anchors 541–550

25. He who persuades himself that physical self-indulgence is commanded by God in the Law gleefully accepts gluttony as a gift from God. In this spirit he develops forms of behavior which pollute the senses through misuse. senses, and which in the shape of mental images provides the passion with suitable matter to work on. [00542] 26. When the soul’s contemplative faculty embraces self-indulgence as a divine command, it makes an unnatural use of the senses, not allowing them to express themselves at all in accordance with nature. In these circumstances the soul’s contemplative faculty begets an implicit or else an active state of passion, and accepts gluttony as a divine prescription, thus developing forms of behavior that defile the senses by misuse and destroy the natural principles and seeds in created beings. [00543] 27. Nobody can embrace the least natural principle or thought if he devotes himself merely to a literal observance of the Law, since symbols and nature are not identical. Because of the difference between symbols and Ac nature of created beings, a person who stops short at the symbols of the Law is incapable of a noetic vision of the nature of created beings and cannot encompass the inner essences implanted in them by their Creator. [00544] 28. He whose God is his belly and who prides himself on his ignominy as if it were something splendid (cf. Phil. 3:19) is merely cleaving to the shameful passions as if they were divine. Because of this he pursues only what is temporal, that is to say, matter and form and the perverted impulses of the five senses. When the senses combine with matter and form they produce passion, killing and effacing natural principles. For, in accordance with the principle of being, passion and nature in no way coexist with each other: the principle of nature is never naturally conjoined with passion, and passion is never co-engendered with nature. [00545] Fifth Century [00546] 25. He who does not believe that the scriptures are spiritual is unaware of his lack of spiritual knowledge, yet wastes away with hunger. Strictly speaking, however, hunger is a deprivation of blessings that we already know by experience and a total absence and dearth of the spiritual nourishment that sustains the soul. How, then, can one regard as hunger or loss one’s complete destitution with regard to what one has never once known in any way at all? [00547] 30. The truly hungry are the faithful who have already acquired knowledge of the truth. So, too, is the soul of every man who has abandoned the grace of spiritual contemplation and become a slave to the literal and external forms of religion; for he does not nourish his intellect with the splendor of his intellections, but imbues his perception with impassioned fantasies derived from the material aspects of scriptural symbols. [00548] 31. Everyone who does not apply himself to the spiritual con-templation of Holy Scripture has, Judaic-wise, also rejected both the natural and the written law; and he is ignorant of the law of grace which confers deification on those who are obedient to it. He who understands the written law in a literal manner does not nourish his soul with the virtues. He who does not grasp the inner principles of created beings fails to feast his intellect on the manifold wisdom of God. And he who is ignorant of the great mystery of the new grace does not rejoice in the hope of future deification. Thus failure to contemplate the written law spiritually results in a dearth of the divine wisdom to be apprehended in the natural law; and this in its turn is followed by a complete ignorance of the deification given by grace according to the new mystery. [00549] 32. Every intellect endowed by the grace of Christ with discriminative and penetrating vision, always desires said seeks the face of the Lord. The face of the Lord is true contemplation and Spiritual knowledge of divine things attained through virtue. When one seeks this contemplation and knowledge one learns the cause of one’s destitution and dearth. For just as the face is the distinctive feature of each person, so spiritual knowledge Is th special characteristic of what is divine. He who seeks such knowledge is said to seek the face of the Lord. But the person who has become carnal through bloody sacrifices performed in accordance with the letter of the Law possesses the ignorance which he desires; for he accepts commandments [00550] Fifth Century only for the pleasure they give to the flesh and he confines his perception literally to the material sense of the written word.