Nicholas would later claim ( in the postfaced dedicatory letter of " On Learned Ignorance ", which Nicholas finished writing on 12 February 1440 ) that he had chosen to write on this metaphysical topic because of a shipboard experience of divine illumination while on the ship returning from this mission to Constantinople.
12.
And since in beholding God face to face the created intelligence finds perfect happiness, the vision is termed'beatific'. " This direct vision of God is possible, as defined by the Council of Vienne of 1311-1312 only by a divine illumination that theologians call the light of glory ( " lumen gloriae " ).
13.
As the " Kav " ( " ray " ) of Divine illumination shines into the " Khalal " ( primordial " vacuum " ), beginning Creation, it first forms the pristine realm of Adam Kadmon ( " Primordial Man " ), described in previous Kabbalah, the first of the comprehensive anthropomorphic name figuratively denotes that man is both the purpose of creation below, as well as the embodiment on high of the sephirot Divine attributes, not yet manifest.
14.
A year later, he published " Discourses on Various Important Subjects ", the five sermons which had proved most effective in the revival, and of these, none was so immediately effective as that on the " Justice of God in the Damnation of Sinners ", from the text, " That every mouth may be stopped . " Another sermon, published in 1734, " A Divine and Supernatural Light, Immediately Imparted to the Soul by the Spirit of God ", set forth what he regarded as the inner, moving principle of the revival, the doctrine of a special grace in the immediate, and supernatural divine illumination of the soul.
