約伯倫理 第 211 章

Ibid.—'Let it look for light, and see it not, nor the rising of the dawn.' 46. The rising of the dawn is the brightness of the inner truth. For with however great an intention the still-pilgrim mind busies itself to see the light as it is, it is not able, because the blindness of its own condemnation hides it from it. But the rising of the dawn is the brightness of the inner truth, which ought always to be new to us. This night undoubtedly does not see it, because through fault our blind weakness, being still set in corruptible flesh, does not ascend to that light which already irradiates the citizens on high. For within this dawn rises, where the new brightness of the Godhead is always shown to the spirits of the angels;

and there arises, as it were, a perpetual joy of light which is never ended. But the rising of the dawn is also that new birth of the resurrection, by which holy Church, raised up even in the flesh, rises to the contemplation of the light of eternity. For if the very resurrection of our flesh were not, as it were, a certain birth, the Truth would not have said of it: 'In the regeneration, when the Son of man shall sit on the throne of His majesty' (Matt. 19:28; Luke 22:69). He saw, therefore, that this was a rising, which He called a regeneration. But with however great a virtue the elect now shine, they cannot penetrate what that glory of the new birth will be, by which they then ascend with the flesh to the contemplation of the light of eternity. Hence too Paul says:

'What eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor has it entered into the heart of man, which God has prepared for them that love Him' (1 Cor. 2:9). Let him therefore say: 'Let it look for light, and see it not, nor the rising of the dawn'; because our weakness, darkened by a self-chosen fault, does not penetrate the brightness of the inner light unless it first pay through death the debt of its own punishment. There follows: