PHIL. IUD. ON THE HEIR OF DIVINE THINGS §. 13. 14.

If someone longing for the ensanguined life, and still changing into those things according to sense, can become an heir of bodiless and divine things? Only the one breathed into from above, who has attained a heavenly and divine portion, the purest mind, is deemed worthy of these, disregarding not only the body but also the other part of the soul, which, being irrational, is mixed with blood, inflaming boiling tempers and burning desires. He asks, therefore, in this way: since you did not give me the self-taught seed, that intelligible one, will perhaps "my household servant inherit from me," original: "ὁ οἰκογενής μου κληρονομήσει με," (Gen. 15:3) the offspring of the ensanguined life? Then God, hastening, anticipated the speaker, sending forth, as it were, the instruction of the statement. "For immediately," he says, "a voice of God came to him, saying, this one shall not inherit from you," original: "Εὐθὺς γὰρ," φησὶ, "φωνὴ Θεοῦ ἐγένετο πρὸς αὐτὸν, τῷ λέγειν οὐ κληρονομήσει σε οὗτος," (Gen. 15:4) nor even one of those coming to the demonstration through sense. For bodiless natures are the heirs of intelligible things. It has been strictly observed that it did not say "he spoke to him," but "a voice of God came to him," as if it sounded forth intensely and unbrokenly; so that the voice, distributed throughout the whole soul, might leave no part empty and void of correct guidance, but that all might be filled by all through healthy learning.

§. 14. Who then will be the heir? Not the mind that remains in the prison of the body by voluntary choice, but the one loosened from the bonds and set free, and having gone outside the walls, and, if it is possible to say this, having left itself behind. "For whoever," he says, "will come out of you, this one will inherit from you." If therefore any desire enters you, O soul, to inherit the divine goods, do not only

*) Gen. 15, 3. — **) Gen. 15, 4.