on which account Mishael and his partisans concealed them not in their own garments, but in those of Nadab and Abihu, who had been burnt with fire and taken upwards; for having stripped off all the garments that covered them, they brought their nakedness before God, and left their tunics about Mishael. But clothes belong to the irrational part of the animal, which overshadow the rational part. Abraham also was naked when he heard,

Come forth out of thy land and from thy kindred;Gen. xiii. 1. and as for Isaac, he indeed was not stripped, but was at all times naked and incorporeal; for a commandment was given to him not to go down into Egypt, Gen. xxvi 2. that is to say, into the body. Jacob also was fond of the nakedness of the soul, for his smoothness is nakedness, for Esau was a hairy man, but Jacob, says Moses, was a smooth man,Gen. xxv. 25. on which account he was also the husband of Leah.

This is the most excellent nakedness, but the other nakedness is of a contrary nature, being a change which involves a deprivation of virtue, when the soul becomes foolish and goes astray. Such was the folly of Noah when he was naked, when he drank wine. Gen. ix. 21. But thanks be to God, that this change and this stripping naked of the mind according to the deprivation of virtue, did not extend as far as external things, but remained in the house; for Moses says, that he was stripped naked in his house: for even if a wise man does commit folly, he still does not run to ruin like a bad man; for the evil of the one is spread abroad, but that of the other is kept within bounds, and therefore he becomes sober again, that is to say, he repents, and as it were recovers from his disease.

But let us now more accurately examine the statement, that the stripping of him naked took place in his house. When the soul, being changed, only conceives some evil thing and does not put it in execution, so as to accomplish it in deed, then the sin is only in the private domain and abode of the soul. But if, in addition to thinking some wickedness it proceeds also to accomplish it and carry it into execution, then the wickedness is diffused over the parts beyond his house:

and on this account he curses Canaan also, because he related the change of his soul abroad, that is to say, he extended it into the parts out of doors, and gave it notoriety, adding to his evil intention an evil consummation by means of his actions: but Shem and Japhet are praised, because they did not attack his soul, but rather concealed its deterioration.