The contemplative life, in which the intellectual creature, cleansed from every sin and wholly healed on every side, shall behold its Creator, took its name from contemplating, that is, from seeing. And if this is so, that life where God can be seen is itself to be believed to be the contemplative one. But in the present life, most full of miseries and errors, there is no doubt that God cannot be seen as he is. In the future life, therefore, which for this reason is called contemplative, he is to be seen, and not undeservedly. For if to see God is the highest and most solid joy, and the highest joy is rightly believed to be the reward of the blessed; and the reward will be given not to those still fighting, but to those already conquering, after the triumph:
who would not see that all the saints shall see God in that eternal life where they shall rejoice without end? There they shall rejoice, where they shall carry off the reward; there they are about to receive the reward, where they shall triumph not only over enemies conquered, but even over enemies finished off; there they shall triumph, where they shall have no further adversary. 2. But in this life, however strenuously we fight, and, with the Lord's help, lay low the bands of enemies by whom we are surrounded; yet, if we do not wish to be conquered by them, we never cease to fight. Nor do battles already manfully sweated out make the victors secure; but rather the revived contests of the adversaries keep them anxious. And so, because according to the word of sacred Scripture, the whole human life is a temptation upon the earth (Job
7:1, according to the LXX), then temptation is to be ended when the battle too is ended; and then the battle is to be ended when, after this life, secure victory succeeds the fighting: so that all the soldiers of Christ, who, divinely aided unto the end of the present life, withstood their enemies indefatigably, the toilsome pilgrimage now finished, may reign happy in the fatherland. In which human nature is so to be repaired and healed from absolutely every infirmity, that no sins may remain to it, nor may it now be able to sin. And this will be its whole reward: that, once made possessor of the contemplative life, it may insatiably behold the author of its own blessedness, rejoice over him, obtain from him what it has hoped for, and in him, unto that to which by living holily —