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THE SECRET SENSE
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Apocrypha of the Old Testament, p. 90.) It is said in the same work:-"We say that the fire sanctifies not the flesh but the sinful soul; we do not mean the all-devouring ordinary fire, but the intelligent, that penetrates the soul that passes through the fire." Tertullian also says (A.N.C.L. vol. si. p. 136): “ The philosophers are familiar as well as we with the distinction between a common and a secret fire."
As Philo Judæus puts it: “ The altar of God is the grateful soul of the wise man, ..... On this-soul the sacred fire is continually kept burning preserved with care and unextinguishable."
The idea is that spirit and matter cannot be separated completely from one another except through the agency of this secret 'intelligent' fire. Death, it should be noted, is not tantamount to a complete separation between spirit and matter. Some matter continues to adhere to the spirit-substance in demise, and under subjection to subtle, magnetic forces, drags the soul into a new womb.' Thus is transmigration forced on the embodied soul. By means of asceticism, complete separation between spirit and matter is brought about, when the roots of desire are completely destroyed; for fresh matter can no longer pour into the soul and the existing one loses its stickiness and is soon shed off.
The Messiah is called the bridegroom,' because He is the - enjoyer of joy or happiness, which is conceived allegorically as a bride, since a bride gives the greatest happiness to the bridegroom.
The mystery of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost is to be understood in this sense: Life in the abstract is the Father, whose divinity being hidden under
