Page:Isaac of nineveh mystical treatises.djvu/5

 because of the many adversaries that are constantly present in the neighbourhood of him who is loved.

If any one is fond of honour, he cannot be without causes of distress.

There is no man, whose mind suffers not likewise a change with things, in whatever respect it may be.

If there is a second apperception of the senses, which generates and gives birth to desire, as Euagrius says, then those who dwell in doubt must keep silence, promising to preserve their mind in peace.

Not that one is chaste from whom evil impulses that intended to combat him, are withheld, but he whose uprightness of heart renders chaste the gaze of his mind, so that he does not audaciously enter upon lascivious thoughts; and the saintliness of his heart is testified by the gaze of his pupils, which are guarded faithfully, so that bashfulness screens, like a curtain, the hidden place of his thoughts. So that his purity, like that of a chaste virgin, is faithfully guarded for Christ.

There is nothing so apt to banish lascivious customs from the soul, and to restrain inciting memories which quicken the wild flames in the body, as burning for the love of teachings, and prosecuting investigations concerning the meaning of the words of the scriptures.

When the impulses are immersed in delight, after [having tasted] the wisdom contained in the [divine] words, by means of the faculty that absorbs information from them, then every man will leave the body behind him. Forgetting the world and all that is in it, he will also banish from his soul all recollections on which are based the images of the material world. And often the soul in its thoughts during ecstasy will desist from the use of the wonted deliberations—natural practice—by reason of the novel [experiences] which reach it from the sea of their mysteries.

Even when the mind is floating on its upper waters, without being able to make its impulses deep as the depth of the waters (so that it can see all the treasures in its abysses)—still meditation, by its [power of] love, will have sufficient force to bind the thoughts firmly together with thoughts of ecstasy so that they are checked from thinking of and running after