OF PHILOXENUS OF MABBUG

THREE THEOLOGICAL TREATISES

[TREATISE ONE

ON THE TRINITY] ¹.

5 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 3.

. . . . . . . . [he] turns his thought to labors, in order
to inspect the treasure of the knowledge of the mysteries of the Most High, because he has placed his gaze at his own feet, either considering lest he stumble on the path of the laws, or looking lest he turn to the right or to the
10 left from the path of the commandments. For when a person has crossed the burdensome path, and his mind is gathered from the sight and wandering around every part, then he looks straight ahead without obstacle, and sees Him who is placed before his face, whose also . . . . ²
was placed. For Jesus humbles Himself to those who know Him,
15 and makes it so that whoever perceives Him perceives Him, and truly understands Him are those who, according to their own virtue, have fore-
known Him. But when someone has labored in that exercise
from which he began to keep the commandments, and has overcome all the degrees of the keeping of the commandments, and has entirely killed in himself the old man
20 of concupiscence, and his renewal has been manifested to him through knowledge by means of intellectual sight, and he has been made a new man in the way in which grace begot him, and he has perceived his second birth through knowledge, in the generation of grace which,
until he was born from it, he had not sensed; and he saw his own nature p. 4

25 true, which is born from baptism, through spiritual intellect,
when there is no longer in him even the slightest memory of
former antiquity; and he stood in the place of knowledge which the first
man lost: then such a person alone can receive into his intellect
[the communion] ² of the true love which is in Christ, so that

¹ Two folios are missing at the beginning. — ² Word deleted in the codex.