I looked upon these carven images with contempt, and spat as I looked.  I knew not what they were, whether forgotten gods or unremembered kings.  But to me they were representative of the vanity of earth-men and earth-aspirations.

And over all this curve of river and sweep of water and wide sands beyond arched a sky of aching brass unflecked by the tiniest cloud.

The hours passed while I roasted in the sun.  Often, for quite decent intervals, I forgot my heat and pain in dreams and visions and in memories.  All this I knew—­crumbling colossi and river and sand and sun and brazen sky—­was to pass away in the twinkling of an eye.  At any moment the trumps of the archangels might sound, the stars fall out of the sky, the heavens roll up as a scroll, and the Lord God of all come with his hosts for the final judgment.

Ah, I knew it so profoundly that I was ready for such sublime event.  That was why I was here in rags and filth and wretchedness.  I was meek and lowly, and I despised the frail needs and passions of the flesh.  And I thought with contempt, and with a certain satisfaction, of the far cities of the plain I had known, all unheeding, in their pomp and lust, of the last day so near at hand.  Well, they would see soon enough, but too late for them.  And I should see.  But I was ready.  And to their cries and lamentations would I arise, reborn and glorious, and take my well-earned and rightful place in the City of God.

At times, between dreams and visions in which I was verily and before my time in the City of God, I conned over in my mind old discussions and controversies.  Yes, Novatus was right in his contention that penitent apostates should never again be received into the churches.  Also, there was no doubt that Sabellianism was conceived of the devil.  So was Constantine, the arch-fiend, the devil’s right hand.

Continually I returned to contemplation of the nature of the unity of God, and went over and over the contentions of Noetus, the Syrian.  Better, however, did I like the contentions of my beloved teacher, Arius.  Truly, if human reason could determine anything at all, there must have been a time, in the very nature of sonship, when the Son did not exist.  In the nature of sonship there must have been a time when the Son commenced to exist.  A father must be older than his son.  To hold otherwise were a blasphemy and a belittlement of God.

And I remembered back to my young days when I had sat at the feet of Arius, who had been a presbyter of the city of Alexandria, and who had been robbed of the bishopric by the blasphemous and heretical Alexander.  Alexander the Sabellianite, that is what he was, and his feet had fast hold of hell.