Bad Advertisement?
Are you a Christian?
Online Store:Visit Our Store
| The soul of man, being intellectual, can know God of itself, if it be true to its own nature.
PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP 
Part
II.
§30. The soul of man, being intellectual,
can know God of itself, if it be true to its own nature.
The tenets we have been speaking of have been
proved to be nothing more than a false guide for life; but the way of
truth will aim at reaching the real and true God. But for its knowledge
and accurate comprehension, there is need of none other save of
ourselves. Neither as God Himself is above all, is the road to Him afar
off or outside ourselves, but it is in us and it is possible to find it
from ourselves, in the first instance, as Moses also taught, when he
said145
: “The word” of faith “is
within thy heart.” Which very thing the Saviour declared and
confirmed, when He said: “The kingdom of God is within you146
.” 2. For having in ourselves faith, and
the kingdom of God, we shall be able quickly to see and perceive the
King of the Universe, the saving Word of the Father. And let not the
Greeks, who worship idols, make excuses, nor let any one else simply
deceive himself, professing to have no such road and therefore finding
a pretext for his godlessness. 3. For we all have set foot upon it, and
have it, even if not all are willing to travel by it, but rather to
swerve from it and go wrong, because of the pleasures of life which
attract them from without. And if one were to ask, what road is this? I
say that it is the soul of each one of us, and the intelligence which
resides there. For by it alone can God be contemplated and perceived.
4. Unless, as they have denied God, the impious men will repudiate
having a soul; which indeed is more plausible than the rest of what
they say, for it is unlike men possessed of an intellect to deny God,
its Maker and Artificer. It is necessary then, for the sake of the
simple, to shew briefly that each one of mankind has a soul, and that
soul rational; especially as certain of the sectaries deny this also,
thinking that man is nothing more than the visible form of the body.
This point once proved, they will be furnished in their own persons
with a clearer proof against the idols.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
|
