Miscellanies 7.12.79

one kind through love, the other through fear. It has been said, at any rate: “The fear of the Lord is pure, enduring forever and ever.” For those who turn from fear to faith and righteousness endure forever. Fear produces abstinence from evils, while love, building up toward what is voluntary, urges one to do good, so that one may hear from the Lord, “I no longer call you servants but friends,” and may now approach prayer with confidence. The form of his prayer is thanksgiving for things past, things present, and things to come, as already present through faith; and before this comes his having received knowledge. And indeed he asks to live the life appointed in the flesh as one who knows, as one without flesh, to obtain the best things and escape the worse. He also asks for relief for the sins we have committed and for conversion to full knowledge. So he follows promptly the one who calls him at his departure, as soon as he calls, going ahead, so to speak, because of his good conscience, hastening to give thanks there too, once he has come to be with Christ, having shown himself worthy through purity to possess, as though blended with it, the power of God supplied through Christ. For he wishes not to be warm by sharing in heat, nor bright by sharing in fire, but to be wholly light. He knows precisely what was said: “If you do not hate father and mother, and moreover your own soul, and if you do not carry the sign.” For he has hated fleshly attachments, which hold the powerful charm of pleasure, and he looks down on everything that belongs to the making and nourishing of the flesh; indeed he rises up even against the bodily soul, putting a bridle on the unruly irrational spirit, since “the flesh desires against the spirit.” And “to carry the sign” is “to carry about death,” “renouncing all things” while still alive; since love for the one who sowed the flesh is not equal to love for the one who created the soul for understanding.