Miscellanies 5.11.74

Hence the apostle says: “We see now as through a mirror, but then face to face,” by means only of those pure and incorporeal apprehensions of the understanding. It is possible also in dialectic to divine something of God, if one attempts, without any of the senses, to press on through reason to what each thing is in itself, and does not stand back from the things that are until, climbing up to what lies above, he grasps by thought itself what the good is in itself, arriving at the very end of the intelligible, according to Plato. Again Moses, not allowing altars and sacred precincts to be built in many places, but establishing one temple of God, proclaimed both the only-begotten world, as Basilides says, and the one God, as Basilides no longer thinks. And because Moses, the one who knows, does not enclose the unenclosable in a place, he set up no image in the temple, showing that God is to be worshiped as invisible and uncircumscribed, while leading the Hebrews in some way to a conception of God through the honor given to the name in the temple. Moreover the Word, forbidding the building of temples and all sacrifices, hints that the Almighty is not contained in anything, by these words: “What house will you build for me? says the Lord. Heaven is my throne,” and so on. And likewise about sacrifices: “The blood of bulls and the fat of lambs I do not want,” and whatever else besides the Holy Spirit forbids through the prophet.