22. SeeMk 16:19, Heb 1:3.
Book I 57 proclaimed in the gospel as being seated at the right hand of God the Father.22 And the Lord himself says: Do not swear by heaven, because it is the throne of God, nor by the earth, because it is thefootstoolfor hisfeet (Mt 5:34-35). Again, he says that it was by the finger of God that he was casting out demons.23 But all those who have a spiritual understanding of the scriptures have learned to take these names as meaning, not parts of the body, but spiritual powers, as also such things as helmets and shield and sword24 and many other such things. So then, the first thing to be said to these heretics is to ask them how they can have the impudence to aim gibes at the Old Testament for such ways of talking, when they can also see them used in the New—or perhaps they do not see them, but are struck blind when they start picking quarrels over them.
28. Nonetheless, they should know that in the Catholic school of doctrine the faithful who have a spiritual understanding do not believe that God is circum scribed in a bodily shape; and when man is said to have been made to the image of God, it is said with reference to the interior man, where reason is to be found and intelligence; and it is from this that he gets "authority over the fishes of the sea and the flying things of heaven, and all cattle and wild beasts, and the whole earth, and all the crawling things that crawl over the earth." After saying, you see, Let us make man to our image and likeness, he added straightaway, and let him have authority over thefishes of the sea and theflying things ofheaven, etc. (Gn 1:26), precisely to make us understand that it was with reference, not to the body that man was made to God' s image, but to the power by which he surpasses all cattle, all animals.
All the other animals, after all, are not subject to us on account of the body, but on account of the intelligence which we have and they do not—though as a matter of fact even our body is so constructed that it indicates how we are better than the beasts and therefore more like God. The bodies of all animals, you see, whether those that live in the water or those that live on land or those that fly around in the air, are bent forward to the earth, and do not have an upright posture like the human body. And this signifies that our spirit also ought to be held upright, turned to the things above it, that is to eternal, spiritual realities. In this way it can be understood, with the upright posture of the body there to remind us, that it is above all as regards the spirit that man was made to the image and like ness of God.
22. SeeMk 16:19, Heb 1:3. 23. See Lk 11:20. 24. See Eph 6:16-17.