our present state of life, attain to the vision of the Divine Essence,
thus:

1. Jacob said: _I have seen God face to face, and my soul hath been
saved._[370] But the vision of the face of God is the vision of the
Divine Essence. Whence it would seem that a man may by contemplation
actually reach, even during this present life, to the vision of the
Essence of God.

But S. Denis says[371]: "If anyone saw God and understood what
he saw, then it was not God he saw, but something belonging to
Him." And similarly S. Gregory says[372]: "Almighty God is never
seen in His Glory, but the soul gazes at something derived from
It, and thus refreshed, makes advance, and so ultimately arrives
at the glory of vision." Hence when Jacob said, _I saw God face
to face_, we are not to understand that he saw the Essence of
God, but that he saw some appearance--that is, some imaginary
appearance--in which God spoke to him; or, as the Gloss of S.
Gregory[373] has it, "Since we know people by the face, Jacob
called knowledge of God His face."

2. Further, S. Gregory says[374]: "Contemplative men turn back within
upon themselves in that they search into spiritual things, and do not
carry with them the shadows of things corporeal; or if perchance they
touch them, they drive them away with discreet hands. But when they
would look upon the Infinite Light, they put aside all images which
limit It, and in striving to arrive at a height superior to themselves,
they become conquerors of their nature." But a man is only withheld from
the vision of the Divine Essence, which is Infinite Light, by the
necessity he is under of turning to corporeal images. From this it would
seem that contemplation can, even in this present life, arrive at the
sight of the Infinite Essential Light.

But human contemplation according to this present state cannot
exist without recourse to the imagination, for it is in
accordance with man's nature that he should see intelligible
forms through the medium of pictures in the imagination, as also
the Philosopher teaches.[375] Yet intellectual knowledge does
not consist in such images, rather does the intellect
contemplate in them the purity of intelligible truth; and this
is not merely the case in natural knowledge, but also in those
things which we know by revelation. For S. Denis says: "The
Divine Light manifests to us the Angelic hierarch