Numbers 32:6

There can be seen also yet a third mode of exposition, so that among the sons of Israel, that is, among the people of the Church, there are understood to be certain spiritual ones, who within the Jordan receive the inheritance of the land flowing with milk and honey, namely receiving the sweetness of wisdom and knowledge, whose land is surrounded and watered by the river of God, which is filled with the waters of divine understanding. But others are carnal, who abound in beasts and cattle, that is, in gross and dull senses; such as were those of whom the Apostle said: "Are you so senseless that, having begun in the Spirit, you now are perfected in the flesh?" and: "O senseless Galatians, who has bewitched you not to obey the truth?" But each one of us also, unless he arms himself and, having cast off the brutish and beastlike senses, hastens to spiritual understanding, will remain beyond the Jordan and will not be able to advance through the river of wisdom, which gladdens the city of God, that is, the soul capable of God; he will not attain the interior things of the Lord's utterances, which are "sweeter than honey and the honeycomb," but he will attain only that land in which the two kings were slain, where it is said to him: "I judged myself to know nothing among you except Christ Jesus, and him crucified." But he who has been able to cross the Jordan and penetrate to the interior things, there following Jesus our Lord will slay thirty and more kings—those, perhaps, of whom it is said: "The kings of the earth stood by and the princes gathered together into one against the Lord and against his Christ"—and when these kings have been driven out and cast down, he will recognize the more secret mysteries, until he come even to that place where the seat of God is and Jerusalem the city of the living God, not this one which serves with its sons on earth, but that heavenly one which is free and is the mother of us all; to whose inheritance may he deign to lead us, our leader and Lord Jesus Christ, to whom be glory unto the ages of ages. Amen.

But unless these things be proved from the divine Scriptures, they will seem fables. Let Paul, then, be brought forward as a suitable witness of these things, who in the epistle to the Hebrews, where he describes all those fathers and patriarchs and prophets who by faith pleased God, after the enumeration of them all, in his final conclusion says thus concerning them: "And all these, having received the testimony of faith, did not obtain the promises, God providing something better for us, that they should not be perfected without us." As if those nine and a half tribes were to say concerning those two and a half tribes that for this reason they did not receive the promise of that land which was decreed to them beyond the Jordan through Moses, God providing something better for us, that they should not be perfected without us. Therefore for this reason they cross over with us armed for battle and help us in warring, in vanquishing the enemies. But those cross over who are armed, who are strong men and mighty; but all the rest, the cowardly and unwarlike band, remain beyond the Jordan. But if any among them are strong men, having left their animals and cattle and all their encumbrances, they fight against the enemy together with us, until our enemies be conquered, until we take the inheritance of the good land, the land of honey and milk. For who doubts that all the saints among the fathers both help us by their prayers and confirm us by the deeds they have done and exhort us by their examples, but also by their volumes, through those things which they have left written for our remembrance, teaching us and instructing us how we must contend against the hostile powers and how the struggles of the contests must be endured? They fight, then, for us, and they themselves advance first before us, armed. For having them as an example and seeing their brave deeds through the Spirit, we are armed for the spiritual battle and contend against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places. Thus, finally, those who serve as soldiers under Joshua as leader slay thirty and more kings and receive their lands by the lot of inheritance. For when the spiritual forces of wickedness have been driven out from the heavenly places, they receive the inheritance of the heavenly kingdom, our Lord Jesus dividing it.