XLV. But not yet perhaps is there formed
upon your soul any writing good or bad; and you want to be written upon
today, and formed by us unto perfection. Let us go within the
cloud. Give me the tables of your heart; I will be your Moses,
though this be a bold thing to say; I will write on them with the
finger of God a new Decalogue. Exod. xxxviii. 28. I will write
on them a shorter method of salvation. And if there be any
heretical or unreasoning beast, let him remain below, or he will run
the risk of being stoned by the Word of truth. I will baptize you
and make you a disciple in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of
the Holy Ghost; Ib. xix.
13. and These Three
have One common name, the Godhead. And you shall know, both by
appearances Matt. xxviii. 19. and by words that
you reject all ungodliness, and are united to all the Godhead.
Believe that all that is in the world, both all that is seen and all
that is unseen, was
made out of nothing by God, and is governed by the Providence of its
Creator, and will receive a change to a better state. Believe
that evil has no substance or kingdom, either unoriginate or
self-existent or created by God; but that it is our work, and the evil
one’s, and came upon us through our heedlessness, but not from
our Creator. Believe that the Son of God, the Eternal Word, Who
was begotten of the Father before all time and without body, was in
these latter days for your sake made also Son of Man, born of the
Virgin Mary ineffably and stainlessly (for nothing can be stained where
God is, and by which salvation comes), in His own Person at once entire
Man and perfect God, for the sake of the entire sufferer, that He may
bestow salvation on your whole being, having destroyed the whole
condemnation of your sins: impassible in His Godhead, passible in
that which He assumed; as much Man for your sake as you are made God
for His. Believe that for us sinners He was led to death; was
crucified and buried, so far as to taste of death; and that He rose
again the third day, and ascended into heaven, that He might take you
with Him who were lying low; and that He will come again with His
glorious Presence to judge the quick and the dead; no longer flesh, nor
yet without a body, according to the laws which He alone knows of a
more godlike body, that He may be seen by those who pierced
Him, Rev. i. 7. and on the other hand may remain as God
without carnality. Receive besides this the Resurrection, the
Judgment and the Reward according to the righteous scales of God; and
believe that this will be Light to those whose mind is purified (that
is, God—seen and known) proportionate to their degree of purity,
which we call the Kingdom of heaven; but to those who suffer from
blindness of their ruling faculty, darkness, that is estrangement from
God, proportionate to their blindness here. Then, in the tenth
place, work that which is good upon this foundation of dogma; for faith
without works is dead, James ii. 17. even as are works
apart from faith. This is all that may be divulged of the
Sacrament, and that is not forbidden to the ear of the many. The
rest you shall learn within the Church by the grace of the Holy
Trinity; and those matters you shall conceal within yourself, sealed
and secure.