The Works of Dionysius the Areopagite

paired, are filled with every inspired harmony and holy comeliness. But pre-eminently, the Godhead is celebrated as loving toward man, because It truly and wholly shared, in one of Its Persons (subsistencies), in things belonging to us. By recalling to Itself and replacing the human extremity—out of which, in an unutterable manner, the simple Jesus original: "ἁπλοῦς Ἰησοῦς." was composed, and the Everlasting took on temporal duration—He, Who is superessentially exalted above every rank throughout all nature, became within our nature, while retaining the unchangeable and unconfused steadfastness of His own properties.

And whatever other divinely-wrought illuminations, conformable to the Oracles, the secret tradition of our inspired leaders bequeathed to us for our enlightenment, in these also we have been initiated. We know them now, according to our capacity, through the sacred veils of loving-kindness toward man, made known in the Oracles and hierarchical traditions. These traditions envelop intellectual things in sensible things, and superessential things in the things that are; they place forms and shapes around the formless and shapeless, and multiply and fashion the supernatural and formless simplicity in the variedness of divided symbols. But then, when we have become incorruptible and immortal, and have reached the Christlike and most blessed repose, according to the Divine saying, we shall be "ever with the Lord," fulfilled through all-pure contemplations, with the visible manifestation of God covering us with glory in most brilliant splendours, just as the disciples were in the