[53] “And the two were naked, Adam and his wife, and were not ashamed.” “Now the serpent was the most subtil of all the beasts that were upon the earth, which the Lord God had made” (Gen. 2:25, 3:1). The mind that is clothed neither in vice nor in virtue, but absolutely stripped of either, is naked, just as the soul of an infant, since it is without part in either good or evil, is bared and stripped of coverings: for these are the soul’s clothes, by which it is sheltered and concealed. Goodness is the garment of the worthy soul, evil that of the worthless.
[54] Now there are three ways in which a soul is made naked. One is when it continues without change and is barren of all vices, and has divested itself of all the passions and flung them away. For this reason “Moses fixes his tent outside the camp, a long way from the camp, and it was called the tent of testimony” (Exod. 33:7).
[55] What this means is this. The soul that loves God, having disrobed itself of the body and the objects dear to the body and fled abroad far away from these, gains a fixed and assured settlement in the perfect ordinances of virtue. Wherefore witness is also borne to it by God that it loves things that are noble; “for,” says he, “it was called the tent of witness.” He leaves unmentioned who it is that calls it so, in order that the soul may be stirred up to consider who it is that bears witness to virtue-loving minds.
[56] This is why the high priest shall not enter the Holy of Holies in his robe (Lev. 16:1 ff.), but laying aside the garment of opinions and impressions of the soul, and leaving it behind for those that love outward things and value semblance above reality, shall enter naked with no coloured borders or sound of bells, to pour as a libation the blood of the soul and to offer as incense the whole mind to God our Saviour and Benefactor.
[57] Nadab and Abihu, too, who had drawn nigh to God and had forsaken the mortal life and become partakers of the life immortal are beheld naked of vain and mortal glory. For those who carried them away would not have borne them in their coats (Lev. 10:5), had they not become naked by bursting every bond of passion and of bodily constraint, in order that their nakedness and freedom from the body should not be debased by the irruption of impious thoughts. For not to all must leave be given to contemplate the secret things of God, but only to those who are able to hide and guard them.
[58] And so Mishael and Elzaphan do not take them up in their own coats, but in those of Nadab and Abihu, who had been devoured by fire and been taken up (into heaven). For having stripped themselves of all that covered them, they offered their nakedness to God, but their coats they left behind for Mishael and Elzaphan. Now coats are those parts of the irrational by which the rational was hidden.
[59] Abraham too becomes naked when the words have been spoken to him, “Go forth out of thy country and thy kindred” (Gen. 12:1). Isaac also does not indeed become naked, but is always naked and without body, for an injunction has been given him not to go down into Egypt (Gen. 26:2), and “Egypt” is the body. Jacob, again, loves nakedness of the soul, for his smoothness signifies nakedness. “For Esau,” we read, “was a hairy man, but Jacob a smooth man” (Gen. 27:11), and accordingly he has “Leah” as wife.