Augustine Quote (The Spirit and the Flesh)

"And so the Spirit, supereminent from the beginning, was 'borne above the waters.' To whom can I expound, and with what words can I express, the weight of cupidity pulling us downwards into the precipitous abyss and the lifting up of love given by your Spirit who was 'born above the waters'? To whom can I communicate this? How can I speak about it? For it is not about literal places where we sink down and rise up. This symbolic language contains a resemblance, but also a difference. It means our feelings and our loves. The impurity of our spirit flows downwards because of our love of anxieties, and the holiness which is yours draws us upwards in a love of freedom from anxiety"(Augustine Confessions Bk. XIII Pg. 277).