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| Chapter X. How to embrace the system of true knowledge.
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Chapter X.
How to embrace the system of true knowledge.
You must then, if you want to
get at the true knowledge of the Scriptures, endeavour
first to secure steadfast humility of
heart, to carry you on by the perfection of love not to the knowledge
which puffeth up, but to that which enlightens. For it is an
impossibility for an impure mind to gain the gift of spiritual
knowledge. And therefore with every possible care avoid this, lest
through your zeal for reading there arise in you not the light of
knowledge nor the lasting glory which is promised through the light
that comes from learning but only the instruments of your destruction
from vain arrogance. Next you must by all means strive to get rid of
all anxiety and worldly thoughts, and give yourself over assiduously or
rather continuously, to sacred reading, until continual meditation
fills your heart, and fashions you so to speak after its own likeness,
making of it, in a way, an ark of the testimony,1892
which has within it two tables of
stone, i.e., the constant assurance of the two testaments;1893
| 1893 Instrumentum is
a favourite word with Tertullian, who uses it more than once of the two
Testaments, e.g., Apol. xix.; and, Against Marcion iv. where he speaks
of the “Two Instruments, or, as it is usual to speak of the Two
Testaments.” | and a golden pot, i.e., a pure and
undefiled memory which preserves by a constant tenacity the manna
stored up in it, i.e., the enduring and heavenly sweetness of the
spiritual sense and the bread of angels; moreover also the rod of
Aaron, i.e., the saving standard of Jesus Christ our true High Priest,
that ever buds with the freshness of immortal memory. For this is the
rod which after it had been cut from the root of Jesse, died and
flourished again with a more vigorous life. But all these are guarded
by two Cherubim, i.e., the fulness of historical and spiritual
knowledge. For the Cherubim mean a multitude of knowledge: and these
continually protect the mercy seat of God, i.e., the peace of your
heart, and overshadow it from all the assaults of spiritual wickedness.
And so your soul will be carried forward not only to the ark of the
Divine Covenant, but also to the priestly kingdom, and owing to its
unbroken love of purity being as it were engrossed in spiritual
studies, will fulfil the command given to the priests, enjoined as
follows by the giver of the Law: “And he shall not go forth from
the sanctuary, lest he pollute the Sanctuary of God,”1894
i.e., his heart, in which the Lord
promised that he would ever dwell, saying: “I will dwell in them
and will walk among them.”1895
Wherefore
the whole series of the Holy Scriptures should be diligently committed
to memory and ceaselessly repeated. For this continual meditation will
bring us a twofold fruit: first, that while the attention of the mind
is taken up in reading and preparing the lessons it cannot possibly be
taken captive in any snares of bad thoughts: next that those things
which were conned over and frequently repeated and which while we were
trying to commit them to memory we could not understand as the mind was
at that time taken up, we can afterward see more clearly, when we are
free from the distraction of all acts and visions, and especially when
we reflect on them in silence in our meditation by night. So that when
we are at rest, and as it were plunged in the stupor of sleep, there is
revealed to us the understanding of the most secret meanings, of which
in our waking hours we had not the remotest
conception.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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