Chapter II. The Steps of Consideration

He is a great man who makes it his concern to utilize the senses, spending, as it were, the wealth of the citizens in thus providing for his own salvation and the salvation of many. And he is no less a man who has made philosophy a steppingstone to the things invisible. The only difference is that there is more pleasure in the latter, more profit in the former : the one has more happiness, the other indicates more strength. But he is the greatest of all who, scorning the use of sensible things, so far as human frailty permits, has accustomed him self, not by gradual steps, but by sudden ecstatic flights l to soar aloft to the glorious things on high. I suppose Paul's ecstasies 2 were of this last description : they were departures [from the senses], not the ascent [of the senses] ; for he him self relates that he did not ascend into Paradise, but was rather caught up thither. This is what he means by saying ' If we mentally depart, it is to the glory of God '. Moreover, when Consideration, even in the place of its sojourning, through the pursuit of virtue, and with the help of grace, has gained the upper hand, these three results follow : — it either checks the senses, lest they assert themselves too strongly: or draws them in, lest they go too far afield : or shuns them, lest they defile. In the first case the mark of Consideration is strength, in the second freedom, in the third purity. For such a flight of the spirit is only made with the wing of purity on the one side, and of rapture on the other.