To Donatus 14

The one peaceful and trustworthy tranquillity, then, the one solid and firm security, is if a man, drawn out of these whirlwinds of the disturbing world, is anchored in the harbour of salvation: he lifts his eyes from earth to heaven, and, admitted to the Lord's gift and already close in mind to his God, he glories that whatever seems lofty and great among others in human affairs lies beneath his own consciousness. He can now seek nothing, desire nothing from the world, who is greater than the world. How stable, how unshaken a protection it is, how heavenly a defence with everlasting goods, to be freed from the snares of the entangling world, to be cleansed from the dregs of earth into the light of eternal immortality! Whatever treacherous ruin of the hostile enemy may have raged against us before, no matter: we are compelled to love more what we shall be, while it is granted us both to know and to condemn what we were. Nor is there need for this of payments or canvassing or force, as when the highest rank or power of a man is brought forth by laborious effort: it is a free gift from God, and easy. As the sun shines of itself, the day gives light, the spring waters, the rain bedews, so the heavenly Spirit pours itself in. After the soul, gazing at heaven, has recognized its Author, it begins, higher than the sun and more sublime than all this earthly power, to be what it believes itself to be.