Page:Isaac of nineveh mystical treatises.djvu/14

 From labour and watchfulness springs purity of deliberations. And from purity of deliberations inward light. And from here the mind is guided by Grace towards that which it is not allowed to the senses either to teach or to learn.

Let excellence be reckoned by thee as the body, contemplation as the soul. The two [form] one complete spiritual man, composed of sensible and intelligible parts. And as it is not possible that the soul reach existence and birth without the accomplished formation of the body, so it is not possible that contemplation, the second soul, the spirit of revelations, be formed in the womb of the intellect which receives the fulness of spiritual seed, without the corporeal performance of excellence, the dwellingplace of the knowledge which receives revelations.

Contemplation is the apprehension of the divine mysteries which are hidden in the things spoken.

When thou nearest of being far from the world, of leaving the world, of being pure from the world, thou art first in need of learning and knowing—not after the fashion of a novice, but with the impulses of gnosis—what the term world means, how many different meanings the word conveys. Then thou wilt be able thyself to know, in how far thou art distant from or connected with the world. If a man know not first what the world is, he cannot understand with how many limbs he is bound to or far from it.

There are many who think themselves wholly devoid of the world in their behaviour because on two or three points they refrain from it. [This is] because they have not understood nor perceived with discernment that they are dead to the world in one or two limbs, while others are living in the body of the