Miscellanies 5.4.19

But since they are unwilling to believe the good justly, or knowledge for salvation, we ourselves, considering their things our own, because all things are God's, and especially since good things have gone forth from us to the Greeks, will deal with them as they are naturally able to hear. For this great crowd judges what is intelligent or just not by the truth but by what pleases it; and it would be pleased by nothing more than by what is like itself. For whatever is still blind and deaf, without understanding or the fearless and keen-sighted vision of a soul that loves contemplation, which the Savior alone implants, like the uninitiated at the mysteries or the unmusical at the dances, not yet pure nor worthy of pure truth, but discordant, disorderly, and material, must still stand outside the divine chorus. “For we compare spiritual things with spiritual.” That is why the Egyptians, through what they call their sanctuaries, and the Hebrews, through the veil, hinted at the manner of concealment, which is truly divine and most necessary for us because of the sacred word stored up in the sanctuary of truth; through which only those consecrated were allowed to enter, that is, those dedicated to God, circumcised in the desires of the passions for love of the divine alone. For Plato too thought it unlawful for the impure to touch the pure.