(12) When the Hierarch has finished these things, he places the body in an honourable chamber, with other holy bodies of the same rank. For if, in soul and body, the man fallen asleep passed a life dear to God, there will be honoured, with the devout soul, the body also, which contended with it throughout the devout struggles. Hence the Divine justice gives to it, together with its own body, the retributive inheritances, as companion and participator in the devout, or the contrary, life. Wherefore, the Divine institution of sacred rites bequeaths the supremely Divine participations to them both--to the soul, indeed, in pure contemplation and in science of the things being done, and to the body, by sanctifying the whole man, as in a figure with the most Divine Muron, and the most holy symbols of the supremely Divine Communion, sanctifying the whole man, and announcing, by purifications of the whole man, that his resurrection will be most complete.

(12) But, inasmuch as the Divine Being is source of sacred order, within which the holy Minds regulate themselves, he, who recurs to the proper view of Nature, will see his proper self in what he was originally, and will acquire this, as the first holy gift, from his recovery to the light. Now he, who has well looked upon his own proper condition with unbiassed eyes, will depart from the gloomy recesses of ignorance, but being imperfect he will not, of his own accord, at once desire the most perfect union and participation of God, but little by little will be carried orderly and reverently through things present to things more forward, and through these to things foremost, and when perfected, to the supremely Divine summit. An illustration of this decorous and sacred order is the modesty of the proselyte, and his prudence in his own affairs in having the sponsor as leader of the way to the Hierarch. The Divine Blessedness receives the man, thus conducted, into communion with Itself, and imparts to him the proper light as a kind of sign, making him godly and sharer of the inheritance of the godly, and sacred ordering; of which things the Hierarch's seal, given to the proselyte, and the saving enrolment of the priests are a sacred symbol, registering him amongst those who are being saved, and placing in the sacred memorials, beside himself also his sponsor,--the one indeed, as a true lover of the life-giving way to truth and a companion of a godly guide, and the other, as an unerring conductor of his follower by the Divinely-taught directions.

(3) We must, then, in my opinion, pass within the All Holy Mysteries, after we have laid bare the intelligible of the first of the votive gifts, to gaze upon its Godlike beauty, and view the Hierarch, divinely going with sweet fragrance from the Divine Altar to the furthermost bounds of the holy place, and again returning to it to complete the function. For the Blessedness, supremely Divine above all, even if, through Divine goodness, It goes forth to the communion of the holy who participate in It, yet It never goes outside its essential unmoved position and steadfastness; and illuminates all the Godlike in due degree, being always self-centred, and in nowise moved from its own proper identity; so, too, the Divine initiation (sacrament) of the Synaxis, although it has a unique, and simple, and enfolded Source, is multiplied, out of love towards man, into the holy variety of the symbols, and travels through the whole range of the supremely Divine description; yet uniformly it is again collected from these, into its own proper Monady, and unifies those who are being reverently conducted towards it. In the same Godlike manner, the Divine Hierarch, if he benignly lowers to his subordinates his own unique Hierarchical science, by using the multiplicities of the holy enigmas, yet again, as absolute, and not to be held in check by smaller things, he is restored to his proper headship without diminution, and, when he has made the intellectual entry of himself to the One, he sees clearly the uniform raisons d'être of the things done, as he makes the goal of his philanthropic progress to things secondary the more Divine return to things primary.

(14) Having received and distributed the supremely Divine Communion, he terminates with a holy thanksgiving, in which the whole body of the Church take part. For the Communion precedes the imparting, and the reception of the mysteries, the mystic distribution. For this is the universal regulation and order of the Divine Mysteries, that the reverend Leader should first partake, and be filled with the gifts, to be imparted, through him, from God to others, and so impart to others also. Wherefore, those who rashly content themselves with the inspired instructions, in preference to a life and condition agreeable to the same, are profane, and entirely alien from the sacred regulation established. For, as in the case of the bright shining of the sun, the more delicate and luminous substances, being first filled with the brilliancy flowing into them, brightly impart their overflowing light to things after them; so it is not tolerable that one, who has not become altogether Godlike in his whole character, and proved to be in harmony with the Divine influence and judgment, should become Leader to others, in the altogether divine.

(3) The holy consecration, then, which we are now extolling, is, as I said, of the perfecting rank and capacity of the Hierarchical functions. Wherefore our Divine Leaders arranged the same, as being of the same rank and effect as the holy perfecting of the Synaxis, with the same figures, for the most part, and with mystical regulations and lections. And you may see in like manner the Hierarch bearing forward the sweet perfume from the more holy place into the sacred precincts beyond, and teaching, by the return to the same, that the participation in things Divine comes to all holy persons, according to fitness, and is undiminished and altogether unmoved and stands unchangeably in its identity, as beseems Divine fixity. In the same way the Psalms and readings of the Oracles nurse the imperfect to a life-bringing adoption of sons, and form a religious inclination in those who are possessed with accursed spirits, and dispel the opposing fear and effeminacy from those possessed by a spirit of unmanliness; shewing to them, according to their capacity, the highest pinnacle of the Godlike habit and power, by aid of which they will, the rather, scare away the opposing forces, and will take the lead in healing others; and, following the example of God, they will, whilst unmoved from their own proper gifts, not only be active against those opposing fears, but will themselves give activity to others; and they also impart a religious habit to those who have changed from the worse to a religious mind, so that they should not be again enslaved by evil, and purify completely those who need to become altogether pure; and they lead the holy to the Divine likenesses, and contemplations and communions belonging to themselves, and so establish those who are entirely holy, in blessed and intelligible visions, fulfilling their uniform likeness of the One, and making them one.

(2) But it is evident, from the effects themselves, that what we now say is the salvation of the soul. For the soul in contemplating blessed spectacles, acquires another life, energizes according to another energy, and is then rightly considered as no longer ranking in the order of man. Frequently, likewise, abandoning her own life, she exchanges it for the most blessed energy of the Gods. If, therefore, the ascent through invocations imparts to the priests purification from passions, a liberation from generation, and a union with a divine principle, how is it possible to connect with it any thing of passion? For an invocation of this kind does not draw down the impassive and pure Gods, to that which is passive and impure; but, on the contrary, it renders us, who have become passive through generation, pure and immutable.

(9) In this choiring, the soul looks upon the wellspring of Life, wellspring also of Intellect, beginning of Being, fount of Good, root of Soul. It is not that these are poured out from the Supreme lessening it as if it were a thing of mass. At that the emanants would be perishable; but they are eternal; they spring from an eternal principle, which produces them not by its fragmentation but in virtue of its intact identity: therefore they too hold firm; so long as the sun shines, so long there will be light.

We have not been cut away; we are not separate, what though the body-nature has closed about us to press us to itself; we breathe and hold our ground because the Supreme does not give and pass but gives on for ever, so long as it remains what it is.

Our being is the fuller for our turning Thither; this is our prosperity; to hold aloof is loneliness and lessening. Here is the soul's peace, outside of evil, refuge taken in the place clean of wrong; here it has its Act, its true knowing; here it is immune. Here is living, the true; that of to-day, all living apart from Him, is but a shadow, a mimicry. Life in the Supreme is the native activity of Intellect; in virtue of that converse it brings forth gods, brings forth beauty, brings forth righteousness, brings forth all moral good; for of all these the soul is pregnant when it has been filled with God. This state is its first and its final, because from God it comes, its good lies There, and, once turned to God again, it is what it was. Life here, with the things of earth, is a sinking, a defeat, a failing of the wing.

That our good is There is shown by the very love inborn with the soul; hence the constant linking of the Love-God with the Psyches in story and picture; the soul, other than God but sprung of Him, must needs love. So long as it is There, it holds the heavenly love; here its love is the baser; There the soul is Aphrodite of the heavens; here, turned harlot, Aphrodite of the public ways: yet the soul is always an Aphrodite. This is the intention of the myth which tells of Aphrodite's birth and Eros born with her.

The soul in its nature loves God and longs to be at one with Him in the noble love of a daughter for a noble father; but coming to human birth and lured by the courtships of this sphere, she takes up with another love, a mortal, leaves her father and falls.

But one day coming to hate her shame, she puts away the evil of earth, once more seeks the father, and finds her peace.

Those to whom all this experience is strange may understand by way of our earthly longings and the joy we have in winning to what we most desire- remembering always that here what we love is perishable, hurtful, that our loving is of mimicries and turns awry because all was a mistake, our good was not here, this was not what we sought; There only is our veritable love and There we may hold it and be with it, possess it in its verity no longer submerged in alien flesh. Any that have seen know what I have in mind: the soul takes another life as it approaches God; thus restored it feels that the dispenser of true life is There to see, that now we have nothing to look for but, far otherwise, that we must put aside all else and rest in This alone, This become, This alone, all the earthly environment done away, in haste to be free, impatient of any bond holding us to the baser, so that with our being entire we may cling about This, no part in us remaining but through it we have touch with God.

Thus we have all the vision that may be of Him and of ourselves; but it is of a self-wrought to splendour, brimmed with the Intellectual light, become that very light, pure, buoyant, unburdened, raised to Godhood or, better, knowing its Godhood, all aflame then- but crushed out once more if it should take up the discarded burden.

(8) When the supremely Divine love towards Man has thus been religiously celebrated, the Divine Bread is presented, veiled, and likewise the Cup of Blessing, and the most Divine greeting is devoutly performed, and the mystic and supermundane recital of the holy-written tablets. For it is not possible to be collected to the One, and to partake of the peaceful union with the One, when people are divided amongst themselves. For if, being illuminated by the contemplation and knowledge of the One, we would be united to an uniform and Divine agreement, we must not permit ourselves to descend to divided lusts, from which are formed earthly enmities, envious and passionate, against that which is according to nature. This unified and undivided life is, in my opinion, established by the holy service of the "peace," which establishes like in like, and separates the Divine and unified visions from things divided. The recital of the holy tablets after the "peace" proclaims those who have passed through life holily, and have reached the term of a virtuous life without faltering, urging and conducting us to their blessed condition and Divine repose, through similarity to them, and, announcing them as living, and, as the Word of God says, "not dead, but as having passed from death to a most divine life."

(42) Therefore the Body of Christ is inferior to the Deity; and in these our human Essences he suffered Death, and his Deity of the holy Man in the pure Element entered together also into Death, and bereaved Death of its Power, and separated the natural Soul (which Christ commended to his Father, when he died on the Cross) from the Kingdom of this World, also from Death, from the Devil, and from Hell, in the strong divine Might [or Power,] and opened a Gate for us all, who come to him and Or by. incline ourselves (with Mind and Thoughts) to him; then the Father draws our Soul (which is in him) into the pure Love of Christ; where then it puts its Imagination again through Christ P forward into the holy Trinity, and is fed again from the Verbum Domini [the Word of the Lord,] where then it is an Angel again, quite separated from the Kingdom of the Devil, and of this World, in the Death of Christ.

(8) Last of all, the Priest calls the ordained to the supremely Divine Communion, shewing religiously that the ordained, if he would really attain to the monastic and single elevation, will not merely contemplate the sacred mysteries within them, nor come to the communion of the most holy symbols, after the fashion of the middle Rank, but, with a Divine knowledge of the holy things received by him, will come to the reception of the supremely Divine Communion, in a manner different from that of the holy people. Wherefore, the Communion of the most holy Eucharist is also given to the sacerdotal Orders, in their consecrating dedications, by the Hierarch who consecrated them, at the end of their most holy sanctifications, not only because the reception of the supremely Divine Mysteries is the consummation of each Hierarchical reception, but because all the sacred Orders, according to their capacity, partake of the self-same common and most godly gifts, for their own elevation and perfection in deification. We conclude, then, that the holy Mystic Rites are, purification, and illumination, and consecration. The Leitourgoi are a purifying rank, the Priests an illuminating, and the Godlike Hierarchs a consecrating. But the holy people is a contemplative Order. That which does not participate in the sacred contemplation and communion, is a Rank being purified, as still under course of purification. The holy people is a contemplative Rank, and that of the single Monks is a perfected Rank. For thus our Hierarchy, reverently arranged in Ranks fixed by God, is like the Heavenly Hierarchies, preserving, so far as man can do, its God-imitated and Godlike characteristics.

(44) But in the new Man (which we attract onto our Souls in the Bosom of the Virgin) we shall spring and flourish again; and therein is no Necessity nor Death, for the Kingdom of this World passes away. Therefore he that has not this Image in the new Birth, shall, in the Restoration of the Spirit of the eternal Nature, have the Image of what his Heart and Confidence has been set upon here [put upon him;] for every Kingdom images [or figures] its Creatures, according to the Essences which were grown here in their Will.

(5) When, then, the comprehensive melody of the holy Hymns has harmonized the habits of our souls to the things which are presently to be ministered, and, by the unison of the Divine Odes, as one and concordant chorus of holy men, has established an accord with things Divine, and themselves, and one another, the things, more strained and obscure in the intellectual language of the mystic Psalms, are expanded by the most holy lections of the inspired writings, through more full and distinct images and narratives. He, who devoutly contemplates these, will perceive the uniform and one conspiration, as being moved by One, the supremely Divine Spirit. Hence, naturally, in the history of the world, after the more ancient tradition, the new Covenant is proclaimed; the inspired and Hierarchical order teaching this, as I think, that the one affirmed the Divine works of Jesus, as to come; but the other accomplished; and as that described the truth in figures, this shewed it present. For the accomplishment, within this, of the predictions of that, established the truth, and the work of God is a consummation of the Word of God.

(9) This Divine Justice, then, is celebrated also even as preservation of the whole, as preserving and guarding the essence and order of each, distinct and pure from the rest; and as being genuine cause of each minding its own business in the whole. But, if any one should also celebrate this preservation, as rescuing savingly the whole from the worse, we will entirely accept this as the cantique of the manifold preservation, and we will deem him worthy to define this even as the principal preservation of the whole, which preserves all things in themselves, without change, undisturbed and unswaying to the worse; and guards all things without strife and without war, each being regulated by their own methods; and excludes all inequality and minding others' business, from the whole; and maintains the relations of each from falling to things contrary, and from migrating. And since, without missing the mark of the sacred theology, one might celebrate this preservation as redeeming all things existing, by the goodness which is preservative of all, from falling away from their own proper goods, so far as the nature of each of those who are being preserved admits; wherefore also the Theologians name it redemption, both so far as it does not permit things really being to fall away to non-existence, and so far as, if anything should have been led astray to discord and disorder, and should suffer any diminution of the perfection of its own proper goods, even this it redeems from passion and listlessness and loss; supplying what is deficient, and paternally overlooking the slackness, and raising up from evil; yea, rather, establishing in the good, and filling -up the leaking good, and arranging and adorning its disorder and deformity, and making it complete, and liberating it from all its blemishes. But let this suffice concerning these matters, and concerning Justice, in accordance with which the equality of all is measured and defined, and every inequality, which arises from deprivation of the equality, in each thing severally, is excluded. For, if any one should interpret inequality as distinctions in the whole, of the whole, in relation to the whole, Justice guards even this, not permitting the whole, when they have become mingled throughout, to be thrown into confusion, but keeping all existing things within each particular kind, in which each was intended by nature, to be.

(1) These, then, are the sacerdotal Ranks and elections, their powers, and operations, and consecrations. We must next explain the triad of the Ranks being initiated under them. We affirm then that the multitudes, of whom we have already made mention, who are dismissed from the ministrations and consecrations, are Ranks under purification; since one is being yet moulded and fashioned by the Leitourgoi through the obstetric Oracles to a living birth; and another is yet to be called back to the holy life, from which it had departed, by the hortatory teaching of the good Oracles; and another, as being yet terrorized, through want of manliness, by opposing fears, and being fortified by the strengthening Oracles; and another, as being yet led back from the worse to holy efforts; and another as having been led back, indeed, but not yet having a chaste fixedness in more Godlike and tranquil habits. For these are the Orders under purification, by the nursing and purifying power of the Leitourgoi. These, the Leitourgoi perfect, by their sacred powers, for the purpose of their being brought, after their complete cleansing, to the enlightening contemplation and participation in the most luminous ministrations.

(31) The Souls departed do not present our Wants before God; for God is nearer to us than the Souls departed are; and [besides] if they should do so, then they must have Bodies, as also paradisical Sources [or flowing Properties] springing up and working, whereas they are in the still Humility and meek Rest, and do not suffer our sour Miseries to enter into them, but one holy Tincture takes hold of another, to [increase] the Love and Delight. But they make not of Christ (their great Prince) a deaf Hearer, as if he did neither hear, feel, nor see any Thing himself; who stretches out his Arms, and himself without ceasing calls with his holy Spirit, and invites all the Children of Men to the Wedding; he will readily accept all, if they would but come.

(26) These holy Souls Works also follow them, in their Tincture of the Spirit of the Soul, in the holy Element, so that they see and know how much Good they have wrought here; and their highest Delight and Desire is still continually (in their Love) to do more Good; although without the paradisical Body (which they [shall then] first attain at the Restoration) they work nothing, but their Source, [Quality or Property,] is mere Delight and soft Welfare.

(16) Next, they throw garments, white as light, over the man initiated. For by his manly and Godlike insensibility to contrary passions, and by his persistent inclination towards the One, the unadorned is adorned, and the shapeless takes shape, being made brilliant by his luminous life. But the perfecting unction of the Muron makes the man initiated of good odour, for the holy perfecting of the Divine birth unites those who have been perfected to the supremely Divine Spirit. Now the overshadowing which makes intelligibly of a good savour, and perfect, as being most unutterable, I leave to the mental consciousness of those who are deemed worthy of the sacred and deifying participation of the Holy Spirit within their mind. At the conclusion of all, the Hierarch calls the man initiated to the most Holy Eucharist, and imparts to him the communion of the perfecting mysteries.

(7) Naturally, however, they are present at the things now done, being clearly taught by seeing both the fearlessness of death amongst us, and the last honour of the saints extolled from the unfailing Oracles, and that the sufferings threatened to the unholy like themselves will be endless; for it will perhaps be profitable for them to have seen him, who has religiously finished his course, reverently proclaimed by the public proclamation of the Leitourgoi, as being certainly companion of the Saints for ever. And, perchance, even they will come to the like aspiration, and will be taught from the science of the Liturgy, that the consummation in Christ is blessed indeed.

(2) And the former, indeed, measures the essences of intelligibles by sacred ways; but the latter, abandoning principles, gives itself up to the measurement of the idea of body. The former is a knowledge of the father; but the latter is a departure from him, and an oblivion of the God who is a superessential father, and sufficient to himself. The former, likewise, preserves the true life of the soul, and leads it back to its father; but the latter draws down the generation-ruling man, as far as to that which is never permanent, but is always flowing. You must understand, therefore, that this is the first path to felicity, affording to souls an intellectual plenitude of divine union. But the sacerdotal and theurgic gift of felicity is called, indeed, the gate to the Demiurgus of wholes, or the seat, or palace, of the good . In the first place, likewise, it possesses a power of purifying the soul, much more perfect than the power which purifies the body; afterwards it causes a coaptation of the reasoning power to the participation and vision of the good , and a liberation from every thing of a contrary nature; and, in the last place, produces a union with the Gods, who are the givers of every good.

(5) When the man, out of love to God, has confessed, according to the instruction of his sponsor, his ungodliness, his ignorance of the really beautiful, his insufficiency for the life in God, and prays, through his holy mediation, to attain to God and Divine things, he (the Hierarch) testifies to him, that his approach ought to be entire, as to God Who is All Perfect, and without blemish; and when he has expounded to him fully the godly course of life, and has demanded of him, if he would thus live,--after his promise he places his right hand upon his head, and when he has sealed him, commands the priests to register the man and his sponsor.