(6) They had come that far. "Oh. we have come without joy! If only we could see the rising of the sun! What shall we do now? If we lived in harmony in our country, why did we leave it?" they said to each other, in the midst of their sadness and affliction, and with mournful voices.

(11) The things which he has spoken he does. When he saw that they were great and good and wonderful, he was pleased and rejoiced, as if he himself in his own thought had been the one to say them and do them, not knowing that the movement within him is from the spirit who moves him in a determined way toward those things which he wants.

(21) 'Though sitting still, he walks far; though lying down, he goes everywhere. Who, save myself, is able to know that God who rejoices and rejoices not?'

(31) He rejoices in good things present, and is glad on account of those promised, as if they were already present. For they do not elude his notice, as if they were still absent, because he knows by anticipation what sort they are. Being then persuaded by knowledge how each future thing shall be, he possesses it. For want and defect are measured with reference to what appertains to one. If, then, he possesses wisdom, and wisdom is a divine thing, he who partakes of what has no want will himself have no want. For the imparting of wisdom does not take place by activity and receptivity moving and stopping each other, or by aught being abstracted or becoming defective.

(10) Verily, verily, I say unto you, That ye shall weep and lament, but the world shall rejoice; and ye shall be sorrowful, but your sorrow shall be turned into joy.

(15) Therefore there is also very great Joy in Heaven, rfor this World, because there is a Principle generated, so that the Devil can make no more Use of the fierce Wrath, which he poured forth and kindled in the Time of his Creation; but is imprisoned between the two Principles, which are both good.

(9) Children, when they have long lived in ignorance, consider themselves happy. Because those who depend on their good works are, owing to their passions, improvident, they fall and become miserable when their life (in the world which they had gained by their good works) is finished.

(15) But suppose two wise men, one of them possessing all that is supposed to be naturally welcome, while the other meets only with the very reverse: do we assert that they have an equal happiness?

We do, if they are equally wise.

What though the one be favoured in body and in all else that does not help towards wisdom, still less towards virtue, towards the vision of the noblest, towards being the highest, what does all that amount to? The man commanding all such practical advantages cannot flatter himself that he is more truly happy than the man without them: the utmost profusion of such boons would not help even to make a flute-player.

We discuss the happy man after our own feebleness; we count alarming and grave what his felicity takes lightly: he would be neither wise nor in the state of happiness if he had not quitted all trifling with such things and become as it were another being, having confidence in his own nature, faith that evil can never touch him. In such a spirit he can be fearless through and through; where there is dread, there is not perfect virtue; the man is some sort of a half-thing.

As for any involuntary fear rising in him and taking the judgement by surprise, while his thoughts perhaps are elsewhere, the Sage will attack it and drive it out; he will, so to speak, calm the refractory child within him, whether by reason or by menace, but without passion, as an infant might feel itself rebuked by a glance of severity.

This does not make the Sage unfriendly or harsh: it is to himself and in his own great concern that he is the Sage: giving freely to his intimates of all he has to give, he will be the best of friends by his very union with the Intellectual-Principle.

(1) In the first place, it is requisite to know this, that the good man is not immediately happy from necessity; but that this is the case with the man who is both happy and good. For the happy man obtains both praise and the predication of blessedness; but the good man far as he is good obtains praise alone. The praise also arises from virtue; but the predication of blessedness from good fortune. And the worthy man, indeed, becomes such from the goods which he possesses; but the happy man is sometimes deprived of his felicity. For the power of virtue is perfectly free, but that of felicity is subject to restraint. For long-continued diseases of the body, and deprivations of the senses, cause the florishing condition of felicity to waste away.

God, however, differs from a good man in this, that God indeed not only possesses virtue genuine and purified from every mortal passion, but his power also is unwearied and unrestrained, as being adapted to the most venerable and magnificent production of eternal works. Man indeed, by the mortal condition of his nature, not only enjoys this power and this virtue in a less degree; but sometimes through the want of symmetry in the goods which he possesses, or through powerful custom, or a depraved nature, or through many other causes, he is unable to possess in the extreme a good which is perfectly true.

(4) There came a bright cloud, and overshadowed them: and a voice out of the cloud, saying, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; hear ye him.

(12) When it said this, it (the soul) went away rejoicing greatly.

(2) For as the sun the sight that trembles most, Even so the memory of that sweet smile My mind depriveth of its very self. From the first day that I beheld her face In this life, to the moment of this look, The sequence of my song has ne'er been severed; But now perforce this sequence must desist From following her beauty with my verse, As every artist at his uttermost. Such as I leave her to a greater fame Than any of my trumpet, which is bringing Its arduous matter to a final close, With voice and gesture of a perfect leader She recommenced: "We from the greatest body Have issued to the heaven that is pure light; Light intellectual replete with love, Love of true good replete with ecstasy, Ecstasy that transcendeth every sweetness. Here shalt thou see the one host and the other Of Paradise, and one in the same aspects Which at the final judgment thou shalt see." Even as a sudden lightning that disperses The visual spirits, so that it deprives The eye of impress from the strongest objects,

(3) Then, moved and mingled with the other lights, The soul that had addressed me showed how great An artist 'twas among the heavenly singers. To my right side I turned myself around, My duty to behold in Beatrice Either by words or gesture signified; And so translucent I beheld her eyes, So full of pleasure, that her countenance Surpassed its other and its latest wont. And as, by feeling greater delectation, A man in doing good from day to day Becomes aware his virtue is increasing, So I became aware that my gyration With heaven together had increased its arc, That miracle beholding more adorned. And such as is the change, in little lapse Of time, in a pale woman, when her face Is from the load of bashfulness unladen, Such was it in mine eyes, when I had turned, Caused by the whiteness of the temperate star, The sixth, which to itself had gathered me. Within that Jovial torch did I behold The sparkling of the love which was therein Delineate our language to mine eyes.

(45) "First all see, then admire; Then gaze, then come to hope; And thus arises love?"

(18) And the man who hears this, full of faith and free from malice, even he shall attain the happy worlds of the righteous, freed from all evil.

(45) Seeing then that the Shriek of the Joy in the Virtue of God (which breaks the Doors of the deep Darkness) thus springs up in the Heart, and flies with its Glimpse [or Sparkling] into the Head, then the Virtue of the Joy sets itself above, as being the strongest, and the Flash [or Glance] beneath, as being the weakest; and so when the Flash [or Glance] comes into the Head into its Seat, then it makes itself two open Gates. For it has broken the Doors of the deep Darkness, and therefore it continues no more in the Darkness, but it must be free as a victorious Prince [or Conqueror,] and will not be held captive. And this signifies to us the Resurrection of Christ from the dead, who is now free, and will not be held [therein,] which in its due Place shall be very deeply described. And those Gates which the Glance holds open, they are the Eyes, and the Spirit of Joy is their Root, which [Spirit] springs up at first in the Kindling of the Life.

(24) And now when it seeth and heareth the divine tone, tune and sound rise up, which is externally without it, then is its spirit affected and kindled with joy, and elevateth itself in its princely seat, and singeth and ringeth forth very joyful words concerning God's holiness, and concerning the fruit and vegetation of the eternal life.

(3) And it continued: "Hunger long and grateful, Drawn from the reading of the mighty volume Wherein is never changed the white nor dark, Thou hast appeased, my son, within this light In which I speak to thee, by grace of her Who to this lofty flight with plumage clothed thee. Thou thinkest that to me thy thought doth pass From Him who is the first, as from the unit, If that be known, ray out the five and six; And therefore who I am thou askest not, And why I seem more joyous unto thee Than any other of this gladsome crowd. Thou think'st the truth; because the small and great Of this existence look into the mirror Wherein, before thou think'st, thy thought thou showest. But that the sacred love, in which I watch With sight perpetual, and which makes me thirst With sweet desire, may better be fulfilled, Now let thy voice secure and frank and glad Proclaim the wishes, the desire proclaim, To which my answer is decreed already." To Beatrice I turned me, and she heard Before I spake, and smiled to me a sign, That made the wings of my desire increase;

(7) His adversaries were ashamed: and the people rejoiced for the glorious things that were done by him. Then said he,

(16) source of peace and joy to others will be to him a source of misery. He, in whose heart the love of God has prevailed over all else, will derive more joy from this vision than he in whose heart it has not so prevailed; just as in the case of two men with equally powerful eyesight, gazing on a beautiful face, he who already loves the possessor of that face will rejoice in beholding it more than he who does not. For perfect happiness mere knowledge is not enough, unaccompanied by love, and the love of God cannot take possession of a man's heart till it be purified from love of the world, which purification can only be effected by abstinence and austerity. While he is in this world a man's condition with regard to the Vision of God is like that of a lover who should see his beloved's face in the twilight, while his clothes are infested with hornets and scorpions, which continually, torment him. But should the sun arise and reveal his beloved's face in all its beauty, and the noxious vermin leave off molesting him, then the lover's joy will be like that of God's servant, who, released from the twilight and the tormenting trials of this world, beholds Him without a veil.