Cognitio Vitae [Incertus]

THE KNOWLEDGE OF LIFE, OR ONE BOOK ON THE KNOWLEDGE OF THE TRUE LIFE.

CHAPTER ONE. For what the rational nature was made. The reason for the work undertaken. Its name. The Wisdom of God, which opened the mouth of the mute (Matt. 9:33), and granted to a brute animal to form human words (Num. 22:28), impels me also, unskilled not only in speech but even in knowledge, to speak, and compels me to make known to others in piety what it has understood through itself and concerning itself. By its prompting, therefore, for the benefit, as I hope, of very many, I again commit myself to be gnawed by the teeth of the envious, and perhaps to be cherished in the hearts of those who love life: since Christ, the truth and the life, says, This is eternal life, that they may know you, the one true God (John 17:3). It is assuredly certain that the rational nature was made for this alone: to understand its maker, the true God; by understanding, to love him; by loving, to live eternally and blessedly in him who is eternal life. To investigate, therefore, the essence of the Godhead rationally is to hasten toward eternal life; but to neglect and be ignorant of it is certainly to hurry toward unending death: because, without doubt, here it will be unknown by it, when at some time it will be separated from the blessed life.

Therefore, since very many of the holy Fathers have written many glorious things on this distinguished subject, and have in a way made the matter itself denser and more obscure to the simpler sort; it pleases me to smooth out, as it were, a certain path with my pen through these thickets, by which, leaving behind the byway of error, it may be permitted to the weak in understanding to walk freely over the plain of truth. But here perhaps some envious person with a clouded face meets me, and spews bitterly upon me the poison long congealed beneath his livid heart. What, says he, do you attempt to bring wood into the forests, or do you try to drip water into the overflowing sea? Let this stone blunt the biting tooth of so biting a one, and let it turn back the venom maliciously vomited into his own bowels to be tormented. By the envy of the devil death entered into the world: those who are of his part imitate him (Wis. 2:24-25). Envious wretch, who are tormented by the prosperity of others, who feed upon the loss of others, by these very things you prove that you are of his part, who envy others the knowledge of what you do not know: and you groan with bitter sighs over the pious labor bestowed upon the sick, because you recognize that it has been denied to you through sloth, nay rather through envy. Come, miserable one, rather vomit out the deadly poison with which you swell, and receive the antidote of wholesome love. But if not, wasting away with the black gall of your father's part, indulge it. But I, with envy wasting away, have no part.

Entering eagerly the excellent forest of the Scriptures, not carrying wood into it, as you assert with your poisoned tongue, but intending to bring out from it the precious tree of life, righteousness, for the hungry, and I shall not delay to draw from the sea of Scripture a sweet draught of life for those thirsting for life. Let all the faithful therefore run to the tree and fountain of life, by whose taste we may live blessed forever. But let the little book receive the name Knowledge of Life, since in it true life is seen to be made knowable to the slower in understanding.

CHAPTER II. The carnal imagining of the heavenly kingdom. How arduous it is to exhibit the knowledge of God. By what method this is attempted. Why he complains. The difficulty of the work. DISCIPLE. We give thanks to God, by whose gift we can be openly assured in doubtful matters. Since therefore you see that we have come together for this very purpose, lest, tending toward the fatherland, we grow weary on the way and faint; refresh us, as you are wont, with the food and drink of life, and, binding up the time that slips away in irreversible course with the knots of questions, make it stable for us: lest its rolling nature envelop us in idleness, but let your affability lift up those laboring in divine things to that which ever remains.

MASTER. Come eagerly with me to the fruit of the tree of life hanging on its branches, and with one accord draw from the fountain of life, flowing as it were from the place of delight, from God the Father of life—the paradise, that is, the Church, the garden of delights, which it waters. If its savor sweetens the palate of your heart, I testify to you that he who made you to endure with the age will one day satisfy you from the torrent of his delight.

DISCIPLE. Since, being minded of carnal things, we cannot think spiritual things, we form in our mind the kingdom of heaven as a most glorious region, abounding in all wealth, in which the heavenly city Jerusalem is set forth, renowned for its merits and riches, and in it God as a glorious king, and the angels as soldiers conspicuous in varied array. Therefore we ask that you, by searching reason, suppressing whatever stands in the way with arguments, bring forth the truth, as it were, lurking in darkness into the light for us, and make God, who is one day to be seen, as you assert, in some manner visible before the eyes of our heart.

MASTER. Since God almighty, alone immortal, alone invisible, alone incomprehensible, dwells in inaccessible light, while I dwell in the darkness beset by vices, in foul gloom, and the power of light is unapproachable to me: how shall I be able to bring the ineffable light into the wounded eyes of others, I who, with the eye of my heart blinded and dazzled by the splendor of such majesty, am in no way able to gaze upon it?

DISCIPLE. Yet strive, as far as you can, to be caught up into that light, so that, with the darkness dispelled, you may deserve to be illumined by it, and we through you to be enlightened; just as we often see valleys irradiated from the mountains by the radiance of the sun.

MASTER. I shall endeavor with all my strength, while you pray, with logic going before and arguments accompanying, to follow the truth even into the very hiding place of that inaccessible light as it flees, and, with it consenting, I shall bring it forth to you as you seek it, showing itself.

DISCIPLE. Indeed our prayer for you will not be lacking, provided that reason, the guide of truth, goes before you. For we greatly desire to hear from you how we ought to think of God in our prayers: lest perhaps the weak mind imagine for itself a beautiful man, and, deceived, venerate this image in place of the true God.

MASTER. I confess that, overcome by the magnitude of the height of the undertaking I have taken on, I give way; for what I somehow conceive in my mind I scarcely manage to explain in words. For it surpasses every outstanding intellect of the greatest philosophers by far, because the sublimity of this matter which is being treated exceeds every understanding. For the more I enter into every creature and try to contemplate it with careful attention, the more I feel that it recedes from the sight of my intellect. Nevertheless I will make an effort to satisfy your inquiry according to my measure, insofar as he of whom we speak will deign to make himself known to the soul that desires knowledge of him. But you, where your powers give way under the weight of such eminence, ought to forgive my frailty.

DISCIPLE. The more diligently we weigh the height of this matter, the more ardently we desire that it become knowable to us in some way, and that we behold its beauty in whatever manner we can; and therefore we gladly forgive you if those things which you cannot express in words, you at least unfold by nods.

CHAPTER III. God Cannot Be Properly Expressed. No Predicament Applies to Him. MASTER. It must therefore be known that God is properly expressed by no words, and can be comprehended by no thought. For how could he be proclaimed immense and incomprehensible, if he were enclosed within human speech or meditation? But now it is clear how admirable he is, since he is ineffable by all tongues and unthinkable by all hearts. For dialectic, mighty in disputing, subtly defining every doubtful matter, sifting and disemboweling all the Scriptures, annihilating all human wisdom, when it directs its attention to the Divinity, is struck back by the light of such great majesty, and, trembling, turns back its frightened head, and fleeing hides itself in the secret places of worldly wisdom, and, its syllogisms' knots dissolved, grows dumb and foolish. For both by name and by word are expressed all things that are conceived in the human heart under the ten predicaments. But that none of these properly applies to God, reason manifestly proves. For if we say that God is substance, which grants being to all things and through which all things have their existence, then at once universals and individuals, the genera and species in which substance is predicated, together with the nine accidents that necessarily inhere in it, come to mind—all of which it is clear do not in the least converge upon God.

If we declare that God is magnitude itself, which disposes all things in measure and number and weight, immediately smallness opposes itself to this quality, and by its own exiguity shatters what is greatest above all things. If we name him goodness itself or the supreme good, who makes all things very good, at once evil, the contrary of this quality, meets him and does not tremble to oppose itself to so great a good. But if he is proclaimed creator or lord, each of which is said in relation to something, namely to the world, immediately relation opposes this: that before the constitution of the world he lacked this word, and that this relative term accrued to him from the creation of the world, since reason establishes that nothing is accidental to God, but what is predicated of him is essential to him. Further, if he is said to be whole everywhere, and at the same time said to fill all places, presently locality, creeping in secretly, encloses in a place him who encloses all things in his fist. But if he is proclaimed eternal, and affirmed to dispose all times, at once past and present, and future hastens to succeed the present, and does not fear to ascribe a beginning and an end to eternity. But if it is said that he possesses all things, and shines clothed in light as with a garment, immediately thought deprives him of this state, while it separates from him the clothing of light or the possession of things. But if he is attested to be always present, presently a posture of standing or sitting is imagined.

But if it is referred to as governing all things, the act of labor tries to annul eternal rest. Further, if it is affirmed to be passive, enduring our evils, then passion thrusts itself in, and it strives to make the impassible one suffer. For in these ten [categories] the whole human condition is enclosed, and from all of them the property of the supreme essence is by evident reasoning utterly excluded. For all things that admit of opposition or contrariety or accident in no way properly belong to God. Therefore, since with opposing reason we are unable to speak anything properly of God, let us at least strive to speak of him improperly and through enigmas.

CHAPTER IV. The mind is the mirror of the soul. Whence knowledge is ours. Spiritual things are attained by faith, not by reason. Spirit is said in Scripture in six ways. Air. Wind. The life of brute animals. Indeed, evident reason teaches that God is ineffable by human words, but the intellectual mind eagerly desires that he become in some way knowable to it; this mind seems to be like a mirror of the soul, in which it contemplates the very image of its Creator.

MASTER: All the things we know among created things, we have come to know through bodily senses. And indeed those things which we have learned by sight or by experience, we learn through comparisons of things seen or experienced, such as what we read about beasts or unknown men; but things wholly unknown to us, unless they are made known through comparisons with known things, are never at all made known to our knowledge. And therefore, because spiritual things are invisible to us and cannot be compared with bodily senses, they will never be made acceptable to us by any reasoning. But because it is established that these things exist, yet they cannot be taught through similarities, they demand only the faith of believers.

DISCIPLE: Things which reason proves by arguments, even though they fall short in comparison, every rational person must not refuse to believe; do you only bring forward what reason suggests to you must be known about spirits.

MASTER: That in the Scriptures "spirit" is said substantially in six ways, I do not doubt is known to you. First, the highest God of all is called spirit, as there: "God is a spirit; and those who worship him must worship in spirit" (John 4:24). Second, angels are called spirits, as there: "Who makes his angels spirits" (Psalm 104:4). Third, souls are named spirits, as there: "His spirit shall go forth, and his flesh shall return to the earth" (Psalm 146:4). Fourth, the life of brute animals is called spirit, as there: "Who knows whether the spirit of the beasts goes downward" (Ecclesiastes 3:21)? Fifth, winds are called spirits, as there: "The spirit of the storms" (Psalm...

CXLVIII, 8). Sixth, air is written as spirit, as in: I opened my mouth and drew in the spirit (Ps. CXVIII, 131). Their definition is as follows: air is a spirit that can be sensed, not one that senses; that is, one which we feel by drawing it in, while it itself senses nothing, yet supplies breath to all living things under heaven. Wind is air, a spirit stirred by some motion at God's nod, increased by storms of waters, roused through angelic ministries, and calmed through the same. The life of brute animals is a vital spirit consisting of air and blood, animate, invisible but sensible, having memory but lacking intellect, dying with the flesh and vanishing into the air.

CHAPTER V. What the intelligent soul is. It is a sensible, mutable, non-local, passible life; without quantity, figure, or color. But the soul is a spirit, an incorporeal substance, the life of its own body, invisible, sensible, mutable, non-local, passible, susceptible neither to the measures of quantities nor to the forms or color of qualities: memorial, rational, intellectual, immortal. And lest this definition waver, let reason strengthen it with proofs. The soul is a spiritual substance; for whatever supplies life to another must itself subsist: but the soul gives life to the body: therefore the soul truly subsists. That this life is the soul itself it proves, in that by its presence it gives life to the body, and by its absence it puts the same to death.

This [soul] is indeed invisible to us, but visible to spirits. For it is also established that it is sensible, since it enables the eyes to perceive colors, the ears sounds, the nostrils odors, the palate flavors, and the hands rough or smooth things. It is also mutable: for everything that is made worse and better is mutable; but the soul is made worse by vices and better by virtues; therefore it is mutable. It is also non-local: for everything that is enclosed in place, circumscribed by the height, width, and length of air, is a body; but reason has taught that the soul is incorporeal, that is, that it has neither body nor any member; therefore it is established that it is non-local. For it does not occupy a space of air like a body, nor does it fill a body like water a wineskin; but as heat is present non-locally throughout the whole of fire, so the soul fills the whole body non-locally. Fire indeed is visible, but heat is invisible and sensible, and in a certain way gives life to fire: so the soul is invisible, but sensible, and by a certain hidden power gives sensation and life to the visible body. It is also passible: for everything that is affected by sorrow is passible; but the soul, when it is not made master of its own will, is affected by the pain of grief; therefore it is shown to be passible. From it quantity is excluded: since it is measured by neither height nor width nor length, nor does it allow itself to be enclosed by the six circumstances, namely before and behind, right and left, above and below.

The quality of form and color is separated from this, since no form either of the human body or of any colored thing is ascribed to it. This is memorial, because it recalls past things. It is rational, because it discerns present things. It is intellectual, because it understands future things. That this is immortal is evident from this, that it labors that the memory of itself endure perpetually among posterity.

CHAPTER VI. What angels are. Whether they are. What they do. The difference between their knowledge and ours. But an angel is a spirit, an incorporeal substance, invisible, sensible, rational, intellectual, immortal; bright and impassible among the good, dark and passible among the evil. But it must be seen whether any such substance is believed to exist among created things, since it is by no means visible to us. That angels exist, those insensible things themselves prove, which observe so certain a law of their own motion. For everything that is moved either has motion from itself or from elsewhere; but everything that has motion from itself is sensible, like the soul; what has it from elsewhere is insensible, like the body. But if the sun, the moon, and the stars are moved by themselves, they seem to flourish with sense or reason: they which keep such fixed times, such fixed spaces of heaven, and in a certain manner intimate their own understanding to this world by their light or by signs. But whoever judges them to be rational, or at least sensible bodies, is rightly reckoned, as one lacking sense, among irrational things.

But since bodies are truly visible yet lack motion—being, for instance, insensible—and yet are moved, it is certain that they are moved by something else. It remains, therefore, that they are moved through the ministry of angels. Likewise, whoever doubts that winds, rains, hailstorms, lightning, thunder, tempests, and breezes are governed by the command of God through them, thinks them merely sensible things; but reason, when tested, proves such a person foolish, along with the insensible things. Those who do not believe that brute animals also obey or oppose human uses through them, or who believe that these animals do such things through the understanding of reason, depart far from reason. But whoever hesitates to accept that all things which are done among insensible things or sensible creatures are administered through them, is greatly foolish, far from the light of truth. Therefore it is certain that angels truly exist, and that they plainly know all things hidden from us. But this is the difference between their knowledge and ours: they foreknow all the causes of things before they come to be; we, however, scarcely and with great labor investigate them after the things exist in act.

CHAPTER VII. What God is. That He is. That He is truth, life, wisdom, justice, and eternity. Furthermore, since spirit cannot properly be thought by any intellect, so it cannot properly be determined by any definition. But because the intellectual mind yearns to recognize Him in some way, let this enigmatic definition suffice for it in the meantime. God is an invisible essence of spirit, incomprehensible to every creature, possessing at once essentially all life, all wisdom, all eternity: or existing as life itself, wisdom itself, truth itself, justice itself, eternity itself, containing every creature within Himself like a point.

But if any foolish person is so senseless as to doubt that God exists, let him gather by this reasoning that He alone truly is, and that all other things have their being from Him. Every substance either subsists through itself or through another; but whoever contends that this world does not subsist—this fool tends toward nothing. Now it is established that the world does not subsist through itself, since reason teaches that it began; for it consists of parts. But everything that is joined together from parts or resolved into parts undergoes conjunction or resolution from something. The world, therefore, does not subsist through itself; and therefore it follows that it is a creature.

But a creature is referred to something, namely to the Creator; therefore the Creator alone exists through Himself and in Himself, whereas every creature subsists through Him. For if it has its being from another, then that from which it has it is greater than God, which is unfitting for God. And since nothing exists besides the Creator and the creature, if God does not have being through Himself, it follows of necessity that He exists through a creature, which is most unfitting. Furthermore, the substance of the world is divided into diverse genera and itself into different species, and in each of these a good is found. For everything useful is good; indeed all useful things are considered, and therefore each one is approved as good. But every good is either good through itself or through another. Yet diverse goods must be good by participation in one good; for diversity admits of more and less. For as regards kind, a stone is a lesser good, which merely is and does not live; a tree is a greater good, which lives by growing; a horse is better than that, which lives and senses; man is more excellent than that, who lives, senses, and discerns by reason. It remains, therefore, that there is for these a greatest and highest good, from which, as from God, as from a fountain, all good things flow forth, and into which all things flow back.

This alone truly is; and therefore it is truth. For everything that is, is true; but what is not, is false. But God truly is; therefore He is truth. A creature, however, compared to Him, is as though it were not; and for that reason it is as though falsity compared to truth. For everything that began to be from nothing can be reduced to nothing; but every creature produced by God from nothing has been brought to be something; therefore, if it is compared to Him, it is proved to be nothing. No mind, then, doubts that God is, through whom it considers all other things to be. His essence is life. For everything that is either lives or is without life; but everything that lives either lives through itself or through another. But God lives through Himself and in Himself, and has granted to all other things to live; therefore He is true life and vital truth. He also knows and understands Himself and His whole creation, for whom to know is nothing other than to live and to be; therefore He is wisdom. He also loves Himself and every creature, who is justice; and He does not receive this justice from elsewhere; therefore He is justice and love. He lacks beginning and end, He has no past or future; therefore He is eternity.

CHAPTER VIII. The brightness of God, which must be known. Every soul is greater than the whole world. Intellectual magnitude. The brightness of God, which must be contemplated. Since, therefore, reason has proved that God truly is, and has taught by true assertions that He is essentially life, wisdom, truth, justice, and eternity, it remains now that it open some window for seeing Him as well, through which the mind, climbing by certain steps, may look forth, so far as to be able to see the King of glory in His beauty. But let reason advance step by step through bodily things, lest the weak intellect, straining through steep places, be broken by difficulty and slip back. First, then, let us consider in the mind this bodily sun, by whose magnitude we see the whole world warmed, and by whose brightness the whole globe illuminated. After this, let us attend to the thousands of thousands of angels ministering to God, each of which, as reason shows, we know to be seven times, nay a hundred times, more splendid than the sun; for this sun is the servant of the world, but the angels are the temples of God. As much, therefore, as the temple of God differs from the servant of the world, so much does the brightness of the angels differ from the brightness of the sun. Then let us weigh ten thousand times a hundred of the sublime angels standing before God, each of which we know for certain to be a hundred times, nay a thousand times, brighter than the sun.

For just as the moon is seen to excel the stars, and the sun the moon, in brightness, so any higher order of Angels is believed to excel the lower, from the Angels up to the Seraphim, in glory, dignity, and brightness. After these, let us look upon the innumerable thousands of holy souls, each of which we do not doubt to be far brighter than the sun and to be made equal to the Angels in blessedness and brightness. Having considered individually so many and such great lights, let us also contemplate the magnitude of each one, so that we may be more easily raised up to that which we long to behold. Let us therefore consider the soul as a splendid fire, whose smallest spark, when reason instructs, surpasses this sun, and in a brief space encompasses the whole circuit of the world, while the whole world in no way circumscribes it. It is therefore evident that each soul understands its magnitude to be far greater than the whole world in bodily quantity—but rather that intellectual magnitude which reduces this corporeal world, and the bodies contained in it, to smallness.

From here now let the mind raise itself on high, let it enlarge its heart as much as it can, let it look beneath itself upon so many lights shining with inestimable brightness and incomparable magnitude; but above itself let it strain toward a certain wondrous light, which is the light of all those lights, which shines far above so many and such great lights as the sun shines above all the stars; whose ineffable magnitude and wondrous beauty those so many and such great lights ceaselessly admire, and in whose most abundant sweetness they delight to gaze without wearying. This truly is the inaccessible light which the essence of God inhabits (1 Tim 6:16), visible to the pure in heart alone. Let no one here think of God as light, as though a man were surrounded by a tabernacle; as though God who inhabits the light were one thing, and the light which he inhabits another; but rather let him know that the light itself is the essence of God, in which he understands all good things to be placed together. This is the light which satisfies the Angels and souls in heaven by its vision. This is the light which has furnished the lamp of the sun to those dwelling in the world, as the light of a candle to those placed in prison; by which it is granted to return from darkness to light, from death to life, from exile to the homeland. In such a way let your intention contemplate its image—namely, such a light as shines above the sun as the sun shines above a candle; immortal, which shines above countless thousands of Angels and souls a hundred times more splendid than the sun, as the sun shines above the stars.

Whence He is called the Father of lights (James 1:17). For he does not stray far from the truth who keeps such an image of God before the eyes of his heart in prayer.

CHAPTER IX. The reason for the various names of the blessed vision of God. How the saints are to be thought of in prayer. This present vision of God face to face is called the kingdom of heaven; because outside this bodily heaven—indeed, outside every place—the angels and the just, who are called heaven, enjoy this vision. For this reason also, although God is believed to remain essentially in all creatures, He is proclaimed to dwell properly in the heavens, that is, in the just; because they themselves, by enjoying it, perceive His indwelling, and, rejoicing, they see that He is present in all things; but they know that He is in no way present to themselves—those who take delight in earthly things. For just as a seeing man and a blind man standing in the sun: the seeing man enjoys the brightness of the sun by seeing, the blind man is deprived of its light; and although the presence of the sun is equally present to both, nevertheless he does not equally perceive its presence. So God is said to dwell only in those who enjoy His presence by seeing face to face, as the angels do, or by beholding through contemplation, as the just do in this life; but He is said not to be in those who are deprived of His vision. Whence also the kingdom of heaven is proclaimed to be within us (Luke 17:21), because the vision of God Almighty, which is called the kingdom of heaven, that is, of the just, is contemplated in the angels and the just.

This is also called eternal life, because the blessed are fully imbued with the presence of unfailing life, and are never permitted to be subject to death or to any pains, the ministers of death. For to this end they were created, that they might live eternally and eternally behold eternal life. This is also named the heavenly city, because the unanimity of those citizens is gathered together to see the King of glory in his beauty. This is likewise called Jerusalem, because they are satisfied by the vision of peace that always endures. This is named paradise, because they are delighted by the full abundance of every delight. This is also called the heavenly fatherland, because all the just, as sons of God, are not doubted to inherit this vision. When, therefore, you invoke the saints in prayer, you ought thus to think of them in their most established glory of eternal brightness—that is, as most splendid lights shining far beyond the radiance of the sun—who have all good things fully in the vision of God, and who powerfully come to the aid of all who invoke them.

Disciple: May the eternal Sun, to the vision of whom your sweet discourse has led us, and whose serene light has shone in our hearts through your words, himself establish you, taken out of the darkness, in the region of light; and among the lights which you proclaim, may he grant that you, shining, enjoy forever the light of his vision.

Master: If anything probable is brought forth by me, I do not wish it to be attributed to me, but to God, whose gift is grace; who often calls his sons through the abject to the inheritance of his vision, and through enemies marks out beforehand for his friends the way of salvation from exile to the fatherland. And you know well that sometimes an ugly mirror has served the beautiful, indeed a blind man has served as a light to those who see, and a lame man has shown the way by his gait to the sound.

Chapter 10: That in God both the trinity of persons and the unity of essence are necessary.

Disciple: We also, because of what we have heard, give thanks to the eternal God, whose vision has become known to us through you, and who has brought forth such a treasure, hidden from carnal men, through you. But because the weight of the flesh burdens the soul, behold again carnal thought assails the mind contemplating divine things. For since reason above has most truly demonstrated that there is one God, and has proved that he alone made all things from nothing, and has proved that he alone made all things from nothing; how are we taught, as it were, to adore three gods, when we are admonished to confess the Father as perfect God, the Son as perfect God, and the Holy Spirit as perfect God?

For while three persons are thus distinguished as distinct, what else do we understand but three gods?

Teacher: With the truth itself showing itself and reason proving it, you will more quickly see the necessary trinity of persons in one essence, and likewise the necessary unity of the individual substance, indivisible, for the three persons. When I spoke above of God in a riddle, because I could not speak properly, what did I say the essence of God is?

Disciple: A lamp.

Teacher: What is begotten from light?

Disciple: Splendor.

Teacher: What is considered in the light and the splendor together?

Disciple: Heat.

Teacher: Is there found diversity in the substance of the light, the splendor, and the heat?

Disciple: No, but identity.

Teacher: Is identity predicated only in the words or functions?

Disciple: Not at all, but diversity; for the word "light" seems to express the substance itself, the word "splendor" the grace of the light, and the word "heat" the efficacy of the light.

MAC. It is therefore clear that three distinct terms constitute one indivisible essence.

DISC. It is clear in every respect.

MAG. You have it in the Apostle that the supreme Spirit, the Father, is called light: God is light, and in him there is no darkness at all (1 John 1:5). You have it in the Apostle, in another place, that the supreme Spirit, the Son, is called brightness: Who is the brightness of his substance (Heb. 1:3). You have it likewise in Moses that the supreme Spirit, the Holy Spirit, is named heat: Our God is a fire (Deut. 4:24). Since, therefore, light, brightness, and heat are one nature and indivisible substance, but distinct in term, it is assuredly established that the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are one nature and indivisible essence, in that, with respect to what it signifies as to what it is, it is named spirit substantially; and likewise that there is a necessary diversity in the persons, in that the Father is proclaimed as begetting, the Son as being born, and the Holy Spirit as proceeding from both.

DISC. We see the Trinity clearly in the persons, and we evidently hold the necessary unity in the substance.

CHAPTER XI. Why the names substance and person are applied to God. Why the Father is so called and not mother. Why he is called the begetter. MAG. Therefore these two names, namely substance and person, are most carefully fitted to the divine essence, because substance is always predicated of things consisting in a plurality of individual substance, while person is predicated of individual rational nature; since we are accustomed to designate plurality by persons, but by substance the unity of essence.

DISC. By what likeness is the eternal light called Father?

MAG. Because from himself he begot an offspring equal to himself.

DISC. Would not the name of offspring seem to fit him rather? and

MAG. In the Father there is always the principal cause of the offspring, and therefore by right, from the principal sex, he ought to be called by this name.

DISC. By what likeness is he said to be the begetter? MAG. It is certain that the mind thinks, begets a thought; but when the mind thinks itself, it generates, as it were, another similar to itself. So the supreme God, when he thought himself such as he is, without doubt generated an image similar in all things. And just as the begetter is called Father, so most rightly the begotten is named Son.

CHAPTER XII. That He Never Existed Without the Son. DISC. If God begot the Son, it seems that at some time He existed without having the Son, and possessed this name accidentally. But if this is so, the earlier proposition is undermined, by which it was declared that nothing accidental is predicated of God, but all is essential.

MAG. Reason has already taught that God's essence is eternal life, knowing neither beginning nor end. But if this singular true life always existed without beginning, it is established that it always understood itself to live without beginning. But if it did not understand itself to live, it was not wise—which it is impious to say of God. But if at some time it received wisdom from elsewhere, because it previously lacked it, then that from which it received so great a good would have been better than God—which is utterly absurd. But if eternal life always understood itself to live through itself, this wisdom of understanding did not come to it from elsewhere, but was always coessential with it, although it begot this from itself, as its own offspring, ineffably. Therefore the Father never existed without the Son.

CHAPTER XIII. Why This One Is a Son and Not a Daughter. DISC. By what likeness is the splendor of eternal light called a Son and not a daughter?

MAC. Because in him the likeness of the Father is expressed in all respects, and hence he is called his likeness. For nothing among created things preserves to the full the likeness of that from which it is born. For hairs are born from the head but are unlike the head; apples born from trees are unlike them; wool is unlike sheep; the offspring of animals, or even the sons of men themselves, are not in all respects like the quality of their begetters. But this one is most like the begetter in all respects; and therefore most truly he is not a daughter but a son.

CHAPTER XIV. Why the Word. The Etymology of the Word. DISC. But in what respect is the Son called the Word? MAC. The word is understood in three ways. For example, when this word, Man, is brought forth by the mouth; or when the same word, Man, is formed in the heart without any movement of the tongue; or when the thing itself which that word, Man, signifies is thought in the intellect, such as it is. In this third way God begot his Word, when by thinking he spoke himself. And because by the same thought he spoke the whole form of the world, therefore it is said that he made all things in his Word; whence also concerning the creation of the world it is read, He spoke, and they were made (Ps. 32:9). For the Son or Word of God is nothing other than his thought or art or wisdom.

Of course, when we think of some thing, we form an image of that thing itself in our thought; so God, when he thought of himself, formed an image like himself in all respects; and therefore this Word is called the image or likeness of God, but nothing other than the same essence is expressed. Hence this Word too is said to be, as it were, truly good.

CHAPTER XV. How Every Created Thing Lives in the Word. DISC. How is it said, "All that was made was life in him"? Do stones, which are lifeless, live in the Word of God?

MAG. Every creature is said to subsist in three ways: in God, in itself, and in us. In God it is unchangeable life; in itself it is changeable substance; in us it is an imaginable likeness of things. For example, a stone in itself is a changeable substance, because it can be converted into lime; in our thought it is the likeness of a stone. For when a craftsman thinks of making a house, the house already lives in the art itself, which his hand afterward builds. But the house that the hand raises will fall; yet the one that lives in the art remains. For art is nothing other than the soul, and the soul nothing other than life; so the Word of God is nothing other than his art, and art is nothing other than life itself; and in this all things that fail, being changeable in their own substance, remain unchangeably.

CHAPTER XVI. Only the Word could be incarnate. Disciple. Since clear reason has invincibly proved that the same Word is with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one indivisible substance, how could it alone be incarnate? For if it is separated from the essence of the Father and the Holy Spirit, and so is made man in a singular way, it is plainly evident that the substance of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit is not indivisible, since it could suffer the discrimination of separation.

Master. Just as the eternal power of the Godhead can be understood through the things that are made (Rom. 1:20), so this deeply hidden profundity can be examined by reason through the things that are carried on within us. For it is known that the human mind, by thinking, begets from itself the word of common speech, and the same word exists in the mind and in the memory at once as one essence. But when the mind desires to make its word known to others, by the same thought, which is nothing other than its word, and by the memory, it arranges that the same word put on the body of a voice, and proceeds audible to ears and visible to the hearts of hearers, and it even permits itself to be bound by letters and seen as its own body; and yet, remaining invisible, it does not depart from the essence of the mind and the memory. Therefore it was not the mind nor the memory, but only the word that sounded in a singular way through the sensible body of a voice; and yet it remained inseparably and invisibly in the essence of the mind and the memory.

Thus the highest Father begot his Word by thinking himself, which subsists coessential at once in the essence of the Father and of the Holy Spirit; yet nevertheless neither the Father nor the Holy Spirit, but only the Word, which is the Son of the Father, uniquely put on a human body, showed himself sensibly to men, and allowed the body he had taken up to suffer indignities; he himself, inseparable in the essence of the Father and the Holy Spirit, remained invisible and impassible.

CHAPTER XVII. Why the love of God is Spirit, and why holy. Disciple. But by what likeness is the love of God called Spirit?

Master. I said that the essence of God is life. But true life understands that it lives; and if it understands itself to be life, it certainly loves itself. But for God, to live, to understand, to love is nothing other than to exist. The love of God, therefore, is life, and life is spirit. And because God through love grants being, or living, to all things, therefore it is called spirit. But it is called holy because all things are sanctified through it.

CHAPTER XVIII. How the Holy Spirit is from the Father and the Son. In what manner in the form of a dove or of fire. Disciple: How is it proved that this Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son?

Master: The Holy Spirit is understood to be nothing other than the love of God, whence also God is called love, and the Son (1 John 4:16). But it is established that the Father loves the Son as himself; and likewise the Son loves the Father as himself; for life loves to be wise, and likewise wisdom loves to live: but it has been proved that life and wisdom are one essence. Therefore the delight or love or charity, which is the Holy Spirit, exists coessential in the substance of the Father and of the Son; and therefore proceeds equally from both.

Disciple: If the Holy Spirit exists coessential with the Father and the Son, how could he be separated from the indivisible substance, when he appeared in the form of a dove over the Lord (Matthew 3:16), or in the form of fire over the Apostles (Acts 2:3)?

Master: The substance of the Holy Spirit was not changed into a dove, just as the substance of the Word was not transformed into flesh; rather, the Holy Spirit created the body of the dove, in which for a time he showed himself visibly and inseparably above the body of the Word as a testimony to men, while he himself remained invisible in essence, inseparably in the Father and the Word. Also, possessing the souls of the disciples inwardly, outwardly he displayed the appearance of fire or light to the eyes of men as a sign, and yet he did not depart from the substance of the Father and the Son; indeed, signifying that the Father and the Son consume sins through him, and that through him the hearts of men draw near to love of them; and that through him they will judge the wicked to fire, but will glorify the righteous in the light of life in him.

CHAPTER XIX. On the equality of the persons. Why the Godhead is not worshiped under the name of virtues. Disciple: How is it established that these persons are equal?

Master: God is the highest life, the highest wisdom, the highest love. Therefore, insofar as he lives as life, so much does he understand himself and so much does he love himself. For if he does not understand himself as much as he lives, he will by no means be the highest wisdom; and if he does not love himself as much as he understands himself, the highest love does not exist at all.

But since his substance is most truly the highest good, and the highest life, the highest wisdom, and the highest love can be found only in the highest good, it necessarily follows that the three persons—of the Father begetting, of the Son begotten, of the Holy Spirit proceeding—are in all things equal, and exist as the highest good in one and the same individual substance.

Disciple: Why is the Godhead worshiped more in these terms than in those? Why are mercy and justice and the other virtues assigned to his essence?

Master: Because those [former terms] are properly his according to himself, substantially; but these [latter] are accidental to him in relation to us. For he is called merciful, not because he has a wretched heart; but reason proves that all misery is far from God. Human speech, however, calls him just, since he repays good things to the good and evil things to the evil. Yet because God comes to the aid of the wretched in their miseries, he has received the name of merciful or of mercy; although if there had never been anyone wretched to whom he might show mercy, mercy itself would nonetheless exist no less in his own substance. And because he bestows rewards on the just and inflicts just punishments on the unjust, he is rightly called just or justice; yet if there were no one to whom he might impart either glory or punishment, he himself would nonetheless subsist as justice no less. The same is to be understood concerning the other virtues.

CHAPTER XX. Whether some are necessarily miserable; but God the author of evil. That the justice and mercy of God cannot be manifested without misery. Disciple: Hence a very great question seems to arise. If the mercy of God could not be known except through the miserable, nor his justice be known except through those to be damned, it seems to follow inevitably that certain ones were made miserable of necessity, through whom the mercy of God might be revealed, and certain ones necessarily damnable, through whom the justice of God might be manifested. But if this is so, then it will now be preached in vain that evil is nothing, since nothing worse can be devised than misery and damnation; and if we do not refute this by the most valid arguments of reason, then God is by no means recognized as the highest good—indeed, he is convicted as the author of so great an evil. Furthermore, if he willed or was able to show his mercy only in the miserable, and his justice only in the damned, who does not see that it follows that he is either malevolent or impotent: in the one case, because he was unwilling to show his good except through evil; in the other, because he could not do otherwise?

MAG. Who, even if mad, would presume to say this: that the mercy and justice of God could not have been made manifest except through the miserable and the damned, when it is manifestly evident that we can make known hidden riches not only through the needy but also through the abundant? For if I have hidden money, it will not for that reason be necessary for anyone to become poor, to whom by giving I might make it manifest, since I can do that very thing by giving to a rich man; but rather, if any poor man comes to me, it will be fitting to show him mercy from my hidden money. And thus his experience proves me generous and wealthy; and it is evident that the same can be done in the case of a rich man, although the knowledge or experience of a poor man or of riches confers no benefit on me, as all the goods of Israel, but it is beneficial to them—indeed, it is necessary for me to have them, and it greatly profits them to know and experience them. In this way, then, if no one had ever been miserable or damnable, God omnipotent could nonetheless have manifested mercy and justice in angels and men, namely by mercifully bestowing on them from his abundance what they did not at all have; especially since every creature has absolutely nothing from itself, but receives all things from the very fountain of all goods, and by justly preserving in his own what they had received from him.

And therefore it was not necessary that either an angel should incur damnation to manifest the justice of God, or a man should incur misery to declare the mercy of God, since He declared both in the angels who stand: namely His mercy, by preserving them from a fall; His justice, by giving them rewards. But because by free will an angel or a man has fallen away from God, they have plainly experienced mercy and justice, as it were previously hidden, when His justice justly condemned the one, and His mercy mercifully delivered the other from misery. And since by this experience nothing of usefulness has accrued to God, in whom was the fullness of all goods before every created creature, it follows that no necessity, but only will, compelled them to misery.

CHAPTER XXI. That God is not the author of evil, but its orderer. The goodness of God. His omnipotence. But that God is not the author of evil is clearly established from this, that He Himself condemns all evil. Moreover, that evil does not subsist, evident reason proves. For every substance is good, but evil is not good; therefore evil is not a substance, but a privation of good. Evil, however, appears to be a certain separable accident of acting or of being acted upon: in action indeed, when one acts inordinately; in passion, however, when an inordinate action is rightly ordered. For in the kingdom of Him who orders all things, nothing inordinate is left.

But the right order of the rational creature is this: that it reject things that pass away and desire things that endure; that it love men, who are immortal in the soul; that, loving God, the highest good, before all things, it obey His will. But those who despise the highest good love the passing good of the world, look down on kindred souls, and obey the desires of the flesh; these live inordinately, and so they do evil. But this evil will be set in order, when this action is changed into a passion. For when such persons are deprived of both the highest good and the passing good of the world, it is necessary that they be affected by harsh things, which are contrary to pleasant things; which nevertheless are not evil in themselves, but seem bitter to those who suffer them. Therefore, by nature nothing is evil.

But that God is the highest good is established from this, that He grants His mercy to the evil and the guilty, as if contrary to justice. For from the fountain of the highest good flows such justice, by which God justly owes mercy to the unworthy; who is also shown to be benevolent in this, that He alone did not wish to enjoy His goods alone, but brought forth so many substances from nothing, to which He distributes the good of glory. But that He is omnipotent, or rather that He is omnipotence itself, is declared from this, that He could form so great a structure of things, with all that exists, from nothing, and does not bend every creature toward what is unsuitable, but whatever exists obeys His nod. Behold, the whole fortification of your proposition lies overthrown by the battering-ram of manifest reason.

CHAPTER XXII. Whence the created thing. Not from God's substance. Not from matter, but from nothing. Yet not from nothing. DISCIPLE: It is useful to overthrow the stronghold of error and to build the citadel of truth, whose foundation you have placed firmly upon the Creator of all things. It remains for you to consolidate the structure concerning the origin of creation, and to build by joining the end of the world to its beginning, and to complete the summit in the height of the kingdom of heaven. Therefore, by proving reason, make known to us whether the universe of creation was founded from the substance of the Creator, or from some pre-existing matter, or from nothing.

MASTER: The craftsman has strengthened the framework of this structure, whose work no effort of any increase will shatter. The creature itself denies that it is from the substance of the Creator, and evident reason fights against this with all its weapons. For God is immutable, but every creature is mutable; and if it had proceeded from an immutable nature, it would consequently also endure immutable. Furthermore, if a corruptible nature came forth from God's substance, it follows that God's essence could be corrupted; the darts of reason pierce this insanity of a blind mind and drive it far from the presence of truth. But that it was founded from no substantial matter is evident from this, that nothing existed besides God. It remains, therefore, that the universe was created from nothing; not because nothing was or is something, but because what was not something, the Creator made to be something.

Nevertheless, before the creation of the whole creation, the image was in the Word, that is, in the art of God, according to whose pattern the universe burst forth in creation. For just as a painter first fashions the variety of a painting in his mind, and afterward paints a visible painting in its likeness, so God had first formed the universe of creation in his wisdom, and according to that form he created all things through many modes of species. But the painter brings the painting conceived in his mind, which does not exist in reality, into being through colors and through external instruments; God, however, produced the universe in his wisdom, and his instruments into so many substances; and therefore he made all things from nothing, and yet, as it were, not from nothing, but from something the visible world proceeded, when it put on forms after the model of the archetypal world.

CHAPTER XXIII. Questions concerning the presence of God. Disciple.

Now, with the distinguished tower rising on high, let discerning reason drive away the darkness of error on every side, illuminate the noble structure with the serene light of truth, and, as we marvel at the work of the glorious edifice, make clear to us whether the Creator is in the creature or the creature in the Creator, or whether both are in each other; or rather whether the Creator remains substantially somewhere outside the creature in some glory, while filling the creature potentially through the existent; whether he is half in heaven and half in the world; whether at one time he subsists wholly in heaven and at another wholly in the world; whether he is divided through individual places, or exists whole in all places; whether he is at one time in this place and at another in that—for example, whether he is to be believed to dwell yesterday at Jerusalem, today at Carthage, tomorrow at Rome; or whether he is outside every place and outside all time, always and everywhere.

MAGISTER: Just as the rising sun, by its presence, illumines all the innumerable forms of things that are shrouded in darkness, so powerful reason, by its penetrating insight, distinguishes each one of your propositions, however manifold and intricate, and brings clearly to light matters most profound, drawn from the deepest hiding places.

CHAPTER XXIV That God is in every creature. That each creature perceives Him to be present in itself. That the Creator exists in the whole of creation, every creature proves: for it cries out that it is nothing of itself, but that it is from God and has its good from Him. For God is the highest essence and the highest good; and every creature subsists through Him; but every substance is good, because it is; and where anything substantial is, there God is: therefore God exists in every creature, since every creature subsists. Here perhaps the weak mind says to itself: If God is in every creature, then He is also in the mud, and in hell, and in brute animals, indeed even in demons, which are certainly creatures. Here open reason proves no incongruity, since it considers the good in all these things. Mud, to be sure, is a thing mixed with another, as earth with water or with other such things; but earth is good, because it is a substance, and water is good, because it is a substance. Hell too is said to be fiery; and fire is good, because it is a substance. Brute animals also, each in its own kind, are useful for something; and therefore they are good. Demons nonetheless, in that they are of an angelic nature, are good. Therefore, since it is established that these individual things subsist in good, does it not necessarily follow that God, who is goodness, is in all things?

But every creature also perceives by some means that God is present within itself. For angels and all living things live the life that God is, by that life they live. For an angel does not live more than a worm, although the one is immortal and the other mortal. Nor does an angel subsist more than a worm, although the substance of the one is eternal and of the other fleeting. Bodies perceive that they are present to themselves. For this very thing is life, and all things, including the heavenly bodies—namely the sun, the moon, and the stars—perceive God within themselves, in that through Him they shine and subsist. Trees and herbs perceive God within themselves, in that through Him they grow and subsist. But stones perceive that God is present within themselves, in that through Him they subsist. Demons perceive that God is present to them, in that through Him they live and perceive; and they perceive God present also in this, that by the just judgment of God they are made evil in their punishments. For God is justice, and wherever justice is exercised, God is believed to be there. Thus, in short, the emperor is present to the robber when he condemns him, just as he is present to the soldier when he rewards him. And let no one suppose that God abhors the filth of the world, but let him know that God detests only the filth of sins; nor can He in any way be defiled by anything, just as a ray of the sun cannot be sullied by any impurity.

CHAPTER XXV. Creatures are also in God. The objection is solved. Carnal thinking about God and the world. A purer idea. But it is known from this that every creature exists in the Creator, because it is believed that nothing is outside God; yet it is not so in him that it is his substance or a part of him, but as the heart is in an animal or a part of the animal, as the light of a lamp in the sun is not its substance, nor a part of its essence. But some foolish person bursts out here and says, If a stone is in God, and God is in the stone, therefore the stone is God. It certainly does not follow that everything which is in another is that in which it is; for wine is in a wineskin, and yet it is not the wineskin; the sun too is in a mirror, and the mirror in the sun, and yet neither is the other. Just as anyone placed in Rome, if he surveyed the whole city in thought, would enclose the whole city with its people in his mind by imagining it; he would rightly be said to have Rome in his soul, and his soul to be in Rome, and yet it is not its substance: so indeed God is in every creature, and every creature in him is most rightly affirmed, and yet neither is what the other is; but here God the Creator is most truly proclaimed immutable, this creature mutable.

But because we are born in darkness, we cannot see the light of truth. We think that this world is founded upon the abyss, but that God with the angels is situated in heaven, and we suppose that outside this world there is nothing but darkness. But rather the sight of our mind is dulled by the magnitude of the true light, just as the bodily eye is dazzled by the brightness of the sun, and our darkness does not comprehend such great brightness, and with the dimness of the heart's gaze they hinder us from contemplating it. Indeed this whole world is gathered together within God like a very brief point; but the most serene light of his majesty is poured abroad on every side without, into the immense. For God fills all things above and below, within and without, and round about, essentially; and the understanding of no creature exceeds his boundless substance by any reckoning. This again scandalizes the weak intellect, and it silently turns over within itself: If all things are in God, then both wolves and serpents, indeed even demons, are in him. Here, as above, no inconsistency is proved, so long as good is found in all these things. But every good is in God, outside whom there is nothing.

CHAPTER XXVI. Why not every creature enjoys the good equally, since every creature is said to be in God. What it is to suffer evil. But it is asked why any creature suffers anything evil, and not rather all equally enjoy the good, if God, who is the highest good, is declared to be in every creature. But it must be known that just as the soul, diffused through the whole body, is whole in each member, yet does not grant the functions of its administration whole to each member, but to the eye only to see and not to hear, to the ear to hear and not to see, and to the rest in this manner; but the member from which the gift of growth is withdrawn will remain dull and useless in the body, and this is affirmed to suffer evil, or rather nothing, because it is deprived of good: so God, diffused through all things, is whole in each, yet does not grant all the gifts of his grace to each, but to each as it has pleased him: to the stone only to exist and not to live, to the tree to live by growing and not to feel, to beasts to feel and not to discern, to angels and souls to discern and to exist immortal. But to whomever he has withdrawn any of these, that one will forthwith be useless in the body of the universe. And when the good that is pleasant to its nature is withdrawn from it, it is forthwith, of necessity, affected by the bitter thing that is contrary to it, as men in the world, demons in hell: and thus it is proclaimed to suffer evil, when it is deprived of good, just as a blind man placed in the sun is said to suffer darkness, because he does not enjoy its light.

But why God should present to one creature the sweetness of his presence to be enjoyed, and withdraw it from another, reason cannot penetrate by any sharpness of insight, but is stunned at God as terrible in his judgments.

CHAPTER XXVII. Why things are changed, when they are in the immutable. Likewise it is asked, if God is in every creature, and every creature is in him, how anything fails, and does not rather remain wholly in one state, especially since the immutable God contains all things. But it must be known that by this the Creator is distinguished from the creature, in that the former is seen to be immutable, but the latter greatly unstable; yet all things imitate eternity, while by failing and again growing back they are always rolled as it were in the circles of existence. For because they took their origin from nothing, they desire to run back into nothing, and as it were to go out beyond God. But because they do not find an exit, as it were rolled back into circles they return again into being. For the heavens and the stars are always rolled around in their circles; waters by flowing continually, as if their circle were completed, return to their fountains. Trees, herbs, animals, by growing, growing old, rotting, and again growing back, are in a certain manner turned around in circles. In this way too all things tend through themselves toward nothing, but through the one containing them they strive always to return into the nature given to them. Likewise it is asked, if man had remained in paradise, whether all these things would have been mutable as now?

Beyond doubt all things with fleeting time, as now, keep their turns by growing, failing, being born, and dying; he himself would endure in one stable state and as lord of all. But because by sinning he became unstable, he himself began to slip with time and with perishable things.

CHAPTER XXVIII. Whether things would have been changeable had man not sinned. That God is everywhere and how. With the darkness of the structure of the sacred house dispelled, let us now set about demolishing the machines erected against it. That God is somewhere substantially and everywhere potentially conflicts with the firmness of the whole argument already elaborated and is overthrown by the impulse of most evident reason. For if he is somewhere and not everywhere substantially, then he is circumscribed and local; and if he is local, then he is a body; and if he is a body, it is concluded that he is not God. Further, if God is contained by a place, then the place that contains him is greater and better than he: greater, because it includes God; better, because it contains so great a good. Moreover, if he is in heaven substantially but in the world potentially, then his essence is one thing and his power another; and it follows that this power came to him as an accident, which reason repelled above from the face of truth. But if he is half in heaven and half in the world, then a creature contains the Creator and encloses its own maker within itself. But if he is sometimes in heaven and sometimes in the world, then he is convicted of being changeable, because he moves from place to place.

Further, if God is at some time in heaven and not in the world, then there is something only where he himself is, and elsewhere there is nothing; for where God is not, there is nothing. But if he is divided through individual places, then he consists of parts; and it follows that he who is divisible by places is passable, and indeed also dissoluble: for everything that consists of parts can be dissolved. If, however, he is whole in individual places, then there are as many wholes as there are places; for everything that is wholly enclosed in one place is proved to have no part of itself in another place; and it follows that God is enclosed by a place, who is proclaimed to enclose all things in his fist. But if he is changed by turns of times, and yesterday stayed in one place, today in another, tomorrow in a third, then he is temporal: and he has already lost the past, does not yet have the future, but all accidents run together upon him.

CHAPTER XXIX The conclusion of the questions concerning the presence of God. A comparison. The engines of this most false opinion are easily dissolved by the instruments of the sacred tower. The power of God is nothing other than his essence: therefore God is not somewhere determinately, but is essentially everywhere.

God is also immense; whereas a place—that is, the space that any body occupies—is measured by height, breadth, and length, and whatever is local is bounded by above and below. God, therefore, is neither partly in one place nor partly in the world; nor is he at one time wholly in heaven and at another time wholly in the world; nor is he divided through individual places, nor wholly in each place separately; but existing outside every place in himself and through himself, filling every place and containing all things in himself, penetrating all creation, holding all things together through his substance—that is, everywhere in all things and outside all things wholly, and removed from no place. Just as the light of a lamp shines wholly in the eyes of all who stand around, and remains wholly in itself; it does not withdraw from itself in order to reach those present, nor does it leave one in order to shine for another, but rather it shines wholly for each and for all at once, and remains wholly in itself; so God is everywhere and wholly in all things, and remains wholly in himself; he does not withdraw from himself, but gathers all things into himself.

CHAPTER XXX. How the whole Christ is in heaven, the whole in the virgin's womb. Hence it is asked, since God is not enclosed in a place, how the whole Christ is said to be in the virgin's womb and the whole in heaven, when the virgin's womb is undoubtedly a place. He was whole in heaven in the essence of the Father, as whole in the soul is all wisdom; whole in the virgin's womb, as the whole Word is in the voice. For God lacks beginning and end; and therefore He remains eternal. Thus He was not past, He is present, He always exists everywhere; whence also He is named Est (Exod. 3:14), because eternity existing, ordering all times, is changed by no time. Behold, the machine of your manifold proposition collapses, because no accident concurs into God.

CHAPTER XXXI. How God alone is immortal. How He alone is invisible. It was said above that God alone is immortal, alone invisible. Are the angels or souls mortal, or is God invisible to the angels, of whom it is said that they always see the face of the Father (Matt. 18:10)?

MAG. Mutability is a kind of mortality: for while anything is moved from the past into the future, it dies, as it were, to the past. God alone is immutable, because nothing of the past passes away from him, nothing of the future accrues to him, but whatever is, or was, or will be, is wholly present to him always. And just as it cannot be thought that he ever had a beginning, so too it cannot be thought that he could ever be ended. The angels, however, are mutable, because they are moved from the past into the present, and from the present into the future; for they lack the past, and do not yet possess the future. For it is certain that they do not now have the angelic companions once lost, and that they are still without the fellowship of the saints who are pilgrims on earth. They gather past things by memory, and understand future things by foreknowledge. And just as it can be thought that they once began, so too it can be thought that they could be ended. But even when they consider in themselves a creature that is mutable, they in some way degenerate from the state of immutability: such mutability is for them a kind of mortality. But souls, just as they are mutable in all respects, so too are they mortal in almost all respects. For God is the life of the soul, just as the soul is the life of the body; but just as the body is dead when it does not have the soul, so the soul is dead when it lacks God; or just as the eye is called dead when it is deprived of light, so the soul is dead when it does not enjoy the blessed life which is God. God alone, therefore, has immortality, because he admits no mutability.

He alone is also invisible, because he is not fully intelligible to any creature. Indeed, the angels and the souls of the blessed see him always by their own manner, not by ours; not through intervals of space, as we see bodily things, but within themselves and outside themselves, in every creature and beyond every creature they behold him, and by no intuition of the intellect do they exceed the breadth of his brightness. And because he is not seen or understood by them as fully as he is seen by himself, therefore he alone is said to be invisible.

CHAPTER XXXII. To what extent man was created in the image and likeness of God. Every thing has some likeness of God. That souls are eternal. DISCIPLE: Now that the divine nature, together with the angelic, holds the scepter in this tower, behold, human nature brings up its region; and it raises its engine to attack it. For it is asked how man is said to have been formed in the image and likeness of God, since no agreement and likeness of God is seen in man.

MAG. Things that oppose are overcome by things that resist them, while preceding things are invincibly strengthened by things that follow. Two men are written of, the inner and the outer. The inner is the soul, the outer the body; the inner is invisible, the outer visible. The invisible one, therefore, was created to the image and likeness of the invisible God, while the visible one was formed according to the visible world. God is invisible, in substance a unity, in persons a trinity. The inner man, therefore, that is, the soul, was created to the image of the unity, because it is not composed of parts like the body, but is a simple nature and an immortal essence. God is also memory, which remembers itself and all things that exist, and is called the Father; from it understanding is born, which understands itself and all things that exist, and is named the Son; from both proceeds love, which loves itself and all things that exist, and is called the Holy Spirit. The soul is established to the image of this Trinity, in that memory, understanding, and the reason of love are implanted in it; for it remembers past things, understands invisible things, rejects evil and loves good. The essence of God is also light, life, justice, goodness, blessedness. The soul was made to this likeness, so that it may be luminous, living, just, good, and blessed.

The outer man, that is, the body, is in a certain way formed after the pattern of the world, since it is composed of the four elements; hence it is also called microcosm, that is, a lesser world. And in this respect the soul also has a likeness to God, in that it governs the lesser world as God governs the greater. Every creature, too, has some likeness to God, and the more excellent each one is than another, the more like it is to him. For he is, he lives, he senses, he discerns by reason. Stones, therefore, attach themselves to his likeness because they exist. Trees approach his likeness more closely because they exist and live by growing. Living creatures express his likeness much more because they exist, live, and sense. Furthermore, in men and angels the likeness of God shines forth most of all, because they exist, live, sense, and discern by reason.

But it is established that souls are eternal. For if they are said to have been made for seeing God, it necessarily follows that just as God is believed to have no end, so the souls that will see him are not to be doubted to live without end. But it is asked whether those souls that will not see God are immortal. It is established that all souls are of one nature; and if some souls are immortal, then all are immortal. Therefore all souls that will see God will always be blessed, and those that will not see him will always be miserable.

CHAPTER XXXIII. Whence the soul sees so many things in dreams. Why it does not see itself. Disciple. Why does the soul see so many things in dreams?

Master. The soul, with an insatiable desire for knowing the truth, is captivated, and therefore always wanders in its thoughts; and for this reason, when the senses of the body are asleep, it foresees certain future things through riddles, with God revealing them; sometimes, concerning things merely probable, it languishes anxiously, with the devil deceiving it; sometimes it converses with angels or with souls, sometimes it is mocked by demons. This soul, in the manner of an eye, sees all other things; can it see itself?

Disciple. Why does it not seem so to us?

Master. Because its nature is said to be so subtle that it does not allow itself to be seen by bodily eyes. For as water is thinner than earth, so air is subtler than water; and as ethereal fire surpasses air in thinness, so the soul surpasses celestial fire in subtlety. For this is the reason that no spirit is discerned by us: because the subtlety of their nature is believed to exceed our sight.

CHAPTER XXXIV. How the soul is whole in each member. Disciple. How is it said that the soul is diffused through the whole body, and yet is not more in the largest nor less in the smallest members, but whole in each one? Are there as many wholes as there are members?

Master. As was said above, if a light is placed in the middle, it shines no less in my eyes and no more in another's eyes, but is whole in each one and remains whole in itself; so the soul is everywhere in the body and is whole in each individual member; hence when one member is touched, the whole soul feels pain. Yet the members are not so many wholes, because the soul remains whole in itself; just as a voice sounds in the ears of all not piecemeal but whole, and remains whole in itself.

CHAPTER XXXV. Why one soul is more capable of learning than another. Disciple. If all souls are of one nature, what then is the cause that one is more apt and another slower to learn?

Master. The soul has the form of wax or of a candle. Wax is apt for expressing an image, if a seal is impressed upon it; so too a candle is apt for burning, if it is lit. In this way the soul expresses the image of knowledge, if the seal of teaching is impressed upon it, and receives the light of truth, if it is kindled by the fire of wisdom; but if it has neglected to make itself apt through study or practice, then just as wax without an image, and as a candle unlit without light, so it will remain in the darkness of ignorance without knowledge and truth. But the more each soul adapts itself to teaching, the more capable of knowledge it will be.

But why does the fire of the Holy Spirit kindle with the light of knowledge some souls that do not present themselves as fit for it—indeed, that are negligent—and not kindle others; indeed, why does he withhold knowledge from some who labor after it, and not withhold it from others who are alike; reason, unable to penetrate this, cries out in wonder: O how incomprehensible are the judgments of God, and how unsearchable his ways (Rom. 11:33)!

CHAPTER XXXVI. That there is one teacher for us. Disciple. Since all things are learned from teachers, how is it written that there is one teacher in the heavens (Matt. 23), from whom, as it were, each thing is specially taught?

Teacher. If it is rightly considered, nothing at all is learned through a man. The soul of a teacher only plants and waters outwardly by reminding; but the truth that dwells within the soul gives the increase inwardly by teaching (1 Cor. 3:7). But the fool does not understand these things: reason, however, which discerns all things, will easily prove that this is so. For whatever is learned is grasped better through sight than through hearing. For however much I may tell a man born blind about the sun, he himself still does not know what the sun is, since he has never seen it; he merely believes my words that there is something called by that name, or perhaps he doubts whether there is anything in reality that is so named. But if he should suddenly see, by that very sight he proves that the sun is what he could not know by hearing.

Thus many blind people have seen the Scriptures, yet they do not know what a book or a letter is; if their eyes were suddenly opened, and the book were placed before them, they would marvel at what they see, and by sight they would discern what they could not by hearing. Further, if I were to say to one of them, "Such a letter is called A, and such a one is named B," he immediately runs back within himself, consults the truth, and proves to be true what he hears. What then have I taught him, who could know what a letter is neither by hearing beforehand nor by sight afterward, unless he learned it with the truth teaching within and sight proving without? I merely uttered the sounds of words; but he himself came to know the words and the things signified by those words, with the truth examining within. So too, if I were to say many things to you about the elephant, you do not know what an elephant is unless you have seen it; likewise we read many things about David, and we know him as it were as a ruddy man and beautiful in appearance—but if he were to enter at this moment, would we recognize him? I think not at all. Why? Because we could not learn from teachers what we have not proved by the truth of sight. For teachers only bring forth the sounds of words; but hearers, with the truth teaching within, learn the words by the mind and the things by sight. Thus we learn letters, thus unknown languages, thus the various arts, while we receive the sounds of words from instructors and consider the things themselves within, with the truth teaching. But what is to be said of singing, which is not seen but is learned only by hearing?

Is it not the case that while the sound of the speaker's voice rings out outwardly, the truth inwardly forms, as it were, certain ascents of the voice in the soul? Therefore nothing at all is learned through a human being except the sound alone; but words and realities are discerned through the truth dwelling in the inner man. And so most truly one master is proclaimed, by whom each person is instructed inwardly. But those things which are never seen by us, such as God and the angels, are only believed to exist.

CHAPTER XXXVII. How "to believe God" and "to believe in God" differ. True faith. DISCIPLE: Is there any difference between believing God and believing in God?

MASTER: A great deal. For demons and pagans believe God, but they do not believe in God. For they believe that there is a God who created all things and is powerful above all things. But they alone believe in God who by loving him tend toward him. True faith, moreover, is to believe that God in essence is a unity and in persons a Trinity, and that he created all things from nothing by his Word, and restored fallen things by the same Word incarnate, and on the last day will renew all things through his Spirit; and that he will give this, namely himself, as the highest good to those who believe, in reward. This faith is the life of the soul, and by this the just man lives. This faith is nourished by hope, as the body is refreshed by food; it is animated by love, as the body is given life by the soul; but love is proved by action, whence also faith without works is declared dead (James 2:17).

Therefore the soul turns away from evil and does good; by hope it rejects all transitory things, it desires invisible things as like itself, it endures all hard things with love, it restrains the impulses of the flesh, it gives what is necessary to neighbors, it always yearns for the highest good. Therefore the soul that thus tends toward God by believing and hoping will possess that highest good without end.

CHAPTER XXXVIII. That souls released from the flesh do not perceive anything corporeal. DISCIPLE: If souls are naturally luminous, it is asked whether the light of day confers anything on souls exiled from the body, or again whether the darkness of night hinders them at all in seeing?

MASTER: Just as the body without the soul is seen to feel nothing, so certainly the soul without the body is believed to feel nothing corporeal. For joined to the body it perceives colors through the eyes, voices through the ears, odors through the nostrils, tastes through the palate, and through touch or motion things tangible differing in softness or hardness. But separated from the body it perceives nothing corporeal in a corporeal manner, and it beholds things in the property of their substance, with the accidents of colors abstracted, and it also perceives spiritual things in its own manner. Therefore just as the light of a candle confers nothing on the sun for burning, so indeed the light of the sun confers nothing at all on the soul for seeing. And just as night does not impede the radiance of the sun, but rather flees from it, so neither does it in any way stand in the way of the soul, since it does not even touch the soul.

Furthermore, the soul either enjoys the spiritual light itself, shining too brightly for the sun, or, darkened by the dread fog of sins, it is wrapped not in the darkness of night but in its own darkness, as a blind man is. But that the soul, once released from the flesh, does not see bodily light is evident from this: when we wish to dictate something, or are arranging to do something, the soul at once flees the outer senses, gathers itself inward, considers within itself the things it is dealing with, and the light of the sun is of no use to it—indeed it even hinders it for this task; and while it attends to other things, it does not hear loud voices nearby. Therefore the soul outside the body sees and hears nothing corporeal. But if it does so, then surely it puts on an airy body.

CHAPTER XXXIX. How the saints hear our prayers. Disciple: If souls do not hear bodily voices, how is it that many have experienced that the souls of the saints—namely Peter or Martin or another—have heard their prayers?

The prayer of the heart, not of the mouth, ascends to heaven. For they hear not the cry of the voice but of the heart, and they come to the aid of those who faithfully invoke them. Nor do they hear prayers that are more clamorous any more than those which are made without a voice, or in a whisper, or only in the heart; because on our part too it is not words but only voices that are heard; words, however, are seen by the mind. When, therefore, our souls desire something according to God, and ask it for themselves from God through the saints, whether with the heart, or with the tongue, or with the voice, the souls of the saints (for whom to hear is the same as to see, and conversely) behold not voices but words, and obtain for them from God the things they desire; whence you have it written, The Lord has heard the desire of the poor.

CHAPTER XL. In what way it is understood that souls are released from the body, and again return, and report what they have seen. Whether hell is incorporeal, or the damned souls put on a body. DISCIPLE: Is it not read that often many souls, drawn out of the body, have seen many places of punishment, and likewise many pleasant and flowery places, and in both many souls in human form, and that, having returned to the body, they have reported that they heard very many things from them?

It must be known that these souls had not left the body when sought for, but had deprived the bodily senses of their functions, while the body was not wholly lacking in vital spirit. Hence the things they had heard were not corporeal things, but were like corporeal things, which, on returning, they could report to others still established in the body for their edification. But after they had wholly put off the body, the matter stood far otherwise than they had previously been unable to see. Just as we, sometimes placed beside a wall, see the shadow of an approaching man, not the man himself; but once the obstacle of the wall is removed, we discern him as he is. The souls of the dead also appear to the living: they put on an airy body, in which they express a corporeal voice or audible words.

From this it is gathered that hell is incorporeal, a spiritual substance, similar to a corporeal one; whose punishment is all the more intolerable the more subtle the spirit is than the body. For every body fails with age, and being dissolved by long duration will perish. Hence if the fire of hell is corporeal, it remains that it be nourished by corporeal foods, and it follows that, these being consumed, it itself would perish; but it is certain that the fire of Gehenna does not fail; therefore it is spiritual. If, however, it is corporeal but was created unfailing, it is necessary that souls and spirits put on some kind of body, in which they may feel that corporeal fire.

CHAPTER XLI. Proof of the resurrection of the dead sought from the promises of God. Another from the eternity of souls. The new creature is spoken of in three ways. Disciple. Can the resurrection of the dead be proved by reason?

Master. If those things stand firm and unshaken which were proved above by the truest arguments, then, with all contradiction removed and all necessity added, the resurrection will be future. For it has been established that God is truth; but the words of truth must necessarily be fulfilled; and it follows, if they are not fulfilled, that either God is mutable or truth is not truth; and if they cannot be fulfilled, then God is not omnipotent. All of which is plainly most absurd regarding God. Therefore God, the unchangeable truth, promised to those who love him full joy, and to those who despise him full punishment; and either of these will be impossible unless it be in soul and body. It is necessary, therefore, that bodies rise again and receive their souls, so that, according to the promises of Truth, the former may have full joy in soul and body, and the latter may in the same manner receive full punishment. Furthermore, if bodies do not rise again, then souls have not been made eternal; but it was proved above that souls have been made eternal, namely, made for this end, that they may always see God with the angels and be blessed in this vision without end. But they do not live blessedly if they see their garments, that is, their bodies, rotting in filth without hope of recovery.

It follows therefore that of necessity the garments of holy souls, which are called stoles, are renewed through the resurrection and changed into incorruptible glory, clothed in which the souls are always blessed and contemplate God; and on the other hand, that the unhappy are reclothed in filthy garments, from whose foulness they grieve always. Therefore it is necessary that not only bodies be renewed, but also that the common nature which served the saints be changed for the better; whence you have it written, Behold, I make all things new (Rev. 21:5).

Disciple. Since God from the beginning of the world until now has created nothing new, how will it be established that there is a new creature?

Master. In three ways a new creature is spoken of, which is thus ordered through the Trinity. God the Father created every creature out of nothing, and this is called a new creature. God the Son also, incarnate, established the Church in a new religion, which is named a new creature; whence you have it in the Apostle, We are a new creature (2 Cor. 5:17); and in another place, That we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creature (James 1:18). God the Holy Spirit also will yet give life to bodies and will renew the whole world; and this likewise is called a new creature; whence you have it, The Lord will make a new heaven and a new earth (Isa. 65:17).

CHAPTER XLII. Who Christ or the saints are in heaven. What is commonly understood by the name of heaven. That the eyes do not reach the firmament. Disciple: Now that the tower has been nobly brought to its summit, it remains that it be encircled with battlements, and so the peak be completed at the very top of the heavens. It is read of the Lord that with his hands lifted up he was carried into heaven, and that he sits at the right hand of God (Luke XXIV; Mark XVI, 19); and Stephen in the assembly saw him standing at the right hand of God (Acts VII, 55). He who is carried from place to place is moved; and he who sits or stands is contained by a place. And since the Lord ascended into heaven bodily, how he is now to be believed to be there, or how the souls of the saints are now there, or how they will be there when their bodies have been received, we desire exceedingly to know. For if some place contains Christ or the saints sitting or standing, lest they fall, then that place is proved better than they, since so many good things are contained by it. And if the saints glory, rejoicing in some visible and sensible creature, as we are delighted by this visible and sensible light, then again that thing is judged better than the rational creature, from whose possession it is itself enjoyed, as we rejoice over money acquired; and the joy seems wretched, if the intellectual creature rejoices in nothing but a dull thing.

MASTER: Let us likewise ascend to the summit of this tower, and with reason as our investigator let us examine how these things stand. By the customary name we call heaven that which we see above our head. But above us we see nothing except clouds, or air illuminated by the sun. The sun, however, or the moon, or the stars we see so far removed from us, just as, placed on the wide sea, we see mountains from afar; but around us we perceive nothing except the air poured about us. Hence it is clear that no man's sight penetrates the whole extent of this air, since it can scarcely even reach the horizon. Hence, when the apostles could no longer see the Lord after he had been taken up, it is said: A cloud received him out of their sight (Acts 1). Stephen also saw the Lord in heaven beyond the firmament, not with bodily eyes, since no man's sight can in any way reach as far as the firmament. But even that room in which Stephen, standing, beheld Christ (Acts 7:55) was in some house, whose roof's summit his bodily eye could by no means penetrate. It is established, therefore, that he saw Christ not with the eye of the body, but by the gaze of the inner man, not in a bodily heaven but in an intellectual one. But here perhaps it is objected by some cavilers that the stars are fixed in the firmament, and that our sight reaches the firmament when we see them. Does our eye therefore touch the firmament, because it beholds all the stars?

Is it for this reason that they penetrate the whole expanse of air in the sea, because they consider the mountains, as it were solid bodies? For just as in the sea, when the mountains are removed from sight, nothing but air is seen on every side, so too when the stars, that is, solid bodies, are removed, nothing but air is discerned. But whatever extends from the air up to the firmament, and the firmament itself, is by no means seen by us, on account of the great distance of that space itself and the subtlety of its nature.

CHAPTER XLIII. The three heavens historically. Three heavens significatively, three visions. The Apostle caught up to the heaven of witnesses. Why the angels and the righteous are heavens, and the demons darknesses. But if perchance it is objected that the Apostle is written to have been caught up to the third heaven, it must be known that three heavens are called so historically, and again three are named significatively. Here indeed the air is historically called the first heaven, as you have it, "the birds of heaven," because they are seen to fly in the heaven, that is, in the air. The second heaven is named the aether, as you have it, "the stars of heaven," because they are borne in the wandering course of the planets. The third heaven is called the firmament, as you have it, "the stars of heaven," because the constellations are handed down as fixed in it. Significatively too three heavens are read, because three visions—namely the sensual, the spiritual, and the intellectual—are not unknown to the wise. The sensual vision, indeed, is when we discern the colors and forms of things outwardly, but something within is hidden, as in letters we understand the signification.

This vision, then, is first called the sensory heaven, because in the Scriptures the understanding is concealed. For “heaven” (caelum) is named from “concealing” (celando). The second vision is spiritual, by which we see not things but images similar to things, as we are accustomed to do in dreams, and as we know John in the Apocalypse and the Prophets saw many things; and this vision is called the second heaven, because truly the things themselves are concealed in these likenesses. The third vision is intellectual, when we behold with the intellect neither things outwardly nor the images of things inwardly, but the very substances as they truly are, with colors abstracted, and we discern by reason the quality of each one, differing among themselves; and this vision is called the third heaven, because in it the truth of things, as if in heaven, is concealed from fools. Therefore, if the Apostle was caught up in the body, then he was led to the bodily heaven, that is, the firmament; but if outside the body, which seems more likely, then certainly he is believed to have been caught up to the intellectual heaven, in which he is known to have seen the essence of the Godhead as it is, and the angelic substances as they are—not sensory, which cannot happen except through the body, nor spiritual, which does not happen except through images similar to things, but truly, which does not happen except by the intellect itself. Angels or the righteous are called heaven by a certain likeness, because they are concealed from human sight in the secret of God; and conversely demons or the impious are called darkness, because in torments they are not concealed from us.

CHAPTER XLIV. What the kingdom of heaven is, and that it is everywhere. Why we are not now in heaven. What it is to enter into it. What it is to be brought in. For what purpose bodily visions were made to certain dying persons. But the kingdom of heaven, that is, of the righteous, is believed to be not the walls of cities, not estates of possessions, not abundance of gold and gems, not varied furnishings, but righteousness and peace and glory of every kind in full joy, which is had from the vision of eternal brightness and from the fellowship of angels and saints. God, moreover, the eternal light, is proved to be in the world and outside the world, below and above and round about, on every side and everywhere. If, then, the kingdom of heaven, by the demonstration of right reason, is nothing other than the vision of God, who is the fountain of all good things, it necessarily follows that the kingdom of heaven is in this world, and outside the world, and in every creature, and outside every creature; whence you have, The kingdom of heaven is within you (Luke 17:21); because, surely, standing firm in God, we behold him in ourselves and in every creature and outside every creature as he is. For this reason, moreover, we are now said to be outside God, or outside the kingdom of heaven, because we are deprived of this vision. In the same way, too, the wretched are then said to be shut out from the kingdom of heaven, because by that same vision they will be deprived like the blind of the light of the sun. This kingdom of heaven, or this joy, the righteous are written to enter; because, not grasping the ineffable joy, they are in a certain manner wrapped up in it.

But the statement that souls are borne upward to heaven, or even the notion that they are carried down below, is expressed in terms of our sight, to whom the higher things are known to be brighter with the radiance of the sun, and because this matter cannot be known otherwise by those who are still constituted in the flesh. Indeed, souls released from the flesh are not moved from place to place, nor are they led into any bodily place so as to contemplate God from there; but as soon as they are separated from the body, they are joined to the angels and the saints, and without delay they enjoy the kingdom of heaven, which is the vision of God, within the world and outside it and on every side: just as a blind man placed in the sun, if his eyes were opened, would at once enjoy the light of the sun. But that to certain dying persons a light, or the forms of angels or saints, are seen there, and harmonies of music are heard, and they are perceived to be led to high places—this is undoubtedly done for the sake of the living, that they may be strengthened in the Christian religion. Furthermore, it seems frivolous to assert that souls, which are not in place, are led from this world beyond the firmament, as if it were more beautiful there, or God were more there, when rather God is proved to be equally present above and below, within and outside. But that souls, since they are incorporeal spirits, should be enclosed in bodily places seems most absurd, especially since every place is measured by height, length, and breadth, and the spirit is well known to lack all these. For they are thought to remain there without place, and to enjoy the vision of him, just as knowledge dwells in the soul without place.

CHAPTER XLV. The glory and place of blessed bodies. The impact of the eye. But the body of the saints will rise spiritual, because in lightness, swiftness, and transparency it will be equal to spirits, and every solid thing will be penetrable to it; just as the body of the Lord rose shut in by a stone, and entered with the doors closed. Therefore, just as now the spirit is sustained by no bodily place, so too there is no need for the spiritual body then to be supported by any place. For it is not the insensible body that quickens the spirit, but the spirit that quickens the body. Therefore no place supports the spiritual body, which will be subtler than every element, but as the spirit subsists illocally in God, the highest spirit; unless perhaps this is taken as its place, that it is circumscribed substantially and personally. Furthermore, either the saints remaining in this bodily world will see God, or they will be outside the world. If they are outside the world, then they are supported by no elemental matter, standing or sitting, because no element is proved to exist outside the world. For he who believes that earth or water is there is foolishly too earthly and fluid; but if he judges that air or fire is there, being himself unstable, he is counted ridiculous by the mobility of air and fire. Therefore outside the world they are supported by no material thing, where none is found. But if they are in this world, they will likewise cling to no element locally by standing or sitting, because they will be equal to the angels (Matt. 22:30).

Since, therefore, they are spiritual, they will abide in the highest spirit spiritually, not locally. Furthermore, the glory of those bodies must be contemplated not by reason but by faith alone. For then those bodies will be as agile as the mind, as transparent as the sun. For as quickly as the mind now reaches from East to West by thought, so quickly will that body then be able to reach there. This is gathered from the fact that the resurrection is read to be accomplished in the twinkling of an eye (1 Cor. 15:52). But the twinkling of an eye is not the opening of the eye, but the glancing of a ray of light upon an object with the eye open. But in truth the swiftness of that body differs from the twinkling of an eye as much as the agility of the mind differs from the body. The brightness of this body also is as great as that of the spirit; for this body is not a burden to the soul but an adornment, since no corruptible mass weighs it down, but the equality of the angelic nature makes it light. The brightness of this body also surpasses the sun as much as the sun surpasses our body in brightness. For the sun is an insensible body, and although it is changed, it will nevertheless never be made alive; but that body will be sensible, vital, and intellectual. Therefore, as much as the intellectual spirit differs from insensible air, so much does the splendid brightness of that body differ from the brightness of the sun.

CHAPTER XLVI. On the common and special glory of the Saints. Hence a question of no small importance arises. For since the Lord says, The righteous shall shine as the sun (Matthew 13:43), and the Apostle says, There is one glory of the sun, another glory of the moon, another glory of the stars; for star differs from star in glory; so also is the resurrection of the dead (1 Corinthians 15:41): the Apostle seems to hold a view contrary to the Lord, namely that those whom the Lord here declares to shine as the sun, the Apostle asserts that some shine as various stars, others as the moon, others as the sun. But it must be known that the Lord expressed the glory of the saints in a general way, whereas the Apostle distinguished the glory of each individual according to merits. Therefore the least in the kingdom of heaven will shine as the sun, which will then be seven times brighter than it is now (Isaiah 30:26). And in this brightness each one differs from another according to merits, as much as star differs from star in brightness. But others surpass these in the glory of such diverse brightness, as the morning star surpasses the Pleiades, the moon surpasses the morning star, and the sun surpasses the moon in brightness. But the whole body of Christ exceeds all of us in brightness as much as the Creator transcends the creature; whence also it is written that he sits at the right hand of God the Father (Colossians 3:1), because he is believed to shine in the glory of divine majesty. Therefore such a vision and such glory is called the kingdom of heaven, because only the citizens of heaven, that is, the righteous, enjoy this vision; their supreme reward is the highest good, in which they have full joy from the fullness of all goods.

CHAPTER XLVII. That the saints will delight not in sensible things, but in the highest good. The heaven of heavens. The chain of virtues. And so it is concluded that the saints will not delight in sensible things, but will glory that they are in the highest good, and that by seeing and enjoying the highest good in every creature and beyond every creature. For if they were to receive anything less than the highest good as their reward, they would still desire more; and it would follow that they would not have full joy. But since it is certain that they have full joy, it necessarily follows that they have God, the highest good, and abound in his overflowing fullness of all goods. Now when the heaven of heavens is read of, God himself is understood; because the heavens, that is the righteous, are hidden in the secret of his face from the disturbance of men (Psalm 30:21). Whence it is written, Having treasure in heaven (Matthew 19:21), that is, in God. To this highest good the righteous are drawn by a certain chain, which is linked from the virtues in this manner. First faith embraces the soul as a kind of circle; to faith hope is joined; hope is held by love; love is fulfilled by action; action is drawn to the highest good by intention; the intention of good is closed by perseverance; to perseverance God, the fount of all goods, will be given. Therefore he who, drawn by this chain and climbing this tower, has reached its summit, will rejoice that he not only knows the true life, but also lives blessedly in it forever; because in it he will be a sharer of this glory.

DISCIPLE: May God make you a partaker of true life and of all who live blessedly, who leads us all to the highest good. Amen.