O Jesu, the mind’s most delectable food, when I look upon Thee within the wall of Paradise, how marvellous dost Thou appear unto me! For Thou art the Word of God humanified, and ~ Thou art man deified. Yet art not Thou as it were compounded of God and man. Between component parts some proportion is necessary, without which there can be no composition, but there is no proportion between the finite and infinite. Nor art Thou the coincidence of the creature and Creator, in the sense in which coincidence maketh one thing to be another. For human nature is not divine nor divine nature human. The divine nature is not mutable nor can it be changed into another nature, since it is eternity itself. Nor can any nature by reason of its union with the divine pass over into another nature: as is illustrated in the case of the image, when united unto its truth. For an image cannot be said to become other when thus united, but rather to
withdraw itself from otherness, because it is united unto its own truth, which is unchangeableness itself.
Neither, most sweet Jesu, canst Thou be said to be of an intermediate nature, between divine and human, for between these twain it is not possible for any intermediate nature to be set, partaking of both. For the divine nature may not be shared, since it is entirely and absolutely onefold, nor in that wise wouldst Thou, blessed Jesu, be either God or man. But I see Thee, Lord Jesu, to be One Person beyond all understanding, because Thou art One Christ, in the same manner that I see Thy human soul to be one, albeit therein, as in any human soul, I see there was a nature of the senses liable to corruption, subsisting in an intellectual and incorruptible nature.
That soul was not composite of corruptible and incorruptible, nor is the nature of the senses one with that of the intellect; but I perceive the intellectual soul to be united through the sentient faculty with the body, which it quickeneth. If a man’s intellectual soul should stay from quickening the body without being separated from the body, that man would be dead, because life would cease: and yet his body would not be separated from
life since the intellect is his life. *Tis as when a man, who had attentively sought by means of his sight to discern someone approaching, becometh rapt in other thoughts and so withdraweth his attention from that pursuit, though his eyes are none the less directed toward it— that man’s eye is not then separated from his mind, although it existeth in separation from the mind’s discerning attention. But if that state of being rapt should not only cease quickening his discernment but should also cease quickening his senses, his eye would be dead because it would not be quickened. Howbeit, for all that, it would not be separated from the intellectual form, which is the form that giveth being, just as a withered hand remaineth united unto the form which maketh the whole body one.
There are men, so Saint Austin saith, who have skill to withdraw the lifegiving spirit from their body, and appear dead and without feeling. In such a case, the intellectual nature would remain united unto the body, because that body would not exist under another form than afore: nay more, it would not only have the same form and remain the same body, while the quickening power would
not cease to exist, but it would remain in K
union with the intellectual nature, albeit that did not actually extend itself unto the body. I perceive a man in such a case as one truly dead because he lacketh the quickening life (death being the lack of that which quickeneth), and yet he would not be a dead body separated from its life, which is its soul.
°Tis thus, Jesu most merciful, that I look upon the absolute life, which is God, inseparably united unto Thy human intellect and thereby unto Thy body. For that union is such that none can be closer. Every union that can be disparted is far inferior to that than which none can be closer. Wherefore it never was true nor can it ever be that Thy divine nature was separated from Thy human nature, nor yet from Thy mind nor Thy body, the parts without which human nature cannot exist. Although it be most true that Thy soul did cease from quickening Thy body and that Thou didst truly undergo death, yet wast Thou never separated from true life. If that priest of whom Austin telleth had some kind of power of withdrawing from the body that which quickeneth, and attracting it into the soul—as if a candle illumining a room were a living thing, and should attract to the centre of its light the beams whereby it illumined the
room, without being separated from the room, and this attraction were naught else than ceasing to shed forth those beams—what marvel, then, if Thou, Jesu, hadst the power (since Thou art the most free of living Lights), of assuming and of laying down Thy quickening soul? When Thou willedst to lay it down Thou didst suffer death, and when Thou willedst to resume it Thou didst rise again in Thine own might.
Now the intellectual nature, when it quickeneth or animateth the body, is called the human soul. And the soul is said to be removed when the human intellect ceaseth to quicken it. For when the intellect ceaseth from its function of quickening, and, with regard to that, separateth itself from the body, it is not therefore separated purely and simply.
These thoughts Thou inspirest, Jesu, that Thou mayest show Thyself unto me, most unworthy, in so far as I can receive it, and that I may contemplate how in Thee mortal human nature put on immortality, so that all men sharing that same human nature may in Thee attain to resurrection and divine life. What can be sweeter, what more delightsome, than to know that in Thee, Jesu, we find all things that be in our nature—in Thee, who alone canst do
all things, and givest most liberally and upbraidest not? O ineffable lovingkindness and mercy! Thou, God, who art goodness’ self, couldest not satisfy Thine infinite clemency and bounty unless Thou gavest us Thyself! Nor could this be done more beseemingly, more possibly, for us recipients than in Thy taking on Thee our nature, because we could not approach unto Thine. Thus Thou camest unto us, and art called Jesus, our Saviour ever blessed.
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