St Maximos the Confessor

We ascend step by step from what is remotest from God, but near to us, to the primal realities which are furthest from us but near to God.

For we begin by abstaining from evil because of fear, and from this we advance to the practice of virtue through strength; from the practice of virtue we advance to the discrimination conferred by the spirit of counsel; from discrimination to a settled state of virtue, which is cognitive insight; from the settled state of virtue to the spiritual knowledge of the divine principles inherent in the virtues; from this knowledge to a state of understanding, that is, to the transmuted state in which we conform to the divine principles of virtue that we have come to know; and from this we advance to the simple and undistorted contemplation of the truth that is in all; things.

From this point of vantage, as a. result of our wise contemplation of sensible and noetic beings, we will be enabled to speak about the truth as we should.

St Maximos the Confessor