41. That perfect knowledge of eternity is granted to none so long as we live. — Because for the most part in sacred speech, as we said above, peoples are designated by the name of waters, 'the Lord encompasses the waters with a bound,' because He so tempers the knowledge of the human race that, until the vicissitudes of alternating times pass away, it does not attain perfectly to the recognition of the inmost brightness. But if by the name of light we understand the just, and by the appellation of darkness sinners (whence Paul too says: 'Ye were sometime darkness, but now are ye light in the Lord' [Eph. 5:8]), nothing hinders that this very thing which we have said be understood, because perfect knowledge of eternity is granted to none, until the course of the just and the unjust be ended.
But because it is no wonder that carnal peoples know not the things above, the holy man raises himself in admiration of that same divine power, and, beholding that it surpasses even the knowledge of the angels and of perfected men, says: