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| Chapter XXXVI. The answer, telling that this question should be reserved for a future Conference.
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Chapter XXXVI.
The answer, telling that this question should be
reserved for a future Conference.
Theonas: Your zeal
indeed, whereby you desire to reach the way of perfection, not for a
moment only but fully and perfectly, urges us to continue this
discussion unweariedly. For you are anxiously inquiring not about
external chastity or outward circumcision, but about that which is
secret, as you know that complete perfection does not consist in this
visible continence of the flesh which can be attained either by
constraint, or by hypocrisy even by unbelievers, but in that voluntary
and invisible purity of heart, which the blessed Apostle describes as
follows: “For he is not a Jew which is so outwardly, nor is that
circumcision which is outward in the flesh, but he is a Jew which is
one inwardly, and the circumcision is that of the heart, in the spirit
not in the letter, whose praise is not of men but of
God,”2228
who alone
searches the secrets of the heart. But because it is not possible for
your wish to be fully satisfied (as the short space of the night that
is left is not enough for the investigation of this most difficult
question,) I think it well to postpone it for a while. For these
matters, as they should be propounded by us quietly and with an heart
entirely free from all bustling thoughts, so should they be received
into your minds; for just as the inquiry ought to be undertaken for the
sake of our common purity, so they cannot be learnt or acquired by one
who is without the gift of uprightness. For we do not ask what
arguments of empty words, but what the inward faith of the conscience
and the greater force of truth can persuade. And therefore with regard
to the knowledge and teaching of this purification nothing can be
brought forward except by one who has had experience of it, nor can
anything be committed except to one who is a most eager and very
earnest lover of the truth itself, who does not hope to attain it by
asking questions with mere vain words, but by striving with all his
might and main, with no wish for useless chattering but with the desire
to purify himself internally.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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