The prosperity of a city is dependent upon the supply of goods for sale in the market. We say that a country is prosperous which produces much fruit. So also there is a certain prosperity of the soul when it has been filled with works of every kind. It is necessary first for it to be laboriously cultivated and then to be enriched by the plentiful streams of heavenly waters, so as to bear fruit thirtyfold, sixtyfold and a hundredfold^[1] and to obtain the blessing which says, Blessed shall be your barns and blessed your stores.

The good God reveals an understanding of this gift to his saints and gives it from his good treasury, as the sacred law attests, when it says, The Lord swore to your fathers to give to you and to open his good treasury. From this heavenly treasury he gives rain to his earth to bless all the works of your hands. The rain is this: the utterance of the law, which falls like dew upon the soul that is fecund and fertile with good works, so that it may possess the moisture of grace.

What is meant by a heaven of brass? Absolute dryness and lack of aerial waters through which the earth produces its fruits.

By brass heaven Scripture means that the heavens are shut up and deny their benefit to the earth. And the earth is iron when it rejects crops and refuses to receive. It is as if in hostile hardness the seed is cast upon the earth, which should be a fruitful field, but it is hard and hostile. The earth ought to nourish the seeds as if in the bosom of a gentle mother. But when does iron bear fruit? When does copper let loose showers?

At times when we were in error, mired in the pride of our mind as if with our feet in the mud, we did not perceive our error because our soul was unable to see itself. Although we would look [into the mirror] each day, we would grope around in the dark like blind men. Our inner mind did not possess that which is necessary for discernment.