[151] Secondly, she declares that she has not partaken of wine or strong liquor, glorying that her whole life has been one of unbroken abstinence. And rightly, for indeed it was a great and wonderful feat to follow reason, the free, the unshackled, the pure, which no passion inebriates.
[152] And the result of this is that the mind, which has drunk deep of abstinence unmixed, becomes a libation in its whole being, a libation which is poured out to God. What else was meant by the words, “I will pour out my soul before the Lord” but “I will consecrate it all to him, I will loosen all the chains that bound it tight, which the empty aims and desires of mortal life had fastened upon it; I will send it abroad, extend and diffuse it, so that it shall touch the bounds of the All, and hasten to that most glorious and loveliest of visions—the Vision of the Uncreated”?
[153] This, then, is the company of the sober who have set before them instruction as their head, while the former was the company of the drunken, whose leader was indiscipline.