Purify, impede, enliven, weaken, and kill

Meaning

Part IV: the spiritual comparison · unit 34 builds its polemic through paired reversals: not purified but impeded, not enlivened but weakened, and finally killed. The learned verbal forms sharpen a claimed difference between Christ's saving efficacy and self-chosen alternatives. The passage names other religious communities in a hostile exclusionary account; these judgments are the anonymous author's, not neutral definitions of those communities. The English retains the negations and progression rather than allowing all five verbs to become generic transformation terms. The accompanying analogy with fraudulent alchemy points toward deprivation of property and life, intensifying the warning about false means.