Gregory of Neocaesarea

In his own words on 1 Samuel

• 1 Samuel 18:1

  Jonathan was not knit to David as a whole, but his "soul," the higher parts, which are not cut off when the apparent and visible elements have been cut off from a person and which will not be coerced by any means, for they never move involuntarily. For the soul is free and not imprisoned in any way.… For in its primary sense, it is its nature to be wherever the mind is, and if it seems to you to be in a room, you are imagining it there in some secondary sense. So it is never prevented from being in whatever place it wishes to be; but rather, in actual fact, it can only be, and reasonably be thought to be, where the works proper to itself alone are found, and relative to that.

  ADDRESS OF THANKSGIVING TO ORIGEN 6.85-87