Miscellanies 7.12.71

so that it may become well suited for receiving knowledge. Do you not see how wax is softened and bronze purified so that it may receive the impression stamped on it? Indeed, as death is “the separation of the soul from the body,” so knowledge is a kind of rational death, leading the soul away from the passions, separating it from them, and leading it on to the life of doing good, so that it may then say to God with boldness, “I live as you wish.” For the one who chooses “to please men” “cannot please God,” since the many choose not what is beneficial but what is delightful; but whoever pleases God becomes, as a consequence, acceptable to good people. How, then, could the pleasures of food, drink, and sex still be delightful to such a man, when he is wary even of speech that brings some pleasure, and of any movement of thought or activity that delights? For “no one can serve two masters, God and mammon.” He does not say this simply of money, but of the supply that money furnishes for various pleasures. Truly, one who has known God nobly and truly cannot serve the pleasures that are opposed to him.