The fourth evil which the desires inflict on the soul is that they pollute and defile it, as it is written, ‘ He that toucheth pitch shall be defiled with it.’t He, then, toucheth pitch who satisfies the desires of the will in any created thing. Observe here that the wise man compareth the creature with pitch: for there is a greater distance between the excellence of the soul and the noblest creature than there is between the glittering diamond or fine gold and pitch. As a diamond or a piece of gold, if placed, heated, in contact with pitch becomes foul and stained in proportion to the heat, so the soul inflamed by the desire it may entertain for the creature, draws corruption therefrom: and defilement. And there is a greater difference between the soul and all other created corporeal things than there is between the most pellucid water and the foulest mud. So, then, as such water mingled with mud becomes foul, so the soul whose affections are set on created things becomes polluted; for then it resembles them. As soot defiles the most beautiful face, so the unruly desires of the soul, if indulged in, defile
Tg) lix.. 10. t Eccles. xiii. 1. VOL. I. D
34= and pollute that soul, which is in itself the most beautiful and perfect image of God.
The prophet Jeremias, bewailing the ravages of corruption produced by these unruly desires, first of all describes the beauty of the soul and then its defilement: ‘ Her Nazarites were whiter than snow, purer than milk, more ruddy than the old ivory, fairer than the sapphire; their face is now made blacker than coals, and they are not known in the streets.’* The hair of the Nazarites signify the thoughts and affections of the soul, which, ordered according to the law of God, that is referred all to Him, are.‘ whiter than snow, purer than milk, more ruddy than the old ivory, fairer than the sapphire.’ The whole physical creation in all its beauty and magnificence is signified by these four things, and higher than all is the soul of man and its operations — that is, the Nazarites with their long hair—which, when ordered, not according to the commandments of God, that is, when occupied with created things, is now made blacker than coals. All this and far greater ruin befalls the soul’s beauty from the indulgence of unruly desires.
So, then, if my object were to describe the foul and corrupt condition to which the desires reduce the soul, I should not be able to find anything so full of cobwebs and worms, not even corruption itself, wherewith to compare it. For though the disordered soul in its natural substance be as perfect as God has made it, its reasonable substance is foul, filthy, and dark, overladen with all these evils and even more. Even one unruly desire—as I shall hereafter explain— though not a mortal sin, sullies and deforms the soul, and indisposes it for the perfect union with God, until it be cast away. What, then, must be the corruption of that soul which is wholly disordered, which has abandoned itself to
* Lam. iy. 7, 8.
35the sway of its desires, and how far removed from the purity of God! No language can describe, no understanding can comprehend, the diverse impurities which diverse desires produce in the soul.
If, indeed, any description of this could be given, so that men might understand it, it would be a matter for wonder and for great pity: for each desire, according to its nature
- and intensity, deposits the filth and sediment of corruption
and uncleanness in the soul, everyone in its own way. For as the soul of the just man, in one single perfection, which is the justice thereof, possesses innumerable most rich gifts, and many virtues of exceeding beauty, everyone of them lovely, different from each other according to the multitude and variety of the acts of the love of God; so the disordered soul in the same way, according to the multitude of the desires, the object of which are created things, contracts a miserable divéjity of vileness and impurity, with which these desires pollute. it.
These diverse pollutions are described by the prophet Ezechiel, when God showed him the interior of the temple with its walls painted round about with the likenesses of creeping things, and all abominable and unclean beasts: ‘I went in,’ saith the prophet, ‘and saw, and behold every form of creeping things, and of living creatures, the abomination and all the idols of the house of Israel were painted on the wall round about.’* When the prophet had seen this, God said to him, ‘Surely thou seest, O son of man, what the ancients of the house of Israel do in the dark, everyone in private in his chamber. Turn thee again; thou shalt see greater abominations.’ The prophet turned, and ‘behold women sat there mourning for Adonis.’ ‘ Turn thee again,’ said God to the prophet, ‘and thou shalt see greater abomi-
* Ezech. viii. 10.
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36nations than these.’ And then the prophet saw ‘at the door of the temple of the Lord, between the porch and the altar, five and twenty men having their backs to the temple of the
-Lord.’*
The various creeping things and unclean beasts painted on the walls of the temple within are the thoughts and conceptions of the intellect derived from the vile things of earth and of other created things, which, because contrary to those that are eternal, defile the temple of the soul; and the soul by means thereof, embarrasses the intellect, which is its first court. The women in the second court. ‘Mourning for Adonis’ are the desires of the will, the second faculty of the soul; these weep, as it were, when they covet that on which the will is bent, that is, the unclean things painted on the understanding. The men in the third court are the fancies and imaginations resulting from created objects which the third faculty of the soul, the memory, preserves and dwells on. These had their backs to the temple of the Lord: for when the faculties of the soul have been completely occupied with any object of earth, the soul itself may be said to have turned its back upon God’s temple, which is right reason, and which tolerates nothing that is in opposition to God.
Let this suffice for the present to give us some insight into the foul disorder which desires engender in the soul. For were I to treat separately of the impediment to the Divine union which these imperfections and their varieties occasion; of that of venial sin, which is much greater than that of imperfections, and of its varieties; and also of mortal sin, which is complete defilement, and of its various forms, Ishould never come to an end. What I say —and it is to the purpose — is, that every single desire, though it be but the slightest imperfection, darkens the soul, and hinders its perfect union with God.
* Ezech. viii. 14, 16.