Miscellanies 7.2.10

Therefore the commandments, both those under the law and those before the law, given to people not under law (“for law is not laid down for the righteous”), ordained that the one who chooses should receive eternal life and a blessed reward, and allowed the one who delights in vice to be with what he chose; and again, that the soul which is improving at each stage in the knowledge of virtue and growth in righteousness should receive a better place in the universe, “straining forward” with each advance toward a state of freedom from passion, until it “attains to the perfect man,” the pre-eminence of knowledge and inheritance together. These saving revolutions are apportioned according to the order of change, by times, places, honors, kinds of knowledge, inheritances, and ministries, each in its turn, up to the contemplation that is highest and nearest to the Lord, in eternity. And what is lovable draws to the contemplation of itself everyone who has given himself wholly to contemplation through love of knowledge.