Renewing the mind

Thus, O Lord, our God, our Creator, when our affections have been   turned from the love of the world, in which we died by living ill; and  when we began to be “a living soul” by living well; and when the word, “Be not conformed to this world,” which thou didst speak through thy apostle, has been fulfilled in us, then will follow what thou didst immediately add when thou saidst, “But be transformed by the renewing  of your mind.” This will not now be “after their kind,” as if we were following the neighbor who went before us, or as if we were living after the example of a better man – for thou didst not say, “Let man be made after his kind,” but rather, “Let us make man in our own image and our own likeness,” so that then we may be able to prove what thy will is.