(84) And I lifted up my hands in righteousness and blessed the Holy and Great One, and spake with the breath of my mouth, and with the tongue of flesh, which God has made for the children of the flesh of men, that they should speak therewith, and He gave them breath and a tongue and a mouth that they should speak therewith:

(1) When then he had said this to his disciples, he said unto them: "Who hath ears to hear, let him hear." It came to pass then, when Mary had heard the Saviour say these words, that she gazed fixedly into the air for the space of an hour. She said: "My Lord, give commandment unto me to speak in openness." And Jesus, the compassionate, answered and said unto Mary: "Mary, thou blessed one, whom I will perfect in all mysteries of those of the height, discourse in openness, thou, whose heart is raised to the kingdom of heaven more than all thy brethren."

(3) Happy is he who speaks in! the ears of the hearing. Now faith is the ear of the soul. And such the Lord intimates faith to be, when He says, "He that hath ears to hear, let him hear;" so that by believing he may comprehend what He says, as He says it. Homer, too, the oldest of the poets, using the word "hear" instead of" perceive" - the specific for the generic term - writes: "Him most they heard."

(21) But if voice and expression are given us, for the sake of understanding, how can God not hear the soul itself, and the mind, since assuredly soul hears soul, and mind, mind? Whence God does not walt for loquacious tongues, as interpreters among men, but knows absolutely the thoughts of all; and what the voice intimates to us, that our thought, which even before the creation He knew would come into our mind, speaks to God. Prayer, then, may be uttered without the voice, by concentrating the whole spiritual nature within on expression by the mind, in un-distracted turning towards God.

(6) The Ear went off. Having remained away a year, it came back and said: l How have you been able to live without me?J They said: 'As the deaf, not hearing with the ear, but breathing with breath, speaking with speech, seeing with the eye, knowing with the mind, procreating with semen. Thus have we lived.' The ear entered in.

(5) So then the men said to him: 'Speak to us, Sir/ To them then he spoke this syllable, c Da! ' Did you understand?' (dattay ' < Yes (Om) \ ' said he. ' You did understand/

(3) And when we were a little farther onward, I heard a cry of, "Mary, pray for us!" A cry of, "Michael, Peter, and all Saints!" I do not think there walketh still on earth A man so hard, that he would not be pierced With pity at what afterward I saw. For when I had approached so near to them That manifest to me their acts became, Drained was I at the eyes by heavy grief. Covered with sackcloth vile they seemed to me, And one sustained the other with his shoulder, And all of them were by the bank sustained. Thus do the blind, in want of livelihood, Stand at the doors of churches asking alms, And one upon another leans his head, So that in others pity soon may rise, Not only at the accent of their words, But at their aspect, which no less implores. And as unto the blind the sun comes not, So to the shades, of whom just now I spake, Heaven's light will not be bounteous of itself; For all their lids an iron wire transpierces, And sews them up, as to a sparhawk wild Is done, because it will not quiet stay.

(6) Nor yet any of the angels: for in the way that angels, in virtue of being angels, speak, men do not hear; nor, as we have ears, have they a tongue to correspond; nor would any one attribute to the angels organs of speech, lips I mean, and the parts contiguous, throat, and windpipe, and chest, breath and air to vibrate, And God is far from calling aloud in the unapproachable sanctity, separated as He is from even the archangels.

(10) The ear (hearing) departed, and having been absent for a year, it came round and said: 'How have you been able to live without me?' They replied: 'Like deaf people, not hearing, but breathing with the breath, speaking with the tongue, thinking with the mind. Thus we lived.' Then the ear went back.

(6) Then he said: ' The boon acceptable to me is this: — Pray tell me the word which you spoke in the presence of the young man.'

(1) And when the disciples had heard this, they fell down, adored him and said: "Help us now, Lord, and have mercy upon us, in order that we may be preserved from these wicked chastisements which are prepared for the sinners. Woe unto them, woe unto the children of men! For they grope as the blind in the darkness and see not. Have mercy upon us, O Lord, in this great blindness in which we are. And have mercy upon the whole race of men; for they have lain in wait for their souls, as lions for their prey, making it [ sc. the prey] ready as food for their [ sc. the rulers'] chastisements because of the forgetfulness and unknowing which is in them. Have mercy then upon us, our Lord, our Saviour, have mercy upon us and save us in this great stupefaction."

(63) But unto those Heathen, Jews, and Turks, blindness did befall, yet for all that they stand in an anxious birth, and seek for a rest; they desire grace, though they seek not for it at the right mark, or in the right place or limit: but God is everywhere, and looketh upon the ground of the heart.

(8) The tongue (speech) departed, and having been absent for a year, it came round and said: 'How have you been able to live without me?' They replied: 'Like mute people, not speaking, but breathing with the breath, seeing with the eye, hearing with the ear, thinking with the mind. Thus we lived.' Then speech went back.

(85) And Enoch lifted up (his voice) and spake to his son Methuselah: 'To thee, my son, will I speak: hear my words--incline thine ear to the dream-vision of thy father.

(2) "See, O Shem, how all the things I have said to you have been fulfilled. . . . And the things that you lack, according to my will, will appear to you at that place upon the earth, that you may reveal them as they are. Do not let your thought have dealings with the body. For I have said these things to you, through the voice of the fire, for I entered through the midst of the clouds. And I spoke according to the language of each one. This is my language that I spoke to you. And it will be taken from you. And you will speak with the voice of the world upon the earth. And it will appear to you with that appearance and voice, and all that I have said to you. Henceforth proceed with faith to shine in the depths of the world."

(13) Twice blessed is he that seeth with his eyes and heareth with his ears

(6) Speech went off. Having remained away a year, it came back and said: c How have you been able to live without me?' They said: 'As the dumb, not speaking with speech, but breathing with breath, seeing with the eye, hearing with the ear, knowing with the mind, procreating with semen. Thus have we lived.' Speech entered in.

(2) "Now, therefore, Mary, not only ye, but every man who shall accomplish the mystery of the raising of the dead,--that which healeth the demons and all pains and all sicknesses and the blind and the lame and the maimed and the dumb and the deaf, which I have given unto you aforetime,--he who shall receive [that] mystery and accomplish it, thereafter then, if he ask for all things, for poverty and riches, for weakness and strength, for . . . and healthy body, and for all healings of the body and for the raising of the dead and for healing the lame and the blind and the deaf and the dumb and all sicknesses and all pains,--in a word, he who shall accomplish that mystery and ask for all the things which I have just said, then will they quickly come to pass for him."

(14) And until then I had been prostrate on my face, trembling: and the Lord called me with His own mouth, and said to me: 'Come hither, Enoch, and hear my word.'

(90) Yea, they cried to them, but they did not hearken to what they said to them, but were exceedingly deaf, and their eyes were very exceedingly blinded.