the perfectly wise rational soul, as it is found
live, for it is not sentient life. It is of the kind that goes on in the rhythm of our bodies, the sort of life that our bones and hair have, and our hair can be cut without our feeling anything. Sentient life is better than this, and yet we must not worship such life as beasts have.
110. Let not our religion be the worship of the perfectly wise rational soul, as it is found in angels who steadfastly carry on their ministry in the universe or in its parts, or in the best of men who await the reformation of their lower selves. All rational life obeys the voice of unchangeable truth speaking silently within the soul. If it does not so obey it is vicious. Rational life therefore does not owe its excellence to itself, but to the truth which it willingly obeys. The lowest man must worship the same God as is worshipped by the highest angel. In fact it is by refusing to worship him that human nature has been brought low. The source of wisdom and of truth is the same for angel and man, namely the one unchangeable Wisdom and Truth. The very Virtue and changeless Wisdom of God, consubstantial and coeternal with the Father, for our salvation deigned, in the temporal dispensation, to take upon himself our nature in order to teach us that man must worship what every rational intellectual creature must also worship. Let us believe that the highest angels and most excellent ministers of God want us to join them in the worship of the one God, in con-