the mystical temple of god 620 awaken your Smell, that is in so ugly a manner buried;120 awaken it; so that it may prevent worthless fragrance from the Temple of God, unless you wish to fall down or to be thrust down to where there is a hideous and everlasting stench, where more than one Cincinnatus,121 with his badly smelling Cyprian powder, laments: Ah! Curses on my curls, curses on my hair, my disgrace, which I have often combed with an effeminate hand!122 Apply yourself to this holy pursuit with all your strength, so that these three ministers of your soul and body, Touch, Taste and Smell, may make you the sort of men about whom that famous saying of the holy King can be appropriately understood and declared: “They have noses and yet do not smell. They have hands but do not feel; and no sound rises from their throats” (Ps 115:6-7). CHAPTER 14 The Doors of the Mystical Temple What are they? Eyes. Ah! How carelessly they are guarded! How often one has to shout to these sentries with the devout bard: “O eyes! O rocks—is not this a better label with which they would be called? Alas! So many ships were lost, dashed against them!”123 Why so? Because, as our Teacher Jesus explains in Matthew: “Everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (5:28). This agrees with that proverb of the Wise Man: “Your eyes shall behold strange women, and your heart shall utter perverse things” (Prov 23:33) [LV]. For whatever is in the eyes is at once in the heart. This is why it is said that Job made a pact with his eyes not to entertain any thoughts 120 The comparison is beingmade here with “snoring badly” (see above, footnote 119 (p. 619)): Smell is sleeping so soundly, that it appears to be dead and buried. 121 That is, “one who has curls.” 122 Although this verse is not italicized in the TDM, it is almost certainly a quotation from an unknown work. 123 This is a quotation from an unknown work by an unknown author (“pius vates”).
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