PG_91A_2

It is not counted together, because the passions that by nature hold us to the present life are not naturally able to pass over with us to the immortal and long-lived life. And the four tens of thousands are the tetrad of the generic virtues; with these the mind, having crossed over nature and time, is restored to the blessed lot of impassibility. For just as the ten thousand is known by the element of the monad alone, being unable to be signified at all by another letter, since it is the same as the monad in subject, even though it receives difference by thought alone, as end to beginning—for the ten thousand is the end of the monad, and the monad is the beginning of the ten thousand, or, to speak more properly, the ten thousand is a monad moved and the monad is a ten thousand at rest—so also every virtue of the generic virtues has the divine and ineffable monad, I mean God, as beginning and end, as beginning from him and ending in him, and being the same as God, differing only in the thought of the Word, from whom and in whom and into whom every generation of virtue has plainly subsisted.

Or perhaps the discourse means the four advances of those who are in the decade of the divine commandments, progressing to the length of contemplation and knowledge, to be the four tens of thousands. For example, the first advance is the simple practice of the commandments in those being introduced, after the avoidance of evil, making the first decade complete, the same also a unit. The second advance is the comprehension of the rest through each commandment being enacted, making the same decade also a hundred, fulfilled by the mutual activity of each commandment. For the decade, enacted tenfold, makes the hundred. The third advance is, according to the law of nature, the tenfold multiplication of this hundred. For the law of nature is also decimal, as consisting of ten—I mean the three powers of the soul and the five senses and the vocal activity and the natural fertility. For it uses the rational faculty for the search of the cause and of the goods pertaining to the cause, the desiring faculty for longing after what is sought, the spirited faculty for guard and affection, and the senses for discrimination divided fivefold also itself, from which knowledge naturally comes to be; for universal discrimination is divided into things begun and things not begun, things intelligible and things not intelligible, things speakable and things not speakable, things to be done and things not to be done, things corruptible and things incorruptible; and the vocal

For the manifestation, and by its fruitfulness for the increase, of the good things that were sought and desired and loved and known and made manifest. Thus the hundred, multiplied tenfold according to the law of nature, becomes a thousand. And the fourth advance is the ascent through contemplation and knowledge of the natural law, according to the division that has been set forth, toward the more archetypal principle of each commandment, by which the ten thousand, gathered together, is contemplated, being known by the element of the first monad. For he who has simply practiced the commandments, and again in the practice of each has taken up the others along with it, and again by the comprehension of these has joined to them the discernment of the natural law, and has again raised this in a gnostic manner to the principle of each commandment, has gathered the four ten-thousands, being honored in each advance by the mystery of the monad, to which the principle of the ten thousand is gathered. Or again, the four ten-thousands signify the so-called four generic impassibilities. For the first impassibility is the complete abstention from evils in act, contemplated in those who are being introduced; the second is the complete rejection of thoughts concerning consent to evils in the mind, occurring in those who pursue virtue with reason; the third is the complete immobility of desire concerning the passions in those who contemplate intelligibly the principles of visible things through their forms; the fourth impassibility is the complete purification even of the bare imagination of the passions, consisting in those who have made their governing faculty a pure and translucent mirror of God through knowledge and contemplation.

He, then, who has purified himself of the activities of the passions and has freed himself from the assent to them in the mind, and has taken a stand against the movement toward them in desire, and has set his intellect undefiled by their mere fantasy, goes out with the four myriads from matter and material things, and hastens toward the divine and peaceful lot of things intelligible. Let the four myriads, then, be understood by us in this way. But the three thousand signify the perfect and right and pious theological account concerning the holy and consubstantial Trinity, according to which the holy Trinity of persons, a monad, is hymned and believed by us to be one God. And the three hundred here indicate the account concerning providence, not only because by the shape of the letter the power that extends from above to things below and encompasses the extremities of the two sides is signified—which declares ineffably the providence that holds all things together—but also because it is honored by the type of the cross, in which the great and first and hidden mystery of providence was accomplished. For the great mystery of God's becoming man is an ineffable mode of providence; and with this type together with the name of the one crucified upon it for our sake, the great patriarch Abraham, perhaps taking courage, went out with three hundred and eighteen—that is, with the type and the name of Jesus—and wrestled down the opposing powers signified by the kings. For Scripture often knows how to reveal its own purpose even from the shapes of the letters, to those who are purified for this.

But if someone wishes to discern the intention of Holy Scripture also from the number, he will thus find the providence made known through it. For it is the work of providence not only to preserve nature unimpaired according to its own principle of being, but also to show it possessing without deficiency, by grace, the acquired principle of well-being. So then, joining one hundred to two hundred, one completes the number three hundred, which signifies nature and virtue. For they say that the number two hundred often signifies nature, as existing from matter and form, since matter is fourfold because of the four elements, and form is fivefold because of the senses, which shape the material compound toward form. For five times forty, or four times fifty, makes two hundred. And the number one hundred signifies perfect virtue, as having the divine decade of the commandments multiplied tenfold; reaching this, Abraham becomes the father of the great Isaac, being dead according to nature, and becoming a begetter of life and joy according to the Spirit. Having therefore joined the one hundred to the two hundred, you would fill up the number three hundred, which signifies providence, holding nature together according to the principle of well-being.

But the number sixty signifies the natural productive power of the commandments, perfected in the principles of the virtues. For if six signifies the productive power of nature, as being perfect and constituted from its own parts—which is why it is written that God made the world in six days—and ten declares the perfection of the virtue that is in the commandments, then sixty clearly indicates the natural capacity for receiving the divine principles contained in the commandments. Therefore the four ten-thousands together with the three thousand three hundred and sixty declare the perfect principle concerning virtue, the venerable mystery of theology, the true aim of providence, and the practical power of nature made quality by the virtues. With these, the one who has distinguished the mind by the Spirit from the senses of the flesh and of the world altogether goes out, leaving behind the mutual intermingling and confusion of these, as the ancients did the Babylonian, and hastens toward the city above, keeping the mind free from every attachment to anything. (Their male and female servants, seven thousand three hundred and seven. The Law, in the passage concerning male and female servants, decrees, saying that Hebrew male and female servants are to serve six years and in the seventh to be released free, but foreign male and female servants are to serve forever, calling, I think, the fiftieth year of release an "age." A Hebrew male servant and a Hebrew female servant are those who serve the practical philosopher for six years—reason and thought—for the conception of ethical propriety and the discovery of the manner of the virtues.)

For every practical man, like a boy and a maidservant, the reason and the thought labor, devising and producing the ways of action according to virtue, and having, as it were, all their power arrayed against the spirits of wickedness that oppose the practical life. Having therefore fulfilled the practical philosophy, which the number six of the years indicated—for it has been said that the number six signifies the practical philosophy—they are released, clearly, to the spiritual contemplation of the kindred principles in existing things, returning back, both the reason and the thought, whenever they come to be in the seventh year, that is, to the state of impassibility, according to which the passions of the soul, subdued by the great labor of the reason and of the thought conjoined with it, give way and withdraw. But the foreign boy and maidservant are anger and desire, which the contemplative intellect always yokes to the mastery of the reason for the service of the virtues through courage and temperance, not giving them complete release toward freedom, until the law of nature is perfectly swallowed up by the law of the Spirit, as death is swallowed up by the endless life of wretched flesh, and the whole image of the unoriginate kingdom is shown clearly, having all the form of the archetype through imitation; coming to be according to this, the contemplative intellect makes both anger and desire free, transforming the one toward the undefiled pleasure of divine love and the pure delight, and transferring the other toward spiritual boiling and fiery, ceaseless motion and temperate madness.

By which, as it seems, the great ray of the undefiled light, the great apostle Paul, having become in the Acts, heard from king Agrippa: You are mad, Paul, and again he himself, writing about himself to the Corinthians: whether we were beside ourselves, it is to God; or whether we are sober, it is for you, calling the sober madness according to God a ecstasy, clearly, as making the sober mind according to it to be outside of beings. But I suspect that the number of these signifies the temporal providence according to the reason together with the impassibility of the ways; according to which, both by reason and by thought, as to Hebrew boys and maidservants they serve in practice, the mind presiding defines the measures of their service according to virtue, transferring them to contemplation, and, taking care of anger and desire as of foreign boys and maidservants as a master of slaves, leads them to the equal-honored freedom according to the end, making desire indeed an enjoyable longing for divine things, and anger an unceasing tension of the enjoyable longing, and rendering the foreign slaves true Hebrews according to grace.

Psalmists and singers of psalms, eight hundred and fifty-five. Psalmists are those who proclaim the divine word through the modes of the virtues, without contemplation, in the realm of practice. Singers of psalms are those who, through the modes of the virtues, together with the gnostic delight that comes from contemplation, guide others into the mysteries and sweeten their spiritual ears. Their number indicates the knowledge of eternal things that is attainable by humans. For eight hundred and fifty suggest the words of knowledge and of the virtues respectively; and five presents the knowledge that pertains to these, just as we set forth concerning the number five a little earlier. Camels, four hundred and thirty-five. The camels, which are joined with the sons of Israel as they are released with great freedom from bitter captivity, are the natural, varied contemplations of things seen, having, like the camel, in relation to sense, as it were feet, the unclean surfaces of visible things, but in relation to the mind, as it were a head, the pure and higher spiritual principles within them. And perhaps the great Isaiah, prophetically prefiguring the glory of the Jerusalem that is understood, spoke concerning these camels: And the camels of Midian and Ephah shall cover you, that is, the spiritual contemplations of the natural passions. For Midian is interpreted as "separation," or "bloody mud," or "human sweats and of a mother," while Ephah is "possession of the back," which is the contemplation of the passions concerning the flesh raised on high, and the back of the soul, as that which is behind, is the flesh.

By these, as by a holy city, the word says that the spiritual lot of the peaceful and unperturbed knowledge of mystical visions is covered, as by walls. The number itself also makes clear the power that was assigned, signifying the rational motion concerning nature and time. And horses seven thousand seven hundred and thirty-six. A horse is one who in the race of the virtues in his life has the whole intensity of his spirited faculty. For they say that the gall of the horse is in the natural hollows of its feet. Therefore, compared with all the remaining tame animals and with the nature of men that are yoked beneath, it was judged more suitable and more powerful for running; to which the great prophet Habakkuk, likening the holy apostles, says through the Spirit, "And you brought your horses into the sea, troubling many waters," calling the holy and blessed apostles horses, who carry the saving word of truth before nations and kings in the whole world, which he figuratively named the sea; and he likened the nations to waters, troubled and shaken by the great power in the word of the Spirit, and transferred by the saving shaking from unbelief to faith and from ignorance to knowledge and from vice to virtue.

The number of the horses itself also makes this clear, typifying the habitual state of practical philosophy according to virtue. For the number seven thousand seven hundred, as a temporal number, signifies the swift motion in virtues, while the thirty-six signifies the activity of nature running together with the virtues. And eight hundred forty-five mules. According to the commended account, a mule is the habitual state wholly barren as regards vice. Therefore, very aptly and fittingly to the spirit of Scripture, the one allotted to reign over Israel was commanded to sit not on a horse but on a mule, the word showing that the contemplative mind, reigning over the thoughts and visions among beings and over its own motions, must have a habitual state barren of vice, that is, a vice that neither conceives at all nor gives birth; upon which it must be borne as it moves toward contemplation, lest, when making a spiritual examination of beings, it unnoticed fall into some of the evil spirits that are naturally disposed to corrupt the pure disposition of the heart through some one of the sensible things.

We know also that Scripture places the mule under censure, as in the verse "Be not as the horse and the mule, which have no understanding," where the Word calls "horse" the habit that neighs with the pleasures of the passions, and "mule" the habit that neither conceives nor brings forth the good; these the Word forbids equally to those who strive for salvation, the one as being productive of evil, the other as having inactivity in virtue. And Absalom's mule too is taken under censure, on which he sat and went out seeking the death of his father, the Spirit showing in these things that whoever is wounded by some vainglory on account of virtue or knowledge, vainly nourishing the hair of his conceit, artfully woven and mixed, displays his ethical conduct like a mule for the deception of onlookers; suspended upon it he imagines that he will overpower the father who begot him through the teaching of the Word, wishing, as a proud man, tyrannically to draw to himself all the glory of virtue and knowledge that belongs to the father from God. But such a man, having gone out into the breadth of natural contemplation in the Spirit for the rational war on behalf of truth, is seized by the hair through the living sense by the thicket of the oak of material spectacles, having as his bond unto death the empty conceit that binds his mind, which suspends him between heaven and between earth. For the vainglorious man has no knowledge that draws him up like a heaven from the conceit that drags him down, nor again earth—I mean the foundation of action in humility—that draws him down from the inflation that pulls him up.

Whom the teacher who begot him, being a lover of God, mourns even in death, out of love for humanity, in imitation of God, not willing the death of the sinner as rather that he turn and live. But that we may also contemplate the passage in another way: David clearly prefigures the practical mind, and Absalom the presumption born from the practical mind through the mind's intercourse with sense. For sense is the daughter of the king of Geshur, whom David took and begot Absalom. And Geshur is interpreted as "guidance of a wall." Now the wall is plainly the body, and the guidance of the body is the law of the body, that is, sense, from which is born Absalom, interpreted as "peace of father, as it is thought," which is clearly presumption. For thinking that we are at peace from the passions, we establish presumption; and the great David, perceiving that it had risen up against him, since he was engaged in practice through knowledge, left the tabernacle and Jerusalem and Judea, and flees beyond the Jordan to the land of Gilead, that is, to the "migration of mourning" or the "migration of testimony" or the "revelation of them," judging himself unworthy, because of the presumption that had risen up against him, of the holy tabernacle, that is, of mystical theology, and of Jerusalem, that is, of the

of peaceful and divinely contemplative knowledge, and of Judea, that is, of confession in the joy of action. For the mind, having relocated its own powers to mourning, and the conscience as a kind of testimony of former deeds, and the memory of sins committed in detail—for this is their uncovering—and, simply put, having come in thought to the time before grace—for this is to be beyond the Jordan—in which it had been estranged from the grace of virtue and knowledge, and having recognized its own weakness and acquired the strong and opposing humility of conceit, through the awareness of its own sins passing over to him who is in noble mourning, it kills the tyrant conceit and returns again to its own glory and rules the land of Judah and Jerusalem, and reigns and serves in the holy tabernacle of God with undefiled and blameless worship. But let us return to the number of the mules of the Jews released from captivity, examining according to our ability the spiritual meaning in it. The mules, it says, are eight hundred and forty-five. This number indicates the mind's perfect impassibility in relation to things perceived by the senses and to perception itself, in accordance with the barren habit of evil, that is, the habit of evil that does not give birth. For eight hundred signifies the impassibility characteristic of the age to come, taken in a praiseworthy sense, while forty signifies things perceived by the senses, and five the senses. The beasts of burden are five thousand five hundred and twenty-five.

A yoke-animal is the body yoked to the soul for bearing the burdens of the toils and labors undertaken for virtue in action, that is, the body's habitual state in accordance with virtue. And perhaps the sons of the great Jacob, having such donkeys, were carrying grain from Egypt to the land of promise for nourishment, setting upon their bodies, through action, the spiritual knowledge shut up in the sacks of their minds—knowledge from natural contemplation, like grain from Egypt—and transporting it toward the life to come. And the number of these donkeys, being wholly spherical, indicates the motion, of the same character, of the body's habitual state in accordance with virtue in action, and borne along without deviation by the principle of knowledge. For those skilled in these matters call only the spherical motion unswerving, since it possesses uniformity throughout, unlike the other motions of beings. Let these things be said by us in this manner, as they do not exceed our capacity for understanding and speaking. But if someone wishes the Church to be prefigured again in these things—to speak of the different ranks of believers, and, so to say, their dispositions—the men are those who have reached the measure, so far as is attainable, of the stature of the fullness of Christ, and who accomplish virtue in love by their own free choice; the boys and girls are those who, through fear of the threatened eternal punishments, undergo the burden of practical philosophy; and the singers are those who rightly expound the account concerning practice and heal the passions of others.

And psalm-singers are those who display the beauty of the knowledge of the divine words through contemplation and drive away ignorance from others as though it were darkness; and camels are those who tame the crookedness of their disposition by reason toward virtue; and horses are those who run well the course of the life according to God; and mules are those of mixed character who harmlessly display the philosophic life in the common sphere; and asses, that is, yoke-animals, are those who have toil in action and receive the word that mounts upon them through contemplation. For one who gathers these together will assemble the fullness of the holy Church, adorned with many beauties of virtue and through many means. The account of the spiritual contemplation of the matters raised has here, in my judgment, reached its end. But if anyone is found abounding in the wealth of gnostic grace, and like the great Samuel seeing things ahead in a spiritual sense, he will clearly reveal to us the meaning hidden in the literal text of what has been written, flashing forth in a gnostic manner the lofty light of the truth in all things, persuading those able to learn that nothing has been written by the Holy Spirit untimely or in vain, even if we are unable to contain it, but all things mystically and in due season and for the sake of human salvation, of which the beginning and end is wisdom, beginning with fear (first creating it and later, at perfection, establishing desire, or rather itself becoming fear in the beginning for our sake by economy, that it may put an end to the lover of evil, and later being found by nature as desire for its own sake at the end, that it may fill with spiritual laughter those who have exchanged their companionship with all things for companionship with it.

I have believed that such men are inscribed by the Spirit, such male and female servants, such psalm-singers and psalm-singers, such camels, such horses, such mules and such donkeys—those whom the Holy Spirit knows how to write, not those whom bodily perception is naturally able to delineate, but those whom a pure mind receives, stamped by the reed of grace. SCHOLIA 1. Grace filled with the Spirit is the wisdom that, according to power and habit and activity, comprehends all the perfect knowledges in Christ that reach human beings; through it the mind, having gone outside the types perceived by sense, applies itself naked to the varied principles of things that have come to be and things that have been written, gathering the divine characters in them into the completion of a single God-befitting form for itself; according to which it receives, as far as possible, the undivided knowledge of all beings in a unified way, through which the light of truth naturally shines forth with lightning flash.

2. Those who are truly knowledgeable, he says, when they teach the principles of the mysteries in the Scriptures, use the historical types as examples, for the elevation of those being taught, fitting the spirit of contemplation to the letter of history, so that both the type, through sense, and the principle, through mind, may be preserved in man—man consisting of soul and body, in relation to which both mind and sense naturally exist, as belonging to one man. 3. Praise is a word that makes known divine beauty; and praising is the relation of the one who praises and the one who is praised, that is, the narration of the words that make known the divine comeliness, according to which the habit of knowledge naturally consists, transforming the one who praises toward the one praised. And the sacrifice of this praise is not only the complete mortification of the passions contrary to nature and the setting aside of those according to nature, but also the complete leading of the one who praises to God. 4. Knowledge that is not bridled by divine fear in practice, he says, produces conceit, persuading the one puffed up by it to put forward what was borrowed as his own, making the contribution of the word for his own praise. But practice that grows together with divine longing, not receiving knowledge of things beyond the practical, produces a humble-minded practitioner, drawing himself back from words beyond his own capacity.

5. He who has conquered the irrational motions of the passions contrary to nature through faith in God and love, he says, comes to be outside the law of nature itself, and is wholly transferred to the region of things intelligible, and with those who have been added to them he casts out along with himself the alien slavery of his natural kindred. 6. Under nature is everything that in any way whatsoever is either a subject, or is naturally predicated of a subject, or naturally exists in a subject; from these the definitions of the things defined are gathered. For the things that complete the various natures of beings are naturally taken up into their definitions, for the precise declaration of what is signified, as existing in the subject and with the subject (naturally subsisting), and from which the subject is, and in which it has its generation; but not observed from outside. Things around nature are those preconceived and co-conceived: the one, because where and when the generation of beings wholly subsisted; the other, because together with the first generation of beings the universal position and motion of beings was also co-observed, which are time and place, in which, according to external position and motion toward a principle, nature exists, but not according to subsistence; for nature is not from them, but in them it has from outside the principle of its being and its position. When, therefore, we contemplate only the principles of being of genera and species and individuals, we take up together with their essential principles the differences that constitute them.

But when we trace genealogies, we necessarily include the where and the when—that is, time and place—along with existing things, observing their beginning and position, without which none of created things has subsisted at all. For nothing among existing things is free from the limitation according to beginning and position. 7. Jerusalem is also a heavenly dwelling-place: the impassible state according to virtue, and the knowledge that has no thought of error warring against it. 8. The tongue, he says, is a symbol of the gnostic activity according to the soul; but the throat is a proof of natural self-love toward the body. Whoever has joined these together in a blameworthy way cannot remember the peaceful state according to virtue and knowledge, delighting with zeal in the confusion of bodily passions. 9. Darius, he says, was taken into the law of nature; and the law of nature encompasses both nature and time, as having authority over the use of all things both according to nature and around nature. The intellect, then, that goes forth as from Darius from the law of nature, becomes, that is, above time and nature, mastered by no thoughts that are under nature and time, so that it may not, carrying about the images of corruptible things, become a temple of idols, having instead of one God many worshipped forms of impure passions.

10. He saw children not counted among them but going out together with their possessors—the reasonings of passions that are not in our power, whose generation, even if not, yet their use is in our power as masters; and women—the natural desires that arise from passions not in our power without reproach; these he leads out with himself, pressing on toward the life according to God, so that they may not become possessed by the slavery of passions contrary to nature. 11. He states the reason why the word did not count the children and the women together with the men. 12. Just as the end of a unit that has been moved is the myriad, and the beginning of a myriad not moved is the unit (for the beginning of every end is clearly its own immobility, and the end of every beginning is the completion of the movement according to it), so also faith, being by nature the beginning of virtues, has as its end the completion of the good that comes through them; and the natural good, having faith as its beginning as the end of virtues, is gathered to it inwardly. For faith is an inward good, and good is faith put into action. And God is by nature faithful and good: the one, as the first good; the other, as the last object of desire. And these are in every way the same as each other, being divided from one another by no principle except that of conception alone, because of the movement from him of things that begin and end in him. Therefore the myriad, bearing the type of the last object of desire, circumscribes the perfect aspiration of things moved toward it; and the unit, bearing the symbol of the first good, [circumscribes] the perfect [aspiration] of things moved from it

is brought forward as a foundation. Therefore there are four myriads—the perfect good that is shown in actuality, proportionately, according to each generic virtue. 13. He who, after the flight from evil, has simply, through inactivity in sin, kept, he says, the decade of the commandments; and again, having shown the complete practice of each commandment to be the comprehension of the others, since all are contemplated in each according to the practice of each, he has made the decade a hundred (for the complete keeping of each commandment in actuality is the fulfilled practice of the rest); and again, having acquired the perfect scientific discernment of these according to nature, he has made the hundred a thousand. And finally, having advanced to the bare rational principles of these in contemplation according to the intellect, he has made the thousand a myriad, gathered from the distinction according to practice to the unified monad according to contemplation. And to speak briefly, he who through the perfect avoidance of evil has kept the commandments unswervingly, and has displayed their perfect practice, and has achieved their most complete discernment according to nature, and has traversed their perfect spiritual contemplation—this man has the four myriads, gathered by the perfect rational principle according to each stage of progress; for the perfect, without interval, possesses together the rational principles both of the beginning and of the end. 14. He says that evil is begun (for it has its beginning in our movement contrary to nature), but that good is not begun (for the good is by nature before every age and time); he says that the good is intelligible, which one must only think; but evil is not intelligible, which one must only not think.

He calls the good "spoken" (for it alone must be spoken), but evil "not spoken" (for it alone must not be spoken). And he calls the good "becoming" (for, existing by nature as unbegotten, by grace through love of humanity it accepts to become from us, toward the deification of us who do and speak and understand), which alone must become; but evil "not being made," which alone must not be made. He calls evil "corruptible" (for the nature of evil is corruption, having existence in no way at all), but the good "incorruptible," as always existing and never ceasing to be, and a guardian of all things in which it comes to be. This, then, we seek with the rational faculty; we desire it with the appetitive faculty; we guard it inviolate with the spirited faculty; with the perceptive faculty, by knowledge, we distinguish it unmixed from its opposites; with the vocal faculty, by speaking, we make it manifest to those who do not know it; and with the generative faculty, we multiply it—or rather, to speak truly, we are multiplied according to it. 15. He calls "first impassibility" the body's untainted movement in relation to sin according to activity.

16. He calls "second impassibility" the complete removal of the impassioned thoughts from the soul, through which the motion of the passions, according to the first impassibility, is withered away, since it no longer has the impassioned thoughts to kindle it toward activity. 17. He calls "third impassibility" the complete immobility of desire concerning the passions, through which the second also naturally comes to be, being established by the purity of the thoughts. 18. He calls "fourth impassibility" the complete setting aside of all the phantasies of sensible things from the mind, according to which the third has received its generation, since it no longer has the phantasies of sensible things forming in it the images of the passions. 19. The thousand is a unit needing nothing for perfection; for it has the most complete account of all the units before it and of itself. Therefore, when it is composed, it is productive of a unit again, but not of a decade. For a unit succeeds the composition of the thousand, as those who have accurately examined the power of numbers say. Reasonably, then, the triad of the thousand signifies the trinitarian account in theology, which, together with perfect virtue, he who has left the Babylon that is understood in the mind possesses and goes forth.

20. The letter Tau is a type of the cross, preserving in its shape the imprint of the cross. And the Iota, as an acrostic of Jesus, signifies the fearful name. And the Eta, as also itself an acrostic, indicates the most steadfast character of virtue; which things, mystically transposing according to number, Abraham the patriarch went out boldly against the opposing powers, as having three hundred and eighteen born in his house; that is, the word that circumscribes the whole of theology through the three hundred, and the ineffable mystery of the divine incarnation of the Word through the ten; and the perfect mode of the steadfast habit according to virtue through the eight; which things the word called those born in the house, as being of the heart of the one who possesses divine offspring by grace. 21. The number one hundred is the tenfold multiplication of the divine decade of the commandments; for it is the perfect comprehension of all of them, each one being enacted through the others. And the comprehension of the divine commandments, each one enacted through the others, is the complete and whole virtue. And perfect virtue is wisdom. And wisdom is the unerring knowledge of the truth. Therefore the one who has unerringly known the truth has become a hundred years old according to the great Abraham, himself also considering his own body as dead; that is, he sees the life according to sense as departed, and begets the joy that lives in the Spirit. For this is what Isaac means. It is therefore a work of providence not only to preserve nature according to its own principle, but also to make the judgment divine, perfectly qualified by the virtues according to the acquired wisdom, with which nature, when contemplated, is naturally able to produce the number three hundred. 22.

The number six has the perfect declaration of the being of beings. And the number ten signifies the constitution of the well-being of beings. So, if one multiplies six tenfold, or multiplies ten sixfold, one makes sixty, which declares the state according to activity of the well-being of beings. 23. When impassibility, he says, which the seventh year indicates, has arrived, both the reason and the thought return to the contemplation of their kindred, having received freedom from the service of the virtues that pertains to bodily modes. 24. An image of the kingdom without beginning is the mind's immutability concerning true knowledge and the senses' incorruptibility concerning virtue, when soul and body, according to the transformation of the senses toward the mind in the Spirit, are bound to each other by the divine law of the Spirit alone, according to which they have the ever-moving and living activity of the reason penetrating through all things at all times, in which every completely unseemly likeness to the divine is absent. 25. They say that pleasure is desire in activity, if indeed it is a present good according to its own definition. And that desire is pleasure not in activity, if indeed it is a future good according to its own definition. And they call anger the motion of madness being practiced; and madness, anger in activity. So then, whoever subordinates these powers to the reason will find that desire becomes for him pleasure according to the undefiled union of the soul with the divine in grace; and anger, a pure boiling, guarding the pleasure that is around the divine, and a temperate madness, wholly ecstatic from beings of the soul's attractive power toward the divine in its longing.

So then, as long as the world lives in us according to the soul's voluntary attachment to material things, we must not give freedom to these powers, lest, mingling with sensible things as though of the same kind, they make war on the soul and take it captive, having become a slave to the passions, as Jerusalem once was to the Babylonians. For the age in which the law commanded the foreign children to serve signifies the soul's disposition of will toward this world, that is, the present life; the passage, through the things recorded, sets forth the things understood. 26. The number seven thousand, placed here as a thing praiseworthy, signifies the temporal and present life adorned with virtue and reason. For if the number one thousand, according to the meaning given in the myriads, signifies the written and natural law agreeing with one another in the life of the God-lover, it is clear from this that the seven thousand signifies the whole life of the God-lover, guarded by these things, which is under time; and the three hundred signifies the providence over those who are provided for, unto their being according to nature and their well-being according to grace. And the seven signifies freedom from passion in one's ways. Therefore, he who has preserved his own life free from passion through his own natural powers, as providence wills, having seven thousand three hundred and seven male and female servants, departs from the confusion of the passions. 27. He calls this the end: both the freedom from passion here in practice, and the deification there according to grace.

28. He calls "psalts" those who live their life in practice, crying out the will of God. 29. He says that "psalm-singers" are those who are not only doers of the divine wills but also become interpreters to others of the mysteries within them. 30. The number eight has both rest and motion: rest, when considered by itself (for every even number is motionless, having no center), and motion, when combined with the number before it or after it; for it produces an odd number. For every odd number is movable by itself, according to the equal distance of its extremes from the middle. What, then, the eight does among the numbers below ten, the eighty also does among the numbers below a hundred; and likewise the eight hundred, ranked among the numbers below a thousand. Considered by itself, then, it has rest, circumscribing the motion of the odd number before it. For seven and seventy and seven hundred are expressive of a temporal property. Since, therefore, perception has the grasp of things under time and generation rather, it remains for the perfected intellect to receive the faultless knowledge—that is, science—of eternal and intelligible things; for they define science as the faultless knowledge of its subject.

The number fifty, bearing an odd unit after the sevenfold multiplication of the week upon itself, signifies the completion of the practice of the virtues in those who are worthy. For he who has attained the good according to nature and taken his stand in it is no longer moved concerning the practice of the virtues; for the unit is the beginning and end of all movement. And the number five signifies the knowledge that comes after these things; for it contains the principles of things intelligible and rational, of things perceptible and living and existent—principles which divine wisdom alone is by nature able to encompass, which they define as the unerring knowledge of the truth. 31. He calls the camels of Midian, on the one hand, since "choice" is the meaning, the true contemplations of things that come to be and pass away; on the other hand, since it means "bloody clay," he has understood by them the principles of providence concerning this transient and unstable life; and on the other hand, since it means "human sweats" and "mother," the principles of the divine judgment concerning the present life, which both the reasonings of the mind and the sensory imagination of visible things gather together; from which—I mean from reasonings and imagination—the true opinion of existing things is gathered, being the fruit of the mind directed upon sensory things. He calls them human sweats and of the mother, then: the reasonings of the mind brought forth with toil, and the imaginations, sense nursing us like a mother. And the camels of Gephar, that is, of the possession of the back; and the back is, of the soul, the flesh, since it comes to be for the sake of the soul. If, then, we possess the flesh well, we have it serving the soul for the generation of virtues, and we contemplate in it only the divine principles for the sake of which it came to be; together with which also the principles of visible things, as camels—

Having gathered the words of Madiam, we cover our Jerusalem, the soul, clothing it with the divine contemplations of beings and making it unseen and unconquerable by the passions. 32. The number four hundred indicates the nature of the bodily world. For four elements complete it. And thirty-five signifies the movement of the virtuous in time, together with reason. For seven taken five times into itself makes the number thirty-five. So seven is of temporal movement; and five is significant of rational knowledge. Having joined therefore four hundred and thirty and five, you have indicated the rational knowledge, according to nature and time, of the divine men living in them. 33. The things numbered agree with the numbers. The horse is swift in its course, having in its feet the ever-moving and upward-tending element; time is sharp in movement, making its own destruction without interval; the action of those numbered is effective; for a cyclical number makes it manifest. For six taken six times under itself begets itself sixfold. Therefore the swift and the straight and the effective of the disposition according to virtue, of divine men mystically indicated, the word of the Spirit has made clear through the horses and their number. 34.

He who gives, it says, to those who contemplate a preconception of knowledge about himself merely by the utterance of the words he has plundered, persuading the ears of the unintelligent as Absalom did, and who tyrannically, by his intercourse, defiles the good and God-loving women of his teacher—that is, their ears—with uninitiated hearings of contemplation, according to the counsel of Ahithophel, which is interpreted as "a brother plastering"—that is, a brother befriending by deceit—is convicted of vainglory, falling under the hand of the children of David, in the breadth of the variety of natural contemplations, arrayed against the stronger with his own self-will. For he is shown neither treading upon the earth, as having no firm foundation of moral virtue, nor yet wholly attaining to heaven, as not at all touching the truly lofty habit of knowledge; and he dies, receiving three arrows in his heart—I mean the memory of his lawlessness against his teacher, the shame over his conceit of knowledge that is not, and, besides these, the inescapable expectation of the coming judgment. For the vainglorious man, detected by these shafts, dies as he is struck, whom the evil counselor Ahithophel precedes, carried off—as was just—by the death that comes through hanging, teaching children to rise up against fathers, and seeing his evil counsel scattered. For he can no longer bear to live, having lifted off the cloak of his blameworthy friendship toward David, and having been unable to demonstrate that the vainglorious and falsely named gnostic possesses the power of reason. 35. Gilead, interpreted as a migration of mourning, he says, signifies the hardship of repentance.

As a migration of testimony, it signifies the conscience's conviction concerning the things that have been done amiss; as a revelation of them, it typifies the declaration of sins committed according to their kind. Having entered into this state, the mind that has the conceit pursuing some good thing puts to death the conceit born of it through union with the foreign perception; and again it returns to Judea and Jerusalem and the tabernacle—I mean the confession of the divine mercies shown toward it, and the perfect impassibility in virtues, and the peaceful contemplation in the Spirit of things that exist, and, as it were, a divine tabernacle, the mystical theology concerning them, in which the beauties wholly invisible to others are mystically veiled. 36. The eight, being one of the numbers within the decade; and the eighty, of those within the hundred; and the eight hundred, of those within the thousand; and the eight thousand, of those within the ten thousand, when considered in themselves, signify immobility, but according to the remission of the

how much, and also the intensity. Therefore, when they are set down in Scripture in a praiseworthy manner, they signify complete motionlessness in relation to the passions—that is, the cessation of passions. And this characterizes the state of the age to come, in which there is no genesis of passions. And the forty bears the image of things perceptible, and the five of the senses, by which the perceptible world has been subjected to natural knowledge. Reasonably, then, this present number signifies the barren habit in relation to vice, and the complete disengagement of these divine men from perceptible things according to the relation of the senses to them. 37. He says that the number five is spherical, as being circular and returning to itself in every composition of it with every odd number. For if you add five five times to each odd number, you will find the sum ending in five. For example, five times three is fifteen; five times five is twenty-five; five times seven is thirty-five; five times nine is forty-five. Proceeding thus without limit, you will find that five, added five times to each odd number, and fifty to fifty, and five hundred to five hundred, and five thousand to five thousand, returns to itself according to the sum—which is the property of circular and spherical motion. Reasonably, then, those who are wise in such matters have called the number five spherical and circular, as never entirely departing from itself in its composition with the so-called odd numbers.

It also signifies general knowledge, which in no way departs from its own knowledge through the ceaseless motion concerning the universe, and which comprehends all things by the power of the word. 38. By hope of punishment, wisdom frees from passions and produces fear; and by accustoming the mind through the acquisition of virtues, it creates a longing to see things to come. 39. Wisdom is fear, becoming a deprivation through avoidance for those who do not strive for it; and it is longing, found as a habit of enjoyable activity for those who love it. N (56). CONCERNING THE ENEMIES OF JUDAH AND BENJAMIN WHO HAD COME. (56. QUESTION 50. Again it is written in the second Ezra: And the enemies of the tribe of Judah and Benjamin, having heard, came to know what the sound of the trumpets was, and they recognized that those from the captivity were building the temple to the Lord God of Israel, and, having come to Zerubbabel and Jesus and the leaders of the fathers, they say to them: Let us build together with you, for we hear your Lord just as you do and we sacrifice to him from the days of Asbakaphath king of the Assyrians, who brought us here. And Zerubbabel and Jesus and the leaders of the fathers of Israel said to them: It is not for us and you to build the house to the Lord our God; for we alone will build to the Lord of Israel. What then does this signify, and especially the envy, on account of which those who worship the same God did not wish to build together with them?

Answer. Judas is interpreted as "confession"; and the meaning of this word is twofold: the one being that which occurs in thanksgiving for the good things that have been given, and the other that which is spoken for the refutation and examination of things evilly done. For "confession" is said both of the enumeration with thanksgiving of the divine benefactions by those who have been well treated, and of the declaration of things evilly done by those who are guilty. And both are productive of humility; for both the one giving thanks for good things and the one being examined for accusations are humbled, the one judging himself unworthy of the good things given, and the other beseeching to receive forgiveness of his transgressions. And Benjamin is interpreted, according to the exact force of the voice among the Hebrews, as "mourning or groaning of a mother, or measure of a mother, or son of the right hand, or building of a people." Therefore everyone who confesses in one of the ways mentioned is of the tribe of Judas, and everyone who mourns for the sake of virtue, or who, after the manner of a mother, has righteousness rightly defining his own life and word, or who, being of many through virtue an abundance and effusion of teaching in the word unto salvation, is a way and building of the tribe of Benjamin. For the word knows such men to be those who receive freedom from the captivity of the passions and who go out from the relation of sensible things and are able to build a house for the Lord, having become according to the state of impassibility; and by "house" I mean the mind, built from various virtues and words in both practice and contemplation, into a dwelling place of God in the Spirit.

And their enemies are the four nations that were resettled into the land of Israel by Asbakaphath king of Assyria; for he first settled in the land of Israel men of Babylon and men of Chuth and men of Aemath and the Evaeans. The Babylonians, then, signify pride, being interpreted as "confused understanding." And the Chuthaeans signify vainglory, turning the mind from virtue toward fruitless conceit; for the name of these also, being interpreted, means "ecstasy." And the men of Aemath signify people-pleasing; for Aemath is interpreted as "sight of things that appear," through which the more substantial of the gains have been devised for those who falsely pursue virtue for the sake of men. And the Evaeans signify the deceit of hypocrisy; for they are interpreted as "serpent-like," driving those who are persuaded out of virtue, as Adam was, through deceit and friendly hypocrisy. And Asbakaphath, who resettled these into the land of Israel, is interpreted as "taking captive from behind," that is, secretly or latently, or again "taking captive by bonds." And this is clearly the devil, who does everything latently for the overthrow of human nature and binds each one fast with the chains of his own sins. This one resettled into the land of Israel—I mean the state of virtue and knowledge—pride and vainglory and people-pleasing and hypocrisy, yoking them to those who are virtuous and knowledgeable, in order to steal the labors of those who toil in good things, sophistically leading the aim of what is done away to other things contrary to the cause.

And perhaps knowing that these wicked demons attend upon the virtuous, the divine apostle persuaded the Corinthians, writing that he did not come to them in a word of flattery, as a hypocrite—this being perhaps what they thought about him—nor with a pretext of greed, as a man-pleaser, nor seeking glory from anyone, as vainglorious; for he passed over pride in silence, having the true marks of humility plainly evident: the countless persecutions and the sufferings of the body and the extreme poverty and his lack of eloquence in speech; for even if I am unskilled in speech, he says, yet not in knowledge. These, having heard the sound of the trumpets, have come to know what the sound is; and they recognized that those from the captivity are building the temple to the Lord God of Israel. Trumpets are those whose sound the unclean demons hear—the words concerning virtue and knowledge. And the sound of these words is the works of the virtues and the stability of character in their manner of life of those who through repentance have returned from vice to virtue and have ascended from ignorance to the knowledge of God. And they came to Zerubbabel and Jeshua and the heads of the fathers' houses, and they say to them: Let us build together with you, for we hear your Lord just as you do, and we sacrifice to him.

Zerubbabel is the practical intellect, and Jesus the contemplative; and the leaders of the fathers are the powers of the soul, from which the dispositions of virtue and the principles of knowledge have their origin, and to these come the unclean demons of pride and vainglory, of men-pleasing and hypocrisy, saying: Let us build together with you the temple of the Lord. For none of these wicked demons ever hinders the eagerness of the virtuous man, but rather, having craftily cut away the deficiencies of the virtues, he suggests intensifications, joining in zeal with the contestants, so that he may draw the whole thought of the ascetic to himself, after it has lost the equal balance of the mean, and so that it may escape notice as it travels to a dwelling other than the one it supposes. Therefore the evildoers say: We hear your Lord in the same way as you. For they neither hate chastity nor loathe fasting, nor the distribution of money, nor hospitality, nor psalmody, nor leisure for reading, nor the higher branches of learning, nor sleeping on the ground, nor vigil, nor all the rest by which the life according to God is characterized, so long as the aim and the cause of what is done inclines toward them. For the ascetic, perhaps having quickly overtaken the other demons, easily escapes the harm from them.

But who among the exceedingly lofty intellects could comprehend these men, who seem to cooperate with the course of virtue and, as it were, wish to build together the temple for the Lord, apart from the active and living Logos who passes through all things and pierces even to the division of soul and spirit, that is, who discerns which of works or thoughts are psychic—that is, natural forms or movements of virtue—and which happen to be spiritual, that is, those that characterize what is above nature and God, but are given to nature according to grace? And who comprehends the fitting or wholly unfitting concord of joints and marrow with the spiritual principles of the dispositions according to virtue, and who judges the impulses and thoughts of hearts, that is, the hidden dispositions in the depth regarding the things that have been said and their invisible causes according to the soul? For him no creature is hidden—clearly among us who seem to escape notice—but all things are naked and laid bare, not only the things that have come to be and been thought, but already also the things that will be done by us and the things that will be thought? For the statement says, no creature is hidden, perhaps concerning a future action and thought; for it does not speak of one that has already happened, which is manifest both to us ourselves and to others—scarcely would it be so to God, who has foreknown all the infinite ages (both those that have come before and those that are and those that will be) and has grasped beforehand by nature the knowledge of the genesis of all things, and not from existing things, but from himself has preconceived in himself the knowledge of existing things.

For He alone of existing things is by nature knowledge, as the cause of existing things, and again self-knowledge, as having His own knowledge by nature beyond cause, and still further exalted above that, by a wholly and utterly transcendent and infinitely repeated account, beyond the boundless boundlessness of ignorance, since He is the creator of what is thus called knowledge in every account and manner, and of every other knowledge that can be spoken or conceived, being unapproachable. Who, not having this Word dwelling in the depth of his heart, will be able, escaping the unseen wiles of the demons' hypocrisy against us, to stand by himself most alone, without any mingling, and to build the temple of the Lord, like the great Zerubbabel and Jesus and the leaders of the fathers, who plainly declared with a loud voice to the deceitful spirits of pride and vainglory and men-pleasing and hypocrisy: Not for us and for you to build the house of the Lord our God; for we alone will build to the Lord of Israel, knowing that their mingling brings corruption and destruction to the whole building, and robs the grace of the beauty of the divine offerings? For no one can, having any of the said demons accompanying virtue, build it to the Lord; for he does not have God as the end of what is done, whom contemplating he would pass through it, but the passion which he establishes through it.

Therefore those of the captivity did not receive the Babylonians and the Chuthaeans and the Aemathaeans and the Evaeans, who were building the temple of the Lord together with them, out of envy, but because they recognized the friendly guile of the wickedness of the demons, which through the good secretly wished to work out for them the death of sin. May it be that we too always say to the spirits of wickedness that invisibly attack us in a guise of spiritual friendship and say, "Let us build the temple to your Lord together with you": "It is not for you and for us to build the house to the Lord our God; for we alone will build to the Lord of Israel." Alone, indeed, because, having been freed from the spirits that war against virtue by deficiency—from which we have also departed—we do not wish, having been puffed up through you by excesses, to be pierced again and to fall by a fall as much harsher than the former as the former had an easy hope of return for those who were forgiven because of weakness, whereas for the latter there is either no hope or it will be difficult for those who are hated because of pride and who make something else more right than the right hand. And not alone again, because we have the holy angels as helpers in good things, or rather God Himself manifesting Himself in us through the works of righteousness and building us for Himself as a holy temple, free from every passion.

SCHOLIA 1. That confession is twofold. 2. That every confession, he says, humbles the soul: the one, having been justified by grace; the other, teaching it by dejection of its own disposition, being held fast in accusations. 3. He who mourns over his first sins, and who perfectly possesses faith in God, which always gives birth to him unto righteousness, and every pattern of virtue, offering his own life and reason, has established himself of the spiritual tribe of Benjamin, showing his birth according to God to be a work of choice, not of necessity. For he is a son of the right hand, who willingly surpasses the birth according to God that is by choice. 4. By the Babylonians he means pride, as being a confused mind. For the passion of pride consists of two ignorances. And two ignorances coming together into unity produce one confused mind. For that one alone is proud, who has ignored both the divine help and human weakness. Pride, therefore, is the deprivation of divine and human knowledge. For by the denial of the truly highest things, there is one false affirmation.

5. He calls the Huthites vainglory. For the goal according to God is ecstasy, and vainglory is a transition to another goal beside the divine one. For vainglorious is he who practices virtue for the sake of his own glory, but not the divine glory, and who buys with his own labors the praises that come from men and have no substance. 6. He calls Amath man-pleasing. For the man-pleaser takes care only for the outward appearances of character, and indeed also of flattering speech, so that he may win over some by sight and others by hearing—those who take pleasure or are struck only by things seen and heard, and who circumscribe virtue by sense perception alone. We say, then, that man-pleasing is the display of characters and words honored as virtue for the sake of men. 7. He calls Euaeous hypocrisy. And hypocrisy is a pretense of friendship, or hatred concealed under the guise of friendship; or enmity worked through goodwill, or envy imitating the stamp of love; or a disposition that loves sin, catching the observers by the display of virtuous characters; or a life that has its decorum in a fiction of virtue, but not in reality; or a pretense of righteousness, maintained by the appearance of being; or a manner of ethical philosophy that conceals the hidden deprivation of the mind's purpose according to virtue; or deceit, having the form of truth, which those who imitate the serpent in the crookedness of their characters practice. 8. God is the cause of beings, and of the good things that are among beings.

Therefore, the one who labors in virtue and knowledge but does not extend the awareness of his own incapacity to the measure of his progress in grace has not escaped the evil of pride. And he who pursues the good for the sake of his own glory has preferred himself to God, pierced by the nail of vainglory. And he who does or pursues virtue in order to be seen by men has set human approval far above divine approval, being sick with the passion of people-pleasing. And he who craftily tints his character with the mere dignity of virtue for the sake of deception, and covers the evil disposition of his mind with the outward appearance of piety, purchases virtue by the fraud of hypocrisy. So then, the noetic Ashbakaqath led the goal of each of these to things other than the cause. 9. The words of God, he says, when spoken merely according to the utterance alone, are not heard, since they do not have as their voice the action of those who speak them. But if they are uttered by the practice of the commandments, they both hold the demons in check, divided as they are by such a voice, and build up men, obediently through the progress of the works of righteousness, as the divine temple of the heart. 10. Zerubbabel here he took to mean the practical intellect, as being more warlike; and Jesus, the contemplative, as being a priest and appointed always to make his petition to God. 11. He calls the division of soul and spirit the difference between the natural virtues, of which we possess the principles by nature, and those which are from the Spirit, of which we receive the grace as a gift; for the Word, when judging, makes the distinction between these clearly. 12.

The divine word is the marrow, which nourishes the divine thoughts within us as though they were bones, and these in turn nourish the body of the virtues. And the joint is the manner of action, according to which the union of our thoughts with the divine words naturally comes about, toward a single fulfillment of virtue. 13. The stirrings of the heart and the conceptions, of which the Word says he is the judge, are the soul's relations to the divine words and to the thoughts, and clearly also the causes of those very relations. For the stirring of the heart moves memory, to which relation is proper; and the conception looks toward an end, which characterizes a cause. 14. The knowledge according to essence, he says, is God; and clearly the intellect precedes all knowledge, and it is natural for knowledge to fall under it; therefore God is also beyond this, because he is beyond every intellect, under which knowledge in any way whatsoever naturally falls, and he is established beyond conception. 15. Those who war against us by deficiency of virtue are demons, who teach fornication and drunkenness, love of money and envy, and the like; and those who war by excess are those who teach presumption and vainglory and arrogance, and the like; and through the things on the right they secretly strike with the things on the left.

16. The boundary of virtue is the union, through knowledge, of human weakness with divine power. Therefore, the one who confines himself to the weakness of his nature has not reached the boundary of virtue; for this reason he fails, not yet having received the power that makes weakness strong. But the one who boldly sets his own weakness against divine power as though it were strength has passed beyond the boundary of virtue; and for this reason, failing, he does not recognize it, since what lies beyond has been made superior by himself. For he considers the failure to be virtue. Therefore, the one who confines himself to the weakness according to nature is more deserving of forgiveness, having fallen from virtue rather through slackness, than the one who sets his own weakness against divine power as though it were strength for the doing of what is fitting, having fallen rather through arrogance. NZ (57). Concerning "The prayer of a righteous man is powerful when it is energized." (57. Question 57: "The supplication of a righteous man is powerful when it is energized." What is "when it is energized"? Answer.

I know that the petition of the righteous man is effected in two ways. In one way, when the one who prays makes his offering of petition to God together with the works done according to the commandments, and does not let the petition lie idle and without substance, falling from the tongue only in bare word and empty sound of voice, but rather active and living, animated by the ways of the commandments—for the substance of prayer and petition is manifestly the fulfillment through the virtues, by which the righteous man has his petition strong and able to do all things, being effected by the commandments. In another way, when the one who is in need of the prayer of the righteous man performs the works of prayer, both correcting his former life and making the petition of the righteous man strong, being empowered through his own good conduct. For there is no benefit in the petition of the righteous man when the one who needs it takes more pleasure in virtues than in his transgressions, since even the great Samuel once grieved over Saul when he was transgressing, but he could not propitiate God, not having received as a fellow-worker of his grief the fitting correction of the one who was transgressing. Therefore, God, putting a stop to the unprofitable grief, says to his own servant: How long will you grieve over Saul, when I have rejected him from reigning over Israel?

And again Jeremiah, the most compassionate, praying on behalf of the people of the Jews, who were raging in the delusion of the demons, is not heard, since he does not have for the power of his prayer the conversion from the delusion of the godless Jews. Therefore God, leading him away from praying in vain, says: And you, do not pray for this people, and do not ask that they be shown mercy, and do not entreat and do not come to me any more concerning them, for I will not hear. For it is truly great foolishness—not to say madness—to seek salvation by the prayer of the righteous for one who in disposition takes pleasure in things destructive, and to ask forgiveness for those things in which he boasts, being stained in intention by his activity, when it is necessary that the one who needs the petition of the righteous not leave it idle and unmoved, if indeed he truly hates evil things, but to make it active and strong, winged by his own virtues and reaching the one who is able to grant forgiveness of sins.

Whether, then, it is from the righteous man who offers the petition, or is wrought in the one who asks the righteous man to pray, the petition of the righteous man has great power. For when it is wrought by the righteous man, it gives him boldness before the one who is able to grant the requests of the righteous; but when it is wrought by the one who asks the righteous man to pray, it removes him from his former wickedness, changing his disposition toward virtue. 58. CONCERNING "IN WHICH YOU REJOICE, NOW FOR A LITTLE WHILE, IF NEED BE, HAVING BEEN GRIEVED." (58. QUESTION 58: "In which you rejoice, now for a little while, if need be, having been grieved in various trials." How can one who is grieved in trials rejoice in that in which he is grieved? Answer. The word of truth knows grief to be twofold: the one consisting invisibly in the soul, the other visibly in the senses; and the one encompassing the whole depth of the soul, tormented by the scourge of conscience, the other circumscribing all the senses, contracted by the weight of pains from natural diffusion; and the one being the end of sensual pleasure, the other of the soul's gladness—or rather, the one being the conclusion of sensual inclinations, the other of the passions themselves contrary to inclination. For grief is, to speak in my own words, a disposition deprived of pleasures; and deprivation is a bringing on of pains; and pain is clearly a deficiency or recession of natural state; and deficiency of natural state is a passion of the power naturally underlying the state; and the passion of the power naturally underlying the state is the mode according to the misuse of natural activity.

But the misuse of the mode that operates according to nature is the motion of the power toward what is not naturally constituted and established. (Just as the account knows grief to be twofold, as I said, so also I understand the mode of temptations to be twofold: the one according to intention, the other contrary to intention; and the one is the producer of voluntary pleasures, the other the bringer-on of involuntary pains. For the temptation according to intention clearly establishes the voluntary pleasures that accord with choice, while the temptation contrary to intention manifestly brings on the involuntary pains that are contrary to choice; and the one is the cause of grief according to the soul, the other of grief according to sense. Wherefore I think that the Lord and God, when teaching His own disciples how they ought to pray, says that they should pray against the form of temptations that is according to intention: and lead us not into temptation—clearly teaching His own disciples to pray that they not be abandoned to undergo a trial of the pleasurable and intentional and voluntary temptations; while the great James, who is said to be the brother of the Lord, teaching that those who struggle for the truth should not shrink from the form of involuntary temptations, says: Count it all joy, my brothers, when you fall into various temptations—clearly the involuntary and contrary-to-intention temptations that produce pains. And they make it clear, there indeed the Lord adding: but deliver us from the evil one; and here the great James: knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance; and let endurance have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. Perfect is the one who

Fighting voluntary temptations through self-control and enduring involuntary ones with patience, he is also whole—the one who completes both action with knowledge and contemplation not without action. For since grief and pleasure are divided into soul and sensation, the one who secures the pleasure of the soul but accepts the grief of sensation with patience becomes approved and perfect and whole: approved through the trial of things opposed according to sensation, perfect as one who unyieldingly fights against pleasure and grief according to sensation through self-control and patience, and whole as one who keeps the habits—opposed to one another by the mutually conflicting dispositions according to sensation—blameless in the stability of the identity according to the principle, I mean action and contemplation held together with one another and neither divorced from the other, but action displaying the knowledge of contemplation through its modes, and contemplation no less armed with the virtue of action by the principle. Since, then, the account has shown that grief and pleasure are twofold and that the one is constituted according to the soul and the other according to sensation, come, let us also contemplate, as far as we are able, their more summary causes. The mode of grief according to the soul is twofold: the one consisting in one's own offenses, the other in those of others; and the cause of such grief is clearly the pleasure according to sensation of the one who grieves or of those for whose sake he grieves.

For, by the exact account, there is almost no sin at all among men that does not have as the beginning of its own generation the soul's irrational attachment to sensation for the sake of pleasure. And the cause of pleasure according to the soul is plainly the grief, according to sensation, of one who takes pleasure and rejoices in his own virtues or in those of others; for by the exact account there is almost no virtue at all among men that does not have as the beginning of its own generation the soul's reasoned aversion toward sensation. And when the soul has acquired an aversion toward sensation on behalf of virtue, of necessity sensation will be in pains, having no power to devise pleasant things, which is joined to it according to the disposition of the will—on the contrary, it manfully beats back the uprising of its natural pleasures through self-control, and against the onset of pains contrary to nature and involuntary it remains through endurance wholly unyielding, and it does not depart from the God-befitting worth and glory that is according to virtue because of unstable pleasure, nor does it fall from the height of the virtues toward the reception of pains through sparing of the flesh because of the painful sensation. And the cause of grief according to sensation is the soul's complete absorption in things contrary to nature; and pleasure according to sensation is plainly brought into being by the soul's activity contrary to nature, which cannot have any other beginning of constitution than the soul's setting aside of things according to nature. For mind and sensation have their natural activity opposed to one another because of the utmost difference and otherness of the things that underlie them.

For the one has as its underlying subjects the intelligible and incorporeal essences, which it is naturally disposed to apprehend according to essence, while the other has the sensible and corporeal natures, which it too naturally apprehends. Since, then, it is not possible for the mind to pass over to the intelligible things akin to it without the contemplation of the sensible things set before it as intermediates, and this is altogether impossible without the sense, which is compounded with it and naturally akin to sensible things, reasonably, if indeed the mind, applying itself, is held fast by the surfaces of visible things, supposing the compounded sense to be a natural activity, it has fallen away from the intelligible things according to nature, and with both hands, as the saying goes, has laid hold of things contrary to nature, being activated contrary to reason in bodies because of the sense that has prevailed over it it becomes the begetter of grief according to the soul (which is tormented by frequent scourges according to conscience), and it becomes the manifest maker of pleasure according to sense, when the flesh is made sleek by the devices of the modes that procure its comfort. But if, cutting through the surface toward sense at once with the impact of the things seen, it contemplates the spiritual reasons of beings pure of the shapes upon them, it has wrought the pleasure of the soul, since it is mastered by none of the things contemplated by sense, and it has established the grief of sense, since all sensible things according to nature have been deprived. For where the reason leads the way before sense in the contemplation of visible things, the flesh is deprived of every pleasure according to nature, not having the sense unfettered and released from rational bonds for the service of its own pleasures.

Therefore, as I said, since pleasure according to sense constitutes the soul's grief—that is, its pain (for both are the same as each other)—and since pleasure according to the soul is naturally disposed to produce the grief of sense—that is, pain—reasonably the one who longs for the life according to hope, our God and Savior Jesus Christ, through the resurrection of the dead unto an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled and unfading, kept in the heavens, has in his soul exultation and joy unutterable, continually rejoicing in the hope of the good things to come, but in his flesh and sense grief—that is, the pains that come upon it from various temptations and the distresses that follow them. For pleasure and pain accompany every virtue: pain of the flesh, deprived of the gentle and smoother sensation, but pleasure of the soul, delighting in all intelligible things through the pure words in the Spirit. It is necessary, then, that the mind in the present life—for this is what I understand the "now" to mean—while it is grieved according to the flesh because of the many pains of the temptations brought upon it for the sake of virtue, always rejoice according to the soul and be glad because of the hope of eternal good things, even if it has its sense worn down by toil; for the sufferings of the present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed in us, says the divine apostle.

Thus, so to speak in my own words, a man can rejoice in that wherein he is grieved. For by virtue he is grieved according to the flesh through his labors, yet in that same virtue he rejoices according to the soul, beholding as present the comeliness of things to come; for the sake of which, according to the great David, by the putting to death of the flesh according to the will he dies each day, while being ever renewed according to the birth of the soul in the Spirit, inasmuch as he has both pleasure as his salvation and grief as his profit. For we call grief not the irrational grief that torments the soul of the many over the loss of passions or material things, as when they make their impulses contrary to nature toward what they should not, and their avoidances from what they should not, but the grief that is reasoned and approved by those wise in divine things, and that signifies the present evil. For they say that grief is a present evil, constituted in the soul when sensory pleasure prevails over rational discernment, and subsisting in the senses when the soul's course in virtue is accomplished without hindrance, bringing upon the senses labors to the same degree as it produces pleasure and joy in the soul that is drawn near to God through the illumination akin to virtue and knowledge.

SCHOLIA 1. He means the grief of the soul. (2. The pain according to sensation he now called grief. 3. He says that the grief of the soul is the end of the pleasure according to sensation; for from this grief of the soul is constituted; just as, then, the end of the pleasure of the soul is the grief according to the flesh; for the gladness of the soul becomes the grief of the flesh. 4. Successive definitions of grief, referring to the cause according to which it naturally comes to be. 5. He says that grief is twofold: the one concerning sensation, constituted by the deprivation of bodily pleasures; the other concerning the mind, arising by the deprivation of the goods of the soul. And he says that temptations are also twofold, some voluntary and some involuntary; and the voluntary ones are fathers of bodily pleasure according to sensation, and are begetters of the grief of the soul. For sin alone, when committed, grieves the soul. And the involuntary ones, which are shown in labors contrary to one's judgment, are fathers of the pleasure of the soul, and are begetters of bodily pain according to sensation.

6. The temptation according to one's own will, he says, establishes grief in the soul, but clearly produces pleasure according to sensation; whereas the temptation against one's will brings about pleasure of the soul and grief of the flesh. 7. The Lord, he says, teaches us to pray against voluntary temptations, as being productive of pleasure of the flesh and pain of the soul; but the great James exhorts us to rejoice in involuntary temptations, as removing pleasure of the flesh and pain of the soul. 8. Whom he calls perfect. 9. Whom he calls whole. 10. He who has had experience of grief and pleasure of the flesh might be called approved, as having been tried by the ease and difficulty of things pertaining to the flesh. But perfect is he who has wrestled down the pleasure of the flesh and its pain by the power of the Word. And whole is he who has kept the dispositions in practice and contemplation unswerving by his intensity toward the divine. 11. Since all grief is established in the soul, he says that pleasure of the flesh precedes it. 12. That without the passionate relation of the soul to sensation, there is no sin at all among men.

13. He says that the one who subdues the flesh with voluntary labors gladdens the soul spiritually. 14. He says that the voluntary alienation of the soul from the flesh is the genesis of virtue. 15. He calls the intellectual power of the soul inventive; when it is separated from the relationship according to sensation, it leaves the flesh destitute of providence toward pleasure, according to the disposition in the will. Nor does the flesh endure being comforted in its pain, because of the wholehearted occupation of the will with divine things in its relationship. 16. He says that the soul's setting aside of things according to nature is naturally the beginning of the pain according to sensation. For when the soul labors over the good things according to nature, the power that invents the modes of pleasure according to sensation is not present. 17. Sensible things are subject to sensation, and intelligible things to the intellect. There is, then, a great difference between intelligible and sensible things. 18. He says that the intellect, as soon as it regards sensation as its own power according to nature, being entangled in the appearances of sensible things, devises the pleasures of the flesh, unable to pass beyond the nature of visible things, encompassed as it is by its passionate relationship to sensation.

19. He who, in relation to his own law, transfers the laws of beings by imitation, is reckoned virtuous, while he who changes his own in imitation of the laws of others is passionate, bringing the power of reason out into irrationality. 20. He says that when reason rules in us, the flesh, which has been enslaved to it for virtue, is of necessity tormented. 21. The flesh is the soul's, but the soul is not the flesh's. For he says the lesser belongs to the better, but not the better to the lesser. Therefore, since the law of sin was implanted in the flesh because of the transgression—that is, the pleasure according to sense, through which the death of the flesh was condemned to pains—death was devised for the removal of the law of sin. He who discerns that death entered for the sake of sin, for its removal, always has his soul rejoicing, beholding through various pains the law of sin in his own flesh being done away, for the reception of the blessed life to come in the Spirit; which it is otherwise impossible to obtain, unless the law of sin in the flesh has first been emptied out, as from a vessel, in the present life, according to the disposition of the will toward it. 22. He calls saving pleasure the joy of the soul in virtue, and beneficial grief the pain of the flesh for the sake of virtue. 23. He who is devoted to passions and to things toward which he ought not to make his impulses. 24. He who does not welcome the combinations productive of passions and of the deprivation of things, from which he ought not to make his escapes. 59. Concerning the salvation which the prophets sought out and searched.

Question 59. Concerning the salvation which the prophets who prophesied of the grace that was to come to us sought out and searched diligently, searching what or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ which was in them did signify, when it testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ and the glories that should follow them. If the blessed prophets themselves left in writing for us the things which they were inspired to utter by the Holy Spirit, so that we might seek them out and search them diligently, how is it that they themselves, being inspired by the Holy Spirit and writing down the things revealed to them, were seeking out or searching diligently? What sort of seeking or searching did they seek or search? Answer. Human nature possesses the questioning and searching powers of divine things essentially, laid down in it by its Creator at the very moment of its passage into being, while the revelations of divine things are brought about by grace through the power of the all-holy Spirit coming upon it. But since in the beginning, through sin, the evil one fastened these powers of nature to visible things, and there was none who understood or sought after God, all who partook of nature having their intellectual and rational power circumscribed by the surface of sensible things and possessing no conception of things beyond sense—for this reason the grace of the all-holy Spirit, in the case of those who were not willingly and inwardly under the deception, unfastened them from material things and restored the power that had been fastened down. Receiving it pure through grace, they first sought and searched, and thus they sought out and searched diligently, that is, through the same grace of the Spirit.

For it is not right to say that grace alone by itself, apart from the natural receptive powers of knowledge, worked the understandings of the mysteries in the saints, since we would then be introducing the holy prophets as not understanding the power of the illuminations given to them by the all-holy Spirit, and how will the statement be true that says, "The wise man will understand the things from his own mouth"? Nor indeed, apart from the grace of the all-holy Spirit, by natural power alone, did they receive the true knowledge of beings by seeking, since then the visitation of the Spirit would be shown to be superfluous for the saints, cooperating in nothing toward the manifestation of the truth; and how will the statement be true that says, "Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights," and "to each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for what is beneficial"? For to one, it says, is given through the Spirit a word of wisdom, to another a word of knowledge according to the same Spirit, to another faith in the same Spirit, to another gifts of healings, and so on; to which he adds: "But the one and the same Spirit works all these things, distributing to each individually as he wills"; and he wills, clearly, what is beneficial to each for the full assurance of the passionless longing of those who seek the divine things. For the one who seeks the divine things passionlessly will certainly receive what is sought; but the one who asks with some passion, as seeking badly, will fail to obtain what is sought; for it says, "You ask and do not receive, because you ask badly.

Therefore neither does the grace of the all-holy Spirit work wisdom in the saints apart from the mind that receives it, nor knowledge apart from the receptive power of reason, nor faith without the full assurance, according to mind and reason, of things to come and for a time hidden from all, nor gifts of healings apart from natural love for humanity, nor any other of the remaining gifts without the receptive habit and power of each; nor, in turn, will a man acquire any one of the things enumerated according to natural power apart from the divine power that supplies these things. And all the saints clearly show this, seeking, after the revelations of divine things, the reasons of the things revealed. For Abraham, having received the promise of the inheritance of the land shown to him, when God said to him, "I am God who brought you out of the land of the Chaldeans, so as to give you this land to inherit it," was not satisfied with having received what he went out from the land of the Chaldeans seeking, but inquired, desiring to learn also the manner of the inheritance, saying to God, "Lord and Master, how shall I know that I shall inherit it?" And Moses, having received the power of the signs and wonders, sought to be taught also the manners and the reasons by which the confirmation of the signs given ought to be demonstrated; and he set among them, says the great David, the reasons of his signs and his wonders in the land of Ham. And again David himself, crying out concerning himself to God, says, "Open my eyes, and I shall understand your wonders from your law," and "your law is a lamp to my feet and a light to my paths.

And Daniel, the great man of desires of the divine visions, for which he completed three weeks of days without food, seeking the meanings, hears an angel saying to an angel: "Make that one understand the vision." And Zechariah the great prophet, throughout his whole prophecy, at each vision introduces the angel who speaks in him, showing the visions and teaching the meanings of the visions, saying: "And the angel who speaks in me showed me"; and "the angel who speaks in me said to me"; and "I said to the angel who speaks in me: Lord, what are these things?" And from this it is clear that all the saints both received revelations from the Spirit and sought to have the meanings of the things revealed made known to them, and that the grace of the Spirit in no way abolishes the power of nature, but rather, when it had been rendered inactive by the use of modes contrary to nature, made it active again, leading it by the use of things according to nature to the understanding of divine things. For the Holy Spirit seeks and searches out in us the knowledge of things that exist, but it does not seek the thing sought for itself, since it is God and beyond all knowledge, but for us who need knowledge, just as indeed the Word also becomes flesh not for itself, but for us, accomplishing through the incarnation the mystery. For just as without flesh rationally ensouled the Word did not divinely perform the natural operations of the flesh, so neither does the Holy Spirit work the knowledges of the mysteries in the saints without the power that by nature seeks and searches out knowledge. Whether, then, they were seeking or

Whether the saints were seeking or searching or scrutinizing, they had the grace of the Spirit moving their intellectual and rational power toward the seeking and searching of the salvation of souls, and without the Spirit they would behold nothing spiritual at all, since human intellect is not by nature able, without divine light, to apprehend things divine and intelligible. For just as it is impossible for the eye to apprehend sensible things without the light of the sun, so too without spiritual light the human intellect would never receive spiritual contemplation. The one illuminates the senses by nature for the apprehension of bodies, while the other illumines the intellect for contemplation, for the understanding of things beyond sense. And the salvation of souls is properly the end of faith; and the end of faith is the true revelation of what has been believed; and the true revelation of what has been believed is the ineffable interpenetration of the thing believed, in proportion to the faith in each person; and the interpenetration of the thing believed is the return of those who have believed to the beginning at the end; and the return of those who have believed to their own beginning at the end is the fulfillment of desire; and the fulfillment of desire is the ever-moving rest of those who desire around the object of desire; and ever-moving rest is the continuous and uninterrupted enjoyment of the object of desire; and continuous and uninterrupted enjoyment is the participation in things divine beyond nature; and participation in things divine beyond nature is the likeness of the participants to that in which they participate.

The likeness of the participants to that which is participated in is the identity, possible through likeness, that comes about in actuality toward that which is participated in by the participants; and the identity, possible in actuality through likeness, of the participants toward that which is participated in is the deification of those deemed worthy of deification; and deification is, in the sense of an outline, the encompassment and limit of all times and ages and of all things in time and age; and the encompassment and limit of times and ages and of all things in them is the undivided unity, in those who are saved, of the pure and properly so-called beginning with the properly so-called and pure end; and the undivided unity of the pure beginning and end in those who are saved is the transcendence, beyond things measured essentially by beginning and end, of things according to nature; and the transcendence of things circumscribed by beginning and end is the immediate and infinite and infinitely extending activity, in those deemed worthy of the transcendence of things according to nature understood in the higher sense, of God, all-powerful and beyond power; and the immediate and infinite and infinitely extending activity of God, all-powerful and beyond power, is the ineffable and beyond-ineffable pleasure and joy, in accordance with the unutterable and beyond-thought union, of those in whom it is active, of which it is not possible to find mind or reason or thought or speech at all in the nature of beings. For the nature of things beyond nature does not have the principles, just as neither does it have the laws of things contrary to nature.

By "beyond nature" I mean the divine and incomprehensible pleasure, which God is by nature disposed to produce by grace when he is united to those who are worthy; and by "contrary to nature" I mean the ineffable pain that consists in the privation of this pleasure, which God is accustomed to produce when he is united, by nature, contrary to grace, to those who are unworthy. For in accordance with the underlying quality of each one's disposition, God, being united to all as he himself knows, grants the perception to each one just as each one has been molded by himself for the reception of the one who will certainly be united to all at the consummation of the ages. And perhaps Peter, the foremost of the apostles, called the salvation of souls, as the end of faith, the participation in that which is beyond nature; concerning this salvation, clearly through the Holy Spirit, prophets sought out and searched diligently what or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ within them was indicating, testifying beforehand to the sufferings destined for Christ and the glories that follow these. Therefore, those who seek in the Spirit the salvation of souls and search out the spiritual principles and ways of this salvation—the Holy Spirit guides them to understanding, not allowing the power by which they are naturally disposed to seek the things of God to remain unmoved and inactive within them.

First, teaching them to seek the mortification of the will that is according to sin, or the mortification of sin that is according to the will, and the revival of the will that is according to virtue, or the revival of virtue that is according to the will; and to search out the ways of the mortification of the will that is according to sin, or of the mortification of sin that is according to the will, and likewise also the principles of the resurrection of the will that is according to virtue, or of virtue that is according to the will; through which—ways, I say, and principles—the mortification of sin that is according to the will, or of the will that is according to sin, and the resurrection of the will that is according to virtue, or of virtue that is according to the will, are naturally brought about, having manifestly in this age, which the word called the time, the things pertaining to Christ—that is, for Christ's sake—the sufferings that are beyond nature, which the Holy Spirit foretestified to them, so that they might become conformed to the death of Christ in the mortification of sin and to the resurrection in the awakening of virtue. For truly the one who is to be saved must mortify sin not only by the will, but also the will itself by sin, and must raise up the will not only by virtue, but also virtue itself by the will, so that the will, wholly separated from wholly dead sin, may not perceive it, and, living, may wholly perceive wholly living virtue through an unbroken union. These things, then, the saints, having first perhaps sought and searched out through the Holy Spirit, successfully accomplished the practical philosophy.

After which, having become pure and free from every defilement, they moved the noetic eye of the soul toward the end of things by the same Spirit, seeking after the resurrection of choice and the incorruption of nature, and searching out both the modes and the principles of the God-befitting immortality according to it. For they were no longer seeking the resurrection of choice, which they already possessed, having received it from the Spirit in the practical life, nor were they investigating the modes according to it, which they had already accomplished through grace, but they were seeking the incorruption of nature, which they did not have, and were searching out the modes and principles of the deification according to it, toward which they were hastening, desiring the glory according to it in Christ, so that, just as they suffered with him in this age—which, as I said, the word called a time—so also they might be glorified with him in the age to come, becoming heirs of God beyond nature by grace, and co-heirs of Christ, he having appropriated the whole nature by the economy through the power of the incarnation. For Christ, being God by nature and man, is inherited by us as God beyond nature by grace through the ineffable participation, and, appropriating us to himself as man in the form that is according to us for our sake, he inherits himself together with us through the inconceivable condescension; whom the saints, having mystically foreseen by the Spirit, were taught how it is necessary that the sufferings for the sake of virtue in the present should precede the glory that will appear in the future in Christ because of virtue.

For, he says, searching into what or what sort of time the Spirit of Christ that was in them was indicating beforehand, when it testified in advance the sufferings destined for Christ and the glories that would follow these things. Therefore they both sought out and searched out not only the incorruption of nature and the principles of its deification, but indeed also the time in which the testing of it through sufferings would come about, making manifest both the disposition of those who truly desire it and the intention of those who are thought to love it in pretense, and the other time, that is, the age, in which, being present, it will appear in actual operation, transforming all proportionally, according as each is receptive of it, toward the divine likeness; which glory, perhaps, the word foretold as following upon the labors undertaken for the sake of virtue. These things one might say in defense against the one who asks why on earth the Scripture said here not "seeking" and "searching" but "seeking out" and "searching out," also manifestly displaying the ready meaning beforehand. But I know also another account, having heard it from a certain wise man. For he said, making a more mystical account concerning the beginning and the end of both seeking and seeking out, that seeking is naturally assigned to the beginning, while seeking out is assigned to the end; for no one naturally seeks out the beginning, just as neither does one naturally seek the end, but one seeks the beginning, while one seeks out the end.

For, he said, from the moment that man, through disobedience, put his own beginning behind him, he was unable to seek what had come to be behind him; and since the beginning naturally circumscribes the motion of the things that have come to be from it, it was reasonably also called the end, to which, as the cause of the motion of things that are moved, the course receives its limit. So man, seeking his own end, arrives at the beginning, which naturally resides in the end; and having abandoned the search for it, he pursued the search for it as an end by nature. For it was not possible to escape its circumscription, which surrounds him on every side and bounds his motion. It was not possible, then, as I said, to seek the beginning that had come to be behind, but to seek out the end that lies ahead, so that through the end he might know the beginning that had been left behind, since he did not know the end from the beginning. And perhaps this is what the wise Solomon says in mystical initiation: What has come to be, that is what will be; and what has been made, that is what will be made—as if clearly showing the beginning from the end. For no longer after the transgression is the end shown from the beginning, but the beginning from the end, nor does one seek the principles of the beginning, but seeks out those that lead the things that are moved toward the end. But if, because in many places of Scripture the word "seeking" is used—as in "Seek peace and pursue it," and "Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness"—he does not consider this notion firm, he provides confirmation of what has been said by wisely insisting on it from that very point.

For the passage, having said, "Seek peace and pursue it," hinted at pursuing the beginning in the end, and commanded us to seek out the kingdom, which is the beginning through righteousness, as the end of the kingdom. For the kingdom of God is before all righteousness, or rather, to speak more properly, it is righteousness itself, toward which every motion of the zealous person hastens as its end. For if righteousness is the distribution of equality to each according to worth, and the kingdom is a lawful governance, then righteousness is the same as the kingdom, through which it is easy for those who wish to walk as toward an end, namely the kingdom as a beginning; for righteousness is the kingdom in operation, and the kingdom is righteousness confirmed through works. For to govern lawfully those that exist is to distribute to each according to worth, and to distribute to each according to worth is a lawful governance of things that exist. Therefore the difference in wording did not disturb the smoothness of the holy Scripture according to the mind, at least among the wise who understand divine things.

But if someone wishes to understand the seeking and the searching, and the out-seeking and the out-searching, in another way as well, he will find that the seeking and the out-seeking are movements concerned with the intellect, while the searching and the out-searching are concerned with the reason. For the intellect seeks by nature, and the reason searches by nature. For seeking is, to put it in a definition, the simple movement of the intellect with desire toward something knowable; and searching is the simple discernment of the reason concerning something knowable with some conception; and out-seeking is the intellect's knowledgeable movement, according to knowledge, toward something knowable with a certain quality, that is, a particular kind, of desire; and out-searching is the reason's discernment, according to activity, concerning something knowable with a certain quality, that is, a particular kind, of conception. Transferring these definitions to divine matters, we say that seeking is the intellect's first and simple movement with desire toward its own cause; and searching is the reason's first and simple discernment with some conception concerning its own cause; and out-seeking, in turn, is the intellect's knowledgeable movement, according to knowledge, toward its own cause with a certain fervent desire; and out-searching is the discernment of the reason, according to the activity of the virtues, concerning its own cause, arising with some prudent and wise conception.

Therefore the holy prophets too, having sought out and searched out concerning the salvation of souls, possessed a fiery and boiling movement of the mind toward God in accordance with desire, together with knowledge and understanding, and a prudent and wise discrimination of reason in accordance with the working of divine things. Those who imitate them with knowledge and understanding seek out the salvation of souls, and with prudence and wisdom, searching out, they pursue the discrimination that is in divine works. SCHOLIA 1. Neither, he says, does divine grace work illuminations of knowledge when there is no one receiving the illumination according to natural capacity; nor indeed does the receptive capacity, apart from the grace that bestows it, work the illumination of knowledge. 2. He who asks without passion receives the grace of being able to work the virtues in practice; and he who seeks without passion finds, according to natural contemplation, the truth that is in existing things; and he who knocks without passion at the door of knowledge will enter without hindrance into the hidden grace of mystical theology. 3. The mind, he says, is an instrument of wisdom; reason, of knowledge; the full assurance in both belongs to the faith that is established in both; and of the gift of healings, natural philanthropy. For every divine gift has in us a suitable and congenial instrument, as it were a capacity or disposition, receptive of it. For example, he who has made the mind pure of every sensory image receives wisdom; he who has established reason as master of the innate passions—I mean anger and desire—receives knowledge; and he who has an unshaken full assurance concerning the divine in mind and reason receives the faith that can do all things.

But the one who has set right his natural love for humanity, after the complete removal of self-love, receives gifts of healings. 4. The sensible light, obviously. 5. The spiritual light, obviously. 6. Of those who are moved toward God, clearly. 7. The principle of being carries God as its natural beginning, he says; and the principle of well-being carries God as its end, toward which everyone who desires to reshape his impulse toward God eagerly presses on in accordance with his will. Their unity is the principle of well-being, coming about by grace and carrying God, who is by nature higher than every beginning and end, making those who have a beginning by nature to be without beginning by grace and without end. (8. The transformation by grace in the quality toward deification is a departure from the things naturally circumscribed by beginning and end. 9. A mystical indication, demonstrative of the coming judgment. 10. First, he says, one seeks by choice to put sin to death, and choice to sin; and thus he investigates how and in what manner these are to be put to death for one another. And again, after the complete putting to death of these for one another, he seeks the life of choice according to virtue, and the life of virtue according to choice. And thus

he searches out how, and in what manner, one ought to bring about the life of these in one another. So then, to grasp it in a definition: inquiry is a desire for something pleasing; and investigation is the manner of desire that accomplishes the pleasing thing. 11. He says that the one who has put his choice to death to sin has become planted together in the likeness of Christ's death; and the one who has raised it up to righteousness has become planted together also in his resurrection. 12. Sin and choice, he says, being put to death in one another, have a double insensibility toward one another; and righteousness and choice, having life in one another, have a double perception. 13. Another contemplation concerning the same things. 14. The mind, he says, being moved by mere impulse unknowably toward the cause of beings, seeks only; but the reason, traversing in various ways the true principles in beings, investigates. 60. CONCERNING CHRIST, THE LAMB WITHOUT BLEMISH AND WITHOUT SPOT. (60. QUESTION 60: As of Christ, a lamb without blemish and without spot, foreknown indeed before the foundation of the world, but manifested at the last times for our sake. Foreknown by whom?

Answer. The word of Scripture called Christ the mystery of Christ, and the great apostle testifies clearly, speaking thus: the mystery which was hidden from the ages and from the generations has now been manifested, plainly saying that the mystery according to Christ is the same as Christ. This is evidently the ineffable and incomprehensible union of divinity and humanity according to hypostasis, bringing humanity into the same with divinity in every way by the principle of the hypostasis, and producing one composite hypostasis of both, while introducing no diminution whatsoever of their essential difference according to nature, so that, as I said, their hypostasis becomes one and the natural difference remains impassible, according to which even after the union the quantity of their nature is preserved undiminished and united. For where, in the union, no passion of change or alteration at all followed upon the things united, the principle of the essence of each of the united things has remained pure; and of those whose principle of essence has remained pure even after the union, their natures have in every way remained unimpaired, since none of them denied its own properties at all because of the union.

For it was fitting for the Maker of all things, who by nature became by economy what he was not, to preserve unchangeably both himself, what he was by nature, and what he had become by nature by economy. For change is not naturally contemplated in God, for whom no motion whatsoever is conceived, in relation to which movement belongs to things that are moved. This is the great and hidden mystery. This is the blessed end for the sake of which all things came together. This is the divine purpose of the beginning of beings, conceived beforehand, which, when we define it, we say is the end conceived beforehand, for the sake of which all things exist, but which itself exists for the sake of nothing; looking toward this end, God brought forth the essences of beings. This is properly the limit of providence and of things provided for, according to which there is a recapitulation of the things made by him into God. This is what circumscribes all the ages and reveals the great counsel of God that pre-exists beyond every limit and infinitely beyond the ages, the mystery of which the very Word of God according to essence became the messenger, having become man and having made manifest, if it is lawful to say so, the innermost depth itself of the Father's goodness, and having shown in himself the end for the sake of which the things made clearly received their beginning of existence. For through Christ, that is, through the mystery according to Christ, all the ages and the things in the ages themselves have received in Christ the beginning of their existence and their end. For there was conceived beforehand a union of the limit of the ages and of indefiniteness, and of measure and of measurelessness, and of boundary and of infinity, and of Creator and of creation, and of rest and of motion.

which was revealed in Christ in the last times, giving fulfillment to God's foreknowledge through itself, so that things moved according to nature might stand firm around that which is in every way immovable according to essence, having wholly departed from motion toward themselves and toward one another, and might receive by experience the knowledge according to activity of that in which they were deemed worthy to stand, unchangeable and ever the same, providing the enjoyment of what is known to them. For the word knows a twofold knowledge of divine things: the one relative, as lying in reason alone and in concepts, and not having the perception according to the activity of what is known through experience, by which we are governed in the present life; and the other properly true, in experience alone according to activity, without reason and concepts, wholly providing the perception of what is known by participation according to grace, by which in the future end we receive the deification beyond nature, ceaselessly active. And they say that the relative knowledge, as lying in reason and concepts, is motive of the desire for the knowledge by participation according to activity, while the knowledge according to activity, providing through experience by participation the perception of what is known, is destructive of the knowledge lying in reason and concepts.

The wise say that it is impossible for the word about God to coexist with the experience of God, or for the understanding of God to coexist with the perception of God. By "word about God" I mean the analogy drawn from created things for the contemplative knowledge of him; by "perception," the experience of the goods beyond nature that comes through participation; and by "understanding," the simple and unified knowledge of him derived from created things. Perhaps this is recognized in the case of every other thing as well, if indeed the experience of a thing puts an end to the word about it, and the perception of a thing renders idle the understanding about it. By "experience" I mean the knowledge that comes through activity itself, which arises after every word; and by "perception," the participation in the thing known, which shines forth after every act of understanding. Perhaps it is this that the great apostle mystically teaches when he says: "Whether prophecies, they shall cease; whether knowledge, it shall be done away with"—clearly speaking of the knowledge that consists in words and concepts. This mystery was foreknown before all the ages by the Father alone, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit: by the one according to good pleasure, by the other according to direct operation, and by the other according to cooperation. For the knowledge of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit is one, since their essence and power are also one. For the Father did not fail to know the incarnation of the Son, nor did the Holy Spirit, because in the whole Son, who directly accomplishes the mystery of our salvation through incarnation, the whole Father was present according to essence—not becoming incarnate, but approving the incarnation of the Son—and the whole Holy Spirit was present in the whole Son according to essence—not becoming incarnate, but cooperating with the Son in the ineffable incarnation for our sake.

Whether, then, one speaks of Christ or of the mystery of Christ, the foreknowledge of this belongs by essence to the Holy Trinity alone: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And let no one be perplexed as to how Christ, being one of the Holy Trinity, is foreknown by it, knowing that Christ was not foreknown as God, but as man—that is, the incarnation according to his economy for the sake of man. For that which always exists from that which always exists, beyond cause and reason, is never foreknown; for foreknowledge belongs to things that have a beginning of their existence through a cause. Christ, then, was foreknown not as what he was by nature for his own sake, but as what he appeared to be according to the economy, having become so later for our sake. For it was truly necessary that the Creator by nature of the substance of beings should also become the author by grace of the deification of created things, so that the giver of well-being might be shown to be also the bestower of always well-being. Since, then, none of beings knows either itself or another at all—what it ever is by essence—it is fitting that none of beings has by nature the foreknowledge of any of those that will come to be, except the God who is beyond beings, who knows both himself—what he ever is by essence—and the existence of all things made by him before they came to be, and who is going to grant by grace to beings the knowledge of themselves and of one another—what they are by essence—and to manifest the principles of their generation, which pre-exist in him in a single form.

For the statement that certain people were foreknown as Christ before the foundation of the world—namely those to whom he was later revealed in the last times, as though they themselves were with the foreknown Christ before the foundation of the world—we reject as alien to the truth, since it introduces the essence of rational beings as co-eternal with God. For it is not possible at all to come to be with Christ in the way he is, and then again to be wholly separated from him at some point, if indeed in him the consummation of the ages naturally takes place, and the rest of things that are moved, by which nothing at all of existing things will be subject to change. But the word of Scripture called Christ blameless and spotless, as being by nature wholly alien to the corruption that comes from sin, in both soul and body; for his soul had no blemish of evil, nor did his body have a stain of sin. Scholia 1. A boundary is a limit, the end of things naturally limited; but a measure is altogether a circumscription of quantity, and the end of ages and of temporal natures. And the end is a circumscription of things limited by beginning and end in generation. And creation is the subsistence of things brought forth out of non-being. The union of these in hypostasis, he says, was foreordained by providence in relation to him from whom these things came to be. So that both the being of existing things might be preserved in essence as is natural, and their subsisting—that is, how they might receive being by divine grace—when all things, through union with God, have been transformed toward immutability.

2. He says that knowledge is twofold: the one consists in reason and divine concepts, present in the form of species, but not having the perception of the things conceived; the other is according to activity, having only the enjoyment in the form of species, without reason and true concepts. 3. Since, he says, reason naturally signifies the knowable through knowledge, it moves the desire of those moved by it toward the enjoyment of what is signified. 4. Before all experience, he says, there exists the reason of knowledge; because enjoyment naturally prevails through experience alone. 61. CONCERNING "THAT IT IS TIME FOR THE JUDGMENT TO BEGIN FROM THE HOUSE OF GOD." (61. QUESTION 61: That it is time for the judgment to begin from the house of God. But if first from us, what is the end of those who disobey the Gospel of God? And if the righteous man is scarcely saved, where will the impious and sinful man appear? What is "it is time for the judgment to begin from the house of God," and "if the righteous man is scarcely saved"? Answer.

God, who created human nature, did not co-create with it, in the sense of sensation, either pleasure or pain, but implanted in it a certain power in the mind directed toward pleasure, by which it will be able to enjoy him ineffably. But this power—I mean the natural longing of the mind toward God—the first man, having given it over to sensation as soon as he came into being, experienced pleasure contrary to nature, activated through the medium of sensation at the very first movement toward sensible things. And to this pleasure, by providence, the one who cares for our salvation fixed pain as a kind of punitive power, by which the law of death was wisely rooted in the nature of the body, restraining the mind's longing when it moves contrary to nature toward sensible things. From this, because of the irrational pleasure that entered into nature, pain according to reason entered in its place, effecting the removal of the pleasure contrary to nature through many sufferings (in which and from which is death), yet not also a complete destruction, by which the grace of divine pleasure according to the mind naturally shines forth. For every pain, having as its cause of its own origin the pleasure that preceded it in activity, is a debt naturally owed, by reason of cause, by all who have partaken of nature. For pain naturally and in every case accompanies pleasure contrary to nature, in all those whose generation the law of pleasure led the way for without cause; and I call "without cause" the pleasure that comes from transgression, since it clearly did not become the successor of a preceding pain.

Therefore, since after the transgression all human beings had pleasure naturally preceding their own generation, and there was absolutely no one who was naturally free from passionate generation according to pleasure, but all, as it were paying a natural debt, endured labors and the death that follows them, and the way of freedom was entirely without resource for those tyrannized by unjust pleasure and naturally held fast by just labors and the most just death that follows them—and it was necessary, for the abolition of the most unjust pleasure and of the most just labors that came about because of it, by which man, suffering, was piteously torn apart, having the beginning of his generation from corruption according to pleasure and ending the goal of life in corruption through death, and for the correction of the suffering nature, that a labor and a death be devised, at once unjust and without cause (without cause, as having in no way had pleasure preceding at his generation; unjust, as being the successor of no passionate life at all)—so that, placed in the middle between unjust pleasure and most just labor and death, a most unjust labor and death might utterly abolish the most unjust beginning from pleasure and the most just end of nature through death that came about because of it, and the race of human beings might again become free from pleasure and pain, nature recovering its original well-being, defiled by none of the marks implanted in things under generation and corruption.

For this reason, the Word of God, being perfect God by nature, becomes a perfect human being, composed of a rational soul and a body naturally passible, in a manner similar to us, apart from sin alone; he in no way at all had the pleasure that comes from disobedience preceding his birth from a woman in time, but for the sake of love for humanity he willingly accepted the pain that comes through it, which is the end of nature, so that by suffering unjustly he might abolish the beginning of generation that tyrannizes nature—the beginning that comes from unjust pleasure—since it did not have, as a debt owed on its behalf, the Lord's death paid out, as in the case of other human beings, but rather set forth against it, and so that he might make disappear the just end of nature that comes through death, since it did not have the lawless pleasure for whose sake it entered in and by which it was justly punished, as the cause of its existence. For it was truly necessary, it was necessary that the Lord, being wise and just and powerful by nature—as wise, not be ignorant of the manner of healing; as just, not accomplish the salvation of the human being held captive in his will by sin in a tyrannical way; and as able to do all things, not grow weak in fulfilling the healing.

He therefore made the word of wisdom manifest in the manner of his healing, becoming human without any turning or alteration whatsoever; and he showed the equality of justice in the greatness of his condescension, willingly submitting to the condemnation that lies in the passible nature, and making that very thing a weapon for the destruction of sin and of the death that comes through it—that is, of pleasure and the pain that comes through it—in which lay the power of sin and death, and the tyranny of sin in pleasure and the dominion of death in the pain that comes through it. For in the passible nature the power of pleasure and of pain is plainly present; for when we wish to escape the painful sensation of pain, we flee for refuge to pleasure, attempting to comfort the nature that is pressed by the torment of pain; and in our haste to dull the motions of pain through pleasure, we ratify all the more our own bond against ourselves, being unable to have pleasure free of pain and toil. But he made the strength of his surpassing power evident by establishing in the nature, without change, the generation of things contrary to those he himself suffered; for through suffering he gave impassibility to the nature, and through toils release, and through death eternal life, and restored it again, renewing the states of the nature by his own privations according to the flesh, and through his own incarnation granting to the nature the grace that surpasses nature—deification.

God has therefore truly become man and has given to nature another beginning of a second birth, one that through toil leads to the pleasure of the life to come. For just as Adam, the first father, by transgressing the divine commandment, introduced into nature, contrary to the first beginning, another beginning of generation—one constituted from pleasure but ending in death through toil—and, having devised, according to the counsel of the serpent, a pleasure that was not the successor of preceding toil but rather issued in toil, he justly held all those born of him in the flesh according to his likeness jointly subject with him, because of that unjust beginning from pleasure, to the end that comes through toil in death—so too the Lord, having become man and having created in nature another beginning of a second birth from the Holy Spirit, and having accepted the death of Adam that comes through toil—that death which was most just, yet in him became most unjust, since it did not have as the beginning of its own generation the most unjust pleasure of the first father that came from disobedience—made the abolition of both extremes, I mean the beginning and the end of human generation according to Adam, inasmuch as they did not primarily come from God; and he set free from the guilt upon them all those who are mystically reborn of him in the Spirit, having no longer Adam's pleasure of generation, but only the pain that works in them on account of Adam—not as a debt for sin, but by economy, for the natural struggle against sin, namely death.

He who, whenever he does not have as his mother the pleasure that gave birth to him—the pleasure of which he is by nature made the punisher—is plainly established as the father of eternal life. For just as Adam's life according to pleasure became the mother of death and corruption, so also the Lord's death for Adam's sake, being free from the pleasure that came from Adam, becomes the begetter of eternal life. Therefore, since—as I think—the account has well distinguished how the birth from Adam according to pleasure, tyrannizing over nature, sent it as food to the death that came about through it, and how again the Lord's birth in the flesh through love for humanity brought about the destruction of both—I mean the pleasure from Adam and the death for Adam's sake—having together with Adam's sin utterly abolished Adam's penalty; for it was not possible that the generation which had in no way touched the beginning should be captured by corruption through death at the end, through which death came to subsist at the end—since, as I said, the account distinguished these things from one another, as long as only the marks of Adam, both at the beginning and at the end—I mean those pertaining to generation and corruption—tyrannically held sway over nature, there was no time for the judgment to begin toward a complete condemnation of sin;

But when the Word of God appeared to us through the flesh and became a perfect man, without sin alone, having in the flesh only the penalty of Adam by nature according to will, and condemned sin in the flesh, suffering blamelessly on behalf of the unjust, being just, and reversed the use of death, having made it a condemnation of sin but not of nature, there came a time for judgment to begin, according to the reversal of death toward the condemnation of sin. What I mean is this: sin, having at the beginning enticed Adam to come to transgression, persuaded him to disobey the divine commandment, by which, having subjected pleasure and nailed itself through pleasure in him to the very foundation of nature, it condemned the death of the whole nature, driving the nature of created things toward degeneration through man according to death. For this is what the sower of sin and evil father of wickedness, the devil, had contrived: he who had exiled himself from the divine glory through pride, and through envy—both toward us and toward God—had banished Adam from paradise, to destroy the works of God and to dissolve the things that had been constituted for generation. For the most defiled one envies not only us for the glory that comes from virtue toward God, but also God for the all-praised power that is on our behalf for salvation. Therefore death, which through transgression ruled as master over the whole nature, had as the basis of its dominion the pleasure that began from disobedience of the whole generation according to nature, on account of which death itself was condemned of nature.

But the Lord, having become man and not having taken as preceding his birth according to the flesh the unjust pleasure through which the just condemnation against nature was brought about through death, but willing it by nature and accepting death in the passible aspect of nature—clearly suffering—he reversed the use of death, so that it was no longer in him a condemnation of nature, but plainly of sin. For it was not possible for death to be a condemnation of nature in the one who did not have his birth from pleasure, but rather the abolition of the forefather's sin, through which the fear of death held sway over the whole of nature. For if in Adam death was the condemnation of nature, since nature had pleasure as the beginning of its own birth, reasonably in Christ death has become the condemnation of sin, since nature in Christ again received a birth pure from pleasure, so that just as sin condemned nature to corruption in Adam through pleasure by means of death, and there came a time for nature to be condemned to death because of sin, so in Christ, through righteousness, nature might condemn sin through death, and there might come a time for sin to be condemned to death because of righteousness, since nature in Christ has completely stripped off the birth from pleasure, according to which of necessity, as a debt, the [condemnation]

Death followed, so that the same death in Adam, because of sin, is a condemnation of nature, but in Christ, because of righteousness, is a condemnation of sin. For he who suffers because of sin justly endures death as a condemnation of nature, but he who does not suffer because of sin, as one rather giving grace to nature by economy, willingly accepts the death that came about because of sin, for the sake of its destruction, as a condemnation of sin.

Therefore, just as through Adam, who by his disobedience established the law of generation according to pleasure and the death of nature that was condemned because of him, all who received their being from Adam necessarily had, even against their will, the death of nature condemned because of him joined to generation according to its capacity, and there was a time for nature to be condemned by sin, insofar as the law of generation according to pleasure prevailed over nature—so likewise through Christ, who completely removed from nature the law of generation according to pleasure and by his will accepted the use of the death of nature condemned because of him for the sole condemnation of sin, all who have been reborn from Christ by will in the Spirit through the washing of regeneration and who by grace have put off the former generation of Adam according to pleasure, and who through the law of the evangelical commandments have kept undiminished and undefiled the grace of sinlessness in baptism and the power of mystical adoption in the Spirit, reasonably have the use of death operating in them for the condemnation of sin, having received a time to condemn sin in the flesh—generally, by nature through grace, because of the great mystery of the incarnation, from the time of the Word's becoming flesh; but specifically, by activity through grace, from the time when each person received through baptism the grace of adoption.

according to which, being enacted in the commandments by deliberate choice, having only the generation in the Spirit, through many sufferings they endure the use of death brought upon them for the condemnation of sin. For the one who has been baptized and keeps the baptism strengthened by the commandments no longer pays death as a debt on account of sin, but accepts its use for the condemnation of sin, mystically sending him on to the divine and endless life—if indeed for the sake of truth and righteousness the saints have bravely completed the course of this present life through many sufferings, having freed in themselves the nature of death from the condemnation that came through sin, and having made the weapon of death, which was for the destruction of nature, into a weapon for the destruction of sin, just as Jesus, the author of their salvation, did. For if sin, in those who work it according to Adam, had death as a weapon for the destruction of nature, much more in those who work the righteousness that is through faith in Christ will nature have death as a weapon for the destruction of sin.

Therefore, since the mystery of the incarnation has come to be and God made flesh has wholly removed, in those who are begotten in the Spirit according to him, the natural generation according to the law of pleasure, the time has come, as I said, for judgment to begin from the house of God—that is, for sin to be condemned, sin having received the beginning of its condemnation through sufferings from the faithful, from those who have known the truth and have set aside the generation according to pleasure through baptism. For these he called the house of God, as the most divine apostle Paul bears witness, saying: Christ, however, is over his own house, whose house we are. And he himself also makes this clear through the following statement, when Peter, the chief of the apostles, says: But if it first began from us—namely, the judgment—what is the end of those who disobey the Gospel of God? As if he were saying: if

We, who have been deemed worthy to become the house of God by grace through the Spirit, ought to show so great an endurance of sufferings for righteousness, unto the condemnation of sin, and, being good, to bear away eagerly, as evildoers, the contumelious death — what is the end of those who disobey the Gospel of God, that is, what will be the end, or rather the judgment, of those who have not only kept the generation according to the pleasure of Adam, living and active in both soul and body, in both will and nature, prevailing over nature, eagerly to the end, but who also did not receive the God and Father who exhorts through the incarnate Son, nor indeed the Mediator and Son himself who intercedes on behalf of the Father and, for the sake of our reconciliation to the Father, by the will of the Father delivers himself willingly to death on our behalf, so that through himself he might glorify us as much as he himself, for our sake, deigned to be dishonored by our sufferings? For this, as I think, is perhaps the Gospel of God: an embassy of God and an exhortation to men through the incarnate Son, and the unbegotten deification granted as a reward to those who obey him, in return for reconciliation with the Father. Therefore the great apostle, indignant at those who disobey in what follows, says: And if the righteous man is scarcely saved, where will the ungodly and sinner appear?

Calling "righteous," as is likely, the faithful man and guardian of the grace given at baptism, who through many sufferings has kept undestroyed the adoption as sons through the Spirit, and "salvation" the most complete grace of deification to be given by God to the worthy, which even the man who clings to all divine things to the utmost will scarcely attain; and "ungodly" and "sinner" the man alien to the grace of the Gospel—ungodly through unbelief in Christ, sinner through the old birth of the passions living in him according to corruption. Or perhaps the word called "ungodly" the man wholly deprived of the knowledge of Christ alone, and "sinner" the man who is faithful but a transgressor, like me, of the Gospel commandments that keep pure the garment of incorruption received through holy baptism; whose position—I mean that of the ungodly and the sinner—has been grasped in some measure by those who care for mystical knowledge. For "where" clearly indicates position, which is not devoid of local circumscription; and if the position of the righteous is set in opposition to it, the righteous man will certainly not be "where" in respect of position, since he has received as his position in grace, beyond "where," God himself, as the promise says. For God is not "where," but beyond every "where" without relation, in whom will be the establishment of all who are saved, according to what is written: Be to me a God for a protector and for a strong place to save me; and everyone who does not in any way partake of the power of well-being according to relation will be like a body entirely deprived of the life-giving energy of the soul.

Or again, since God will be the place of all who are saved, uncircumscribed and undivided and infinite, becoming all things to all in proportion to righteousness, or rather giving himself to each according to the measure of the sufferings endured here with knowledge on behalf of righteousness, just as the soul reveals itself as active in the members of the body according to the power underlying each member and holds the members together through itself for existence, kept together for life—where will the impious and sinful man appear, deprived of this grace? For he who cannot receive the presence of God actively operating according to well-being—where will he appear, having undergone the fall from the divine life that is beyond age and time and place? Therefore, whether in the first affirmation the impious and sinful man is asked "where will he appear," he will not be entirely free from circumscribed life, not having the life that escapes all circumscription and is beyond every place; or whether in the second negation it is asked "where will he not appear," not having God who holds life together for well-being—he who is to become a place for all who are worthy, how will he be so, not having God himself as his place according to the abiding and establishment in God of well-being? And to speak simply, if the righteous man is saved with great difficulty, what will become of, or what will he suffer, the man who has made no account of piety and virtue in the present life?

SCHOLIA 1. Pleasure and pain, he says, were not created together with the nature of the flesh; but transgression devised the one for the corruption of the will, and condemned the other for the dissolution of nature; so that pleasure might work the voluntary death of the soul through sin, and pain, through dissolution, might bring about the passing away of the flesh in respect of its form. 2. That by providence, for the punishment of pleasure that is according to the will, God has given to nature the pain that is contrary to the will, and the death that follows upon it. 3. The devising of voluntary labors, he says, and the infliction of involuntary ones, take away pleasure, putting a stop to its movement according to activity; but they do not abolish the power of pleasure that lies implanted in nature, as it were a law, for generation. For the philosophy that is according to virtue is naturally fitted to produce impassibility of the will, but not of nature; and it is according to this, namely impassibility of the will, that the grace of divine pleasure according to the intellect comes upon us. 4. He calls unjust pleasure the law of sin that was implanted in nature from transgression.

5. He says that the Lord's pain and death were destined to be shown as the mean for the removal of the extremes, since he had a birth free from pleasure and a death clean of passionate life—the death of his divine flesh for our sake; in which birth, generation, and death he voluntarily endured for us, so that by appearing as a mean he might take away our birth from pleasure and our death from passionate life, and transfer us to another life, free of temporal beginning and end, which not nature but grace creates. 6. For he says it was altogether impossible for nature, once subjected to pleasure according to choice and to pain contrary to choice, to be recalled again to its original life, unless the Creator had become man, receiving by choice the pain devised for the punishment of the pleasure of nature according to choice—pain that did not have its birth from pleasure preceding it—so that he might free nature from the birth that comes from condemnation, by accepting a generation that does not have its beginning from pleasure.

7. The end of the Lord through death. 8. Clearly, by the passible element of nature. 9. How do we intensify the penalty according to nature beyond the pain, striving to soothe it through pleasure? 10. He says that the wisdom of God is shown in his becoming truly a man by nature; the justice, in his having taken up a nature passible in its generation just as ours; the power, in his creating eternal life for nature through sufferings and death, and unchangeable impassibility. 11. Because the Lord, having taken away the pleasure that comes from the law of sin for the rejection of the fleshly generation of those born in him by grace through the Spirit, permits them to receive the death that was formerly for condemnation of nature as a condemnation of sin. 12. He says that after the transgression the nature of men had a beginning of its own generation—conception through seed according to pleasure—and an end, death through corruption according to pain. But the Lord, not having this beginning of fleshly generation, was not by nature catchable by the end, that is, by death. (13. Because the devil, expecting the nature of created things to receive a departure into non-being, struggled to show man a transgressor of the divine commandment.