? Is the
Father such as I see Thee to be? Forasmuch as Thou hast said, "He who
hath seen Me hath seen the Father also?" But before Philip answered
thus, or perhaps before he so much as thought it, when the Lord had
said, "He who hath seen Me hath seen the Father also," He immediately
added, "Believest thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in
me?" For with that eye he could not yet see either the Father, or the
Son who is equal with the Father; but that his eye might be healed for
seeing, he was anointed unto believing. So, then, before thou seest what
thou canst not now see, believe what as yet thou seest not. "Walk by
faith," that thou mayest attain to sight. Sight will not gladden him in
his home whom faith consoleth not by the way. For, so says the apostle,
"As long as we are in the body we are absent from the Lord." And he
subjoins immediately why we are still "absent or in pilgrimage," tho we
have now believed; "For we walk by faith," he says; "not by sight."

V. Our whole business, then, brethren, in this life is to heal this eye
of the heart whereby God may be seen. To this end are celebrated the
Holy Mysteries; to this end is preached the Word of God; to this end are
the moral exhortations of the Church, those, that is, that relate to the
corrections of manners, to the amendment of carnal lusts, to the
renouncing the world, not in word only, but in a change of life: to this
end is directed the whole aim of the Divine and Holy Scriptures, that
that inner man may be purged of that which hinders us from the sight of
God. For as the eye which is formed to see this temporal light, a light
tho heavenly yet corporeal, and manifest, not to men only, but even to
the meanest animals (for this the eye is formed to this light); if
anything be thrown or falls into it, whereby it is disordered, is shut
out from this light; and tho it encompasses the eye with its presence,
yet the eye turns itself away from, and is absent from it; and tho its
disordered condition is not only rendered absent from the light which is
present, but the light to see which it was formed is even painful to it,
so the eye of the heart too, when it is disordered and wounded, turns
away from the light of righteousness, and dares not and can not
contemplate it.

VI. And what is it that disorders the eye of the heart? Evil desire,
covetousness, injustice, worldly concupiscence; these disorder, close,
blind the eye of the heart. And yet, when th