Scotus Academicus, Tomus septimus: De Incarnatione Verbi Divini

The mystery of the Incarnation.

NOTE 1. There is a threefold light which, as is customary, shines upon us, whereby supernatural truths can be made known: The first is the light of infused faith, by which they are perceived through a mirror and in an enigma. The second is that of demonstration, or of knowledge divinely bestowed, or acquired from revealed principles with the aid of reasoning. Finally, the third is that of persuasion, whereby a thing is sought out from conjectures and reasons, and is supported and confirmed by similitudes. Faith informs and enlightens the believer through the authority of the one revealing, in whom he believes: knowledge confirms and convinces the Philosopher through the evidence of demonstration and of inference from naturally evident principles regarding some lesser-known truth: persuasion, finally, instructs the unskilled and the ignorant, and disposes them to receive the truth through a knowledge of those things which lie within their view. But whether the Mystery of the Incarnation is proved by this threefold light is disputed among theologians. All agree indeed that it is made known by the light of faith; inasmuch as the sacred Scriptures bring forth nothing more frequently than this Mystery, which is to be adored: wherefore Christ rightly admonished the Jews, John 5: Search the Scriptures, for you think that in them you have life everlasting; and they are they that give testimony of me. The difficulty therefore concerns only the light of knowledge and persuasion; namely, whether this Mystery can be clearly uncovered either by demonstration or by conjecture, both by Philosophers and by the more unlearned and ignorant.

NOTE 2. Supernatural things are distinguished in two ways: for certain things are called supernatural as to their substance, while others only as to their manner. Of the former kind and order are all those things which so exceed nature that by no effort whatsoever of any intellect can they be detected and known by their native and proper power: for instance, the Trinity of persons in the unity of essence, the decree of predestination of this or that man. For what man knows the things of a man, says St. Paul, 1 Cor. 2, but the spirit of man that is in him? So the things also that are of God no man knows, but the Spirit of God. Of the latter kind, however, are those things of the natural order indeed as to their entity, although not so as to their manner of existing. Thus, for example, sight restored to a man born blind is natural according to its entity, since that visual faculty is of the same order and kind as that which is possessed by generation: but it is supernatural as to its manner; because it exceeds the powers of nature, and the manner and order which God is accustomed to preserve in acting by his ordinary providence. It is disputed among theologians, however, whether all faith and divine revelation set aside, the Incarnation of the Word is so supernatural according to its entity that it cannot be perceived naturally. Some judge that since it was accomplished only by an extraordinary power of God, it follows from this that it cannot evidently be proved. Yet some theologians, whom Raymond Lull is said to have anticipated, contend that the Incarnation can be evidently proved against the objections of the Philosophers.

NOTE 3. The Incarnation may be regarded either as possible, or as future, or as accomplished, concerning which threefold state there can be a difficulty: how it may be known by man as wayfarer, and likewise by the Angels, both the blessed and the damned.

First Conclusion. — No angelic or human intellect can uncover by the powers of nature the possibility, or the future occurrence, of the Incarnation: nor can it evidently and certainly know its existence.

Proof of the first part: Supernatural entities as to their substance cannot be attained by the powers of nature: but the Incarnation is supernatural according to its entity: therefore by no effort of natural intellect can it be perceived. The major stands, for entities of supernatural order according to their entity are called such because they transcend every grasp of nature. The minor is also evident, since it is altogether supernatural that God should be united hypostatically to man, that created nature should be stripped of its connatural mode of subsisting, that natural subsistence should be supplied in place by divine personality, etc.

Furthermore, in order that an intellect might comprehend the Mystery of the Incarnation, it would have to know evidently the obediential power of rational nature with respect to all that to which that power can extend itself; it would likewise have to know the power of the divine Omnipotence with respect to the supreme effect which that power can produce; since the Incarnation is the greatest and most excellent work of the divine Omnipotence: but a created intellect cannot evidently grasp both of these by its own powers: therefore neither can it uncover certainly and evidently the Mystery of the Incarnation.

Finally, in order that that possibility could be conjectured and come into anyone's mind, there would need to be some medium in created things from which a created intellect could detect that possibility: but there is no such medium: partly because that mystery is a work of God's supreme liberality and freedom; and consequently there is no connection of it with natural causes and effects: partly because since each created nature is infinitely distant from God, it has nothing at all of itself whereby it may show forth a possible intimate union of itself with God: therefore by no medium, and by no power of a created intellect, faith and revelation set aside, can the possibility of this mystery be uncovered.

The second and third parts are proved together: First indeed from Scripture, which declares this mystery hidden from creatures. Thus Paul, writing to the Ephesians 3, speaking of the Mystery of the Incarnation calls it the unsearchable riches of Christ, and the Sacrament hidden from eternity in God: and in 1 Cor. 2 he calls it the wisdom in a mystery which is hidden. Wherefore Christ is said in Isaiah 8 to be a hidden God, on account namely of the Sacrament of the assumed man. This St. Ambrose excellently proves in the second chapter of the latter Epistle to the Corinthians, where he concludes thus: Therefore the wisdom of God was hidden while it was not in words, but in power: possible not by human reason, but believable by the efficacy of the Spirit. To these words equally applies that of Isaiah 35: Who shall declare his generation? Whence St. Ambrose, book 1 On the Faith, chapter 3: For me indeed it is impossible to know the secret of the generation: the mind fails, the voice falls silent, not mine alone, but even that of the Angels. And shortly after: Not only is the generation of Christ from the Father admirable: admirable also is his generation from the Virgin.

The other holy Fathers testify the same: above all Dionysius, book

On the Divine Names, chapter 2: Jesus, he says, appeared in the flesh, and is ineffable in speech, and wholly unknown to understanding: even to the most ancient prince of the Angels himself not sufficiently perceived. To him accords St. Cyril of Alexandria, book On the Incarnation of the Only-Begotten, chapter 7, saying that the union of the Word with flesh is superior to all human cognition. This St. Augustine openly demonstrates in Epistle 3 to Volusianus, where speaking of this mystery he says: Here if reason is sought, it will not be marvelous: if an example is set forth, it will not be singular. That God can do something which we confess we cannot do is incredible. In such things the whole reason of the deed is the power of the one doing it.

You will say 1: Natural reason does not judge evidently that the incarnation is impossible: therefore it can judge it to be possible. The consequence is evident, because between contradictories, such as possible and impossible, no middle is given.

I deny the consequence: for although on the part of the thing itself there is no medium between a mystery being possible and impossible; nevertheless there is a medium between judging that mystery to be possible, and judging it to be impossible: for between both of these judgments there is given a suspension and denial of the act. Hence if some Philosopher were asked whether he judged the union of God with man to be possible or impossible; either he would suspend the act, affirming and denying nothing; or if he uttered anything, that would certainly exceed the capacity of his own intellect, and would send a sickle into another's harvest: since the Incarnation is of the supernatural order, it exceeds the natural sphere of created intellect, and has no connection with natural principles, from which alone the Philosopher can borrow his certain knowledge.

You will say 2: An angel evidently knows that God can effect whatever does not imply contradiction: but it is also evident to him that there is no contradiction in God being made man; since he naturally knows that God is subsistent and independent in the manner of a person, he likewise knows that the subsistence of human nature is separable from it: therefore he can gather that a divine person, by reason of its independence, can supply the place of created personality.

I deny the minor: for although an angel can know that divine subsistence is communicable, and that created subsistence is naturally distinct from human nature, yet he would not know in what way the Word could be united to human nature; indeed it would not be known to him whether that human subsistence were really separated from its nature, and whether that nature subsisted by the subsistence of the Word, since that mode of subsisting is of the supernatural order.

You will insist: Created subsistence is of the natural order, and within the breadth of the natural object of an angel: therefore an angel can know it to be absent from the individual nature of Christ; and consequently he can know that nature to subsist by the subsistence of the Word.

I deny this last consequence; for although an angel could acknowledge the human nature of Christ not to have its own subsistence, yet he cannot infer thence that it subsists by the subsistence of the Word; indeed he could judge that God preserves that individual nature without any subsistence, just as in fact He preserves the Eucharistic species without any subject.

You will say 3: An angel can know the resurrection of man to be possible; therefore he can also judge the Incarnation to be possible.

I deny the antecedent: for although the resurrection of man is not supernatural as to its substance as the Incarnation is, nevertheless since it is of the supernatural order as to its manner, and depends upon the free will of God, and there is no natural cause by which it can be brought about, hence it is that an angel certainly cannot know by natural light that the resurrection is possible.

You will say 4: Some most skilled Philosopher will be able to solve evidently all the arguments persuading the impossibility of the Incarnation: therefore he will be able to infer it to be possible.

I distinguish the antecedent: that he will be able to solve them negatively, that is, by denying the principles from which they are inferred, and by showing that the conclusions drawn from those principles do not convince, nor persuade altogether, I concede; that he will be able to solve them positively, by showing evidently that the principles from which they proceed are false, and consequently that their contradictories are true, I deny: for it does not follow that he who proves evidently by certain arguments that something is not impossible, persuades and demonstrates by those same arguments that it is possible; because the possibility of a thing does not depend upon the arguments which persuade it, but upon its own intrinsic principles from which it comes about that that thing is possible. Add to these, that even if the Philosopher solved all the arguments proposed to him against the possibility of the Incarnation, still he certainly could not judge that there is no argument which would assert that impossibility; nay, he could suspect that far more pressing arguments might be proposed, which would demonstrate that impossibility.

You will say 5: Natural reason persuades that the Mystery of the Incarnation is evidently credible: therefore it likewise persuades that it is evidently possible.

I deny the consequence; for credibility is sought from one source, and the possibility of the thing from another: for possibility proceeds from the internal principles of that thing, from which it has that it does not conflict, nor is there a contradiction that it be; but credibility is taken from the authority of one speaking worthy of faith, whence the more one is judged truthful in speaking, the more easily and firmly also is faith given to him.

You will say 6: In truth the demons knew the Mystery of the Incarnation, and that Christ is the God-man: but they did not know it through revelation, seeing that they are incapable of every divine benefit: therefore they must have known it by their native power of understanding. The major is established: first indeed from that passage of Matthew 8, where it is said, that when Christ the Lord had come across the strait into the region of the Gerasenes, there met him two possessed with devils, exceeding fierce, so that none might pass by that way, and they cried out, saying: What have we to do with thee, Jesus Son of God? art thou come hither before the time to torment us? And Luke 4: And devils went out from many, crying out and saying: For thou art the Son of God: and rebuking them he suffered them not to speak, for they knew that he was Christ. Second, the same is established from all the oracles uttered by the devil himself in idols: for it is established, as Suetonius relates in Octavius chapter 91, Nicephorus in book one chapter 17, and several other sacred Annalists, that when the Emperor Augustus had consulted the Delphic Apollo, and the shut-up demon gave no accustomed responses, when the Emperor asked what was the cause of so great a silence of the speechless Apollo, he at last elicited from him these responses:

Me puer Hebraeus divos Deus ipse gubernans, Cedere sede iubet, tristemque redire sub orcum: Aris ergo dehinc tacitus abscedito nostris.

Wherefore the same Authors add that Augustus, having returned to Rome, erected an altar on the Capitol, inscribed with these words: Ara Primogeniti Dei.

I answer by distinguishing the minor: that they did not receive it through a revelation made to them immediately, I concede: through a revelation made both through the Prophets and through Angels, and set down in the divine Scriptures, and declared by miracles, I deny. For it is certain, as Tertullian says in his Apologeticum, chapter 22, that the demons

know most easily what is done everywhere, just as they proclaim it; swiftness is believed to be divinity, because their substance is unknown: they even snatch away the dispositions of God, then when the Superiors preach, and then when the readings resound they pick them apart, and so taking from this source certain lots of times, they emulate divinity while they steal divination.

The demons therefore could know from the reasonings of the Prophets that Christ was that Messiah so longed for in so many vows, and promised in so many oracles; for indeed if the Jews, from the promises made and set down in the divine Scripture, could know that Christ was the Messiah, much more easily could the demons come to know it; not indeed certainly and evidently, but conjecturally, both on account of those prophecies, and on account of the marvelous works which Christ himself had wrought. For if they had truly known him, they would never have crucified the Lord of glory, that is, would never have suggested that he be crucified, as the gloss upon 1 Corinthians 2 says. Hence also the demons strove to hinder the death of Christ the Lord, as is gathered from the dream of the wife of Pilate, who, as we read in Matthew 27, said to her husband: Have nothing to do with that Just One: for I have suffered many things today in a vision because of him: for then the devil, greatly doubting whether Christ was the Messiah, tried to dissuade his death: whence although the demons acknowledged very many signs of divine virtue in Christ, yet because they also beheld in him examples of human infirmity, they did not hold for certain that he was truly the Son of God, whence the tempter came to him saying: If you are the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread. Nor does it stand against this that the Evangelist said, He suffered them not to speak, because they knew him to be the Christ: for the particle because is not taken there causally, but historically and recitatively; that is, Christ did not suffer the demons to assert that they knew him to be the Son of God, partly because they lied, when they intended to signify that they knew it with certainty, when they knew it only conjecturally; partly because they said it chiefly to probe whether it were truly so.

You will urge: Doctor Subtilis in 1. dist. 10, question 8, number 12, teaches that whatever Angel, even a bad one, if he be permitted absolutely to use his natural cognitive power, can understand mysteries of grace already existing: which he seems indeed to assert concerning the Mystery of the Incarnation, and proves expressly through that whole Question concerning the Existence of the Body of Christ. For the respondent says in answer to the third argument:

Concerning the bad Angels I say that, if any bad Angel whatsoever be permitted absolutely to use his natural cognitive power, he can understand any intelligible thing caused; and consequently he could understand the thoughts of hearts, and the Mysteries of Grace. Whence he infers that if a demon did not know the Mystery of the Incarnation, that happened for this reason, because, he says, it was not permitted on account of certain causes, lest our redemption be impeded; for if they had known it, they would never have crucified the Lord of glory, that is, would never have procured my redemption by his death; therefore the Doctor Subtilis opposes us, and we him.

I deny the consequence; for the Doctor speaks not of evident and certain cognition, but of argumentative and conjectural cognition. And if you contend that it must be understood of prior cognition, I answer with Fabro, in the first Disputation, chapter 13 last, that the Doctor speaks of supernatural Mysteries of grace, which do not involve an order to something uncreated, such as is the Mystery of the Incarnation, which involves an order to the Word, which order surely, being supernatural, so transcends the powers of any natural intellect, that without revelation it cannot perceive it with clear and evident cognition, whether mediate or immediate, but only with argumentative and conjectural cognition.

You will say seventhly: Very many unbelievers had some knowledge of the Incarnation of the Word, as is gathered from Theodoret in the book De Graecanicis Haeresibus, Eugubius book 1. De perenni Philosophia chapter 3, Sixtus Senensis book 2. Bibliotheca sancta, the Serbian Sibyl, and St. Augustine book 18. De Civitate, chapter 23, where he recites and weighs the prophecies of the Sibyls, especially indeed the Cumaean Sibyl, concerning the Incarnation of the Word; and that so distinctly and expressly that she expressed even the name of Jesus Christ acrostically; by which testimony also the Holy Fathers made use, as many as undertook to defend against the Gentiles the cause of the Christian Religion. Nay, St. Paul did not disdain to make use of the testimony of those Sibyls, as Clement of Alexandria relates in book 6. Stromatum, in these words:

As God willed the Jews to be saved, giving them Prophets: so also Paul declared that the Greeks, the most eminent among them, trained in their own language, were believed by Him according as they could desire the beneficence of God, through the preaching of Peter, saying: Take up also the books, recognize the Sibyl, how she signifies one God, and the things that are to come. Take up the Hydaspes, and read, and you will find the Son of God written far more clearly and openly, and how many Kings would array a battle line against Christ, who hold him in hatred, and who bear his name, and his faithful ones, and constancy, and tolerance.

Which Clement surely recites not from the Epistles of Paul, but from sermons delivered to the peoples, certain words of which must be thought to have fallen so into the ears of the hearers that oblivion never effaced them, but they were propagated by a fortunate and continuous tradition down to the time of that same holy Clement. For why should not St. Paul be believed to have made use of Sibylline testimony, when he was wont to cite the Greek Poets, as we read in Acts 17? Hence at first the Christians were frequent in reading the Sibylline books, that thence they might make use of testimony against the Gentiles for the Christian Religion: wherefore, as Origen avers in book 5. Contra Celsum, the Gentiles themselves were accustomed to call the Christians Sibyllists. Whence Justin Martyr relates in his Oration to Antoninus Pius that, by the work and instigation of evil demons, the punishment of death was established against the labors of the books of Hydaspes, the Sibyl, or the Prophets, that through fear men might be withdrawn from them (lest, reading their writings, they should attain knowledge of good things, but should be held in their servitude): which indeed they were unable to accomplish, nor to carry through to their end. Whence it came about, as Lactantius relates in book 4. chapter 15, that overcome by these testimonies the Gentiles were wont to take refuge in saying, that those were indeed Sibylline Verses, but forged and composed by ours: Which surely no one would think, says the same Lactantius, who has read Cicero and Varro, and others besides, who mention the Erythraean Sibyl and the rest, from whose books we bring forth those examples: which authors died before Christ was born according to the flesh. Nor was Virgil ignorant of these things, seeing that from the same Sibylline Verses he ascribed to Saloninus, son of Pollio, with great flattery, the first Eclogue, in which things were foretold concerning Christ about to be born of a Virgin. For he sings:

Under your guidance, if any traces of our guilt remain, they will render void the lands, freed from perpetual fear, He shall receive the life of the gods, etc. Noble offspring of the gods, great increase of Jupiter, etc.

But that these things were to be understood concerning the Incarnation of the Word, the Emperor Constantine splendidly argued in his Oration to the assembly of the saints. Thence a settled persuasion had even come among the Gentiles, as Suetonius relates in his life of Vespasian, chapter 11: It was contained in the fates that at that time men from Judaea would seize the reins of power, which Suetonius, surely ignorant of the matter, thought must be attributed to Vespasian Augustus. To these add what St. Thomas relates, 2. 2. q. 2. art. 7. ad 3.: It is found, he says, in the histories of the ancients that at Constantinople in the time of Constantine and Helena his mother, a certain sepulchre was discovered, in which lay a man bearing on his breast a stone tablet, on which was engraved this epigram: Christ is born of a Virgin, and I believe in him! O sun, under Helena's and Constantine's times you will smile upon me again. Therefore from these and similar testimonies it is established that the Gentiles had knowledge of the Incarnation of the Word, and consequently that Mystery did not exceed the natural grasp of man.

I deny the consequence: for although I do not doubt that all these things narrated in the objection are true, yet it does not follow from them that this knowledge was acquired by the Gentiles by the mere guidance and light of nature; for it could have been brought in from elsewhere. First indeed by tradition, which could have prevailed from Adam through the Patriarchs to the posterity of Noe: for that a promise was made to our First Parent of the Incarnation of the Divine Word, the restorer and savior of men, is doubted by no one; and by happy tradition this prevailed among his posterity. Second, from the gift of Prophecy generously granted by God to very many Gentiles: in which manner St. Jerome, book 7. Contra Iovinianum, judges that the Sibyls were illustrious by the gift of Prophecy: Of whom, he says, signal was their Virginity, and the reward of virginity divination: whence the consentient opinion of Christians holds, as Lactantius relates, book 1. chapter 6., that the Sibyls prophesied many things by divine instinct concerning the Mysteries of the Christian Religion, but especially concerning the Incarnation of the Son of God, and above all his Passion. Third, from the oracles of the demons themselves, to whom this Mystery had been revealed before their fall. For St. Bernard judges that the demons fell and became the utter foes of God for this reason, because God, proposed to them as the man who was to be, as head and prince of all, to whom all creatures ought to be subject as to a superior, they refused to submit themselves. Nay, even after their fall this Mystery was intimated to the demon, as the sacred Interpreters gather from those words of Genesis, chapter 3., where God thus addresses the devil, the explorer and assailant of the First Parents under the masked figure of a serpent: I will put enmities between thee and the woman, and thy seed and her seed: she shall crush thy head, and thou shalt lie in wait for her heel. Add that, as we said above, the demons, being endowed with the highest power of understanding, were able to know all the prophecies of the holy Prophets written in the Scriptures concerning Christ who was to come, and to intimate them to their followers. Finally, the Gentiles could borrow that knowledge from their communication with the Hebrews; who, scattered among various nations through many captivities, were able to announce to them what they held in their sacred writings and prophecies: for since the whole hope of the Hebrews was placed chiefly in Christ who was to come, who would deliver them from all their miseries and hold the empire of the whole world, and this they would chiefly have as their solace in their straits, it is no wonder if they intimated this eminent hope of theirs to the Gentiles.

Second Conclusion. — Faith and divine revelation being supposed, natural reason, illumined by that divine light, can by conjectures and examples scale the mystery of the Incarnation.

The truth of this Conclusion is evident from the holy Fathers, who labored to intimate this Mystery to infidels and the more unlearned by various examples and similitudes. And this especially by the example of the union of the rational soul with the body, which St. Augustine elegantly employs in both ways, Epistle 3., which is to Volusianus, where speaking of this Mystery,

Thus, he says, certain persons demand that a reason be rendered to them how God was mingled with man so that one person of Christ should come to be, when this had need to be done once, just as if they render reason concerning a thing which happens daily, how the soul is mingled with the body so that one person of man comes to be. For as in the unity of person the soul is united to the body that man may be, so in the unity of person God is united to man that Christ may be. In that person therefore there is a mingling of soul and body; in this person there is a mingling of God and man: provided however the hearer withdraw from the custom of bodies, whereby two liquors are wont to be so commingled that neither preserves its integrity — although even in bodies themselves incorrupt light is mingled with air: therefore the person of man is a mingling of soul and body: but the person of Christ is a mingling of God and man. For when the Word of God was mingled with the soul having a body, at the same time he took to himself both soul and body. The former happens daily for the procreation of men: the latter was done once for the liberation of men. Nevertheless the commixtion of two incorporeal things ought to have been believed more easily than of one incorporeal and another corporeal. For if the soul in its own nature, comprehending itself to be an incorporeal nature, is not destroyed, far more incorporeal is the Word of God; and for this reason the mingling of the Word of God and the soul ought to have been more credible than that of soul and body. But this we experience in ourselves; that we are bidden to believe in Christ. Yet if both alike, being unexperienced by us, were commanded to be believed, which of the two would we sooner believe? How do we not confess that two incorporeal things could have been mingled more easily than one corporeal and another incorporeal — provided however it be not unworthily admitted to that name of mixtion or mingling, on account of the custom of bodily things, which are far removed from one another and known otherwise? The Word therefore of God, and the same the Son of God, coeternal with the Father, the same power and Wisdom of God, reaching from the supreme end of the rational creature even to the innermost end of the corporeal creature, attaining mightily and disposing all things sweetly, present and hidden, nowhere confined, nowhere divided, nowhere swollen: but without bulk everywhere entire, > in a manner somehow far other than that wherein he is present to the other creatures, took up man, and made himself and him one Jesus Christ, mediator of God and men, equal to the Father according to divinity, less than the Father according to the flesh, that is, according to man, unchangeably immortal equally as equal to the Father according to divinity, and the same changeable and mortal according to the infirmity known to us, in which Christ at that time, which he himself knew to be most opportune, and had disposed before all ages, came to men as magisterium and aid, for the attaining of everlasting salvation.

Fitly also is this marvelous union expounded through the union of an accident with its subject, which the Doctor uses in o. dist. 1. question 1. But that this similitude may appear, first there must be distinguished a twofold relation of accident to subject. The first is that of informing to informed, to perfectible: and this, says Poncius there, denotes imperfection in the subject, because potentiality and perfectibility do not accord with God, our purpose being such. The second is the relation of a substantiated natural posterior to the prior substantiating, from which it depends as from a pure terminus: and this latter notes no imperfection in the subject; because it denotes only the natural properties in it, and the substantiation of the accident, which is a note of perfection. Therefore, the imperfections being removed from this union, it will be most like the hypostatic union, and consequently will render it most intelligible, on account of its manifold congruence. The first is: as the subject sustains the accident, and the accident depends on the subject, so the Divine Word sustains the human nature, and this depends on him by special motive. Second: as accident and subject united together make a certain one supposit, so in this union, although there are two natures, yet they have one unique supposit. But the third is: as the accident accrues to the subject already existing, so humanity to the Word. Fourth: as the accident is not of the essence of the subject, so neither is humanity of the essence of the Word. Fifth: as the nature of the subject is neither confounded nor commingled with the nature of the accident, nor conversely; but each remains integral and unmingled, so it is said of the divine and human nature. Sixth finally: as the properties of the accident, and the accident itself in concreto, are communicated to the subject and enunciated of it, and conversely; so the properties of human nature, and the nature itself, are communicated to the Divine Word, and enunciated of him, and conversely; as will be seen where we treat of the communication of idioms.

Reason also persuades the same thing. For it is established by the natural light itself that God, as the greatest of all goods, is supremely communicative of himself: and accordingly it is fitting that he communicate himself in respect of all that which his infinite entity contains; namely, according to entity, perfection, and hypostasis; therefore as he had communicated his entity in the order of nature to all creatures, which are participations of his infinite entity and certain outflowings from it; but most of all to man, who is the breathing and truthful image of his divine entity: as he had implanted his divine excellencies, gathered together and expressed as it were in his sublime sanctity, in just men in the state of grace, that he might constitute them his adoptive sons: finally, as he had implanted his felicity and beatitude in the most blessed minds in the order of glory: so likewise it was fitting to his supremely good nature that he communicate himself with his human nature hypostatically and personally in an individual, inasmuch as man might thereby be able to be raised up to the order of divinity.

You will say. If, faith being supposed, the human intellect can by its natural power scale this mystery with probable reasons: then also without any light of faith, the same intellect will be able by those conjectures and reasons to judge this mystery possible, or to come.

I deny the consequence: for the intellect illumined by the light of faith can investigate more things for confirming a truth than it can when destitute of those aids. For things found out and known are proved more easily than unknown things are found out. Therefore; because these reasons and conjectures, which the intellect now illumined by faith employs, faith set aside would not suffice for overcoming the difficulty and repugnance which the natural light suffers concerning this mystery: and therefore, faith set aside, those reasons and conjectures do not avail sufficient for rendering judgment even probable, that such a mystery is possible, or to come.