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THEONAS: Your zeal indeed, whereby you desire to reach the way of
perfection, not for a moment only but fully and perfectly, urges us to
continue this discussion unweariedly. For you are anxiously inquiring not
about external chastity or outward circumcision, but about that which is
secret, as you know that complete perfection does not consist in this
visible continence of the flesh which can be attained either by constraint,
or by hypocrisy even by unbelievers, but in that voluntary and invisible
purity of heart, which the blessed Apostle describes as follows: "For he is
not a Jew which is so outwardly, nor is that circumcision which is outward
in the flesh, but he is a Jew which is one inwardly, and the circumcision
is that of the heart, in the spirit not in the letter, whose praise is not
of men but of God," who alone searches the secrets of the heart. But
because it is not possible for your wish to be fully satisfied (as the
short space of the night that is left is not enough for the investigation
of this most difficult question,) I think it well to postpone it for a
while. For these matters, as they should be propounded by us quietly and
with an heart entirely free from all bustling thoughts, so should they be
received into your minds; for just as the inquiry ought to be undertaken
for the sake of our common purity, so they cannot be learnt or acquired by
one who is without the gift of uprightness. For we do not ask what
arguments of empty words, but what the inward faith of the conscience and
the greater force of truth can persuade. And therefore with regard to the
knowledge and teaching of this purification nothing can be brought forward
except by one who has had experience of it, nor can anything be committed
except to one who is a most eager and very earnest lover of the truth
itself, who does not hope to attain it by asking questions with mere vain
words, but by striving with all his might and main, with no wish for
useless chattering but with the desire to purify himself internally.
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