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Gregory of Nyssa

Gregory of Nyssa Quotes

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Famous Gregory of Nyssa Quotes

“Now seeing that the Word declares that the living in God is the life of the soul, and seeing that this living is knowledge according to each man's ability, and that ignorance does not imply the reality of anything, but is only the negation of the operation of knowing, and seeing that upon this partaking in God being no longer effected there follows at once the cancelling of the soul's life, which is the worst of evils — because of all this the Producer of all Good would work in us the cure of such an evil. A cure is a good thing, but one who does not look to the evangelic mystery would still be ignorant of the manner of the cure. We have shown that alienation from God, Who is the Life, is an evil; the cure, then, of this infirmity is, again to be made friends with God, and so to be in life once more. When such a life, then, is always held up in hope before humanity, it cannot be said that the winning of this life is absolutely a reward of a good life, and that the contrary is a punishment (of a bad one); but what we insist on resembles the case of the eyes. We do not say that one who has clear eyesight is rewarded as with a prize by being able to perceive the objects of sight; nor on the other hand that he who has diseased eyes experiences a failure of optic activity as the result of some penal sentence. With the eye in a natural state sight follows necessarily; with it vitiated by disease failure of sight as necessarily follows. In the same way the life of blessedness is as a familiar second nature to those who have kept clear the senses of the soul; but when the blinding stream of ignorance prevents our partaking in the real light, then it necessarily follows that we miss that, the enjoyment of which we declare to be the life of the partaker.”

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Book:On Infant's Early Deaths
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