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You drive men, therefore, into the most palpable error. And yet you
are not ashamed of doing so much harm, though you call yourself a lover
of virtue and wisdom. Had you been true and faithful in this
profession, you would have recognized Christ, the virtue of God and
the wisdom of God, and would not, in the pride of vain science, have
revolted from His wholesome humility. Nevertheless you acknowledge
that the spiritual part of the soul can be purified by the virtue of
chastity without the aid of those theurgic arts and mysteries which you
wasted your time in learning. You even say, sometimes, that these
mysteries do not raise the soul after death, so that, after the
termination of this life, they seem to be of no service even to the
part you call spiritual; and yet you recur on every opportunity to
these arts, for no other purpose, so far as I see, than to appear an
accomplished theurgist, and gratify those who are curious in illicit
arts, or else to inspire others with the same curiosity. But we give
you all praise for saying that this art is to be feared, both on
account of the legal enactments against it, and by reason of the danger
involved in the very practice of it. And would that in this, at
least, you were listened to by its wretched votaries, that they might
be withdrawn from entire absorption in it, or might even be preserved
from tampering with it at all! You say, indeed, that ignorance, and
the numberless vices resulting from it, cannot be removed by any
mysteries, but only by the patrikos nous, that is, the Father's
mind or intellect conscious of the Father's will. But that Christ
is this mind you do not believe; for Him you despise on account of the
body He took of a woman and the shame of the cross; for your lofty
wisdom spurns such low and contemptible things, and soars to more
exalted regions. But He fulfills what the holy prophets truly
predicted regarding Him: "I will destroy the wisdom of the wise,
and bring to nought the prudence of the prudent." For He does not
destroy and bring to nought His own gift in them, but what they
arrogate to themselves, and do not hold of Him. And hence the
apostle, having quoted this testimony from the prophet, adds,
"Where is the wise? where is the scribe? where is the disputer of
this world? Hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? For
after that, in the wisdom of God, the world by wisdom knew not God,
it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that
believe. For the Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after
wisdom; but we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a
stumbling-block, and unto the Greeks foolishness; but unto them
which are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God,
and the wisdom of God. Because the foolishness of God is wiser than
men; and the weakness of God is stronger than men." This is
despised as a weak and foolish thing by those who are wise and strong in
themselves; yet this is the grace which heals the weak, who do not
proudly boast a blessedness of their own, but rather humbly acknowledge
their real misery.
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