The Question Kept for Another Conference

Your zeal, by which you long to reach the way of perfection, not for a moment only but fully and perfectly, urges us to continue this discussion without tiring. For you are anxiously asking, not about outward chastity or visible circumcision, but about what is hidden. You know that complete perfection does not lie in this visible self-control of the flesh, which even unbelievers can achieve, either under compulsion or by hypocrisy, but in that willing and invisible purity of heart which the blessed apostle describes this way: “For he is not a Jew who is one outwardly, nor is circumcision that which is outward in the flesh. But he is a Jew who is one inwardly, and circumcision is that of the heart, in the spirit, not in the letter; whose praise is not from men but from God,” who alone searches the secrets of the heart. But your wish cannot be fully satisfied now, since the short part of the night that is left is not enough to investigate this most difficult question, and so I think it best to put it off for a while. For these matters must be set out by us quietly, with a heart entirely free from all bustling thoughts, and they must be received into your minds the same way. Just as the inquiry ought to be undertaken for the sake of our common purity, so these things cannot be learned or acquired by anyone who lacks the gift of uprightness. For we are not asking what arguments of empty words can persuade, but what the inward faith of the conscience and the greater force of truth can persuade. And so, as to the knowledge and teaching of this purification, nothing can be put forward except by one who has experienced it, and nothing can be entrusted except to one who is a most eager and earnest lover of the truth itself: one who hopes to attain it, not by asking questions with mere empty words, but by striving with all his might and strength, with no wish for useless chatter, but with the desire to be purified within. [a]