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. . . oh, happy chance!
-- I went forth without being observed,
My house being now at rest.These lines take as
a metaphor the miserable estate of captivity, a man's
deliverance from which, when none of the gaolers'
hinder his release, he considers a 'happy chance.'
For the soul, on account of[205] original sin, is
truly as it were a captive in this mortal body,
subject to the passions and desires of nature, from
bondage and subjection to which it considers its
having gone forth without being observed as a 'happy
chance' -- having gone forth, that is, without being
impeded or engulfed[206] by any of them.
2. For to this end the soul profited by going
forth upon a 'dark night' -- that is, in the
privation of all pleasures and mortification of all
desires, after the manner whereof we have spoken. And
by its 'house being now at rest' is meant the sensual
part, which is the house of all the desires, and is
now at rest because they have all been overcome and
lulled to sleep.
For until the desires are lulled to sleep through
the mortification of the sensual nature, and until at
last the sensual nature itself is at rest from them,
so that they make not war upon the spirit, the soul
goes not forth to true liberty and to the fruition of
union with its Beloved.
END OF THE FIRST BOOK |