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YOU must then, if you want to get at the true knowledge of the
Scriptures, endeavour first to secure steadfast humility of heart, to carry
you on by the perfection of love not to the knowledge which puffeth up, but
to that which enlightens. For it is an impossibility for an impure mind to
gain the gift of spiritual knowledge. And therefore with every possible
care avoid this, lest through your zeal for reading there arise in you not
the light of knowledge nor the lasting glory which is promised through the
light that comes from learning but only the instruments of your destruction
from vain arrogance. Next you must by all means strive to get rid of all
anxiety and worldly thoughts, and give yourself over assiduously or rather
continuously, to sacred reading, until continual meditation fills your
heart, and fashions you so to speak after its own likeness, making of it,
in a way, an ark of the testimony, which has within it two tables of
stone, i.e., the constant assurance of the two testaments; and a golden
pot, i.e., a pure and undefiled memory which preserves by a constant
tenacity the manna stored up in it, i.e., the enduring and heavenly
sweetness of the spiritual sense and the bread of angels; moreover also the
rod of Aaron, i.e., the saving standard of Jesus Christ our true High
Priest, that ever buds with the freshness of immortal memory. For this is
the rod which after it had been cut from the root of Jesse, died and
flourished again with a more vigorous life. But all these are guarded by
two Cherubim, i.e., the fulness of historical and spiritual knowledge. For
the Cherubim mean a multitude of knowledge: and these continually protect
the mercy seat of God, i.e., the peace of your heart, and overshadow it
from all the assaults of spiritual wickedness. And so your soul will be
carried forward not only to the ark of the Divine Covenant, but also to the
priestly kingdom, and owing to its unbroken love of purity being as it were
engrossed in spiritual studies, will fulfil the command given to the
priests, enjoined as follows by the giver of the Law: "And he shall not go
forth from the sanctuary, lest he pollute the Sanctuary of God," i.e.,
his heart, in which the Lord promised that he would ever dwell, saying: "I
will dwell in them and will walk among them." Wherefore the whole series
of the Holy Scriptures should be diligently committed to memory and
ceaselessly repeated. For this continual meditation will bring us a twofold
fruit: first, that while the attention of the mind is taken up in reading
and preparing the lessons it cannot possibly be taken captive in any snares
of bad thoughts: next that those things which were conned over and
frequently repeated and which while we were trying to commit them to memory
we could not understand as the mind was at that time taken up, we can
afterward see more clearly, when we are free from the distraction of all
acts and visions, and especially when we reflect on them in silence in our
meditation by night. So that when we are at rest, and as it were plunged in
the stupor of sleep, there is revealed to us the understanding of the most
secret meanings, of which in our waking hours we had not the remotest
conception.
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