75. God's indulgence toward beginners. — Everyone who follows God, in his very beginning is raised up like a locust, who, though in certain actions, after the manner of locusts, with bent knees he clings to the earth, yet in certain others, with wings outspread, suspends himself in the air. For the beginnings of conversions are mingled with good morals and bad, while both the new life is now enacted through intention, and the old life is still retained by habit. But we are so much the less harmed by the evils meanwhile mingled in, the more we fight against them daily without ceasing. Nor does guilt claim us as its own any longer, against whose wicked practice our mind carefully struggles. Less therefore do earthly works hinder us who are beginning, because they are forbidden to tarry longer within us.
Accordingly, since in the very beginning of our conversion the Lord devoutly bears with certain infirmities in us, that He may at length bring us to heavenly things out of perfection, He raises us up as it were as locusts in our outset, because though He lifts us up in the flight of virtue, He nevertheless does not despair over the fall of earthly work. There follows: