Elihu therefore, because he first spoke of the bitterness of sorrow and afterwards of the joy of consolation, fitly added of this person thus afflicted and thus delivered, “All these things God works three times in every man,” that is to say, in conversion, in probation and in death. For in these three states, a person first suffers under sharp pangs of sorrow and afterward is comforted by great pleasures of security. But because the mind of each of the elect suffers in each of these three stages [in the pain of conversion, the trial of probation or the dread of dissolution] and is purified and set free from this very suffering, it is appropriately added, “So that he may recall their souls from corruption and enlighten them with the light of the living.” This is the light of the dying that we behold with our bodily eyes. They who still live for this world are in darkness in the light of the dying. But they are enlightened with the light of the living, who, despising the light of the wo...
35. For that is the light of the dying which we behold with our bodily eyes. But they who still live for this world, are in darkness in the light of the dying. But they are enlightened with the light of the living, who despising the light of the world, return to the splendor of the inward brightness, that they may live in that place where they may see, by feeling it, the true light, where light and life are not different from each other, but where the light itself is life also; where the light so encircles us from without as to fill us within; and so fills us within, as, being itself uncircumscribed, to circumscribe us without. They are enlightened therefore with this light of the living, which they behold at that time the more clearly, the more purely they now live by its aid.
36. Eliu has uttered great and very powerful words. But it is a characteristic of every boastful person, that, while giving utterance to truths and mysteries, he suddenly blends with them, through pride of hear...
