Three Books on the Death of Christ and Self-Reflection, and Two Books on the Study of Divine and Human Philosophy

we cannot comprehend as it is in itself, we can nevertheless retain it more richly in Christ, observed by both mind and imagination. Nor can we find an object closer to God, since Christ Himself is both God and man, the physician of our infirmity and the assertor of our now-lost liberty. Considering Him as He is man, we shall not overstep the powers of our own nature, but we shall be led by the hand to know Him more clearly as He is God, and to weigh more abundantly His benefits, both many and great, which have been shown toward us. I would also think it was brought about by divine clemency and infinite providence that not only is access to Heaven provided for us through the death of Christ—that is, so that He might be the mediator of God and men in the way it has been the custom to write—but also so that He might reside in the mind as a guide of the journey for those tending toward the supernal Jerusalem, who might manifest God's goodness, which pitied the human race and shone supremely in His death, and exist as a mediator comforting sense and spirit between us and God. For just as we see that it is necessary for men with weaker sight to use spectacles that return a clearer image of those things that are seen, with which they might help their sight—if it is perhaps dimmed by old age or another cause—so we need the constant imagination of the crucified Christ, by which the benefits with which we are accumulated, otherwise little considered due to the depravation of the will and intellect, might shine forth more expressively and abundantly. We find that the Egyptian monks were not remote from this study; nay, we find that they brought all their forces to this, and intended all their nerves toward it. For they established that it must be known where we ought to have our mind fixed and toward what destination we ought to recall the intuition of the soul, which, when the mind could obtain it, would rejoice, and from which, when distracted, it would grieve and sigh within itself. Feeling itself to have receded from the supreme good as often as it would perceive itself separated from that intuition, they judged even a momentary departure from the contemplation of Christ as fornication, from which, when the gaze would deviate a little, it was to be directed back to Him—the eyes of the heart—and the edge of the mind was to be recalled as if by a straight line. For those most holy men learned from the internal and external wars by which they were constantly agitated how much wealth and strength they derived from the meditation of Christ.