“May grace, that suffers me to make confession,”
Began I, “to the great centurion,
Cause my conceptions all to be explicit!”
And I continued: “As the truthful pen,
Father, of thy dear brother wrote of it,
Who put with thee Rome into the good way,
Faith is the substance of the things we hope for,
And evidence of those that are not seen;
And this appears to me its quiddity.”
Then heard I: “Very rightly thou perceivest,
If well thou understandest why he placed it
With substances and then with evidences.”
And I thereafterward: “The things profound,
That here vouchsafe to me their apparition,
Unto all eyes below are so concealed,
That they exist there only in belief,
Upon the which is founded the high hope,
And hence it takes the nature of a substance.
And it behoveth us from this belief
To reason without having other sight,
And hence it has the nature of evidence.”
Then heard I: “If whatever is acquired
Below by doctrine were thus understood,
No sophist’s subtlety would there find place.”
Thus was breathed forth from that enkindled love;
Then added: “Very well has been gone over
Already of this coin the alloy and weight;
But tell me if thou hast it in thy purse?”
And I: “Yes, both so shining and so round
That in its stamp there is no peradventure.”