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are privations, the one of wisdom, the other of power, the other of prudence, but when spoken of God they clearly signify an excess of wisdom and power and prudence. If, therefore, something among us is said by way of privation, it is right to understand it as signifying a state when said of God, and conversely, if something is said of us by way of a state, it is most fitting to understand it as signifying a privation in God on account of His preeminence. For the divine excesses, even when spoken of by us by way of privation through contradiction, fall far short of the true manifestation of their meaning. If this is true according to the probable argument (for divine things never coincide with human things), then the foolishness of God and the weakness of God according to the holy apostle Paul, and the play of God according to Gregory the wonderful and great teacher, is the mystery of the divine incarnation, as having super-essentially transcended every order and harmony of every nature, power, and energy, which the most divine David, having beheld from afar in his mind by the divine Spirit and been initiated, and as it were pre-interpreting the Apostle's saying about the surpassing state of God through privation, crying out, wisely I think, against the Jews: In the multitude of thy power thy enemies shall lie to thee. For every man is certainly an enemy of God and is clearly made a liar who ignorantly and impiously confines God by the law of nature, and does not begin (1412) to believe that He who impassibly and supernaturally came to be essentially in things under nature could do all things according to nature. Thus, therefore, for the time being, the discourse has dared to consider conjecturally, in one attempt, the foolish, the weak, and the play of God, with which, in a digression, as a preliminary paradigmatic consideration of the proposed difficulty, and taking the abyss calling upon the abyss at the voice of the divine cataracts to mean that the gnostic mind receives what is called wisdom, it has indicated some small manifestation of the mysteries of the divine and ineffable condescension. For abyss and the place of the abyss are named homonymously, and the place of divine wisdom is the pure mind. Therefore, by position, on account of its receptivity, the mind is also called an abyss, and wisdom again is called the same on account of its nature.

Another contemplation on the same. And examining the proposed difficulty in another way with the help of divine

grace, conjecturally but not declaratively (for the one is moderate, the other rash), we dare to undertake the proposed saying, asserting that the projection of the middle things, perhaps, having an equal distance from the extremes, was called the play of God by the great teacher, on account of their transient and easily changeable state, or rather, it is more fitting to say, a stationary flux. Which is also paradoxical, to behold a state ever flowing and being carried along, and an ever-moving flux providentially devised by God for the betterment of the things administered, able to make wise those who are instructed by it, to hope that they will certainly be transferred elsewhere, and to believe that the end of the mystery concerning them will be surely deified by grace through inclination towards God. And by middle things I mean the completion of the things seen that are now around man or in which man is, and by extremes the substance of the things not seen which are infallibly to be around man, of those things which have been made and have come to be properly and truly according to the ineffable and pre-eminent purpose and reason of the divine goodness. Just as the wise Ecclesiastes with a great and clear eye of the soul, having peered beyond the generation of things seen and flowing, and as it were in a phantasy of the things that truly

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στερήσεις εἰσίν, ἡ μέν σοφίας, ἡ δέ δυνάμεως, ἡ δέ φρονήσεως, ἐπί Θεοῦ δέ λεγόμεναι σοφίας καί δυνάμεως καί φρονήσεως ὑπερβολήν σαφῶς ὑποδηλοῦσιν. Εἴ τι οὖν παρ᾿ ἡμῖν κατά στέρησιν λέγοιτο, ἐπί Θεοῦ λεγόμενον ἕξιν ὑποδηλοῦν πάντως ἐκδέχεσθαι δίκαιον, καί τό ἔμπαλιν, εἴ τι κατά ἕξιν ἐφ᾿ ἡμῶν λέγοιτο, ἐπί Θεοῦ στέρησιν διά τήν ὑπεροχήν ἐκδέχεσθαι δηλοῦν πρεπωδέστατον. Αἱ γάρ τῶν θείων ὑπερβολαί καί κατά στέρησιν δι᾿ ἀντιφάσεως λεγόμεναι παρ᾿ ἡμῶν ἀποδέουσι πολύ τῆς ἀληθοῦς καθ᾿ ὅν εἰσι λόγον ἐμφάσεως. Εἰ δέ τοῦτο κατά τόν εἰκότα λόγον ἐστίν ἀληθές (οὐ γάρ συμβαίνει πώποτε τά θεῖα τοῖς ἀνθρωπίνοις ), ἄρα μωρία Θεοῦ καί ἀσθένεια κατά τόν ἅγιον ἀπόστολον Παῦλον, καί παίγνιον Θεοῦ κατά Γρηγόριον τόν θαυμαστόν καί μέγαν διδάσκαλον, τό μυστήριόν ἐστι τῆς θείας ἐνανθρωπήσεως, ὡς πάσης φύσεως δυνάμεώς τε καί ἐνεργείας πᾶσαν ὑπερουσίως ἐκβεβηκός τάξιν καί ἁρμονίαν, ὅπερ πνεύματι θείῳ πόῤῥωθεν κατά νοῦν θεασάμενος καί μυηθείς ὁ θειότατος ∆αβίδ, καί οἷον τήν τοῦ Ἀποστόλου λεγομένην διά στερήσεως ὑπερβάλλουσαν ἕξιν τοῦ Θεοῦ προερμηνεύων, Ἰουδαίων, σοφῶς οἶμαι, καταβοῶν· Ἐν τῷ πλήθει τῆς δυνάμεώς σου ψεύσονταί σε οἱ ἐχθροί σου. Πᾶς γάρ ἄνθρωπος ἐχθρός πάντως τοῦ Θεοῦ καί ψεύστης προδήλως καθίσταται ὁ τόν Θεόν τῷ νόμῳ τῆς φύσεως ἀμαθῶς τε καί ἀσεβῶς περικλείων, καί ἀπαθῶς ὑπέρ φύσιν ἐν τοῖς ὑπό φύσιν οὐσιωδῶς γενόμενον τά κατά φύσιν ὡς πάντα δυνάμενον ἐνεργῆσαι πιστεύειν μή (1412) ἀρχόμενος. Οὕτω μέν οὖν κατά μίαν ἐπιβολήν τέως θεωρῆσαι τό μωρόν τοῦ Θεοῦ καί τό ἀσθενές καί παίγνιον, στοχαστικῶς ὁ λόγος ἐτόλμησε, μεθ᾿ ὧν παρεκβατικῶς, ὡς προθεωρίαν παραδειγματικήν τοῦ προτεθέντος ἀπόρου, καί τήν ἄβυσσον τήν ἐπικαλουμένην τήν ἄβυσσον εἰς φωνήν τῶν θείων καταῤῥακτῶν λαβών ὁ λόγος νοῦν γνωστικόν εἶναι σοφίαν ἐπικαλούμενον δέξασθαι, μικράν τινα τῶν ἐπί τῇ θείᾳ καί ἀφράστῳ συγκαταβάσει μυστηρίων ἔμφασιν παρεδήλωσεν. Ἄβυσσος γάρ καί ὁ τῆς ἀβύσσου τόπος ὁμωνύμως ὀνομάζεται, τόπος δέ τῆς θείας σοφίας, ὁ καθαρός καθέστηκε νοῦς. Ἆρα θέσει διά τό δεκτικόν ἄβυσσος καί ὁ νοῦς προσαγορεύεται, καί ἡ σοφία πάλιν τό αὐτό διά τήν φύσιν κατανομάζεται.

Ἄλλη θεωρία εἰς τό αὐτό. Καθ' ἕτερον δέ τό προκείμενον ἄπορον διασκοποῦντες τρόπον τῇ βοηθείᾳ τῆς θείας

χάριτος στοχαστικῶς, ἀλλ᾿ οὐκ ἀποφαντικῶς (τό μέν γάρ μέτριον, τό δέ προπετές), ἐγχειρεῖν τῷ προκειμένῳ ῥητῷ τολμῶμεν, φάσκοντες τήν τῶν μέσων τυχόν προβολήν, κατά τό ἴσον ἀπό τῶν ἄκρων ἔχουσαν ἀπόστασιν, παίγνιον εἰρῆσθαι Θεοῦ τῷ μεγάλῳ διδασκάλῳ, διά τήν ἐπίῤῥυτον αὐτῶν καί εὐαλλοίωτον στάσιν, μᾶλλον δέ, στάσιμον ῥεῦσιν εἰπεῖν οἰκειότερον. Ὅ καί παράδοξον, στάσιν ἀεί ῥέουσαν καί φερομένην θεᾶσθαι, καί ῥεῦσιν ἀεικίνητον προνοητικῶς τῆς τῶν οἰκονομουμένων ἕνεκεν βελτιώσεως θεόθεν ἐπινενοημένην, τούς δι᾿ αὐτῆς παιδαγωγουμένους σοφίσαι δυναμένην, ἀλλαχοῦ μεταστήσεσθαι πάντως ἐλπίζειν, καί πέρας τοῦ κατ᾿ αὐτήν ἐπ᾿ αὐτοῖς μυστηρίου τῇ πρός Θεόν νεύσει βεβαίως διά τῆς χάριτος θεωθήσεσθαι πιστεύειν. Μέσα δέ λέγω τήν τῶν ὁρωμένων καί νῦν περί τόν ἄνθρωπον ὄντων ἤ ἐν οἷς ὁ ἄνθρωπος συμπλήρωσιν, ἄκρα δέ τήν τῶν μή φαινομένων καί περί τόν ἄνθρωπον ἀψευδῶς ἔσεσθαι μελλόντων ὑπόστασιν, τῶν κυρίως τε καί ἀληθῶς κατά τόν ἄῤῥητον καί προηγούμενον σκοπόν τε καί λόγον τῆς θείας ἀγαθότητος πεποιημένων τε καί γεγενημένων. Καθώς ὁ σοφός Ἐκκλησιαστής μεγάλῳ τε καί τρανῷ ψυχῆς ὄμματι τῶν ὁρωμένων τε καί ῥεόντων ὑπερκύψας τήν γένεσιν, καί οἷον ἐν φαντασίᾳ τῶν ἀληθῶς