VVHither are you carried, O men, drunkenwith drinking up the strong Wine of Ignorance? which seeing you cannot bear: why do you not vomit it up again?
2. Stand, and be sober, and look up again with the eyes of your heart; and if you cannot p. 116 all do so, yet do as many as you can.
3. For the malice of Ignorance surroundeth all the Earth, and corrupteth the Soul, shut up in the Body, not suffering it to arrive at the Havens of Salvation.
4. Suffer not your selves to be carried with the great stream, but stem the tide, you that can lay hold of the Haven of Safety, and make your full course towards it.
5. Seek one that may lead you by the hand, and conduct you to the door of Truth, and Knowledge, where the cleer Light is, that is pure from Darknesse, where there is not one drunken, but all are sober, and in their heart look up to him, whose pleasure it is to be seen.
6. For he cannot be heard with ears; nor seen with eyes, p. 117 nor expressed in words, but only in minde and heart.
7. But first thou must tear apeeces, and break thorow the garment thou wearest; the web of Ignorance, the foundation of all Mischief, the bond of Corruption, the dark Coverture, the living Death, the sensible Carcasse, the Sepulchre, carried about with us, the domesticall Thief, which in what he loves us, hates us, envies us.
8. Such is the hurtfull Apparell, wherewith thou art cloathed, which draws and puls thee downward by its own self; lest looking up, and seeing the beauty of Truth, and the Good that is reposed therein, thou shouldst hate the wickednesse of this garment, and understand the traps and ambushes which it hath laid for thee.
9. Therefore doth it labour p. 118 to make good those things that seem, and are by the Senses, judged and determined; and the things that are truly, it hides, and envellopeth in much matter, filling what it presents unto thee, with hatefull pleasure, that thou canst neither hear what thou shouldest hear, nor see what thou shouldest see.
The End of the eighth Book.