sidered is the dissension that has arisen among
us to unity ought to be greater and more worthy of being believed.
47. Another thing which must be considered is the dissension that has arisen among men concerning the worship of the one God.
We have heard that our predecessors, at a stage in faith on the way from temporal things up to eternal things, followed visible miracles.
They could do nothing else. And they did so in such a way that it should not be necessary for those who came after them. When the Catholic Church had been founded and diffused throughout the whole world, on the one hand miracles were not allowed to continue till our time, lest the mind should always seek visible things, and the human race should grow cold by becoming accustomed to things which when they were novelties kindled its faith. On the other hand we must not doubt that those are to be believed who proclaimed miracles, which only a few had actually seen, and yet were able to persuade whole peoples to follow them. At that time the problem was to get people to believe before anyone was fit to reason about divine and invisible things. No human authority is set over the reason of a purified soul, for it is able to arrive at clear truth. But pride does not lead to the perception of truth. If there were no pride there would be no heretics, no schismatics, no circumcised, no worshippers of creatures or of images. If there had not been such classes of St. Augustine opponents before the people was made perfect as promised, truth would be sought much less eagerly. xxvi, 48. This is the tradition concerning
God's temporal dispensation and his providential care for those who by sin had deservedly become mortal. First, consider the nature and education of any individual man who is born.
His first age, infancy, is spent in receiving bodily nourishment, and it is to be entirely forgotten when he grows up. Then follows childhood when we begin to have some memories.
To this, adolescence succeeds, when nature allows propagation of offspring and fatherhood.
After adolescence comes young manhood, which must take part in public duties and be brought under the laws. Now sins are more strictly forbidden, and sinners have to undergo the servile coercion of penalty. In carnal souls this of itself causes more dreadful onsets of lust, and wrong-doing is redoubled. For sin has a double aspect. It is not merely wrong-doing. It is disobedience. After the labours of young manhood, a little peace is given to old age.
But it is an inferior age, lacking in lustre, weak and more subject to disease, and it leads to death. This is the life of man so far as he lives in the body and is bound by desires for temporal things. This is called "the old man" and "the exterior or earthly man," even if he obtain what the vulgar call felicity in a wellordered earthly city, whether ruled by kings