Verse 24. — 'Why dost thou hide thy face, and reckon me thine enemy?' 59. From penal fear one must return to love. — The human race had the contemplation of the innermost light in paradise; but, pleasing itself, whereby it withdrew from itself, it lost the light of its Creator and his face; it fled to the trees of paradise, because after the fault it dreaded to see him whom it had been wont to love. But behold, after the fault it comes into penalty, and from penalty it returns to love, because it finds what has been the fruit of its fault; and that face which, roused up, it feared in the fault, it seeks again out of the penalty, so that it may now flee the mist of its own blindness, and gravely shudder at this very thing — that it does not see its Author.
Pricked with which desire, plainly, the holy man cries out: 'Why dost thou hide thy face, and reckon me thine enemy?' For if thou didst regard me as a friend, thou wouldst not deprive me of the light of thy vision. And, following upon the mutability of the human heart, he adds: