De rigatione arboris sapientiae per gratiam.
The Watering of the Tree of Wisdom
Grace waters the seed of wisdom sown by fear, flooding the soul with spiritual joy once it is stripped of carnal desire.
Second, it is stated that through grace the tree of wisdom is watered. For just as fear is like a seed, so grace is like the moisture that waters the seed cast into the earth and makes it sprout. For after a person's mind has been pulled away, as it were, by a certain violence from carnal delight through fear, it is necessary that it immediately begin to taste something of spiritual joy beforehand, lest if it has remained entirely foreign to that delight, like dry seed without moisture, it be unable to grow strong into the shoot of wisdom. Therefore it comes about, when divine grace inspires, that when the soul has been perfectly stripped of bodily passions and earthly desires, it is immediately flooded with a certain unfamiliar joy, so that the more it recognizes how bitter what it deserted is, the more sweet it feels what it has found to be. This is the grace that, once the seed of wisdom has been cast into the human heart through fear, waters it from above, because it draws those minds to a desire of inner sweetness that no outward affection of carnal desire has bound.1 Therefore let it be said of wisdom: through fear it is sown, through grace it is watered, because fear first cuts off the affection of carnal delight from the soul, and then grace floods that same soul, now as if cleansed and pure of the filth of spiritual delight.2
Read the original Latin
Secundo dictum est, quod per gratiam rigatur. Sicut enim timor similis est semini, ita gratia similis est humori, qui rigat semen jactam in terram, et germinare facit. Postquam enim mens hominis quadam, ut ita dixerim, violentia a delectatione carnali per timorem abstracta fuerit, necesse est ut statim jam aliquid spiritualis gaudii praegustare incipiat, ne si omnino a delectatione aliena remanserit, quasi semen aridum absque humore ad germen sapientiae convalescere non queat. Fit igitur divina gratia aspirante, ut cum animus perfecte a corporeis passionibus, et desideriis terrenis exutus fuerit, quadam statim insolita laetitia perfundatur, ut eo amplius amarum esse agnoscat quod deseruit, quo magis dulcis sentit esse quod invenit. Haec est gratia, quae jactum in cor hominis per timorem semen sapientiae, desuper insula rigat, quia illas mentes internae dulcedinis desiderium trahit, quas nullus concupiscentiae carnalis affectus foris religavit. Dicatur ergo de sapientia, per timorem seminatur, per gratiam rigatur, quia timor primum carnalis delectationis affectum ab animo praecidit, ac deinde gratia eumdem animam quasi jam defaecatum et purum a sordibus spiritali delectatione perfundit.
Notes
- 1 ↩The phrase 'desuper insula rigat' is syntactically uncertain: 'insula' as ablative is difficult to parse naturally. The most plausible intended sense is 'waters it from above,' taking 'desuper' as the governing adverb and treating 'insula' as a corrupt or awkward reading. The translation renders the likely intended meaning.
- 2 ↩The phrase 'a sordibus spiritali delectatione' is rendered here as 'of the filth of spiritual delight,' but the syntax is compressed and could also be read as 'pours spiritual delight upon it, now cleansed and pure of filth.' The chosen reading takes 'sordibus' as ablative of separation and 'spiritali delectatione' as ablative of means.
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