414

making its entrance, confirmed against us the dominion of corruption, being ruled having been voluntarily and wholly ceded to God who rules well, by ceasing to will anything contrary to what God wills; just as the Savior says to the Father, forming our state in himself: Yet not as I will, but as you will. And after him the divine Paul, as if having denied himself and no longer knowing that he has a life of his own: For I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. But let not what is said trouble you. For I do not say that there is an abolition of free will, but rather a firm and unchangeable positing according to nature, that is, a volitional cession, so that from whence we have our being, we may long to receive our movement, as the image comes to the archetype, and like a seal, the impression is well-fitted to the archetype, no longer having or being able to be borne elsewhere, or to speak more clearly and truly, no longer being able to will, since the divine energy has taken hold, or rather having become God by deification, and taking more pleasure in the ecstasy from things that are and are conceived naturally in it, on account of the conquering grace of the Spirit, and showing that it has only God working, so that there is one and only energy through all things, of God and of those worthy of God, or rather of God alone, as He in a manner befitting his goodness has interpenetrated the worthy, whole in whole. For all authoritative motion according to desire must cease from all things concerning anything else, when the ultimate object of desire has appeared and is partaken of, and is contained, so to speak, uncontainably in proportion to the capacity of the participants; toward which every sublime way of life and thought hastens, "and at which all desire comes to rest, and beyond which it is in no way carried; for it has it not, and toward which every motion of the earnest tends, and in which, when they have arrived, is the repose of all contemplation," says this blessed teacher. (1077) For then nothing is shown outside of God, or appears to be weighed against God, so as to entice the desire of anyone to incline toward it, since all things, both intelligible and sensible, are comprehended by Him in His ineffable manifestation and presence, just as in the daytime the starry lights are themselves covered, and are not even known by the senses to exist. But with God this is even more so, inasmuch as the interval and difference between the uncreated and created things is infinite. For then, learning, as I think, the existence of beings according to their essence in what, how, and for what they are, we shall not be moved according to knowledge toward anything desirable, since our knowledge of each thing and concerning each thing after God has been brought to its end, and only the infinite and divine and incomprehensible lies before us and is partaken of by us enjoyably and in proportion. And this is what is most profoundly philosophized according to this God-bearing teacher, "that we shall one day know even as we have been known, when we have united this God-like and divine thing, I mean our mind and reason, to that which is its own, and the image ascends to the archetype, for which it now has desire." Therefore, concerning the non-existence of the much-talked-of henad, and how, suggestively from the thoughts and reasonings of Scripture now attainable by us, the state of future things will be, let these things have been said. But concerning how, being a portion of God, we flowed away from God, I will make my argument from this point, with God leading.

For who, knowing by reason and wisdom that beings were brought by God from non-being into being, if he were to wisely bring the contemplative faculty of the soul to the infinite difference and variety of natural beings, and with his investigative reason distinguish by conception the logos according to which they were created, being co-distinguished by the indivisible difference of the things that have come into being, on account of their unconfused particularity in relation to one another and to themselves? And again one the many, existing unconfusedly through himself in the reference of all things to him, the enhypostatic and consubstantial God the Word of God the Father, as beginning and cause