We are told that our forefathers, showing that de-
preferred to impart through historical data and through prophecies. Now, faith in temporal matters, whether they be past or future, thrives more on belief than on knowledge. But we must here consider what men and what books we should | believe to ensure the proper worship of God, our only means of salvation. In this matter our first consideration is whether we should believe those who call us to the worship of many gods or those who call us to worship one God. Who would doubt that he should certainly believe those who call him to worship one God, since even the worshipers of many gods agree upon one Supreme God and Ruler of all things. And certainly, enumeration begins with the number one. Primarily, then, we should believe those who hold that there is but one God, that He is supreme, the only, the true God, and that He alone is worthy of adoration. Only if the truth does not shine forth among these must we look elsewhere. Just as in nature itself the wider influence lies with the one that reduces all things to unity, and just as among men in general no large group has any strength without mutual consent—that is, unity of belief; so in religion we should yield more completely and with deeper trust to the influence of those who call us to the worship of one God.
Our second consideration has to do with the dissen47. sion among men about the worship of the one God. We are told that our forefathers, showing that degree of Faith by which one mounts from the temporal to the eternal, were led along by visible miracles (of course, miracles cannot be otherwise). Through their experience miracles were made unnecessary for the following generations. For the Catholic Church has scattered its foundations throughout the whole world. Therefore, firstly, those miracles are not permitted to continue into our own day, for fear that our souls should be constantly in search of visible things, and that mankind would grow cold through familiarity with the very things whose novelty warmed it. Secondly, we should no longer doubt that we are to believe the men who, in spite of the fact that they were preaching a doctrine followed by a minority, could nevertheless persuade nations to follow them. For at present the question is whom we should believe; later it will be proper to start reasoning about the divine and the invisible. Of course, the reasoning faculty of a purer soul, one that has attained to the lucid truth, is in no way subordinate to human authority; but this stage is reached only with the absence of all pride.