November 12

Know ye not that ye are the temple of God?

(Dr. More speaks)

YOU have, what is very happy for you, what I call an ethereal sort of body—to use the Pythagoric phrase—even in this life, a mighty purity and plenty of the animal spirits, which you may keep lucid by that conduct and piety by which you may govern yourself. And this makes it all the more incumbent on you to have a great care to keep in order this luciform vehicle of the soul—as the Platonists call it; for there is a sanctity of body which the sensually minded do not so much as dream of. And this divine body should be cultivated as well as the divine life; for by how much any person partakes more of righteousness and virtue, he hath also a greater measure of this divine body or celestial matter within himself; he throws off the baser affections of the earthly body, and replenishes his inner man with so much larger draughts of ethereal or celestial matter: and to incite you still more to this effort, you have only to consider that the oracle of God is not to be heard but in His holy temple, that is to say, in a good and holy man, thoroughly sanctified in spirit, soul, and body.

J. H. SHORT- HOUSE, John Inglesant

THE DIVINE BODY