Ephesians 5:8-17

b. Against their secret and nightly shame be children of light and day, Ephesians 5:8-17 .

As the darkness of night is the element in which license and guilt find their covert, so by association of thought license and darkness are conceptually identified; while, on the contrary, truth and purity, as well as knowledge, are conceptually identified with light. These associations of thought are universal in the human mind and in human language. Zoroastrianism makes light and darkness the emblem of the two great kingdoms of good and evil in the world. St. Paul here intensifies the thought, by making light and darkness include not only the principles of good and evil, but the human embodiments of good and evil, the Church and the anti-Church.