16. "For hear and conceive it: I, the greatest, became less than dust; I, the strongest, became weaker than a gnat; and I, the most brilliant, became darker than the center of the earth.

17. "And that is how I am now before you who came as a small spirit out of me and is now already greater in everything than I was when the world did not exist as yet. I got myself imprisoned in my all too great strength and became the weakest of all. For those who had much, lost much and those who had little, lost little; and I who had everything, lost it all and all through my fault, and the others lost their much and their little through my burning guilt, too.