XIV. (42) On which account in another passage also he boasts, saying “the Lord the God of Heaven, and the God of earth who took me out of the house of my Father.”{24}{#ge 24:7.} For it is not possible for one who dwells in the body and belongs to the race of mortals to be united with God, but he alone can be so whom God delivers from that prison house of the body. (43) On which account also, that joy of the soul, Isaac, when he is conversing and discoursing privately with God, comes forth forsaking himself and his own mind, for he says, “Come forth, O Isaac, to converse in the plain towards Evening,”{25}{#ge 24:62.} and Moses, that word of prophecy, says, “When I go forth from the city,” that is from my soul, (for the soul is the city of the living creature, in as much as it is the soul which gives it its laws and customs), “I will stretch forth my Hands,”{26}{#ex 9:29.} and I will reveal and unfold all my actions to God, invoking him as a witness and inspector of every one of them, from whom it is impossible by its own nature that vice should be hidden, but to whom it must be unfolded and by whom it must be clearly discerned.
(44) When therefore the soul is made manifest in all its sayings and doings, and is made a partaker of the divine nature, the voices of the external senses are reduced to silence, and so likewise are all troublesome and ill-omened sounds, for the objects of sight often speak loudly and invite the sense of sight to themselves; and so do voices invite the sense of hearing; scents invite the smell, and altogether each varied object of sense invites its appropriate sense. But all these things are put at rest when the mind going forth out of the city of the soul, attributes all its own actions and conceptions to God.
Page 12345678910111213141516171819202122232425262728293031323334353637383940414243444546474849505152535455565758596061626364
