Book V - Snyder Bible

The Preaching of Simeon Kefa 23
Chapter III: His Dissatisfaction with the Schools of the Philosophers
Having therefore such a bent of mind from my earliest
years, the desire of learning something led me to frequent the
schools of the philosophers. There I saw that naught else was
done, save that doctrines were asserted and controverted
without end, contests were waged, and the arts of syllogisms
and the subtleties of conclusions were discussed. If at any time
the doctrine of the immortality of the spirit prevailed, I was
thankful; if at any time it was impugned, I went away sorrowful.
Still, neither doctrine had the power of truth over my
heart. This only I understood: that opinions and definitions of
things were accounted true or false, not in accordance with
their nature and the truth of the arguments, but in proportion
to the talents of those who supported them. And I was all the
more tortured in the bottom of my heart, because I was neither
able to lay hold of any of those things which were spoken
as firmly established, nor was I able to lay aside the desire of
inquiry; but the more I endeavored to neglect and despise
them, so much the more eagerly, as I have said, did a desire of
this sort, creeping in upon me secretly as with a kind of pleasure,
take possession of my heart and mind.
Chapter IV: His Increasing Disquiet
Being therefore straitened in the discovery of things, I said
to my
manifest? For if after death I shall be no more, my present torture
is useless; but if there is to be for me a life after death, let
us keep for that life the excitements that belong to it, lest it be
that some sadder things befall me than those which I now suffer,
unless I shall have lived obediently and soberly; and, according
to the opinions of some of the philosophers, I be
consigned to the stream of dark-rolling Phlegethon, or to Tartarus,
like Sisyphus and Tityus, and to eternal punishment in
ut these things are fables; or if it be