18. And look, that is the literal state of every reader! He can understand all that he has read so well, from the natural to the innermost spiritual sense; But if he wants an actual sample of all that is known, he learns that not even a sunbeam bows before his will! And if he wants to see the life of the spirit, then instead of that, he always encounters the night of the grave into which he has laid the corpse; or in other words: he does not get any self-evident certainty about the hereafter, but everything is a diction (unsubstantiated assertion) in him and no longer a corpse in the grave.

19. But what did it help him? If he has read so much, but cannot attain to any living conviction through all that has been read, he continually resembles Joseph of Arimathea, who probably removes one corpse after the other from the cross, and anoints it and wraps it in white linen. - but the corpse remains a corpse and is always carried to the grave.