Nations tread the sanctuary; vices enter the soul’s shrine

And something most paradoxical Jerusalem suffered at the time of the captivity. For she beheld nations—which God commanded not to enter into the assembly—treading the sanctuary, where not even for the Israelites is it lawful to enter, only the priests having been counted worthy to be in that place after not ordinary purifications. And the enemies reached even as far as the untrodden places, entering into a place which scarcely, after much sanctification, the high priest entered once a year.

And after a little: And if Jerusalem, just as we set out before, is such a soul, one must understand her goods according to nature—being her adornment, through which she was serving the divine—laid away in her places untrodden by everyone except the high-priest Word, to be called her desirable things. And upon all these the enemy who has conquered in wrestling, having afflicted the one not campaigning well for herself but worthily left behind by the divine help, having stretched himself through his operative power unto the base things, has pulled them out of the ruling part and has left desolate of the good things the soul that stood away from God. And nations in this place must be allegorized as the crowd of vices, having entered into the ruling part created to be receptive of God and a true sanctuary of the one wanting to rest upon a pure mind. Which nations God forbids altogether to enter into the church; for what else would we more properly suppose God forbids to enter into a soul numbered in the church of God than the works and the mindset of the flesh, truly being nations hostile to God? “For the flesh campaigns against the spirit,” “the mindset of the flesh being enmity unto God”; “for it is not subject to the law of God; for it is not even able.”