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WE ought then to take the utmost care that our inner man as well may
cast off and make away with all those possessions of its sins, which it
acquired in its former life: which as they continually cling to body and
soul are our very own, and, unless we reject them and cut them off while we
are still in the flesh, will not cease to accompany us after death. For as
good qualities, or charity itself which is their source, may be gained in
this world, and after the close of this life make the man who loves it
lovely and glorious, so our faults transmit to that eternal remembrance a
mind darkened and stained with foul colours. For the beauty or ugliness of
the soul is the product of its virtues or its vices, the colour it takes
from which either makes it so glorious, that it may well hear from the
prophet "And the king shall have pleasure in thy beauty," or so black,
and foul, and ugly, that it must surely acknowledge the stench of its
shame, and say "My wounds stink and are corrupt because of my
foolishness," and the Lord Himself says to it "Why is not the wound of
the daughter of my people closed?" And therefore these are our very own
possessions, which continually remain with the soul, which no king and no
enemy can either give or take away from us. These are our very own
possessions which not even death itself can part from the soul, but by
renouncing which we can attain to perfection, and by clinging to which we
shall suffer the punishment of eternal death.
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