The Flightiness of Our Thoughts

For when the mind has taken in the meaning of a passage in any Psalm, the meaning slips away from it without its noticing, and, ignorantly and thoughtlessly, it passes on to a text of some other Scripture. And when it has begun to consider this by itself, before it has explored it thoroughly, the memory of some other passage springs up and shuts out the consideration of the first. From this, too, it is carried over to something else as some fresh thought comes in. So the soul is always turning about from Psalm to Psalm. It jumps from a passage in the Gospels to read one in the Epistles, passes from there to the writings of the prophets, and is carried from there to some sacred history. And so it wanders about, aimless and unsure, through the whole body of the Scriptures. It cannot reject anything or keep hold of anything as it chooses, nor finish anything by fully considering and examining it. So it becomes only someone who touches and tastes spiritual meanings, not one who brings them forth and possesses them. And so the mind, always fickle and wandering, is distracted even at the time of the service by all sorts of things, as if it were drunk, and does not carry out any part of the office properly. For instance, while it is praying, it is recalling some Psalm or passage of Scripture. While it is chanting, it is thinking about something other than what the text of the Psalm itself contains. When it repeats a passage of Scripture, it is thinking about something that has to be done, or remembering something that has been done. In this way it takes in nothing and rejects nothing in a disciplined and proper way, and seems to be driven about by random attacks, with no power either to keep what it likes or to linger over it. It is well for us, then, before everything else, to know how we can perform these spiritual offices properly, and keep a firm hold on this particular verse that you have given us as a formula. Then the rise and fall of our feelings will not be tossed about by their own flightiness, but will lie under our own control. [a]