e eye of the body is out of
order, how is the physician sought out, what an absence of all delay to
open and cleanse it, that they may be healed whereby this outward light
is seen! There is running to and fro, no one is still, no one loiters,
if even the smallest straw fall into the eye. And God, it must be
allowed, made the sun which we desire to see with sound eyes. Much
brighter, assuredly, is He who made it; nor is the light with which the
eye of the mind is concerned of this kind at all. That light is eternal
wisdom. God made thee, O man, after His own image. Would He give thee
wherewithal to see the sun which He made, and not give thee wherewithal
to see Him who made thee, when He made thee after His own image? He hath
given thee this also; both hath He given thee. But much thou dost love
these outward eyes, and despisest much that interior eye; it thou dost
carry about bruised and wounded. Yea, it would be a punishment to, if
thy Maker should wish to manifest Himself unto thee, it would be a
punishment to thine eye, before that it is cured and healed. For so Adam
in Paradise sinned, and hid himself from the face of God. As long, then,
as he had the sound heart of a pure conscience, he rejoiced at the
presence of God; when that eye was wounded by sin, he began to dread the
divine light, he fled back into the darkness, and the thick covert of
trees, flying from the truth, and anxious for the shade.

VII. Therefore, my brethren, since we too are born of him, and as the
apostle says, "In Adam all die"; for we were all at first two persons;
if we were loath to obey the physician, that we might not be sick; let
us obey Him now, that we may be delivered from sickness. The Physician
gave us precepts, when we were whole; He gave us precepts that we might
not need a physician. "They that are whole," He saith, "need not a
physician, but they that are sick." When whole, we despised these
precepts, and by experience have felt how to our own destruction we
despised His precepts. Now we are sick, we are in distress, we are on
the bed of weakness; yet let us not despair. For because we could not
come to the Physician, He hath vouchsafed to come Himself to us. Tho
despised by man when he was whole, He did not despise him when he was
stricken. He did not leave off to give other precepts to the weak, who
would not keep the first precepts, that he might not be weak; as tho He
would say, "Assuredly thou hast by experience felt that I