"I Myself," He seems to say, "am going on before to make ready for you the path of entrance into the heavens: but if you wish, and if it is the delight of your heart, to rest within those mansions, and if you have devoted all your endeavours to reach the city above and to dwell in the company of the holy spirits, then ye know the way, which is Myself; for assuredly through Me. and none other, will you gain that blessing so marvellous. No other will ever open the heavens to you, or ever smooth for you the ground that none on earth could hitherto ever tread or ever know, except Myself alone." And the saying is true. Therefore surely it was that the prophet Jeremiah, speaking by the Spirit, bade us ever seek this way most diligently, saying: Stand ye in the ways, and ask for the everlasting paths of the Lord, and see what is the good way, and walk therein; and ye shall find sanctification to your souls. For the ways and paths of the Lord are, according to the prophet, the saving precepts of the holy prophets; but if any one devote his mind to them, he will find the Good Way, that is, Christ, through Whom cometh the perfect sanctification to our souls: for we are justified by faith, and are made partakers of the Divine nature by sharing in the gift of the Holy Spirit. Nay, more, Isaiah himself, that prophet of mighty-sounding voice, thus heralded forth to us the coming of Christ, saying: There shall be in that time an undefiled way, and it shall be called a holy way; where by the phrase "in that time" he clearly means to speak of the time of the Incarnation of the Only-begotten: for He has made Himself for us an Undefiled and Holy Way, along which whosoever shall travel will at the appointed season behold the fair brightness of the city of the saints, and the Jerusalem which is free. And again, the inspired Psalmist himself says to us, addressing himself as to God the Father: Teach me, O Lord, in Thy way: for he is desirous to be instructed in the laws that are given by Christ, as one who is not unaware that he will travel onward even to the city above, if led by the Evangelic teaching, journeying straight towards every blessing. And it would not be difficult to bring forward also many other testimonies out of the prophets, from which we might know assuredly that Jesus was called by them the holy "Way"; but I consider that there is |240 no necessity for laying excessive stress on arguments whose effective use is so self-evident. "Ye know therefore," He says, "the way by which you yourselves also may pass to the mansions above;" signifying thereby just this, and nothing else: "There are indeed resting-places in God the Father's home, many and glorious; and I am going on before you to prepare for you a means of access whereby you may in all boldness enter the regions yonder. But be well assured that no man would ever be able to reach those courts save through Me, and Me alone." If therefore any one fall away from the love of Christ, or (giving way to profane babblings and to impure and unnatural suggestions on the part of men whose hearts are set on false slanders) venture to degrade to the condition of slavery His nature so ineffable and incomprehensible, numbering among those born in the world Him Who is the Word begotten of the Father's essence in perfect freedom, or having any like base thoughts; let that man be well assured that he has lost the track of the journey to heaven above, and that he has been "deceived as to the waggon-wheels of his own farm," according to the saying of some one, and will most certainly undergo the penalties that are merited by those who cling to the world below. Therefore also the most wise Paul says of those who in madness have refused to order their lives in the manner of Christ, rushing back to the shadows of the law, that they have been alienated from Christ, and have fallen from grace in their desire to be justified by the law. For even as he who strays from the direct and beaten path will certainly be exposed to the disastrous consequences of his wandering, just so methinks and in the same degree will they who have rejected the righteousness that is in Christ, and have set at nought the teaching of the Evangelic dispensation, never see the city above, and never dwell with the saints. For Christ alone is the Way that can bring them thither.
