SECTION II

Thus the most holy Hierarchy of the supercelestial Beings has, for its initiation, its own possible and most immaterial conception of God and things Divine, and the complete likeness to God, and a persistent habit of imitating God, as far as permissible. And its illuminators, and leaders to this sacred consecration, are the very first Beings around God. For these generously and proportionately transmit to the subordinate sacred Ranks the ever deifying notions given to them, by the self-perfect Godhead and the wise-making Divine Minds. Now the Ranks, who are subordinate to the first Beings, are, and are truly called, the initiated Orders, as being religiously conducted, through those, to the deifying illumination of the Godhead. And after this,—the heavenly and supermundane Hierarchy,—the Godhead gave the Hierarchy under the Law, imparting its most holy gifts, for the benefit of our race, to them (as being children according to the Logion), by faint images of the true, and copies far from the Archetypes, and enigmas hard to understand, and types having the contemplation enveloped within, as an analogous light not easily discerned, so as not to wound weak eyes by the light shed upon them. Now to this Hierarchy under the Law, the elevation to spiritual worship is an initiation. Now the men religiously instructed for that holy tabernacle by Moses,—the first initiated and leader of the Hierarchs under the Law,—were conductors; in reference to which holy tabernacle,—when describing for purposes of instruction the Hierarchy under the Law,—he called all the sacred services of the Law an image of the type shewn to him in Mount Sinai. But “initiated” are those who are being conducted to a more perfect revelation of the symbols of the Law, in proportion to their capacity. Now the Word of God calls our Hierarchy the more perfect revelation, naming it a fulfilment of that, and a holy inheritance. It is both heavenly and legal, like the mean between extremes, common to the one, by intellectual contemplations, and to the other, because it is variegated by sensible signs; and, through these, reverently conducts to the Divine Being. And it has likewise a threefold division of the Hierarchy, which is divided into the most holy ministrations of the Mystic Rites, and into the Godlike ministers of holy things, and those who are being conducted by them, according to their capacity, to things holy.

And each of the three divisions of our Hierarchy, comformably to that of the Law, and the Hierarchy, more divine than ours, is arranged as first and middle and last in power; consulting both reverent proportion, and well-ordered and concordant fellowship of all things in harmonious rank.