Page:Isaac of nineveh mystical treatises.djvu/4

 imagining them. Nor do the affections cease, nor evil thoughts end except in the desert and the wilderness.

While the soul has not yet become drunk by the faith in God, in that it has received an impression of its powers, the weakness of the senses cannot be healed and it is not able to tread down with force visible matter which is a screen before what is within and not perceived [by the senses].

Reason is the cause of freedom and the fruit of both liability to err. Without the first, the second cannot be. And where the second fails, there is the third bound as it were with halters.

When grace is abundant in man, then the fear of death is despised on account of the love of righteousness. He finds many arguments in his soul [proving] that it is becoming to bear troubles for the sake of the fear of God. And those things which are supposed to injure the body, and to repel nature injustly, which consequently are of a nature to cause suffering, are reckoned in his eye as nothing in comparison with what is expected to be. And his mind convinces him firmly of the fact that it is not possible to recognize truth without gaining experience of the affections, and that God bestows great care upon man, and that he is not abandoned to chance. Especially those who are trained in praying unto Him and who bear suffering for His sake, see [these truths] clearly [as if painted] in colours. But when little faith takes root in our heart, then all these things are felt as contrary, not as serving for testing us.

And that we are not always successful in trusting in God, and that God does not care for thee as it is supposed, is often insinuated by those who lay ambushes and shoot their arrows in the darkness.

The foundation of man’s true life, is the fear of God. And this does not consent to dwell in the soul as long as there exists the distraction of [outward] things. For the heart, by the service of the senses, is turned away from the delight in God.

The inward impulses are bound up in their sensible faculty with the senses administering to them.

The doubt of the heart introduces fear into the soul. But faith is able to make manly the mind, even under the cutting off of the limbs. As long as the love of the body is strong in thee, thou art not able to be courageous and without fear