g his opportunity to make show
of his Greek proficiency he began: heaven is our intelligence and the
earth our sensibility. The spirit descended into matter, and God created
man according to his image, as Moses said and said well, for no creature
is more like to God than man: not in bodily form (God is without body),
but in his intelligence; for the intelligence of every man is in a
little the intelligence of the universe, and it may be said that the
intelligence lives in the flesh that bears it as God himself lives in
the universe, being in some sort a God of the body, which carries it
about like an image in a shrine. Thus the intelligence occupies the same
place in man as the great President occupies in the universe--being
itself invisible while it sees everything, and having its own essence
hidden while it penetrates the essences of all other things. Also, by
its arts and sciences, it finds its way through the earth and through
the seas, and searches out everything that is contained in them. And
then again it rises on wings and, looking down upon the air and all its
commotions, it is borne upwards to the sky and the revolving heavens and
accompanies the choral dances of the planets and stars fixed according
to the laws of music. And led by love, the guide of wisdom, it proceeds
still onward till it transcends all that is capable of being apprehended
by the senses, and rises to that which is perceptible only by the
intellect. And there, seeing in their surpassing beauty the original
ideas and archetypes of all the things which sense finds beautiful, it
becomes possessed by a sober intoxication, like the Corybantian
revellers, and is filled with a still stronger longing, which bears it
up to the highest summit of the intelligible world till it seems to
approach to the great king of the intelligible world himself. And while
it is eagerly seeking to behold him in all his glory, rays of divine
light are pouring forth upon it which by their exceeding brilliance
dazzle the eyes of the intelligence.

Whilst he spoke, his periods constructed with regard for every comma,
Mathias' eyes were directed so frequently towards Paul that Paul could
not but think that Mathias was vaunting his knowledge of Greek
expressly, as if to reprove him, Paul, for the Aramaic idiom that he had
never been able to wring out of his Greek, which he regretted, but
which, after hearing Mathias, he would not be without; for to rid
himself of it he would