Verse 13. — In the horror of a vision by night, when deep sleep is wont to seize upon men. 46. That they may show what they teach to be lofty, behold they declare that they themselves scarcely grasp it. They now exalt themselves over the singularity of wisdom. — Often, while heretics strive to speak loftier things, they are witnesses against their own selves that what they utter is not true. For in a vision by night one sees but dimly. They therefore assert that they have perceived the crannies of the whisper amid the dread of a nocturnal vision, because, in order to show to others that the things they teach are lofty, they proclaim that they themselves can scarcely grasp them. But from this it must be gathered how the things they themselves have seen but dimly can be certain to their hearers.
By a wondrous order, therefore, when they pour forth speaking lofty things, in the disclosing of their folly they are bound fast by the very utterances of their loftiness. And how greatly they are lifted up by the singularity of wisdom is shown when he at once adds: When deep sleep is wont to seize upon men. As though it were openly said by the heretics: While men sleep below, we keep watch to perceive the things on high, because those things are known to us, to the knowing of which the drowsy hearts of other men do not rise up. As though they said more openly: In the things wherein our understanding raises itself, the sense of the rest of men sleeps. Sometimes, however, when they perceive that they are despised for this by the hearer, they feign that they themselves fear what they say. Hence it is subjoined: