Being swallowed up therefore in the miserable gulf of idle talk and worthless vanities, thenceforth I lived among shadows, like a prodigal son feeding upon husks with swine. A comfortless wilderness full of thorns and troubles the world was or worse: a waste place covered with idleness and play, and shops, and markets, and taverns. As for churches they were things I did not understand, and schools were a burden: so that there was nothing in the world worth the having or enjoying but my game and sport, which also was a dream, and being passed wholly forgotten. So that I had wholly forgotten all goodness, bounty, comfort, and glory; which things are the very brightness of the Glory of God, for lack of which therefore He was unknown. XV Yet sometimes in the midst of these dreams I should come a little to myself, so far as to feel I wanted something, secretly to expostulate with God for not giving me riches, to long after an unknown happiness, to grieve that the world was so empty and to be dissatisfied with my present state because it was vain and forlorn. I had heard of Angels and much admired that here upon earth nothing should be but dirt and streets and gutters. For as for the pleasures that were in great men's houses I had not seen them: and it was my real happiness they were unknown. For because nothing deluded me I was the more inquisitive. XVI Once I remember (I think I was about four years old) when I thus reasoned with myself. Sitting in a little obscure room in my father's poor house: If there be a God certainly He must be Infinite in Goodness, and that I was prompted to, by a real whispering instinct of nature. And if He be Infinite in Goodness and a perfect Being in Wisdom and Love, certainly He must do most glorious things and give us infinite riches; how comes it to pass, therefore, that I am so poor? Of so scanty and narrow a fortune, enjoying few and obscure comforts? I thought I could not believe Him a God to me unless all His power were employed to glorify me. I knew not then my Soul or Body, nor did I think of the Heavens and the Earth, the Rivers and the Stars, the Sun or the Seas: all those were lost and absent from me. But when I found them made out of nothing for me, then I had a God indeed whom I could praise and rejoice in. XVII