St Dionysius the Areopagite The Ecclesiastical Hierarchy

Translated by John Parker

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39 Pages

Page 6

Section VIII.

When he has finished these things, he elevates himself from his progression to things secondary, to the contemplation of things [13] first, as one, who, at no time or manner, turns himself to any other thing whatever than those which are peculiarly his own, but from things Divine to Divine,----is persistently and always ranging himself under the banner of the supremely Divine Spirit.

III. Contemplation. 

Section I.

This initiation, then, of the holy birth in God, as in symbols, has nothing unbecoming or irreverent, nor anything of the sensible images, but (contains) enigmas of a contemplation worthy of God, likened to physical and human images. For how should it appear misleading? Even when the very divine meaning of the things done is passed over in silence, [14] the divine Instruction might convince, religiously pursuing as it does the good life of the candidate, enjoining upon him the purification from every kind of evil, through a virtuous and Divine life, by the physical cleansing through the agency of water in a bodily form. This symbolic teaching then of the things done, even if it had nothing more divine, would not be without religious value, as I think, introducing a discipline of a well-regulated life, and. suggesting mysteriously, through the total bodily purification by water, the complete purification from the evil life.

Section II.

Let this, then, be, for the uninitiated, a conducting guidance of the soul, which separates, as is meet things sacred and uniform from multiplicity, and apportions the harmonious elevation to the Orders severally in turn. But we, who have ascended by sacred gradations to the sources of the things performed, and have been religiously taught these (sources), shall recognize of what moulds they are the reliefs, and of what invisible things they are the likenesses. For, as is distinctly shewn in the Treatise concerning "Intelligible and Sensible," sacred things in sensible forms are copies of things intelligible, to which they lead and shew the way; and things intelligible are source and science of things hierarchical cognizable by the senses.

13. [g] From outward signs to inward grace.

14. [h] Catechism.

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