POEMANDRES. VIII. 47 



indwelling Good, thou shouldest hate its vileness, having 

 understood the snare, which it hath laid in wait for thee, 

 making those things seeming to us and being considered 

 objects of sense (a), insensible, having obstructed them with 

 much matter, and filled them with abominable pleasure, 1 

 so that thou shouldest neither hear those things about 

 which it behoves thee to hear, nor discern those about 

 which it behoves thee to discern. 



CHAPTEK VIII. 



Tliat none of the Entities perish, ~but mankind erroneously 

 call the changes, destructions and deaths. 



1. CONCERNING Soul and body, Son! now is to be 

 discoursed ; in what way verily the soul is immortal, and 

 of what quality (&) is energy in constitution and dissolution 

 of body. For concerning naught of these is the death, but 

 it is intellectual notion (c) of an appellation " immortal," 

 either as vain work (d), or by deprivation of the first letter ; 



(a) otlffdnr^ptot. (6) tutpyeia B Trorottryi. (c) voyf&di. (d) xsvov spyoy. 



William Law, in his " Spirit of Prayer" (Part I., Works vii. 84): 

 " Our own life is to be hated, and the reason is plain: it is because 

 there is nothing lovely in it. It is a legion of evil, a monstrous 

 birth of the Serpent, the World, and the Flesh. It is an Apostasy 

 from the Life and Power of God in the Soul a life that is death to 

 Heaven, that is pure unmixed Idolatry, that lives wholly to self and 

 not to God, and therefore all this own life is to be absolutely hated, 

 all this Self is to be denied, and mortified, if the Nature, Spirit, 

 Tempers, and Inclinations of Christ are to be brought to life in us." 



1 " I see a different law in my members, warring against the law of 

 my mind, and bringing me into captivity under the law of sin which 

 is in my members. wretched man that I am ! Who shall deliver 

 me out of the body of this death ? (Eom. vii. 23). "The mind of 

 the flesh is enmity against God " (ibid. viii. 7). " They that are in 

 the flesh cannot please God " (ibid. viii. 8). See also Galat. v. 17. 



