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Of the same, from the second discourse on baptism, on the passage "The Word knows a threefold birth for us: the one from bodies, the one from baptism, the one from resurrection"; then, after adding certain things to these and interpreting the births, he says, "These births, all of them, my Christ appears to have honored from himself: the one by the first and life-giving breath, the one by the incarnation and the baptism which he himself was baptized with, and the one by the resurrection of which he himself began, so that as he became firstborn among many brothers, so also he was deemed worthy to become firstborn from the dead." How in these words does this God-minded teacher seem to have made a more superfluous repetition of what was said before? For having said a threefold birth—the one from bodies, the one from baptism, the one from resurrection—he added, as if forgetting, through the phrase that seems superfluous, also a fourth, by saying, "The one by the first and life-giving breath." For which, with the three, is not

The work of Saint Maximus was divided into volumes, and the pages are recorded according to the order of "GREGORY PALAMAS" of the "TO BYZANTION" editions, Thessaloniki 1992, PHILOKALIA OF THE NEPTIC AND ASCETIC FATHERS, so that the reader can easily consult the translation. The text comes from three sources: 1) from the electronic library of Greek texts, ( :// ), 2) texts not included in the Patrologia of, volume os and os (typed by the mother of Fr. Arsenios Meskos), and 3) the scholia on the works of Saint Dionysius the Areopagite from the BYZANTION editions; the text was passed through a scanner, followed by optical character recognition and proofreading. Volume and page for the BYZANTION editions are recorded in the following way:, that is, the tenth page of volume B follows. There is also an indication of the page of the Patrologia when the text comes from there.

* The text comes from the Patrologia of, volume os (typed by the mother of Fr. Arsenios Meskos), in comparison with the text of the "TO BYZANTION" editions of the series "GREGORY PALAMAS," Thessaloniki 1992, PHILOKALIA OF THE NEPTIC AND ASCETIC FATHERS, volume E.

He mentioned generations, and as concerning what was said beforehand he added, saying, "The one indeed by the first and life-giving inbreathing." How then the teacher has said this in truth, he knows fully who has become like him in virtue and has not stood far from his wisdom and knowledge concerning divine things. But as far as I can know, according to the weak and feeble capacity of my infirm mind, I do not think the fourth generation that has been brought forward is superfluous, but rather complementary to the generation from bodies that was set forth, and interpretive of the divine words and modes pertaining to it. For the one who, for the sake of the generation of the first Adam, deigned to become man, not disdaining the grace, demonstrated through his generation his condescension toward the fallen one, and through his birth his voluntary self-emptying toward the condemned one; by his generation being led naturally into the same state as man according to the life-giving inspiration, from which, receiving the according-to-the-image as man, he remained with his freedom unassailed, and his sinlessness undefiled. But by his birth according to the incarnation, voluntarily submitting to the likeness of man's corruption through the form of a servant, he endured to be subject, like us, to the same natural passions according to the will without sin, as one liable though sinless. For in both these parts, having been cut from parts, he was composed, and became a completely new Adam, bearing in himself the first Adam undiminished in both parts. For having submitted by the law of condescension to the generation of Adam before the transgression, according to the formation, receiving sinlessness naturally through the inspiration, he did not take up incorruption.

Of the birth after the transgression that comes from condemnation, having naturally received the passible element in accordance with the voluntary kenosis, he did not take on the sinful element, and he becomes a new Adam, receiving the same sinless generation and enduring the same passible birth. For having perfectly interwoven both with each other in himself, alternately in both parts, he healed both through each other by the absence of the extreme in each, making the second, the dishonorable, salvific and renewing of the first, the honorable, and establishing the first as consolidating and preserving of the second. And I mean the extremes: of the first generation, which is honorable, the incorruptible, as the beginning of sinlessness; and of the birth, which is second and dishonorable, the sinful, as the cause of every passion and of corruption. These things the Savior, having in no way taken them into himself at the incarnation, and having accepted the things that come through them, made the birth of the generation salvific, paradoxically renewing the incorruption of the generation by the passion according to it, and again he established the generation as preserving of the birth, sanctifying the passionate condition of the birth by the sinlessness according to it, so that he might wholly save the generation, preserving nature by the God-completed principle according to it, and might wholly free from the birth the nature that has fallen under it because of sin, which is not held, as perhaps in the other living creatures on earth, by the flowing manner of seed according to it.

Having therefore joined generation, formation, and inbreathing naturally to the incarnation and the birth, he divided them from one another by mere conceptual distinction, and you will find, according to the great teacher, the fourth generation, which completes the generation from bodies, and which by conceptual distinction alone receives the distinction from it in the manner that has been set forth. I say that generation, naturally conceived beforehand, is the same as the supervening birth, whose proper element is the first and life-giving inbreathing. R (106). CONTEMPLATION ON "THE WORD KNOWS A THREEFOLD GENERATION FOR US." Contemplation on "The Word knows a threefold generation for us."

And to speak summarily, if you wish to know the precision of the teacher's words, seek what is the principle (logos) that precedes by way of cause the generation of man, remaining always within its own stability without going out, and what is the manner of his generation according to the pedagogical economy because of sin, which has as its end the correction of the one being educated and the perfect return to the principle of his generation; and you will learn clearly how God, having become man, became perfectly so in both respects, wisely leading back the manner according to the economy to the principle of generation that he truly possessed, and then you will justly marvel at the teacher's understanding, how, having divided by conceptual distinction the things joined by nature, he secretly made plain the whole account of the most divine mystery concerning us. For having divided, by conceptual distinction, the generation from bodies among the life-giving inbreathing and the incarnation, he hinted at the difference between the manner according to generation and the principle according to generation.

Having taken hold of these things for our sake, God, who renewed nature—or rather, to speak more truthfully, made it new—and brought it back to the ancient beauty of incorruption through his holy and rationally ensouled flesh taken from us, and who generously granted it deification in abundance, from which it is altogether impossible for him to fall away—since the incarnate God himself unites the mode of the soul to the body, having pervaded it wholly without confusion according to the union, and having received so much of the concealment of his manifestation through it as he himself became manifest on its account and was thought to have departed from his own natural hiddenness—

And what is more paradoxical than this, that being God by nature and having deigned to become man by nature, he did not at all transgress the natural bounds of either nature through the other, but being wholly God he remained wholly man? Not being prevented by being God from becoming man, nor yet being diminished by becoming man from being God, one and the same whole being preserved through both, being both naturally in truth, neither divided by the purity of the natural difference of the parts according to essence, nor yet confused by the absolute singularity of the hypostasis, not turned into the lower nature nor falling into what he was not.

He did not fulfill the economy by imagining flesh in appearance and form, nor by taking those things that are said to belong to a subject without the subject, but by truly and in reality taking on the human nature itself, he united it to himself in hypostasis, without turning, without change, without diminution, and without division, holding it unalterable by the principle and definition of its essence. By this nature he also honored our birth from bodies, according to this holy and great teacher, and became man truly and was born in a human way, so that he might free us from the bonds of birth, and from being sown like grass and growing from condemnation because of the law of sin, and from having the same kinship of generation toward being as plants and irrational animals. As the great Ezekiel, seer of great things, says somewhere, being initiated into the divine mysteries and being taught the cause of the economy that now exists concerning man, speaking to Jerusalem: Thus says the Lord to Jerusalem, Your root and your birth are from the land of Canaan; your father was an Amorite, and your mother a Hittite. On the day you were born, your navel was not bound, and you were not washed in water, nor salted with salt, nor wrapped in swaddling clothes, and you were cast out on the face of the field because of the perversity of your soul on the day you were born. And I passed by you, and I saw you defiled in your blood, and I said to you, Your life is from your blood; multiply, as the east of the field I have given you.

Therefore the Lord, who heals nature and leads it back to the ancient grace of incorruption, came to set it free from the condemnation of growing by seed like grass and of having life through blood like the rest of the animals; and to show it openly the good toward which, when it was made in the beginning, it was in no way moved, and to trample the evil toward which, as soon as it came to be, it was moved by deceit contrary to nature and emptied out its whole power, and to bind to himself the power of desire (of which the navel is a symbol), receiving the fertile disposition in the good as firm and unchangeable, and to wash it in water, cleansing it, he says, from the defilements of ignorance by the sea of the knowledge poured out upon it according to grace, and to salt it with salt, and to wrap it in swaddling clothes—that is, having firmly fixed by the Spirit the natural activity toward the good for which it was made, to render it pure and unreceptive of the corruption of the passions, and having bound it round with the garment of the true principles in existing things like swaddling clothes, to make it altogether incapable of being dissolved. 107. Another contemplation on the same. Another contemplation on the same.

Perhaps through what has been said the teacher is suggesting that the principle and the mode of the generation of human nature are twofold, the one of the soul and the other of the body, and that he has divided by conceptual distinction the birth from bodies into two births, showing that the soul is constituted ineffably from the divine and life-giving inbreathing, while the body comes to be at the very moment of conception together with the soul from the underlying matter of that body from which it is. For it is not lawful to say that the principle and the mode of generation are in every respect the same in both cases, since these two are not even the same as each other in essence. For of things whose being is not the same as one another, clearly the principle and mode of their generation relative to one another also differs. But it is right to think that the principle and the mode of the soul are different, according to which it comes to be and is and remains unchangeably united to the body and the soul.

RHETORICAL CHAPTER 108. CONTEMPLATION... AGAINST THOSE WHO SAY THAT SOULS PRE-EXIST OR CO-EXIST... A brief contemplation against those who say that souls pre-exist or co-exist with bodies.

Even if at the same time, with respect to existence, the time of generation of both—I mean of soul and body—is the same, with neither of the two pre-existing, as I said, in generation nor coming into being after the other, so that the form composed of both as a whole might not be dissolved, then the account of the relative would rightly hold the subsistence of the one as a part to be older in itself, and to have its union with another thing entirely unrelated in nature, and for this reason never naturally to complete, without corruption and without change into what it was not, a subsistence together with another by composition of something else. For what has been individually established beforehand in itself is not naturally led into the subsistence of another form. But if what pre-exists receives composition with another for the completion of a different form, it does this either according to nature entirely, or contrary to nature. And if according to nature, it will never be seen ceasing from composition with another for the fulfillment of a different form, because nature cannot by force depart from itself; and by this account, neither without the body is the

Neither will soul ever be conceived without body, nor body without soul; and the wise man's understanding was turned to folly by those who busy themselves with superfluous things, being driven by force toward that which they earnestly sought to flee. But if, contrary to nature, one of these receives its completion of form from another, and the other receives composition in relation to it, it is utterly destroyed, departing from its natural boundary and becoming what it was not made to be, and falling into what it was not. What could be more senseless than this? But let us return to what lies before us. The generation of the soul, then, as the teacher says with clear emphasis, does not come from underlying matter, as bodies do, but by the will of God through the life-giving inbreathing, ineffably and unknowably, as only its Creator knows. The soul, receiving its existence at conception together with the body, is led to the completion of one human being; and the body comes to be at conception from the underlying matter, that is, of the other body, receiving together with the soul the composition of being one form with it. Making this clearer elsewhere, the teacher says, "According to the double power of the inbreathing, all are both breathed upon as breath and are Holy Spirit." We must therefore distinguish in thought, at conception, the life-giving inbreathing and the Holy Spirit as belonging to the rational essence of the soul, and the enfleshment and the breath as belonging to the nature of the body, as the Fathers say.

And the generation of Adam, our forefather, was brought forth mystically, having one account of the soul—both the principle of its being and the manner of its coming to be—and another, clearly, of the body, as the divine Scripture mystagogically taught us in a lofty manner, not permitting the soul and the body, having fallen together in one and the same manner of generation, to be confused with each other according to nature, and the principle of the essence of each to be ignored, and the manner of generation.

But if the double power of the insufflation followed Adam in his generation into being, running together with it, what would one say concerning the composite of the God and our Savior Jesus Christ according to his humanity—I mean soul and body? Which mixture preserves, as far as possible, a great resemblance to the first Adam. For just as, as the teacher himself says, God, taking the body from matter—which had plainly pre-existed as newly formed—and breathing life into it from himself, which the account knows to be a noetic soul and image of God, creates man; in the same manner also, taking the body from the undefiled Virgin as if from undefiled earth, and breathing life into it from himself, which the account knows to be a noetic soul and image of God, he created his own humanity, or rather, by taking on flesh ensouled noetically and rationally, he immutably created himself as man for our sake, voluntarily, as the Almighty, having made him.

In this way, then, the teacher says that our Lord and God has honored the threefold generation that pertains to us—that is, the universal modes of our generation into being, into well-being, and into always being. The first is from bodies, which is one [generation] of the composite whole according to the simultaneous coexistence of the parts with one another—I mean of soul and body—yet is divided into two because of the different manner of the generation of each, and through it we receive being. The second is from baptism, through which we richly receive well-being. The third is from resurrection, through which by grace we are transformed into always being. It is necessary, then, to examine the teacher's words carefully because of those who assail the good things that have been set forth. For having divided the generation from bodies by mere conceptual distinction, for the reason that has been given, he says that at the very moment of conception, with no temporal interval whatsoever being conceived beforehand, the Lord received the life-giving spirit—that is, the inbreathing—according to his human nature, I mean the rational soul together with

of the body from the immaculate Virgin, and not after conception, the teacher determines.

109. TO THOSE WHO SAY THAT SOULS PRE-EXIST BODIES. To those who say that souls pre-exist bodies. For some say, as I have already stated above, that souls pre-exist bodies, while others say the opposite, that bodies pre-exist souls. But we, walking the middle path as the royal road according to our fathers, say that there is neither pre-existence nor after-existence of soul or body, but rather co-existence, guarding against the inclinations on either side, and leaning neither to the left nor to the right, as the holy Scripture says, fearing a fear than which there is nothing more fearful—lest, in saying that souls pre-exist bodies and that bodies were devised for the punishment of souls because of the prior wickedness of incorporeal beings, we suppose that the cause of the visible creation's surpassing magnificence, through which God is known though proclaimed in silence, is reasonably nothing other than wickedness alone, imposing a necessity upon God contrary to His purpose, so that He created a substance He did not will—a substance whose reason, perhaps, He did not even have from the beginning before the ages, hidden along with the others. For to say that God has the reasons of substantiation for things that come to be contrary to His purpose does not seem to me to belong to an intelligent mind, one that has in any way well perceived the majesty of God, who is impassible and alone true, and who has nothing at all recent according to the reasons of beings that pre-exist in Him, and especially not contrary to His purpose.

For all things that in any way exist or will come to be according to essence have been fore-willed and fore-conceived by him, and foreknown; and each of existing things he brings into essence and gives subsistence at the fitting and suitable time.

For neither, when we see God making something, should we think that then he began to have the conception and knowledge of his will concerning it. Far be it. For this is truly full of great absurdity, if what God from the beginning, before the ages, neither conceived nor knew nor willed to exist, now having conceived and willed and known—or, to speak more properly, having changed his mind—he accomplished as good; not to mention that he does not know the making of things whose principles he does not possess beforehand. But we believe that all things are always encompassed by the will of God in a foreknowing manner according to his infinite power, with nothing being newly devised by him in any way whatsoever and receiving existence according to essence. For neither should those who think piously suppose, I think, that God learns each of the things fore-contained in himself according to foreknowledge, in an infinitely powerful way, according to their own principles, through their being brought into existence. But to us the ages and the times wisely show each thing being created according to the predetermined and fitting time of each, and being brought forth into existence, just as the divine Apostle also says concerning Levi, speaking thus: For he was still in the loins of his father, before he came forth into existence.

He who existed potentially in the patriarch Abraham, but in the fulfilled time received, through conception, his actual coming-into-being in accordance with the fitting order and arrangement of the ineffable wisdom of God, has brought us to understand and believe that all things receive their coming-into-being at the time foreknown. Therefore, of all things that exist or will exist according to essence—whether they have come to be, or will come to be, or appear, or will appear—the logoi pre-exist firmly in God, according to which all things are, have come to be, and always remain in their own logoi according to purpose, drawing near through natural movement and being more closely held to existence, according to the qualitative and quantitative movement and inclination of the will, receiving either the good through virtue and the straight path toward the logos according to which it exists, or the bad through vice and the movement contrary to the logos according to which it exists; and, to speak briefly, according to the possession or privation of their natural capacity to participate in that which by nature is wholly non-participable, and which gives itself wholly by grace to all, worthy and unworthy alike, through its infinite goodness, and which produces the permanence of always being, in the measure that each one disposes himself and is disposed. For these, the analogous participation or non-participation in the truly existent, the well-existent, and the ever-existent is the intensification and increase of punishment for those unable to participate and of enjoyment for those able to participate. For there is absolutely nothing among existing things whose logos has not pre-existed in God.

Of those things whose principles pre-exist with God as the principles of their essence, the coming-into-being is, clearly, entirely according to the divine purpose. And of those whose coming-into-being is according to the divine purpose, their substantial existence remains unchanging toward non-being. And of those whose substantial existence, after coming-into-being, stands unchangeably toward non-being from that which is, their principles are stable and firm, having as the sole origin of their being Wisdom, from which and through which they exist, and by which they possess the power to be firmly. And of those whose principles exist stably with God, the purpose of God who made all things concerning them is also unfailing; for the purpose of God is in no way encompassed by temporal limits, nor does it admit alteration from change, falling together with the things that underlie it; of these, undeniably, the existences are clearly incorruptible. For either God, willing according to purpose, made human bodies, and they remain through him entirely unchangeable toward non-being, always willing to be what was willed according to the divine purpose with reason and wisdom, and there will not be, according to them, a complete passing-away of bodies toward non-being; or he did not make them according to purpose, and being unwilling he was tyrannized, being led by force to the coming-into-being of things whose principles, though he had them, he did not manifest. And if, tyrannized, he came to make the bodies unwillingly, against purpose, then clearly reason and wisdom in no way guided their coming-into-being. For what comes to be against the divine purpose is entirely deprived of and estranged from reason and wisdom.

Only evil is entirely deprived of reason and wisdom, and its being is characterized by non-existence; never may it enter our minds to conceive of God as its maker, much less to say so openly and to dare to believe it perniciously. And who is he who tyrannized God—if indeed He has been tyrannized—and how is it lawful at all to say that He made, contrary to His purpose, what He did not will? And how is the one tyrannized God, bringing into subsistence under necessity, contrary to His purpose, the coming-into-being of things unto destruction? Let those who foster this opinion dare to say it. For either they would claim that God has made these things, and they would blaspheme in the greatest matters, imposing necessity upon God to make something contrary to His purpose; or they would claim that He has not made them, and they will be caught introducing of necessity another principle that makes these things, in the manner of the Manichaeans. For in every way it is characteristic of those who set two principles against one another to hold the doctrine of pre-existence. Those whom the deep darkness of obscurity, having encompassed them, has driven away into complete forgetfulness by the grace of God the all-merciful, since they cannot bear the light of the truth proclaimed by our holy Fathers. And I marvel how—to pass over now all that could be said, on account of the proportion of the discourse—the mystery according to Christ, our true God, does not persuade them eagerly to shake off from themselves this opinion. For if the mystery according to Christ is more mysterious than all the divine mysteries, and is definitive of all perfection in all things, whether existing or to come, in every conception, and

It is established above every boundary and limit, and this mystery teaches that the body taken from us and united to Him in essence by hypostasis belongs to and exists with the incarnate and perfectly humanized God the Word, with whom He was also taken up into the heavens, above every principality and authority and power and dominion and every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the age to come, and He sits together with God the Father now and unto endless ages, having passed through all the heavens and become above all things, and He will come again for the transformation and transfiguration of the whole and for the salvation of our souls and bodies, as we have believed and do believe and would remain believing forever—who then is so bold and presumptuous, and skilled only in recklessly fighting against things clear and manifest, as even to think idly that bodies will ever have a passage into non-being, according to that progress of rational beings toward the perfect, as they say, while believing that the Lord Himself and God of all is now and forever with a body, He who also grants to others the power to make progress, and leads and calls all to their own glory, as far as is attainable by the power of the incarnation, as the author of the salvation of all, and cleanses the stains in all things?

But not being led by those as types of his perfection—if indeed they would dare to conceive this at all—toward the putting off of the body. For he does not follow others toward perfection, nor does he possess the perfect as something contemplated through progress—he who alone is by nature most perfect and the maker of all perfection—nor does he wait to receive the perfect together with others, being in no way at all similar to any of existing things in needing progress, so that he too would then put off the nature of the body, when for the rest progress to the utmost prepares the putting off of the body to take place. Since he is no longer the author of those being saved and Savior, if he did not mystically show in himself once for all the end of perfection that corresponds to us, but he will appear as one of those being saved and being ruled and needing another who shows in himself the perfection toward which all who have naturally partaken of reason press on, and himself being that perfection.

But this is not so. From where? Nor does the account of the truth tolerate those who say these things.

For the divine Apostle calls him the author and perfecter of our salvation, as having become flesh for our sake so that he might consume our sin in himself, and as giving himself as a type and pattern of the conduct according to virtue to all who believe in him, as a good and wise teacher, first accomplishing through himself both the things to be said and the things to be done for our instruction—having died and risen and been taken up into the heavens, and having sat down with the body at the right hand of God and the Father—so that we too, when we die, may firmly hope to rise again, and to live a life wholly separated from all death and all corruption, and to be taken up into the heavens, and to receive the honor and glory in God and the Father, with his Son mediating, and the blessed and eternal abode with him; but we are not to expect the putting off of the body in any respect, since not even the word of the holy Scripture teaches us this. Nor indeed have we observed this having happened beforehand in the author of our salvation. For if this too had been dear to him, he himself would first have worked it out in himself, and this along with the rest, which, having set himself before us for our sake as a lover of humanity, he perfected in accordance with us, so that we, believing this along with the others, might hope for it.

But how, if we were to tolerate them saying this, according to this holy teacher, shall we believe that what has been united to God is also saved? "For," he says, writing to Cledonius, "what has been united to God, this is also saved." But the body was united to God the Word together with the soul. Therefore the body too will be saved together with the soul. And again, if for this reason the Word of God becomes flesh, according to this God-minded teacher, in order that he may both save the image and make the flesh immortal, how shall what is being saved be destroyed, and what is being made immortal die again—or rather, to speak more properly, how shall that which has been wholly deified, through the mediating of the intelligent soul and the body, having received the whole presence of the hypostasis of the incarnate God the Word in an ineffable and substantial manner, and having been made and declared his own body—how this shall be, I cannot comprehend. But for what reason, if indeed this doctrine too is contained in the mystery of the Church's faith, it was not included with the others in the symbol of the exposition of the blameless faith of the Christians by our holy and blessed Fathers, who were assembled at various times for the confirmation of the divine doctrines of the holy and apostolic Church of God—let us leave it to the wise to say. But I think it is sufficient for the present that these things have been said by way of digression against these men. Let us turn to the others.

RI (110). AGAINST THOSE WHO SAY THAT SOULS EXIST BEFORE BODIES. To those who say that souls exist before bodies. To say that souls exist after bodies, O you there, is easy and belongs to anyone who wishes it, but to establish the claim by argument is altogether difficult and laborious, and never has the easiest demonstration of the effort. For if the seed cast down, according to you, as the occasion of human generation is entirely soulless, it is clearly altogether without vital power. For what is completely deprived of any soul whatsoever is also destitute of every vital activity. But if it is entirely without soul and without the vital power and activity that belongs to it, it is clearly dead; and if we suppose it to be dead, it is neither nourished nor grows, nor will it be able to subsist at all, and to remain entirely undispersed and undiffused. The healing of wounds in bodies attests to what has been said. For when physicians' sons touch these, if they find a dead body lying on the surface, having first consumed it with corrosive drugs, they then apply what is for the restoration of the body that has been hollowed out from the scar, for its replenishment, since obviously the living body has a nature that recovers and a power that both consolidates and recalls its own state, while the dead body does nothing of this, once it has been deadened and completely deprived of vital power, and for this reason is inactive.

And how will that which is by nature both dispersible and easily dissolved stand, unless, as it were in the manner of a foundation, some vital power be conceived beforehand as underlying it, which by nature both compacts and holds together the dispersing, in which power it has received both its being and its being formed from the power that wisely crafts all things? For in whatever thing the body truly has its being after it has been begotten, in that thing it would surely and justly be said to have the beginning of its existence as well. For that by whose separation the body is naturally dissolved, by that thing's existence in generation it would surely and reasonably have also been constituted together. But if, being constrained by these reasonings, O you there, you say that what is cast down as the basis of the human constitution is not entirely dead, but partakes in some vital power, even if only to some degree, as obviously having a soul through participation in such power (for apart from a soul there would never at any time be a form of life at all among things brought under nature and clearly included within the ever-moving heavenly circuit, and always a form of life without a soul is altogether impossible according to logical sequence), then whatever form of life you suppose what is cast down at conception to have, you have manifested the property of a certain soul only, a difference that is constitutive of the substance in which it is and separative from those that are not such. But if, driven by the truth against your will toward what is right, you say that the embryo also has a soul, it is fitting and appropriate for you to say what this soul is and of what sort, and how it is contemplated or spoken of.

And if you maintain that it has only the nutritive and augmentative soul, then by this account of yours the body that is nourished and grows will plainly be that of a plant and not of a man. And how a man will be the father of a plant, I cannot see, though I consider it much, since a man by nature has his being wholly from a man.

But if you assign to the embryo only the sensitive soul, then the embryo will certainly be shown to have the soul of a horse or an ox or some other of the land or air animals at conception, and the man will not by nature be the father of a man according to your view, at the first constitution, but of a plant, as I said, or of one of the animals on the earth. What could be more absurd or more insane than this? For to maintain that the proper definitions of existence do not coexist without omission with the first constitution of beings according to each one's natural difference is to confound all things with one another, and to insist that nothing of beings is properly what it is and is called. And the greater evil, it will certainly be shown to contain the most manifest slander of the divine wisdom and power. For if all things that in any way exist have their perfection in their own principle before their generation according to God's foreknowledge, then clearly, when they are brought to generation according to their own principle, they will also without omission have their perfection in that very activity.

But if existing things possess perfection in respect of foreknowledge, yet in respect of their being brought forth into existence and their generation possess imperfection, then either those very things that were foreknown will not be, but different things in place of different things, or this would be the manifest and clear weakness of the Creator, who was unable, in accordance with His foreknowledge, to bring the foreknown thing to full realization at once, together with its generation, in actuality as it naturally is in essence. But if, shrinking from these refutations, you take refuge at last in that claim, saying that it is not just for what is according to the image of God and divine (thus you call the rational soul) to coexist with flux and filthy pleasure, and that it is more seemly to say that it is implanted after the forty days of conception, you will plainly be found accusing the Creator of nature, and you will reasonably be shown to incur the fearful danger of the blasphemy that arises from this. For if marriage is evil, then clearly also the natural law of generation is evil; and if such a law of natural generation is evil, then clearly the one who made nature and gave it the law of generation will justly be blamed, as you would have it. And why do we turn away from the followers of Manes and the heretics before him, who, for this cause—in a manner of speaking, this one cause alone—posited two principles and denied the God over all, if we have found you saying the same things, even if not through the same words?

But if, for the sake of this cause, you decline through a sense of shame to say that the rational and intellectual soul coexists with the body at conception, and you will not dare to say that what has been begotten has the rational and intellectual soul either after forty days, or after the nine-month period of gestation, or indeed after birth, before the forty days of purification. For what has been born is not yet accessible to the temple of God, being reckoned unclean by the law. So then, up to the completion of the days of purification, one must reasonably suspect that what is born does not have the rational and intellectual soul, but is something, as I said a little before, of a plant or an irrational animal among the things distinguished in existence. But if the pretext for such a statement has been established for you by the fact that the great Moses wrote that no penalty is exacted from the one who struck a pregnant woman, if it should happen that through the blow she miscarries the embryo before its time, before forty days, it should be known that the wise Moses was not indicating the entrance of the rational soul into the body at that time, but declaring that the perfect formation of what was cast forth is then completed, having written this for the time being according to the superficial sense.

In addition to all these things, I fear to accept such an argument, lest the order of the argument proceeding in sequence make me justly liable to fearful charges—something it is not lawful to say—insofar as the consequence of the argument compels me to say that our Lord and God, if He truly deigned to become man like us without sin, became at conception a man without a soul and without a mind, and remained so for the forty days—while our holy Fathers and teachers cry out clearly, or rather the truth that speaks and is spoken through them, that at the very descent of God the Word at conception, the Lord Himself and God the Word was united timelessly to flesh through a rational soul, and not that He received a rational soul coming into being through soulless flesh, and that He did not take on a completely soulless body or a mindless and irrational soul, but that He ineffably united to Himself in hypostasis the perfect nature consisting without deficiency of a rational soul together with a body.

Therefore I am especially held fast by the principle of coexistence, rejecting the things on either side that are contrary both to each other and to the mean, and having as my advocate and unerring teacher of this principle, by his own mystery of embodiment, the very Maker of nature—the one who truly became man and confirmed by himself that nature, perfectly possessing being, subsists at once with its coming to be through generation, and who alone innovated the innovation of nature—I mean conception through seed and birth through corruption, which nature drew upon itself after the transgression, when it fell away from the divine and spiritual increase into multiplicity—but not the principle of nature according to which it both is and is naturally brought to be, subsisting at once with its being from a rational soul and a body. 111. On how innovation takes place in things that are innovated...

Concerning how innovation takes place in things that are innovated while they remain unchanging in nature.

For every innovation, so to speak, universally tends to concern the mode of the thing being innovated, but not the principle of its nature. Therefore the principle, when innovated, destroys the nature, since it does not have the principle by which it exists free from tampering; but the mode, when innovated while the natural principle is of course preserved, displays the power of a wonder, evidently showing the nature both acted upon and acting beyond its own established order. Now the principle of human nature is that the nature consists of soul and body, and that it is from a rational soul and a body; and the mode is the order in acting and being acted upon naturally, often changing and being altered, but by no means changing the nature along with itself. Just as it is with every other thing, whenever God wishes to make something new in his own creation, for the sake of providence over those under providence, and for the demonstration of the power that extends over all things and through all things.

Just as, to be sure, in his wonder-working he has by the principle of innovation made use of the greatnesses of wonders and signs from of old, transferring the blessed Enoch and Elijah to another form of life beyond that in the flesh which is under corruption—not by a change of nature, but by a variation of the conduct and governance according to it—setting water for the flooding of the wicked men upon the earth by the many times over, showing the first sailor Noah to have an undefiled dwelling in the ark with wild beasts, honoring Abraham and Sarah his great servants with a child beyond age and beyond the limit and time of nature ordained for childbearing, preparing fire to make its course downward for the flooding of the impious, its principle according to nature not in the least diminished by this, kindling the bush with fire unburned for the calling of his servant, changing water in Egypt into the quality of blood, its nature not at all denied, water having remained according to nature even after the reddening, and performing the rest of the wonders and signs there, to give to the faithful a hope of freedom from the terrors that hold them, and to the unfaithful a consciousness of the punishing power, for the putting away of the hardening that holds them concerning the Divine, cutting the sea with a rod and dissolving the continuity of the water, its own nature not departing, for the passage of those persecuted for his sake, and for the stopping of those who unjustly persecute the noble and free, sweetening water with wood, and raining down from heaven bread unplowed, strange and unknown, and a multitude of edible birds suddenly from the sea

gushing forth, without the natural succession from one another, to comfort those suffering hardship in the desert, showing the rock to be a mother of water; to confirm the faith of those who desert in the struggles, cutting off a river for the dry passage of a God-fearing people; and wondrously holding back the course of the sun and moon unhindered, stopping the ever-moving nature of the surrounding sphere motionless, for the destruction of the impious dominion that ignorantly arrays itself against God, and before the power of things seen should reach its end, and for the possession of the inheritance promised from afar without falsehood. And the rest, as many things as he is said to have done, both in the land of possession and in the other ways in which the old Israel transgressed, God did, innovating the nature of the things innovated in the manner of operation, but not in the principle of existence. And with all these, and after these, he accomplished the truly most novel mystery of his incarnation for our sake through all things and through which all things, innovating the nature in the manner, but not in the principle, by the assumption of flesh through a median rational soul, ineffably conceived without seed, and truly born without corruption, a perfect man, having a rational soul with a body from the very ineffable conception.

112. That every nature always has its end in its own principle. Every nature, to speak universally, whether intelligible or sensible, that is, simple or composite, in no way ever receives the beginning of its generation toward being from a part, nor can it subsist from a half share. But if it is a composite nature, it is wholly and perfectly constituted together at once with its own perfect parts, having no interval of time whatsoever toward itself or toward one another among the parts of which it consists. And if it is a simple nature, that is, intelligible, it is likewise by nature constituted together at once, perfectly and without omission, with its own principles, no time at all separating the whole from its own principles. For there never was any nature at all among existing things, nor is, nor will be, existing according to its own principle as what it now is not, nor again is it now or will it be hereafter what it was not before. For those whose principles have possessed perfection together with their being in God—their production and substantiation according to their own principles is entirely incapable of any addition or deficiency toward being what they happen to be. But I think what has now been said, in this digression of the argument, is sufficient also for these matters, so as not to be easily swept away into absurd opinions by those who give credence to the technical persuasiveness in the elegances of arguments. 113. Why the Teacher joined the generation from baptism to the incarnation.

Looking to what end, and for whose sake, did the Teacher join the generation from baptism to the incarnation (for this still remains for the examination of the present discourse), I shall state briefly, as I learned it, according to my ability. Those who mystically handle the divine oracles, and who, as is likely, adorn them with the higher contemplations, say that man was made in the image of God in the beginning, in order that he might by all means be born of the Spirit according to his free choice, and might receive the likeness that comes to him through the keeping of the divine commandment, so that the same man might be a creature of the natural order, but a Son of God and God through the Spirit by grace. For it was not possible otherwise for the man who came to be to be shown forth as a Son of God and God according to deification by grace, unless he had first been born of the Spirit according to his free choice, on account of the self-moved and undominated power that is naturally present in him. This deifying and divine and immaterial generation, because the first man preferred the pleasant and visible good of sense to the good things that are understood and as yet unseen, he passed by, and he is reasonably condemned to have the involuntary and material and perishable generation from bodies, since God justly judged that the one who voluntarily chose the worse over the better should exchange the free, impassible, self-determined, and pure generation for the passionate, servile, and compelled generation, in likeness to the irrational and senseless beasts on the earth, and should receive, in place of the honor that is with God and divine and ineffable, the dishonorable coexistence with the senseless beasts.

Desiring to set man free and to lead him back to the divine inheritance, the Word who created the nature of men truly becomes and is born a man from men, bodily, without sin, for man's sake; and He is baptized, voluntarily undergoing for us the spiritual birth unto adoption, He who is God in essence and Son of God by nature, for the abolition of birth from bodies. Since, then, for our sake the One who made us, and who alone with the Father and the Spirit is of the same divinity and the same glory, the Son and Word, truly becomes a man like us and from us, and is born bodily without sin, and, being God by nature, deigns to undergo for us the birth from baptism unto spiritual adoption—for this reason the Teacher joined the birth from baptism to the incarnation, as I think, so that birth from bodies might be reckoned as abolished and dissolved. For what Adam voluntarily passed over—I mean the birth unto deification from the Spirit—and chose instead to be born bodily, he was condemned to corruption; this same thing the good and man-loving One voluntarily underwent in our transgression, becoming man and voluntarily condemning Himself together with us, the only free and sinless One, and He deigned to be born by birth from bodies, in which lay the power of our condemnation, and mystically set right the birth in the Spirit; and having loosed in Himself for us the bonds of bodily birth, He gave us authority, through the birth according to the Spirit, to become by will children of God instead of flesh and blood—to those who believe in His name.

Therefore the incarnation and, before it, the bodily birth of the Lord for the sake of my condemnation came to pass, and thus the birth in the Spirit through baptism, which had been passed over, followed, for the sake of my salvation and recall by grace—or, to speak more clearly, my re-formation; as God joins together in my regard both the principle of my being and the principle of my well-being, and unifies the division and separation of these that came about through me, and through these wisely drives me on toward the principle of eternal being, according to which there is no longer, in the case of man, bearing and being borne, since the economy of things that appear has reached its end in respect of being borne, through the great and common resurrection, which gives birth to man unto immortality in unchanging existence, through whom the nature of things that appear has received being by generation, and with whom it will receive by grace not to be corrupted in respect of essence. But if it seems good, having recalled in summary the force of what has been said, let us bring it to a head. We have the birth of our Savior from bodies, divided in conception into the principle of nature that comes first and into that which now again exists according to us, into which it has come to an end, and again into the principle of generation according to nature and into the manner of generation, and moreover also into the different manners of the generation in respect of essence of soul and body, and in addition to these into the conception without seed and the birth without corruption. It is in your power, then, as just judges of the objections stated, to approve the better one. RID (114)...». WHY DO YOU SEEK DRUGS THAT WILL PROFIT NOTHING? WHY A CRITICAL SWEAT..».

From the same discourse of the same author, on the text, "Why do you seek medicines that will profit nothing? Why a critical sweat, when the departure is perhaps at hand?" This passage, as the blessed elder used to say, the teacher set down against those who defer baptism, who defer it in the hope of living, for the sake of pleasure. And he says, "Why need you learn from another that the departure—that is, from life—is at hand, and not rather consider it as already present? Why do you seek medicines that will profit nothing? Why a critical sweat, when the departure is perhaps at hand?" For since the physicians' disciples say that there are four critical days in those with fevers—the fourth, the seventh, the ninth, and the eleventh, and perhaps also the thirteenth (for on these days, they say, if they find the body of the sick person moistened with sweat, they judge that the patient will live)—therefore, so that the sick person, awaiting this sweat, may not wickedly defer baptism, having a span of years, the teacher very wisely advises the afflicted one not to trust in this sweat and not to prop himself up in vain, since it is possible that instead of this the final sweat may come upon him, which cries out of the present

From the same discourse, on the text, "For Christ does not often love being stolen from, even if he is exceedingly philanthropic."

Why ever, they say, coming to this point of the discourse—if God is exceedingly philanthropic and an unfailing source of philanthropy, so that he is diminished not in the least by those who draw from him—does he not love being stolen from? For in that way he would all the more display his philanthropy, not being diminished by giving occasion to those who wish to steal, and especially a saving theft, and as often as they might wish. To these, as God grants the word, we say that this very thing is full of philanthropy—or rather is philanthropy itself—and that the refusal to permit those who wish to steal to obtain the appropriation of salvation is the clearest demonstration of good providence, lest, as is likely, the loss of what has been given should become very easy, since it can easily be taken again, and those who obtain the gift should be shown to be ignorant of the unchangeable and firm habit of virtue, having a mind easily falling into evil because of the ease of acquiring the good, which is despised by the left hand.

From the same discourse on Pascha, on the text, "Naked in simplicity and uncontrived life, and without any covering or garment. For such it was fitting for him to be from the beginning."

What this great teacher secretly reveals through these words, I say only those know who have received the equal gift of wisdom and knowledge with him, who, because they have laid aside all the filth of the passions and of every material attachment from the eyes of their mind, have been able to contain the ray of true knowledge in all things, according to which, having gathered the mind back from many things to the simple and uniform principle, as far as is attainable, they have encompassed all the scientific knowledge of beings in a simple comprehension. But for us, on whom the darkness of ignorance still lies as a barrier to the understanding of the true, because the mind is concentrated on moving things alone, just as a blind man groping with both hands in a heap of matter often finds something precious, so we too, with our own weakness, attempt to say something about the proposed question. And indeed we say nothing else at all than what God delivers into our hands, according to what is written, in order to feed you, the good fathers, according to our ability—I mean by the groping word of the noetic power within us—a simple and unadorned contemplation, commensurate with us, and inviting a fatherly blessing, lest, like Esau, we go about the field of sensible things in a sensible way and unskillfully, and through slowness be deprived of the ready...

being nourished by the father of blessings, or again, through pride seeking something beyond our power from those who still dwell on our mountain of contemplation, we might be wounded after the manner of Israel, concerning whom the law says that some, having broken through, went up into the mountain, and the Amorite who dwelt in that mountain came out and wounded them. I suspect, then, that the teacher says these things wishing to show the difference between the composition of the human body before the transgression in our forefather Adam and that which is now observed and prevails in us: namely, that then man was not torn apart by opposing and corruptive qualities of one another in the composition of his body, but was in the same state, free from flux and reflux, and free from the continuous alteration that comes from the predominance of qualities in either direction, inasmuch as he did not lack the immortality that comes by grace, and did not have the corruption that now scourges him with its own goads, but had another composition of the body, evidently fitting for him, held together by qualities that are without conflict and simple. In accordance with this, the first man was naked, not as being without flesh and bodiless, but as not having the coarser composition that makes the flesh and is mortal and resistant. According to this great teacher, he lived without artifice, not being dissipated from the natural good condition once given to him essentially, and he had no need of covering, both because of the impassibility that was in him, not suspecting shame, and because he was not subject to colds and heats, for which reasons especially the manner of shelter and clothing has been devised by men.

Another contemplation concerning him.

Or perhaps the teacher also indicates, from the things now contemplated concerning man, the things that were then concerning him, by the removal of the things now concerning him. For man is now moved either concerning irrational fantasies of passions from deception through love of pleasure, or concerning the principles of arts from circumstance through need, or concerning natural principles from the law of nature through learning—none of which, in the beginning, reasonably drew man by necessity, since he had become above all things. For thus it was fitting that the man from the beginning be, wholly undistracted by anything of the things beneath him, or around him, or according to him, and needing only one thing for perfection—the unhindered motion toward the One above him, I mean God, with his whole loving power. For being passionless by grace, he did not admit the deception of the fantasies of passions through pleasure; and being without need, he was free from the circumstantial necessity of arts through need; and being wise, he stood above the contemplation of nature through knowledge.

The first man therefore had nothing interposed between God and himself for knowledge, nothing to hinder the kinship with God that was to come about through love by his own free choice in his movement toward God; and for this reason he was called by the teacher "naked in his simplicity," as being above every natural inquiry, and "in uncontrived life," as being pure from any life that stands in need of arts, and "without any covering and pretext," as being free from the passionate entanglement of the senses with sensible things—until he was later justly brought into subjection, having fallen short by his own falling short, and having freely chosen to become empty of all things instead of being full, coming to be below what he had naturally been above.

ANOTHER CONTEMPLATION CONCERNING HIM. Another contemplation concerning him.

Or perhaps he was "naked," as the teacher says, of the varied contemplation and knowledge concerning nature, and "in uncontrived life," being outside the manifold method concerning practice and virtue, having in his state the undefiled principles of the virtues, and "without any covering and pretext," not needing in the first place the understanding of things that appear, based on the senses, for the comprehension of divine things, having only the simple projection of the unified and simple and cohesive virtue and knowledge that come after God, of the movement in activity alone, which needs free choice for its manifestation.

To be sure, then, all who wish by philosophical reasoning to rouse themselves from the fall of the first man begin first with the complete removal of the passions, then with the occupation with the accounts of the arts, and finally, having risen above natural contemplation, they peer into immaterial knowledge, which has no form at all stamped by sense perception, nor a concept conveyed by the utterance of speech, just as God made the first man from the beginning—naked in the simplicity of knowledge and in a life free from distraction, and having become so by the mortification of the law of the flesh. It was possible, however, to contemplate the present difficulty in another and higher way as well, but let these things be passed over for now, for the reason I stated at the beginning of the discourse.

119. ... "as a sun of righteousness," either proceeding from there, or circumscribed by what is seen...

Of the same discourse, on the words: "And the yearly one, as a sun of righteousness, either proceeding from there, or circumscribed by what is seen."

Many are the titles of our Savior, and manifold is the manner of the anagogical interpretation in each, according to its own conception, because the thing taken by way of example for the title of the Lord admits, according to natural contemplation, many possible apprehensions of contemplative truths. Just so, indeed, does the present difficulty before us also stand. For since it is not yet possible to set forth in order all the ways of contemplation concerning the sun, on account of the brevity of the conception by which the teacher contemplated it, let us too contemplate it, unfolding as far as we are able the things stated by him in condensed form.

A year, then, according to our holy and wise teachers, is the return of the sun from the same point to the same point, encompassing the fivefold property according to time. For time is both divided and gathered into a day and a week and a month and a season and a year; and the year likewise, into an hour and a day and a week and a month and a season, its motion remaining continuous and uninterrupted, in relation to which the divisions observed in accordance with change have numbered the continuous and uninterrupted motion of time.

If, then, in this way a year comes to be among us according to the course of the sun, a year acceptable to the Lord is certainly, as it is written, in the manner of allegory, the whole extent of the ages, from the beginning when God was pleased to give substance to the things that are, and to give existence to the things that are not, and through providence, like some intelligible sun of the power that keeps the whole together for permanence, condescendingly allowing his ray to be sent forth, having deemed various the ways for fruition

He sowed the good things proper to existing things until the consummation of all the ages, at which he will gather the fruits of his own sowing unmixed with tares and clean from all chaff-like husk and refuse, and the whole account of the motion of things moved will be brought to its end, when those who are worthy receive the promised final blessedness of deification. The Lord, then, is called the "Sun of righteousness," as maker and perfecter of the ages, and as beginning of all things and end, and as craftsman of the fivefold wise good order of things providentially cared for according to providence, and as one who fills all things with light eternal by the unceasing assaults of his goodness, and who makes those who widen their own intelligible pores to receive his blessed ray ripe and edible to God and the Father. The same is also the acceptable year of the Lord, as being fulfilled through all those who are saved according to the fivefold motion that takes place intelligibly by him, as of the Sun of righteousness—which he will surely understand who gathers the spiritual knowledge of things intelligible through the precise natural contemplation according to reason of things that appear. Thence he is said by the teacher to be "setting out," either as "bounded by what is seen," or as light from light and true God from God, setting out by generation from the Father who is true in essence, or as man, the same being bounded by the form of nature that is seen among us, just as the sun setting out from the heaven is bounded by the visible disk-shaped body. RK (120)...». IT IS NO WONDER IF THE SHEEP IS ESPECIALLY SOUGHT OUT BY EACH ONE AT HOME»

From the same discourse, on the text: "It is no wonder if the sheep is sought especially in each house."

Someone might say, and reasonably, as I think, perhaps: If Christ is one, who is mystically proclaimed through the law and the prophets and the majesty of creation to those able to hear and see spiritually, how is it that the law, fulfilling the type of Christ, commands many sheep to be sacrificed in the houses of the fathers? To this we say that if we would receive the word itself, touching spiritually the ears of the soul and the eyes, and opening these for the reception and contemplation of his mysteries, and for the avenging of all disobedience and the turning away from all vanity, we would surely know the mystical will of Holy Scripture, having joined to the present text a similar one from the holy Apostle, who says: "I determined not to know anything among you except Jesus Christ, and him crucified." Just as, then, each of those who have believed in Christ, according to his own capacity and the disposition and quality of virtue that lies within him, is crucified and co-crucifies Christ with himself—being crucified with Christ, clearly, in a spiritual sense. For one man makes his crucifixion appropriate to himself in one way of virtue, another in another: one is crucified only to sin in its activity, putting it to death, nailed fast by the fear of God; another is crucified even to the passions themselves and heals the powers of the soul; another is crucified even to the very fantasies of the passions, not allowing the senses to be let loose to receive any of the elevations that come through them; another is crucified even to the thoughts and deliberations concerning the passions.

One person does so also by the deception that comes through the senses; another crucifies and sets aside the soul's attachment to sensible things through the natural affinity of the senses; another wholly extinguishes every sensory movement by the cross, so as to have nothing at all within himself that is naturally active; another ceases entirely even from the activity that is according to the intellect, and—to speak of the greater thing—one person, crucified by the practical philosophy through dispassion, passes over, as it were, from the flesh of Christ to his soul, to the natural contemplation that is in the Spirit; another is put to death even by natural contemplation, through the setting aside of the symbolic contemplation of beings that is according to the intellect, and is transferred, as it were, from the soul of Christ to his intellect, to the unified and simple initiation of the theological knowledge; another is led up mysteriously from this, as it were, from the intellect of Christ's soul to his divinity, into the wholly ineffable, apophatic indeterminacy that comes through negation. Each one, as I said, according to his own capacity and the measure worthily granted to him, makes the lofty ascents through the mortification of all things; and so each of us, in his own rank, as in a kind of house, of the state of virtue that suits him, both sacrifices the divine lamb and partakes of his flesh, and is filled with Jesus.

For Christ Jesus becomes each person’s own lamb, as each is able to receive and eat him—his own, for Paul the great herald of the truth, and in a peculiar way his own for each of the saints according to the measure of the faith in each and the grace supplied by the Spirit, being found whole for the whole, in one way for one and in another way for another, and becoming all things to all.

“...with the inner and hidden parts of the mind it will be eaten and given over to digestion...”

From the same discourse, on the words: “As much of the word as is fleshly and nourishing will be eaten with the inner and hidden parts of the mind and given over to spiritual digestion.”

God, who established every nature with wisdom and secretly placed in each rational essence as its first power the knowledge of himself, has also given to us lowly humans, as a generous Master, the longing and love for himself according to nature, having naturally intertwined with it the power of reason, so that we might be able with ease to know the ways of the fulfillment of that longing and, without going astray, not miss what we strive to attain. Moved, then, by this longing, we are led to seek concerning the truth itself and the wisdom and governance that appear in an orderly way throughout all things, longing through these to attain that for the sake of which we received the longing.

And those who love learning and are lovers of the truth, having understood this mystically, established for themselves one school and one devoted pursuit—the diligent exercise concerning this—having learned accurately from the very nature of things both the true understanding and the sequence, namely that if in this present age they have in some measure imaged the truth to come through pious contemplations, they will also fulfill their longing, having kept their soul more ready, as one well trained here, and will pass without weariness after this life to the truth that is to come, already well sketched out for them through the more divine thoughts, with the truth of God and our Savior Jesus Christ himself leading them to it, and showing it to them plain and manifest and without any perplexity, free from symbolic variety and all enigmatic obscurity—just as in the practical virtue pain and grief and groaning have fled from them because of impassibility, so also in contemplative knowledge all obscurity and perplexity have been removed because of wisdom, since they received from here the outlines of it, at that time of naked truth. For to everyone, he says,

To the one who has it—clearly, the longing for things to come—it will be given, and the enjoyment of eternal goods will certainly be set before him.

For our God, being rich, never ceases distributing to those who love him the divine gifts of knowledge, which we cannot even name in this age, because of their height and magnitude—if indeed the great Apostle speaks truth when he says concerning the final blessedness that it is above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come, hinting at the highest summit of goods that will be shown after the distribution and ascent of all gifts, which cannot be spoken or known by any word or mind—both those attainable by us in this age and those that will be shown in the age to come and that perhaps can be named and known by us. For Jesus, the Word of God, who has passed through the heavens, always goes above all the heavens, and those who follow him through practice and contemplation he transfers and moves from lesser things to better, and from these again to things still higher than these; and, simply put, time will fail me as I speak of the divine ascents and revelations of the saints according to the change from glory to glory, until each one receives the deification suited to his own rank.

Knowing, therefore, that we possess the natural longing for God that was spoken of before, this great teacher exhorts and calls all through his teaching to the spiritual food of the Lamb slain for us, and he suggests that we keep clearly and profitably the harmony of his members—of the Lamb, that is—unbroken and unmixed, so that we may not be condemned as tearing apart and rending the well-ordered harmony of the divine body, or as eating the flesh of the Lamb and Word boldly, beyond our power, or impiously, against our power; but let each one, according to his own power and order and the grace of the Spirit that falls to him, partake of the divine Word according to the meaning of each member. For example, the head: he who has acquired a faith in matters of theology that is wholly free, from unproven principles, will partake of it, from which the whole body of virtues and knowledges, being joined together, grows with spiritual growth. The ears: he who receives the divine words spiritually with knowledge, and becomes obedient and subject to God through them, through works, unto death. The eyes: he who contemplates creation spiritually, and without stumbling gathers all the principles perceived by sense and by mind into one fulfillment of the glory of God. The breast: he who has filled his heart with theological contemplations, according to the great evangelist John, and, like an ever-flowing spring, piously pours out to those who learn the comprehensive word of the providence of the universe, both in word and in manner.

He rightly partakes of the hands, in turn, who fulfills none of the works according to the commandment in a slack and negligent manner, but who keeps the whole active energy of the soul in the practical life ready and vigorous for the fulfillment of the divine laws. And he partakes of the belly, who keeps the ever-gushing generative power of the soul, and is multiplied by spiritual contemplations, and possesses the most burning and inextinguishable love of the passionless longing for union with the divine. And he will worthily partake of the inward parts, who by the more secret inquiry and knowledge of the mind searches out the depths of God and is filled with ineffable mysteries. The word will dare something greater. Let him who stands rationally against matter partake soberly of the lower parts of the Word, and who keeps the flesh together with the soul altogether undefiled, and who without omission forms in it the whole Word through the virtues, having become flesh. And he will partake of the thighs, who has the word resting upon the passionate part of the soul, and who utterly cuts off its material motion. And of the knees, he who in providence compassionately bends down to those who lie sick in faith, and who imitates the condescension of the Word toward us. And let him partake, in addition to these, of the shins and feet, who keeps the foundations of the soul unshaken and unmoved in faith and virtue and knowledge, and who hastens according to his goal toward the prize of the upward calling, and who leaps over the mountains of ignorance and the hills of wickedness with the Word and springs across them.

But who will be able to enumerate all the conceptions of our Savior God, devised for our sake, according to which he has made himself edible and partaken of in a manner analogous to each person? For besides all these, the Lord still has locks of hair, and nostrils, and lips, a neck, and shoulders, and fingers, and whatever else of our own constitution is spoken of in him by way of trope. Of these those partake fittingly and profitably who are transformed into the spiritual meaning signified by each member and through each member. Thus the Lamb of God is eaten, according to this holy and great teacher, and is assimilated into spiritual digestion, transforming those who partake of him to himself in the Spirit, leading and transferring each of them to the place of the member that he has spiritually eaten, according to the position of the bodily harmony, so that in his love for humanity the Logos in all things becomes substance to the things, he who alone is beyond nature and reason.

From the same discourse, on the text: "Having put to death the members that are upon the earth, and imitating the belt of John, the desert-dweller and forerunner and great herald of the truth."

He who imitates the belt of John is the one who, by the power of the word, practically tightens the generative faculty of the soul through knowledge, and keeps it undiffused toward matter. And a desert-dweller is he who has acquired his disposition pure from the passions. And a forerunner is he who, through genuine repentance, foretells the righteousness that follows upon it, and through the virtue that appears, the knowledge that is about to dwell in them. And a great herald of the truth is he who by his own life confirms the word of teaching spoken by him. 123... "He is sent... without bronze and without staff and with a single tunic, and further also to go barefoot."

From the same discourse, on the text: "And if any disciple is sent to the Gospel, let him go in a philosophical and unadorned manner; who, besides being without bronze and without staff and with a single tunic, must also go barefoot, so that the feet of those who proclaim peace may appear beautiful.

The Gospel is the higher word concerning the kingdom of God; and the kingdom of God is the lot that is pure from all matter and from all the phantasies that arise from it. Therefore he who is sent to the Gospel is reasonably a disciple who displays in his manners a complete alienation from this world, both by being without bronze and without staff and wearing a single tunic, and who has cut off love of money and anger, or his confidence in some dominion over others, and who pursues a moral philosophy that is uncontrived and unfeigned and single in its manner and free from all duplicity, as though one single garment, leaving behind in the track of his soul nothing at all of deadness, as though a sandal—a symbol—since he is an angel of the great peace, and a herald of the state that no longer fears the war that comes from the passions, nor shrinks back from the death of the body, so that those who look upon him with understanding may, from the unalterable sameness of his life according to virtue, be imaged with the most seemly citizenship and stability that is among the angels in relation to God. 124. Another on the same contemplation. Another on the same contemplation.

Unless perhaps, because he spoke simply and in imitation of John's belt, and again in a gospel manner to be able to eat the Passover, the Father hinted in a teaching manner at the differences among those who partake and the modes of the Passover itself. For the word of the Old Scripture hands down three Passovers: one celebrated in Egypt, another in the desert, and the other in the land of promise. Egypt, then, allegorized according to one of the conceptions concerning it, signifies this world; the desert likewise, according to one of the contemplations upon it, allegorically indicates the state of souls after death; and the land of promise prefigures the age to come. For there are three places and states in which we men come to be: this world, in which, receiving being, we are born; the place after death, in which we come to be as we depart from here; and the age to come, in which we are enclosed together with souls and bodies. Therefore, for as long as we are in this world, we keep the Passover in Egypt, being cleansed of the stains of sin; but when we have crossed over this life through death, as in a desert we again keep another Passover, learning more clearly the reasons of beings, without symbols and riddles and the variety that comes through sense perception, in a noetic and incorporeal manner.

And again, in the age to come of the divine promises, we celebrate the Passover, eating directly the highest word of wisdom, transformed in accordance with it and deified by grace, having no other passage to another Passover in any other respect, except that even here, while we are present, it is possible to be imaged according to each one's state by the particular character of the places mentioned. For the life of each of us is characteristic of the place in which it is. For example, if we pursue the practical philosophy courageously, we celebrate the Passover well in Egypt, being with the Egyptians but not being Egyptians, as being in the flesh but not warring according to the flesh. But if we piously practice the natural contemplation in the Spirit, making the powers of the soul weapons mighty for God, for the destruction of strongholds and every high thing exalted against the knowledge of God, and for the contemplation of the spiritual principles in created things, as if naked of the body and free from the deceptive fantasy of sense perception, making our journey to the divine promises in a gnostic manner, we are in the desert—I mean the state purified of passions and of every material fantasy. But if we form the theological mystagogy by ineffable movements of the mind, not ignorant, as far as is attainable by humans, of what is the breadth and length and depth and the surpassing magnitude toward us of the wisdom of God, we are in the land of promise. The practical, then, and the natural, and the theological philosophy I think, through the division of the three persons, the

to exhort the teacher, through which each, in proportion to the power present in him, eats the intelligible Passover.

RKΕ (125)...». IF YOU ARE RACHEL OR LEAH,... STEAL THE IDOLS WHATEVER YOU FIND OF YOUR FATHER..».

From the same discourse, on the text: «If you are Rachel or Leah, a patriarchal and great soul, steal the idols whatever you find of your father, not that you may keep them, but that you may destroy them; but if you are a wise Israelite, transfer them to the land of promise».

Rachel, as they say, is interpreted as a lamb or shepherding, and Leah is interpreted as laboring or labor. So Rachel is shepherded and shepherds, is led and leads, according to the force of the name. Rachel, then, is every contemplative soul, which is shepherded and led by the law of God as a lamb, and which by the law of God shepherds and leads its own movements and thoughts by the ordinances pertaining to practice, and for a time subjects the passions of the flesh to the fruitfulness of virtue, and thus after the entrance into knowledge utterly destroys them. And Leah is every practical soul, which has labor for the sake of virtue, which especially, as the first thing, anyone pursuing divine philosophy receives as a wife and brings into his house. And a wise Israelite is a contemplative intellect, which transfers the thoughts of this age to the region of knowledge, after the manner of that great Jacob, who moved all the things of Laban to the land of the Fathers.

For just as that wonderful Jacob, in the historical account, peeled the rods and placed them beneath the troughs of water, causing the sheep that drank to conceive by looking at them, so too every mind most wise in the Spirit, having stripped bare the more divine principles of beings from the matter that surrounds them, and having placed them beneath the modes of knowledge pertaining to contemplation, brings about the formation of the constitution of incorporeal things, and teaches all who are learning, as well as the movements of his own soul. Therefore, Leah is the patriarch of those who achieve virtue through practical toil, while Rachel is the patriarch of those who pursue virtue rationally through natural contemplation, as she is led obediently by the law of God and leads gently according to it. And of those who pursue the height of knowledge through spiritual contemplation, the all-praised Jacob is the patriarch—of those who contemplate and know things not entirely as they appear but as they are understood, and who, together with the concepts in these things, are transferred richly to immaterial and incorporeal knowledge.

If you are Simon the Cyrenian, take up the cross and follow.

From the same discourse, on the text: "If you are Simon the Cyrenian, take up the cross and follow."

Simon is interpreted as obedience, and Cyrenian, as they say, as readiness. Everyone, then, who is ready for obedience to the Gospel, and who eagerly, through the mortification of the members that are upon the earth, passes beyond the hardship that comes for the sake of virtue according to the practical philosophy, has become a Simon the Cyrenian, pursuing virtue of his own free will, having the cross upon his shoulders and following Christ, showing forth a manner of life according to God wholly raised up from the earth.

If you are crucified together with him as a thief, acknowledge God as one who is grateful.

From the same discourse, on the text: "If you are crucified together with him as a thief, acknowledge God as one who is grateful."

Every man who suffers evil for the sake of his sins, as one who is guilty, is a grateful thief crucified together with Christ, suffering together with the Word who suffers evil uncondemned on his account, and bearing it with thanksgiving, and acknowledging the Word who is present through the providence of righteous judgment, and confessing the cause for which he suffers evil, and reckoning that just as the Word shared his passion though he was uncondemned, so he should impart the reason of his own well-being to him who is unworthy, and by his gratitude reckon the mortification that comes from circumstances as voluntary virtue for his sake, when the wise veils of the providence of the Word have reached their end and the unapproachable light of his kingdom appears.

Thus, for him who suffers because of sin, the mortification of the members of the body that comes from circumstance is brought to an end, passing over through grateful thanksgiving into voluntary virtue, by which, being released from the many debts incurred by sin, he rightly enters with the Word into the country of knowledge—I mean paradise—in which, once he has come to be there, he will know the cause of the condemnation and misery in which we are now confined. But the ungrateful thief is the one who suffers badly because of sin as one liable, and who does not recognize, through a contentious disposition, the Word of righteousness who suffers with him without liability on account of love for humanity, but blasphemously rejects the reason of judgment justly appointed over him by providence; and since he did not recognize the Word who was condemned with him dishonorably according to his will, and did not ask for grace for the sins he had committed, he is dismissed as a stranger to the kingdom, having received no promise from the Word that he will ever attain it. 128. Another on the same contemplation. Another on the same contemplation.

And again, the grateful thief is the one who, even having come to the very end of the present life that is his, comes to a sense of the wrongs he has committed against himself, and with understanding recognizes the reason justly defined for him here, being accomplished for him by the divine judgment, and sincerely from the depth of his soul asks forgiveness for the things he has sinned. But the ungrateful thief is the one who, having come to the very end of the present life that is his, blames the law and boundary of the soul's separation from the body, which was wisely appointed by the just vote of God, as though it were not well given, out of love of life.

RKTh (129). Another on the same contemplation. Another on the same contemplation.

And again, since each of us is double in nature, composed of soul and body, he is a thief who, in accordance with each of the things of which he is composed, is mystically crucified together with the Word for the sake of virtue according to the law of either nature, having the law of the flesh, as it were an ungrateful thief, resisting the word of virtue, and the law of the spirit, as it were a grateful thief, and receiving the Savior Word through the ways of the practical life, even if they be painful, to whom

He enters rejoicing into the place of feasting that is filled with all knowledge, having been completely freed from the mind-set of the flesh. RL (130). ANOTHER ON THE SAME CONTEMPLATION. Another on the same contemplation.

And again, the grateful thief is the one who has been deemed worthy to be crucified together with Christ through the complete and entire mortification of the passions, and who is crucified at his right hand—that is, who passes through every virtue with reason and knowledge, and keeps his life blameless before all people, and has no movement at all of harshness that is discordant with the gentleness of the Word. But the ungrateful thief is the one who, for the sake of glory or of more abundant gain, hypocritically feigns the life according to virtue in outward manners, and who pursues one single flattering word toward those outside in place of all virtue and knowledge, but toward his intimates is altogether crooked in his disposition and hard to approach, whom one must certainly silence with understanding when he blasphemes the way of God. For perhaps he will cease from slandering the Word through his own conduct, at the admonition of the one who rebukes him, just as happened on the cross to the thief who boldly offered the blasphemy. For not to answer back to the one who rebuked him is a sign of the acceptance of the word spoken, namely his silence.

In whatever contemplation of the things said, then, let us strive to be crucified together with Christ, so that, as we are here, we may propitiate the Word who is crucified together with us, and may receive, with a conscience purified, the true promise of rest from the thoughts that strike it—if indeed “today” indicates the present day of this age (for “today,” he says, “you will be with me in paradise”), while “tomorrow” indicates that of the age to come, in which one must expect no forgiveness of sins, but only the requital of the repayment of each one’s life, according to worth, that is fitting.

RL 131… “And if you are Joseph, the one from Arimathea, ask for the body from the one who is crucifying.”

From the same discourse, on: “And if you are Joseph, the one from Arimathea, ask for the body from the one who is crucifying.”

The body of Christ is the soul, or its powers, or the senses, or the body of each individual, or the members of the body, or the commandments, or the virtues, or the principles of created things, or, to speak more truly and simply, both individually and collectively, all these things and each one of them is the body of Christ. The devil crucifies this—that is, all these things—in the one who has received their crucifixion, not allowing them to be active according to nature. And Joseph, in the Hebrew tongue, is interpreted as “Addition”; and Arimathea, “Take that.” How, then?

A man who has additions of faith and has grown in the ways of virtue, and who has stripped away from himself every deceit of material things—this man is a spiritual Joseph, able to take the body of Christ and bury it well and lay it in the heart hewn out by faith, and to make his own body as the body of Christ because of grace, and the members of the body weapons of righteousness for God unto sanctification, and to prepare the senses of the body to be servants to the soul according to the innate reason for the natural contemplation in the Spirit, and to make the soul itself equal in rank with the powers for the fulfillment of the virtues, and further to enslave the soul and its powers to the commandments of God, and to show the commandments themselves to be natural energies of the soul, and through the unchangeable and firm habit of virtue to be roused again to understanding and reception of the more divine reasons hidden in the commandments, and, as it were, with a kind of linen cloth—the spiritual reasons concerning this age—to wrap the first Logos, from whom and through whom and to whom are all things. He who has kept this well-ordered order in this way is a Joseph, mystically burying the mystical body of Christ.

132. Another [scholion] on the same contemplation.

And, to speak briefly, he who by practice and contemplation wondrously sets forth to his hearers the words concerning the cross—this man has become another Joseph, having increased to spiritual knowledge through the addition of the good things pertaining to contemplation, and an Arimathean through his genuine affinity with the virtues, circumcising in his practice all his attachment to material things. 133. Another contemplation on the same [passage].

Again, those who blasphemously teach doctrines concerning the embodiment of God crucify Christ; and again, he who piously and with all boldness proclaims to all the doctrines concerning the incarnation of God buries him. 134. "...Even if Nicodemus, the night-loving God-fearer, be [there], bury him with spices."

From the same discourse, on the passage: "Even if Nicodemus, the night-loving God-fearer, be [there], bury him with spices."

Nicodemus, the night-loving God-fearer who buries the body of Christ with spices, is the man who is strong in mind for the knowledge of Christ, but who, out of love for the flesh, declines the zeal of practice of the commandments as cowardly because of fear of the Jews (I mean, the assaults of the passions or of the demons)—for whom it is a great thing for acceptance even to think rightly about Christ and not to utter blasphemous words.

From the same discourse, on the passage: "Whether it be Mary, or the other Mary, or Salome, or Joanna, weep at dawn. See first the stone rolled away, and perhaps also the angels, and Jesus himself." The first Mary, from whom the Word had cast out seven demons, is every practical soul, purified through the word of the gospel commandments from the agitation that concerns this present age. For this age is hebdomadal, being fulfilled in the revolving of time upon itself, from which the Word sets free his own devotees, placing them altogether above the things that are under time. And the other Mary is every contemplative soul, which through true knowledge has acquired its kinship with the Word according to grace. And Salome—which is interpreted Peace or Most Full—is every soul that is at peace through the casting off of the passions, and by the abundance of practical virtues has subjected the mind of the flesh to the law of the spirit, and by the fullness of the spiritual meanings pertaining to contemplation has wisely encompassed the knowledge of beings so far as is possible. And Joanna—which is interpreted Dove, the gentle and guileless and prolific animal—is every soul that through gentleness has laid aside the passible element, and keeps fervent the prolific generation in knowledge of the spirit. And these women weep at dawn, that is, they pour forth tears of knowledge, seeking the Word who is the most principal source of all virtue and knowledge. And first they see the stone rolled away from the door of the tomb, that is, the hardness of the Word's obscurity that lies upon the heart.

Then the angels, that is, the natural principles of beings in the Spirit, silently proclaiming the all-causative Word. 136. Another contemplation concerning the angels. Another contemplation concerning the angels.

Or the words of Holy Scripture, providing them a clearer understanding concerning Christ as God and man, that is, concerning theology and economy. For the Word says that they saw one at the head and one at the feet. For at the head is the word of theology because of the divinity of Christ, and at the feet the word of the economy because of the incarnation; and if one calls the divinity of Christ his head, and his humanity his feet, he will not miss what is fitting.

137. Another contemplation concerning the same. Another contemplation concerning the same.

Or perhaps the angels are the movements of conscience concerning the word of piety, because of the complete casting off of evil and ignorance, proclaiming to them intelligibly the resurrection of the Word who was once dead in them because of evil. And finally they see the Word himself appearing to them plainly, without symbols and types, and filling their intellectual capacities with intelligible joy. 138... "Become Peter or John; hasten to the tomb, running back..

From the same discourse, on the words: "Become Peter or John; hasten to the tomb, running counter, running together, contending in the noble contest." Peter is every man who has acquired the firm foundation of faith in Christ through the conduct of his life; John is he who, through great gentleness and the pure sincerity of heart that comes from it, is loved by the Word, and for this reason is entrusted with the treasures of wisdom and knowledge, and by reclining on the breast has received from the Word himself the power of theology from his hidden divinity. These run counter to one another: the one, in virtuous action, striving eagerly to surpass the other's contemplation; the other, in gnostic contemplation, hastening to outrun the other's action. But they run together in purpose, each prospering equally in his own good.

139. Another contemplation on the same. Another contemplation on the same.

Peter, then, and John are again each man who has been deemed worthy to draw near to God, having the practical faculty of the soul as a kind of Peter, and the contemplative as a kind of John, running together with one another in reason, without excess or deficiency of the one toward the other; and again running counter to one another in purpose, since by outrunning the other at each one's extreme, the one is thought to be surpassed by the other.

From the same discourse, on the words: "And even if, like Thomas, you are left behind by the disciples to whom Christ appears, when you see, do not disbelieve. And even if you disbelieve, believe those who tell you. And if not them, be assured by the marks of the nails." Thomas is interpreted as "twin," which is doubt or one who doubts in his reasonings, and for this reason, apart from touching the marks of the nails, he did not even believe that the resurrection of the Word had taken place. Thomas, then, is every doubting man who finds it hard to believe the resurrection of the Word of virtue and knowledge within himself; such a one only the memorials of past sins, impressed impassibly upon the mind, persuade to receive the resurrection of the divine Word within himself and to confess him Lord and God: Lord, as lawgiver of perfection in practice; God, as teacher of the complete mystical initiation in contemplation. An impassive memory is the impression of things that have happened, arising in the soul without pleasure or pain concerning practice and the Word—a discernment of one's own deeds or thoughts, having the marks, but not the punctures, of the wounds, since by the impassibility that has come to be in it they have been scarred over.

Another contemplation on the same passage.

Or again, the nails are the ways of the virtues according to the practical philosophy, holding the disposition of the soul fastened with toil to the divine fear; and the dispassionate, simple, and ineffable words of knowledge, succeeding them, cry aloud the resurrection of the divine Word that has taken place in the soul through contemplation, faithfully bearing witness and showing beforehand the dispassion of the God-like state—which one who has not suffered it would never believe even if another were to tell him about it, just as Thomas did not believe the apostles when they spoke of this resurrection before he had experienced it through suffering.

From the same discourse, on the words: "If he descends into Hades, descend with him. Know also the mysteries of God there—what is the meaning of the double descent." The spiritual man, knowing that the Word of God is everywhere present undefiled, follows him through contemplation, gathering the knowledge of his providence over all things with understanding. Thus he also descends with the Word when he descends into Hades—not, clearly, for any evil, but to search out and learn the mystery of God's descent into Hades, and to be taught the transcendent meaning of the things that happen and are accomplished there.

143. Another contemplation on the same passage.

Or again, since every sin is a Hades, rendering the soul held by it dark, formless, and corrupted, the one who discourses on the passions descends with the word of his teaching into a Hades that is descending, giving life by his word to the virtue that has been put to death by each vice and leading it to resurrection, and manfully breaking in pieces with his word the bonds of the souls' material attachment. And the word of the double descent, according to the ready sense, is: with respect to the first undertaking, that it is to save souls together with bodies through faith and a pure conduct of life on the earth, and that the Word, having descended without a body into Hades, is able to procure for the souls of those who died beforehand there through the power of faith alone; and with respect to the second undertaking, that the habit of vice and its activity receive from the Word the return to virtue and knowledge.

144. ... "If He ascends into the heavens, ascend with Him. Be with the angels.

From the same discourse, on the passage: "Even if you ascend into the heavens, go up with him. Be with the angels who escort him or those who receive him; command the gates to be lifted up." The one who, through great abundance of knowledge and rich participation in the Holy Spirit, has sufficiently completed, as far as is possible, the discourse concerning providence, and has comprehended the knowledge that pertains to it, ascends together with the Word as he goes up from earth to the heavens, having passed through in a knowing way, together with the principles that pertain to it, the nature of all things that are provided for, both visible and invisible, and having been taken up through every principle and manner to that cessation which has no movement or motion whatsoever, toward which he was especially hastening, being led up from those who escort him—as it were, certain angels, namely the principles of providence that are among existing things—to the place of the ineffable principles and mysteries of theology that receive him, and making the noetic gates of the soul higher through his successive ascents for the reception of the most divine-ruling Word.

RME (145). ANOTHER CONTEMPLATION ON THE SAME PASSAGE. Another contemplation on the same passage.

And in yet another way, as the word ascends, there accompanies it the one who comes from the virtuous modes of the practical philosophy, as from some earth to certain heavens—the spiritual heavens of knowledge according to contemplation—being raised together with the divine Word who draws him upward.

RM (146). ANOTHER CONTEMPLATION ON THE SAME PASSAGE. Another contemplation on the same passage.

And to speak yet more mystically concerning these things: the one who is able to be led up from the knowledge according to the economy, from which the world of the Word's flesh has come to be in the Father, to the understanding of the glory of being in the Father before the world, before the incarnation of the Word—this one has truly ascended with the God and Word who for his sake descended to earth, having fulfilled the measure of the knowledge accessible to humans in this age, and having become God to the same extent as that one became man—being exalted so much by divine ascents for God's sake as God, for man's sake, emptied himself immutably and descended to the utmost limit of our nature.

RME (147). From the word for the New Sunday: "And the tabernacle of witness is consecrated."

By the same author, from the word for the New Sunday, on the passage: "And the tabernacle of witness is consecrated, and very lavishly, which God showed forth, and Bezalel completed and Moses set up."

Since the anagogical meaning of the contemplation concerning the tabernacle is manifold, let us contemplate it as the teacher took it up for us on the present occasion. The tabernacle of witness, then, is the mysterious economy of the incarnation of the Word of God, which God the Father, well pleased, showed forth, and the Holy Spirit, prefigured through the wise Bezalel, cooperated in completing, and the noetic Moses, the only-begotten Son of God the Father, wrought with His own hands, setting up human nature in Himself by union according to hypostasis. RMH (148). Another [contemplation] on the same theme.

Moreover, the tabernacle is an image of the whole creation, both intelligible and sensible, which God the Father conceived as Mind, and the Son created as Word, and the Holy Spirit completed. And again, it is an image of sensible nature alone, and of man alone, who consists of soul and body, and again of the soul alone as contemplated by reason in itself, being contemplated according to the meaning fitting to each.

RME (149)... "And the kingdom of David is consecrated, and not once only, but of one anointed..." From the same word, on the passage: "And the kingdom of David is consecrated, and not once only, but of one anointed the first time, and proclaimed the second." In like manner let us also receive the great David, the prophet and king, who has a most august account of his leading upward, according to which the teacher has here contemplated him. Therefore the true king of Israel, who sees God, is the noetic David, Jesus Christ: according to his first coming, anointed by the conception of humanity, as the teacher says elsewhere, having anointed humanity with divinity and made it what the anointing is; and according to his second and glorious manifestation, as God and Lord and King of all creation, both being and being proclaimed. RN (150)... "Having forgotten his own decision, the day of the consecration..." Concerning the present word, some are at a loss, saying: Why is it that the teacher, having said that the day of resurrection surpasses all the feasts on earth—not only human and earthly ones, but even those of Christ himself and those celebrated in him—as though he had forgotten his own decision, sets the day of the consecration above it, saying, "Highly higher, and wonderfully more wonderful," so that from this the teacher is thought to fall into contradiction with himself. To these it must be said that the teacher himself says in the same word after certain things: "The word does not wish you to remain ever in the same state, but always to be moved, easily moved, altogether newly created.

Just as, then, we know that the one being consecrated becomes higher than himself and more godlike, made radiant by his advances in virtue, so too we must believe that every day of a feast devised for our sake becomes higher than itself in us and through us, since the mystery signified through it brings its own power to perfection in us. Reasonably, then, the teacher called the new Lord's Day higher than the high, as always being exalted together with us and surpassing itself; inasmuch as the resurrection—I mean the first Lord's Day—secretly through the mystery pertaining to it grants a life wholly purified from all material fantasy to those who thus spiritually accomplish the mystery pertaining to it, while the new Lord's Day, in addition to these things, makes them partakers of the enjoyment of all the divine goods of which the former made a beginning.

And again, the first Lord's Day is a symbol of the future natural resurrection and incorruption, while the second bears the image of the future deification by grace. If, then, the enjoyment of good things is more honorable than a state purified of evils, and the state of a sound disposition according to virtue is more honorable than the perfection according to true knowledge, and the transformation in grace toward God according to deification is more honorable than natural incorruption—of which the first Lord's Day bears the type and the second happens to be the symbol—with good reason the teacher, being led by the Spirit to a high thing higher than the high, spoke of the new Lord's Day.

153. "I hate even the habit of passing through the air." From the same discourse, on the text "I hate even the habit of passing through the air." Directing a long discourse to women, and especially those who have embraced the solitary life, concerning the right ordering of morals, the teacher gently, by way of suggestion, I think, exhorts that those who practice asceticism ought not to peer out at anyone at all from windows at home, and especially at those passing by, so that they might not receive the stings of death through untimely gazing.

154. Of the same, from the discourse On Holy Pentecost, on the text: "One day being needed, which we have received from the age to come, the same being both the eighth and the first, or rather one and indissoluble. For it is there that the sabbath-rest of souls here must come to its end."

The number seven, according to Holy Scripture, when taken merely as a number, naturally contains much mystical contemplation lying upon it for those who labor over divine things. For it signifies both time, and age, and ages, and motion, and encompassment, and measure, and limit, and providence, and many other things, being well contemplated according to the principle of each. But when considered merely as rest, it likewise contains much knowledge mystically taught upon it. But lest, going through each one, I make my discourse burdensome, let us exercise what seems to be higher than the others. For those learned in divine things speak of three modes. The whole principle of the entire genesis of rational essences is contemplated as having the principle of being, the principle of being well, and the principle of being always, and the first, that of being, has been given to existing things by essence; the second, that of being well, has been given to them by choice, as being self-moved; and the third, that of being always, has been bestowed on them by grace. And the first is comprehensive of power, the second of activity, and the third of idleness. For example, the principle of being, having naturally only the power for activity, cannot altogether have that activity most complete without choice;

But the one who has the power of well-being only by choice, in the sense of the natural faculty's activity, does not possess that whole power entirely apart from nature; while the one who by definition circumscribes the "always to be" of all things before him—of the one the power, of the other the activity—neither naturally exists in beings at all according to power, nor indeed does it follow by necessity from the will of choice in every respect. For how could those things that have a beginning by nature and an end by motion be capable of that which always is and has neither beginning nor end? But it is a boundary, making the nature stand still according to power and the choice according to activity, never changing in any way the principle according to which it is, and defining all ages and times for all. And this is, I think, perhaps the mystically blessed Sabbath, and the great day of the rest from the divine works, which, according to the Scripture of the cosmogony, appears to have neither beginning nor end nor generation—the manifestation, after the motion of things measured and delimited, of things beyond limit and measure, and the infinite sameness, after the quantity of things contained and circumscribed, of things uncontained and uncircumscribed.

So then, according to how the activity by choice uses the power of nature, whether according to nature or contrary to nature, it will receive the good or the bad as its end, that is, the state of ever-being, in which souls keep sabbath, having received rest from all movement. The eighth and first day—or rather, one and indissoluble day—is the pure and all-radiant presence of God, coming to be after the cessation of things that move; and for those who have used the principle of being according to nature by choice, it is present in a fitting way to them wholly, and grants them to be always good through its own participation, since it alone is properly both being and ever-being and well-being; but to those who have used the principle of being contrary to nature by inclination, it assigns, as is reasonable, the ever-bad instead of the good, since the capacity for well-being is no longer available to them, as they are disposed in opposition to it, and they have no movement at all after the manifestation of what is sought, by which the sought thing naturally becomes manifest to those who seek it. RNE (155). Another on the same contemplation. Another on the same contemplation.

And again, the seventh and the Sabbath is the passage through all the modes of virtue and the gnostic principles of contemplation. And the eighth is the true transformation, according to grace, toward the beginning and cause of the things done practically and the things known contemplatively.

PN (156). Another contemplation on the same. Another contemplation on the same.

So then, again, the seventh and the Sabbath is dispassion, which succeeds the practical philosophy according to virtue. And the eighth is also the first, as one and indissoluble, namely the wisdom that comes after gnostic contemplation. And in other manifold ways it is possible for those who love to contemplate divine things to receive the account concerning such matters, and to discover many noble and true contemplations. PN 157 (157).... How the teacher, taking "Ye shall double and triple"... From the same discourse, how the teacher, taking "Ye shall double and triple," speaks concerning the mystery of the seventh: "As also the seventh course of Elijah the prophet, breathing life into the son of the woman of Zarephath, and the same number of his pourings upon the split pieces of wood." The blessed elder, when asked by me about this, said, "In this respect, perhaps, it is possible to conjecture that the teacher is discoursing about the number seven. First, according to those called arithmeticians. For they say that certain numbers are constituted from other numbers doubled and tripled, with the monad added last.

For example, sixty-four is composed from doublings, the monad being doubled along with the six numbers, and the monad also being added, and thus the hebdomad is completed: for instance, twice one is two, twice two is four, twice four is eight, twice eight is sixteen, twice sixteen is thirty-two, twice thirty-two is sixty-four. These things having been formed in this way through six numbers, they seem to have been put together, but the monad too, taken last, fills out the seven, from which the doubling has taken its beginning. So then, here too, having held to the same rule, we shall complete the number seven. For it says, "Pour out, double and triple." Twice one, then, is two; three times two is six; and the first monad, added to the six, completes the number seven. And they say that the number three has a certain spiritual kinship, according to mystical contemplation, with the number seven, in the following way: because the all-venerable and adorable Trinity is signified by the three, and again the same is signified by the seven, because the number seven is a virgin. For of the numbers within the decade, this one alone neither generates nor is generated. And this is clearly indicated by one who expounds in the book of the Epics On Virginity, speaking as follows: "The first virgin is the holy Trinity." 158. ANOTHER CONTEMPLATION ON THE SAME. Another contemplation on the same.

Or also in this way. To the Holy Trinity, mystically in the word, having contemplated its activity, I mean the good which displays the four general virtues, you will fulfill the number seven. For to the holy and all-praised Trinity, mystically contemplating its activity, we complete the number of the seven virgins. 159... "But Jesus himself, the pure perfection, knows how to feed in the desert.."

From the same discourse, on the passage: "But Jesus himself, the pure perfection, knows how to feed in the desert both five thousand with five loaves, and again four thousand with seven; and the remnants of the satisfaction there were twelve baskets, here seven baskets." Neither do I think this happened without reason, nor unworthily of the Spirit. Since the mind has already been exercised toward a contemplative habit in what has been said before at length, as far as possible, let us not burden it, if it seems good, with a multitude of words, since it is now able also to receive in summary the contemplation of divine things with knowledge. The five barley loaves, then, suggest the readily available principles of natural contemplation. And the five thousand men fed by them indicate those who are moved concerning nature, but not yet entirely purified from the relative disposition concerning the passive and irrational part of the soul. As the visions of such principles give us to understand that the loaves are of barley, and this is a common kind of food for beasts and humans, and that there were women and children present, which clearly shows that they had not been entirely estranged from the desires according to pleasure and the incomplete infancy of their reasonings.

This wilderness is this world, in which the Word of God, spiritually breaking for those who are moved concerning the divine through natural contemplation the words of nature, grants every fullness of good things, as the baskets of the leftovers make clear, being twelve in number.

160. Contemplation on the number twelve. Contemplation on the number twelve.

The number twelve indicates either the words pertaining to time and nature, as being completed by composition from five and seven. For time is hebdomadic, as being moved cyclically, and having a fitness naturally suited to being moved, the equal distance of the extremes from the middle according to this number. Nature is pentadic, being naturally disposed to be ordered under the number five, both because the form has more than matter simply so called, which is divided fourfold. For nature is nothing other than matter given form. For the form added to matter produces nature.

161. Another contemplation on the same. Another contemplation on the same.

Or the understandings of beings that are generated and eternal, as being moved and circumscribed, and admitting the reason of what and of what sort and how they are. For everything is both movable and generated, and for this reason is certainly also under time, even if not the time measured by motion. For every generated thing has a beginning of its being, as having begun to be, and an interval from which it began to be. But if every generated thing both is and is moved, it is certainly under nature and time—under nature because it is, under time because it is moved—through which, by their combination, the reason of twelve is fulfilled in the manner that has been set forth.

162. Another contemplation.

Or this number indicates ethical, natural, and theological philosophy, as being gathered from four and five and three. For the philosophy in things that is exact in respect of character is fourfold because of the four general virtues. Natural contemplation is fivefold for the reason stated—I mean the sense divided fivefold according to nature. Mystical theology is threefold because of the three holy consubstantial hypostases of the all-holy Monad, or in which the holy Monad is, or, to speak more properly, which the holy Monad is.

163. Another contemplation.

Or the universal and most general virtue and knowledge—the one accomplished here through the four virtues, the other signified as through the eight, mystically indicating the more divine state of things to come—from which the number twelve is completed by combination.

164. Another contemplation.

Or things present and things to come, since things present naturally accept the number four, which is elemental and material, while things to come admit the number eight, mystically contemplated in them, as of the hebdomadal supervening property in time.

165. Another contemplation.

Or the number twelve clearly indicates the threefold reasons concerning intelligible and sensible things, both of judgment and of providence. For each of these, in relation to itself, of being that which it is, admits three reasons, just as the extreme reasons have become evident to the divine mystics and initiators from many things through much practice of the oracles. Tripling themselves, therefore, the universal threefold reasons of beings

The principles (logoi) according to which beings are contemplated are four, or conversely, being multiplied fourfold in relation to the things of which they are the principles, they make up the number twelve. For if beings have essence, power, and activity, they clearly possess a threefold principle of their being. And if providence binds these principles to being—clearly insofar as they exist—then its principle is altogether threefold as well. And if the judgment upon the corruptions of the principles that have been perverted in each of the things mentioned—past, present, and future—is punitive as the chastisement of vice, it too has a threefold principle of contemplation, according to which, circumscribing the essence, power, and activity of beings, it remains keeping its own indefiniteness unto perpetuity. 166. Another contemplation. Another contemplation.

Or again, this number indicates the perfect knowledge, attainable, of the cause and of the things caused. For a dyad added to a decad makes twelve; and the decad is Jesus the Lord and God of all, as he who, without departing from himself, through the processions from the monad, is again restored to himself in a monadic manner. For the decad is also a monad, both as the boundary of things bounded and the encompassment of things inclined and the limit of every numerical completion. And the dyad is again the whole composition of all things after God—for instance, all sensible things, as composed of matter and form, are a dyad, and intelligible things likewise, from essence and the property that gives them form essentially.

For no created thing is in the strict sense altogether simple, since it is not merely this or merely that, but it has its constitutive and distinguishing difference contemplated together with it in its essence as in a subject—the difference that constitutes it as that very thing and clearly distinguishes it from another. And nothing that in any way whatsoever has a difference essentially contemplated together with it for the manifestation of its own existence can be strictly simple.

167. ANOTHER CONTEMPLATION

Or again, this number secretly signifies the divine essence and its active operation. The divine essence is indicated by the number three, as being hymned in a threefold way because of its three-hypostatic existence; for the monad is a triad, being perfect in perfections in its hypostases, that is, in the mode of existence, and the triad is truly a monad in its essence, that is, in the principle of being. The active operation is made known by the number six, as the only perfect and complete number among those within the decade, being composed of its own parts, and as containing both the general and unequal numbers—I mean the even and the odd—as also the only perfect number that is productive and preservative of perfect things according to the principle in which they exist. For the unequal things that are moved between the extremes tend toward the ever-moving stability of the extremes. For example, so that I may make the exposition from one instance and the rest for those who love labor: an extreme is "And God said, Let us make man in our image and likeness"; a middle is "And God made man, male and female made he them"; and again an extreme—

For in Christ Jesus there is neither male nor female. Since, then, the extremes and the intermediates are unequal—the former having male and female, the latter not having them—the divine activity is creative and comprehensive, which the most wise Moses, mystically initiated, as I think, and goodly hinting to the rest of men, wrote that God made the whole world in six days; and with this activity, in sequence and order, together with providence and the judgment of things that exist, we fittingly contemplate creation (for these things are contained in it) and complete the most perfect number twelve.

WORD 168. CONTEMPLATION OF THE BASKETS. Contemplation of the baskets.

The Word calls baskets those in which the leftovers were placed, meaning the pedagogical economy—the spiritual meanings of the things said, for those who have been spiritually fed—because they have not yet risen above the pedagogical teaching, which also properly sets before them what is useful and presents to those so educated the painful discipline, as the material from which the baskets are made gives us to understand, being by nature striking.

WORD 169. CONTEMPLATION OF THE SEVEN LOAVES. Contemplation of the seven loaves.

The seven loaves of the four thousand prefigure, as I think, the legal mystagogy, that is, the more divine principles contained in it, which the Word mystically gives to those who remain with the Word for three days—that is, who patiently and long-sufferingly bear the labor that procures the illumination of knowledge concerning ethical, natural, and theological philosophy. RO (170). ANOTHER CONTEMPLATION CONCERNING THE THREE DAYS. Another contemplation concerning the three days.

Or perhaps the three days indicate the natural, the written, and the spiritual law, since each of the more spiritual principles contained in it provides illumination to those who love labor, during which days those who rightly and truly hunger for divine things, remaining with God the Word, receive mystical food that at the same time has the symbols of victory and kingship—the remnants of the loaves being the remnants of satiety. For the seven baskets, having their material from palm branches (and the palm is a symbol of victory and kingship), and furthermore by themselves demonstrate those who were fed to be victors over all evil and ignorance, through their unshaken resistance on behalf of truth against the assaults of violent spirits, so that they have received from God the Word the invincible dominion over passions and demons.

Contemplation of the number of the four thousand men. And the number of their spiritual principles—of those very men who were fed—is a manifest witness of their true perfection, as containing the four generic units, of which the first is the first unit, the second unit is the ten, the third unit is the hundred, and the fourth unit is the thousand. For each of these, apart from the first unit, is both a unit and a ten: a unit of those after it, as being summed into itself and, by tenfold multiplication, completing its own ten; and a ten, as enclosing within itself the composition of the units before it; and the thousand, quadrupled, establishes the four thousand. The first unit, then, is a symbol of mystical theology; the second unit is a type of divine economy and goodness; the third unit is an image of virtue and knowledge; and the fourth unit is a declaration of the more divine transformation of all things universally.

ROB (172). Another contemplation of the number seven. Another contemplation of the number seven.

The number seven of the baskets, contemplated in another way in addition to the former, as they say, signifies wisdom and prudence—the one, as moving threefold in the intellect concerning the cause; the other, concerning the things after the cause and the things that are around the cause, moving fourfold according to reason on account of the cause. Neither, then, was done by the Lord without reason, according to this great teacher, nor unworthily of the Spirit.

ROG (173)... "DIVERSITY OF CHARISMS... A CHARISM NEEDED FOR DISCERNING THE BETTER"

From the same discourse, on the text: "And there is a diversity of charisms, one needing another charism for discerning the better." The diversity of charisms that needs another charism for discernment is, according to this great teacher, prophecy, as I think, and speaking in tongues.

For prophecy needs the gift of discerning spirits, so that it may be known who the speaker is, and whence, and whither he is tending, and of what spirit he is, and for what reason—lest it be mere nonsense, uttered at random solely from some injury to the ruling faculty of the speaker, or some self-moved impulse of the supposed prophet, who from shrewdness infers certain things naturally and rationally by reason of much experience, or from the evil and demonic spirit, as in the case of Montanus and those like him, where what is said is a prodigy-mongering in the guise of prophecy, or else for the sake of empty glory one man perhaps prides himself on another's gifts, speaking and parading what he himself did not beget, lying in order to be admired, and not ashamed to put himself forward as the false father of bastard words and thoughts, so as to seem to be someone wise. For, says the divine Apostle, let two or three prophets speak, and let the others discern. And who are the others but those who have the gift of discerning spirits? Prophecy, then, needs the discerning of spirits, as I said, so that it may be known and believed and approved; and the gift of tongues needs the gift of interpretation, so that such a one may not seem to those present to be mad, since none of the hearers is able to follow what is being said. For, says the great Apostle, if you speak in tongues and some unbeliever or outsider enters, will they not say that you are mad? And he commands the one who speaks in tongues rather to keep silent, unless there be one to interpret.

The teacher’s phrase “for the discernment of the better” means, say those who have illumined their mind with the divine words, that the charism of prophecy and the charism of tongues are superior to those charisms that need discernment and clarification—that is, the discernment of spirits and interpretation. Knowing this, the teacher said, “For the discernment of the better.”

(174). From the same author, from the discourse to Heron the philosopher, on the text “Events and accompanying events.”

An event, according to the grammarians, is a proposition consisting of a noun and a verb that completes a self-sufficient meaning, for example, “John walks.” An accompanying event is a proposition consisting of a noun and a verb that does not complete a self-sufficient meaning, for example, “It concerns John.” So one who says, “John walks,” has shown that he needs nothing else; but one who says, “It concerns John,” has omitted to say what it concerns him about.

(175). From the same author, from the funeral oration for Saint Basil, on the text “There is nothing, then, among all things for which it is not the case that it is among all things.”

That whenever someone approves of good things, it is certainly in that respect that he also makes progress, and he clearly takes pleasure in and is encouraged by what is said about it. He takes pleasure when more is added to it in his soul, as in a thing according to his desire, and he is encouraged toward greater progress in it, receiving greater exhortation from the praise he accepts concerning it.

For those whose praises I know,” says the teacher, “of these I clearly know also the advances”—that is, of the things whose praises I know, I also know clearly the advances, or increases, of the men who receive them toward virtue. Therefore, on none of all the things that are praised—obviously—is there any case in which you would not find the increase of those who take pleasure in them; or, since the teacher, having set forth three things above—himself, the words, and the praisers of virtue—enclosed them in these and expanded them in rhetorical fashion, applying the inducements to the three, and beginning the repayment from himself first, then passing through the middle term of the praisers of virtue, and fulfilling them in the words, so that the theme according to Saint Basil is fitting both for him as a teacher and for one who has come forward in speech, and is desired by those who love virtue, that is, by its praisers, as those who long to know the ways of advancement toward virtue through imitation, and it is fitting for the words themselves, as declarative of the goods that pertain to virtue. Therefore, since every man who has a life praised according to God—and especially the great Basil—whether they are able to encompass the whole and display the man’s virtue to its lovers as a living and animate image, or are unable to reach its greatness, on none of all things, neither word nor speaker nor hearer, is there any case in which the beauty of the theme will not fit, or as has been examined more precisely above. (176)... “For playful speech darts among all kinds of forms, judging as it wishes.

From the same man, from the verses, on the passage: "For the steep word plays in forms of every kind, judging, as it wills, the world that is here and there." When the great David, having passed through the things that appear as through certain bolts, by faith alone in the spirit, toward the things intelligible, received some

impression from the divine wisdom of the mysteries attainable by men, then, as I think, he says, "Deep calls unto deep at the voice of your cataracts," perhaps indicating by these words that every contemplative intellect, being like a deep both because of its natural invisibility and because of the depth and multitude of its thoughts, when it has crossed the whole ordering of things that appear and, surpassing the fair order of things intelligible by the vehemence of its movement, stands upon itself, wholly fixed and motionless because of its passage through all things—at that time it rightly calls upon the divine wisdom, the deep that is truly and really impassable in knowledge, to give it the voice of the divine cataracts, but not the cataracts themselves—that is, to receive some gnostic impression of faith concerning the ways and reasons of divine providence that pervade the whole, through which it will be able to remember God from the land of the Jordan and Hermon, in which the great and awesome mystery of the divine condescension of the Word of God toward men was accomplished through the flesh, in which the truth of piety toward God was given to men, which, because it has transcended every order and power of nature—

To the divine Paul, the great apostle, both initiate and initiator into secretly-known wisdom, it was named folly of God and weakness, on account of the surpassing wisdom, I think, and power; but to the God-minded great Gregory it was called a plaything, on account of the surpassing prudence. For the one says: "The foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men"; and the other: "For the steep word plays in forms of every kind, judging, as it wills, the world that is here and there" — each of them, by the privation of the highest positions among us, displaying the divine state, and by the negations of our own terms making the affirmation of divine things. For folly among us and weakness and plaything are privations — the one of wisdom, the one of power, the one of prudence — but when said of God they clearly indicate the excess of wisdom and power and prudence. If, then, anything among us is said by way of privation, when said of God it is right to understand that it altogether indicates a state; and conversely, if anything is said among us by way of state, it is most fitting to understand that when said of God it indicates privation, on account of the transcendence. For the excesses of divine things, even when spoken by us by way of privation through contradiction, fall far short of the true emphasis according to the reason by which they are.

If this is true according to the probable account (for divine things never coincide with human things), then the folly of God and weakness, according to the holy apostle Paul, and the play of God, according to Gregory the wondrous and great teacher, is the mystery of the divine incarnation, since it has transcended beyond being every order and harmony of every nature, power, and activity, which the most divine David, having beheld it from afar in mind by the divine Spirit and having been initiated, and as it were pre-interpreting the surpassing disposition of God spoken of by the Apostle by way of negation, cried out against the Jews, wisely, I think: In the abundance of your power your enemies will lie to you. For every man is altogether an enemy of God and is plainly shown to be a liar who ignorantly and impiously confines God within the law of nature, and who does not begin to believe that he who became essentially beyond nature and impassibly among things under nature, as one able to accomplish all things, acts according to nature.

Thus, then, by a single attempt, for now, the account has dared to contemplate the folly of God and the weakness and play, conjecturally, with which things, by way of digression, as a paradigmatic preliminary contemplation of the proposed difficulty, the account also, having taken the abyss that calls upon the abyss to a voice of the divine cataracts, to receive a knowing mind that is called wisdom, a small portion of the things concerning the divine

And by an ineffable condescension he indicated the manifestation of mysteries. For the abyss and the place of the abyss are named by the same name, and the place of divine wisdom is the pure mind. Is the mind then called an abyss by position, because of its capacity to receive, and is wisdom again named the same by nature? RHOZ (177). ANOTHER CONTEMPLATION ON THE SAME PASSAGE. Another contemplation on the same.

Considering the present difficulty in another way, with the help of divine grace, by way of conjecture and not by way of assertion (for the former is moderate, the latter rash), we dare to undertake the present text, saying that the projection of the intermediates, which has an equal distance from the extremes, was called a play of God by the great teacher, because of their unstable and easily changeable state—or rather, it would be more fitting to call it a standing flow. And this is paradoxical: to behold a standing that always flows and is borne along, and a flow ever in motion, providentially devised by God for the sake of the improvement of those who are governed, able to make wise those who are educated through it, so that they hope that they will certainly be transferred elsewhere, and believe that the end of the mystery accomplished in them will be divinely accomplished with certainty through grace by their inclination toward God. And by "intermediates" I mean the completion of things seen and now present concerning man, or in which man consists; and by "extremes" the subsistence of things not apparent and which will truly be concerning man hereafter, of things made and brought into being in the primary and true sense according to the ineffable and preeminent purpose and principle of the divine goodness.