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

"leave your land," original: "γῆν," (Gen. 12:1) which is the body, and your "kinship," which is sense-perception, and your "father’s house," which is speech, but also flee from yourself, and depart from yourself, just like those who are frenzied and possessed, having been initiated into the mysteries and god-possessed according to some prophetic divine inspiration. For when the mind is inspired and no longer in itself, but is agitated and maddened by heavenly love, and is pulled upward to Him, truth proceeding and restraining the things under its feet so that it might walk upon the highway of the road, it is to become an heir of divine things. How, then, do you migrate from those former things, tell us confidently, O mind, or do you sound forth to those taught to hear the intelligible things, always saying that I migrated from the body when I disregarded the flesh; and from sense-perception, whenever I imagined all sensible things as being what they are truly; condemning its criteria as corrupted, and bribed, and filled with false opinion, and condemning also the things judged, as having been prepared to entice, and deceive, and snatch the truth from the middle of nature. I migrated also from speech, when I condemned much irrationality in it, even though it raised itself high and puffed itself up. For it dared a no small daring, to show me bodies through shadows, and things through words, which was impossible. Therefore, it flowed around those who were stumbling and chattered, being unable to manifest the properties of the underlying things with clear emphasis due to the commonality of names. Having suffered like a foolish and infant child, I knew that it was better to depart from all these, and to dedicate the powers of each to God, who even gives body to the body and makes it firm, and prepares sense-perception to perceive, and offers speech to reason.