Basel, Universitätsbibliothek, AN I 8

...refutation; but what exactly and to what extent; let us say this for the rest: why before all things, and why thus, and what in what way. Not of all equally, because everything that the soul [is]; and to those of the better and good; and to those who will act divinely; for it must be judged to remain before us for those who will harmonize with this opinion; and therefore that which pertains to philosophizing and ascending by contemplation. Since it is impossible to grasp contemplation within, unless one has first been purified by the purification of life through action; there is, even before the ascent to contemplation, benefit even before these things; from the state of being purified; and by means of the things that happen, perhaps even the body [is] purely [purified]. Therefore, of the things of purification, nothing is better; wherefore the more moderate course is to be set even for these. One might say that purification, and the
From Plato

contemplation resulting from it, ought to be greatly honored, as if it were a work and possession of Plato; since it is the center; that for the one who is not pure, to touch the pure is not lawful. One must no less bring forward [what] the Theologian [says], that it is not even safe; for it is not only unlawful, but also dangerous and difficult. For just as the brilliance of the sun is not carelessly safe for the movement of the eyes; not entirely, then, that which concerns philosophizing. For these reasons, before this, one must deliberate in stillness, and to know divine things from God; and that divination exists for things to come, Plato also mentions these things that have been said. But seeing that the many reasonably speak of the outer body; nor the soul; by which indeed those many things [exist], the soul itself. For even of the soul itself, there is the "mind of the flesh"; and those external things themselves; concerning the incorporeal things themselves. For what of the fantasies of external things? Which we hardly know, as being of wretched matters. At least for those, then, concerning which the judgments of these things cease through toil, as if of ships and conditions and deceptions. For if it were possible for a city to touch these things that pertain to piety, it would be a certain portion of these delights below. It is turbid and it muddies [the waters], of which we speak, because of the confusion and the carnal passions being mixed up with those things that tend toward the divine, and they do not permit its form to be pure; just as he says in his writings to me. For most beautifully, if the vessel is stirred up, so also the soul itself is confused by the souls of those remaining from all the types of things.
For knowing God, from useful things

Clear also is the example of the Euripus and of the Lord’s work; for the servitude of the Euripus is required and it is confused, [with] mixed forms. But the leisure and knowledge of God and so forth, has been handed down by our teachers; for it is necessary to "be still and know that I am God." And again: he who has suffered... of the humble. And those which are leisures; those which also make divine, by the power of the will of the gods. Toward sins one must [attend], and toward grief and harm; concerning the fact that it is not among the wicked, one must therefore guard against them. And from the servitude of their labor-bearing, that which is according to wrath; he sends, he receives toward existence; and into many superfluous bodies. And from this, the not having self-will at all; which is another repository and step from humility, for those who have rightly been at leisure from affairs, we do not need the necessity of God. For what portion is there with the world and with the eyes of these people toward God himself? They are able to attend to the boundaries toward God; and may it be possible to contemplate the things lying there by His contemplations. Whenever we are fully at leisure from the body, and whenever directly and toward the things of the divine there, we shall bring forward the contemplations of God; and to set in order our uprightness; as a seed of all other skeptical things; and the uprightness of the better ones after us.