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| Chapter LX
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Chapter LX.
And as we teach, moreover, that “wisdom will
not enter into the soul of a base man, nor dwell in a body that is
involved in sin,”3614
we say, Whoever has
clean hands, and therefore lifts up holy hands to God, and by reason of
being occupied with elevated and heavenly things, can say, “The
lifting up of my hands is as the evening sacrifice,”3615
let him come to us; and whoever has a wise
tongue through meditating on the law of the Lord day and night, and by
“reason of habit has his senses exercised to discern between good
and evil,” let him have no reluctance in coming to the strong and
rational sustenance which is adapted to those who are athletes in piety
and every virtue. And since the grace of God is with all those
who love with a pure affection the teacher of the doctrines of
immortality, whoever is pure not only from all defilement, but from
what are regarded as lesser transgressions, let him be boldly initiated
in the mysteries of Jesus, which properly are made known only to the
holy and the pure. The initiated of Celsus accordingly says,
“Let him whose soul is conscious of no evil come.”
But he who acts as initiator, according to the precepts of Jesus, will
say to those who have been purified in heart, “He whose soul has,
for a long time, been conscious of no evil, and especially since he
yielded himself to the healing of the word, let such an one hear the
doctrines which were spoken in private by Jesus to His genuine
disciples.” Therefore in the comparison which he institutes
between the procedure of the initiators into the Grecian mysteries, and
the teachers of the doctrine of Jesus, he does not know the difference
between inviting the wicked to be healed, and initiating those already
purified into the sacred mysteries!E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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