1Chapter 12 — The importance of knowledge to true spiritual life.
2When you have read and carefully listened to these things, you shall know what God bestows on such as rightly love Him, being made as ye are a paradise of delight, presenting in yourselves a tree bearing all kinds of produce and flourishing well, being adorned with various fruits.
3For in this place the tree of knowledge and the tree of life have been planted; but it is not the tree of knowledge that destroys— it is disobedience that proves destructive.
4Nor truly are those words without significance which are written, how God from the beginning planted the tree of life in the midst of paradise, revealing through knowledge the way to life, and when those who were first formed did not use this knowledge properly, they were, through the fraud of the Serpent, stripped naked.
5For neither can life exist without knowledge, nor is knowledge secure without life.
6Wherefore both were planted close together.
7The Apostle, perceiving the force of this conjunction, and blaming that knowledge which, without true doctrine, is admitted to influence life, declares, "Knowledge puffeth up, but love edifieth".
8For he who thinks he knows anything without true knowledge, and such as is witnessed to by life, knows nothing, but is deceived by the Serpent, as not loving life.
9But he who combines knowledge with fear, and seeks after life, plants in hope, looking for fruit.
10Let your heart be your wisdom; and let your life be true knowledge inwardly received.
11Bearing this tree and displaying its fruit, thou shalt always gather in those things which are desired by God, which the Serpent cannot reach, and to which deception does not approach; nor is Eve then corrupted, but is trusted as a virgin; and salvation is manifested, and the Apostles are filled with understanding, and the Passover of the Lord advances, and the choirs are gathered together, and are arranged in proper order, and the Word rejoices in teaching the saints,—by whom the Father is glorified: to whom be glory for ever, Amen.