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THOSE on the other hand who make the sum of all their joy and delight
and bliss consist in the contemplation of divine and spiritual things
alone, if they are unwillingly withdrawn from them even for a short time by
thoughts that force themselves upon them, punish this as if it were a kind
of sacrilege in them, and avenge it by immediate chastisement, and in their
grief that they have preferred some worthless creature (to which their
mental gaze was turned aside) to their Creator, charge themselves with the
guilt (I had almost said) of impiety, and although they turn the eyes of
their heart with the utmost speed to behold the brightness of the Divine
Glory, yet they cannot tolerate even for a very short time the darkness of
carnal thoughts, and execrate whatever keeps back their soul's gaze from
the true light. Finally when the blessed Apostle John would instill this
feeling into everybody he says: "Little children, love not the world,
neither the things which are in the world. If any man love the world, the
love of God is not in him: for everything that is in the world is the lust
of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the pride of life, which is not
of the Father but of the world. And the world perisheth and the lust
thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth forever." The saints
therefore scorn all those things on which the world exists, but it is
impossible for them never to be carried away to them by a brief aberration
of thoughts, and even now no man, except our Lord and Saviour, can keep his
naturally wandering mind always fixed on the contemplation of God so as
never to be carried away from it through the love of something in this
world; as Scripture says: "Even the stars are not clean in His sight," and
again: "If He puts no trust in His saints, and findeth iniquity in His
angels," or as the more correct translation has it: "Behold among His
saints none is unchangeable, and the heavens are not pure in His sight."
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