20.  "No other creature," he says, separates us.  O man of profound mysteries!  He thought it not enough to say, no creature:  but he says no other creature; teaching that with which we love God and by which we cleave to God, our mind, namely, and understanding, is itself a creature.  Thus the body is another creature; and if the mind is an object of intellectual perception, and is known only by this means, the other creature is all that is an object of sense, which as it were makes itself known through the eyes, or ears, or smell, or taste, or touch, and this must be inferior to what is perceived by the intellect alone.  Now, as God also can be known by the worthy, only intellectually,⁵⁷

57 [I.e. only by the use of the mental faculty of which God Himself is the Creator and Author; not by any independently existing power "of the same nature with Him who created it."—A.H.N.]

21.  The farther, then, the mind departs from God, not in space, but in affection and lust after things below Him, the more it is filled with folly and wretchedness.  So by love it returns to God,—a love which places it not along with God, but under Him.  And the more ardor and eagerness there is in this, the happier and more elevated will the mind be, and with God as sole governor it will be in perfect liberty.  Hence it must know that it is a creature.  It must believe what is the truth,—that its Creator remains ever possessed of the inviolable and immutable nature of truth and wisdom, and must confess, even in view of the errors from which it desires deliverance, that it is liable to folly and falsehood.  But then again, it must take care that it be not separated by the love of the other creature, that is, of this visible world, from the love of God Himself, which sanctifies it in order to lasting happiness.  No other creature, then,—for we are ourselves a creature,—separates us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH