(2) For there where earth and heaven obedient were, The woman only, and but just created, Could not endure to stay 'neath any veil; Underneath which had she devoutly stayed, I sooner should have tasted those delights Ineffable, and for a longer time. While 'mid such manifold first-fruits I walked Of the eternal pleasure all enrapt, And still solicitous of more delights, In front of us like an enkindled fire Became the air beneath the verdant boughs, And the sweet sound as singing now was heard. O Virgins sacrosanct! if ever hunger, Vigils, or cold for you I have endured, The occasion spurs me their reward to claim! Now Helicon must needs pour forth for me, And with her choir Urania must assist me, To put in verse things difficult to think. A little farther on, seven trees of gold In semblance the long space still intervening Between ourselves and them did counterfeit; But when I had approached so near to them The common object, which the sense deceives, Lost not by distance any of its marks,

(40) Now the chaste Virgin ought to be bent into the Heart of God, and to have no Imagination to lust after the Beauty of the comely young Man; but yet the young Man was kindled with Love towards the Virgin, and he desired to copulate with her; for he said, thou art my dearest Spouse [or Bride,] my Paradise, and Garland of Roses, let me into thy Paradise: I will be impregnated in thee, that I may get thy Essence, and enjoy thy pleasant Love; how willingly would I taste of the friendly Sweetness of thy Virtue [or Power?] If I might but receive thy glorious Light, how full of Joy should I be?

(30) We must consider in the Virtue [or Power] of the Virgin, that the Will first is threefold, and each in its Center is fixed [stedfast or perfect] and pure, for it proceeds out of the Tincture. In the first Center there springs up between the Parents of the Child the Inclination [or Lust,] and the bestial Desire to copulate; this is the outward elementary Center, and it is fixed in itself. Secondly, there springs up, in the second Center, the inclinable Love to the Copulation; and although they were at the first Sight angry and odious one to another, yet in the Copulating the Center of Love springs up, and that only in the Copulating; for the one pure Tincture receives [or catches] the other, and in the Copulating the tMass receives them both.

(43) Therefore I will write from the Virgin, which knows well what is in the Woman. She is as subtle as the Tincture. But she has a Life, and the Tincture has none: The Tincture is nothing else but an exulting joyful mighty Will, and a House [or Habitation] of the Soul, and a pleasant Paradise of the Soul, which is the Soul's Propriety [or own Portion] so long as the Soul with its Imagination depends on God.

(35) Whereby then you see here, that God has not willed the earthly Copulation. Man should have continued in the fiery Love which was in Paradise, and generate out of himself. But the Woman was in this World in the outward elementary Kingdom, in the Inflammation of the forbidden Fruit, of which Adam should not have eaten. And now he has eaten and thus destroyed us; therefore it is now with him [the Adamical Man,] as with a Thief that has been in a pleasant Garden, and went out of it to steal, and comes again and would fain go into the Garden, and the Gardener will not let him in, he must reach into the Garden with his Hand for the Fruit, and then comes the Gardiner and snatches the Fruit out of his Hand, and he must go away in his burning Lust and Anger, and come no more into the Garden, and instead of the Fruit there remains his desirous burning Lust with him; and that he has got instead of the paradisical Fruit, of that we must now eat, and live in the Woman.

(9) Accordingly one dreams, the soul assenting to the vision. But he dreams waking, who looks so as to lust; not only, as that Gnostic said, if along with the sight of the woman he imagine in his mind intercourse, for this is already the act of lust, as lust; but if one looks on beauty of person (the Word says), and the flesh seem to him in the way of lust to be fair, looking on cam ally and sinfully, he is judged because he admired. For, on the other hand, he who in chaste love looks on beauty, thinks not that the flesh is beautiful, but the spirit, admiring, as I judge, the body as an image, by whose beauty he transports himself to the Artist, and to the true beauty; exhibiting the sacred symbol, the bright impress of righteousness to the angels that wait on the ascension; I mean the unction of acceptance, the quality of disposition which resides in the soul that is gladdened by the communication of the Holy Spirit.

(49) It is a great and good thing not to love fornication, and not even to think of the wretched matter at all, for to think of it is death. It is not good for any man to fall into death. For a soul which has been found in death will be without reason. For it is better not to live than to acquire an animal's life. Protect yourself, lest you are burned by the fires of fornication. For many who are submerged in fire are its servants, whom you do not know as your enemies.

(4) As far as respects human nature, the woman does not possess one nature, and the man exhibit another, but the same: so also with virtue. If, consequently, a self-restraint and righteousness, and whatever qualities are regarded as following them, is the virtue of the male, it belongs to the male alone to be virtuous, and to the woman to be licentious and unjust. But it is offensive even to say this. Accordingly woman is to practise self-restraint and righteousness, and every other virtue, as well as man, both bond and free; since it is a fit consequence that the same nature possesses one and the same virtue. We do not say that woman's nature is the same as man's, as she is woman. For undoubtedly it stands to reason that some difference should exist between each of them, in virtue of which one is male and the other female. Pregnancy and parturition, accordingly, we say belong to woman, as she is woman, and not as she is a human being. But if there were no difference between man and woman, both would do and suffer the same things. As then there is sameness, as far as respects the soul, she will attain to the same virtue; but as there is difference as respects the peculiar construction of the body, she is destined for child-bearing and housekeeping. "For I would have you know," says the apostle, "that the head of every man is Christ; and the head of the woman is the man: for the man is not of the woman, but the woman of the man. I For neither is the woman without the man, nor the man without the woman, in the Lord." For as we say that the man ought to be conti-nent, and superior to pleasures; so also we reckon that the woman should be continent and practised in fighting against pleasures. "But I say, Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lusts of the flesh," counsels the apostolic command; "for the flesh lusteth against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh. These, then, are contrary" (not as good to evil, but as fighting advantageously), he adds therefore, so that ye cannot do the things that ye would. Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are, fornication uncleanness, profligacy, idolatry, witchcrafts, enmities, strifes, jealousies, wrath, contentions, dissensions, heresies, envyings, drunkenness, revellings, and such like; of which I tell you before, as I have also said before, that they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, temperance, goodness, faith, meekness." He calls sinners, as I think, "flesh," and the righteous "spirit." Further, manliness is to be assumed in order to produce confidence and forbearance, so as "to him that strikes on the one cheek, to give to him the other; and to him that takes away the cloak, to yield to him the coat also," strongly, restraining anger. For we do not train our women like Amazons to manliness in war; since we wish the men even to be peaceable. I hear that the Sarmatian women practise war no less than the men; and the women of the Sacae besides, who shoot backwards, feigning flight as well as the men. I am aware, too, that the women near Iberia practise manly work and toil, not refraining from their tasks even though near their delivery; but even in the very struggle of her pains, the woman, on being delivered, taking up the infant, carries it home. Further, the females no less than the males manage the house, and hunt, and keep the flocks: "Cressa the hound ran keenly in the stag's track."

(22) The Pride of Nature indeed inclines one Man more strongly than another, but it forces [or compels] none that they must be proud; and if there be a Force [or strong Compulsion upon any,] then it is when Man willingly for temporal Honour and Pleasure Sake lets the Devil into his eternal Essences; and then he [the Devil] sees presently how that Man is inclined [or led] by the Spirit of this World, and in that Way tempts him accordingly; if Man lets him but in, he is then a Guest very hardly to be driven out again; yet it is very possible, if that Man entirely and sincerely purposes to turn, and to live according to the Will of God, then the Virgin is always ready [before-hand] in the Way to help him.

(39) But thus the Tincture is the Longing, the great Desire after the Virgin, which belongs to the Tincture; for it is subtle without Understanding, but it is the divine Inclination, and continually seeks the Virgin, [which is] its Play-fellow; the masculine seeks her in the feminine, and the feminine in the masculine; especially in the delicate Complexion, where the Tincture is most noble, clear, and vigorous; from whence comes the great Desire of the masculine and feminine Sex, so that they always desire to copulate, and the great burning Love, so that the Tinctures mingle together, and [try, prove, or] taste one another with their pleasant Taste; whereas one [Sex] continually supposes that the other has the Virgin.

(10) And she would fain return again into her Place to her Bridegroom, if the earthly Flesh, with the earthly Mind and Senses [or Thoughts did not hinder, or] were not in the Way, for the Virgin does not go into them, she will not be bound [-to, or] in the earthly Center; she finishes the whole Time (while the Woman lives in her Stead) of her Speculation with Longing and much Calling, Admonishing and hearty Seeking: But [to] the Regenerate she appears in a high triumphing Manner, in the Center of the Mind; [she] also often dives into the Tincture of the Blood of the Heart, whereby the Body with the Mind and Senses comes to tremble and triumph so highly, as if it were in Paradise; it also presently gets a paradisical Will.

(56) Therefore, O Man, look to it! [have a care] how you use the bestial Lust; it is (in itself) an Abomination before God, whether it be in the State of Wedlock, or out of it. But the right Love and Fidelity (in the Fear of God) covers it before the Countenance of God; and (through the Sun of the Virgin) it is regenerated to be a pure undefiled Creature again, in the Faith, if thy Confidence be in God.

(64) The member endures, but that pleasure is forgotten, Yet not all forgotten, but hidden from the senses. Like summer wherein cotton is produced, The cotton remains, but the summer is forgotten. Or like ice which is formed in great frost, The frost departs, but the ice is still before us. The ice is mindful of that extreme cold, In like manner, O son, every member of your body Tells you tales of God's bounties to your body. Even as a woman who has borne twenty children,

(34) Because of this certain other depraved and worthless fellows have been impelled to assert that man was formed by various powers, and that down as far as the navel his body shows the work of godlike craftsmanship, but his lower parts indicate inferior workmanship. In consequence of the latter man has a sexual impulse. They fail to observe that the upper parts also want food and in some men are lustful. And they contradict Christ when he said to the Pharisees that the same God made both our outer and our inner man. Moreover, desire is not a bodily thing, though it occurs because of the body. Certain others, whom we may call Antitactae [i.e., opponents ], assert that the God of the universe is our Father by nature, and all that he has made is good. But one of the beings made by him sowed tares and so caused the origin of evils. He involved us all in them and so made us opponents of the Father. Therefore even we ourselves are set in opposition to him to avenge the Father, and act contrary to the will of the second. Since, then, the latter has said, "Thou shalt not commit adultery," Let us, say they, commit adultery to abolish his commandment.

(7) Further, it forbids intercourse with a female captive so as to dishonour her. "But allow her," it says, "thirty days to mourn according to her wish, and changing her clothes, associate with her as your lawful wife." s For it regards it not right that this should take place either in wantonness or for hire like harlots, but only for the birth of children. Do you see humanity combined with continence? The master who has fallen in love with his captive maid it does not allow to gratify his pleasure, but puts a check on his lust by specifying an interval of time; and further, it cuts off the captive's hair, in order to shame disgraceful love: for if it is reason that induces him to marry, he will cleave to her even after she has become disfigured. Then if one, after his lust, does not care to consort any longer with the captive, it ordains that it shall not be lawful to sell her, or to have her any longer as a servant, but desires her to be freed and released from service, lest on the introduction of another wife she bear any of the intolerable miseries caused through jealousy.

(37) Therefore he wrestles in many a Man (that is of a strong Complexion, in whom the Virgin does often behold herself) so very hard, continually supposing he shall get the Virgin, and that she shall be generated for him: And the more the Soul resists him, and draws near to the Heart of God, and pants to yield itself over thereto (where the amiable Virgin not only freely looks upon it, but dares even for a long Time even to sit in its Nest, [mgr. in] the Tincture of the Soul,) the more strong and [eager or] desirous does the Spirit of this World come to be.

(5) "A perfect life and merit high in-heaven A lady o'er us," said she, "by whose rule Down in your world they vest and veil themselves, That until death they may both watch and sleep Beside that Spouse who every vow accepts Which charity conformeth to his pleasure. To follow her, in girlhood from the world I fled, and in her habit shut myself, And pledged me to the pathway of her sect. Then men accustomed unto evil more Than unto good, from the sweet cloister tore me; God knows what afterward my life became. This other splendour, which to thee reveals Itself on my right side, and is enkindled With all the illumination of our sphere, What of myself I say applies to her; A nun was she, and likewise from her head Was ta'en the shadow of the sacred wimple. But when she too was to the world returned Against her wishes and against good usage, Of the heart's veil she never was divested.

(7) But yours be the recompense, (O ye righteous women!) of this great cause. For while lustful desire heart-inflamed from the body there beyond goeth down where the spirit of evil reaches (to ruin, still) ye bring forth the champion to help on the cause, (and thus conquer temptation). So your last word is 'Vayu'; (ye cry it in triumph ).

(3) For if thou should’st regard that supreme [point] of time when . . . the one nature doth pour forth the young into the other one, and when the other greedily absorbs [it] from the first, and hides it [ever] deeper [in itself]; then, at that time, out of their common congress, females attain the nature of the males, males weary grow with female listlessness. And so the consummation of this mystery, so sweet and requisite, is wrought in secret; lest, owing to the vulgar jests of ignorance, the deity of either sex should be compelled to blush at natural congress,—and much more still, if it should be subjected to the sight of impious folk. XXII