Chapter 11.—The Image of the Beast in Man.

16. For as a snake does not creep on with open steps, but advances by the very minutest efforts of its several scales; so the slippery motion of falling away [from what is good] takes possession of the negligent only gradually, and beginning from a perverse desire for the likeness of God, arrives in the end at the likeness of beasts. Hence it is that being naked of their first garment, they earned by mortality coats of skins.763    Gen. iii. 21 For the true honor of man is the image and likeness of God, which is not preserved except it be in relation to Him by whom it is impressed. The less therefore that one loves what is one’s own, the more one cleaves to God. But through the desire of making trial of his own power, man by his own bidding falls down to himself as to a sort of intermediate grade. And so, while he wishes to be as God is, that is, under no one, he is thrust on, even from his own middle grade, by way of punishment, to that which is lowest, that is, to those things in which beasts delight: and thus, while his honor is the likeness of God, but his dishonor is the likeness of the beast, “Man being in honor abideth not: he is compared to the beasts that are foolish, and is made like to them.”764    Ps. xlix. 12 By what path, then, could he pass so great a distance from the highest to the lowest, except through his own intermediate grade? For when he neglects the love of wisdom, which remains always after the same fashion, and lusts after knowledge by experiment upon things temporal and mutable, that knowledge puffeth up, it does not edify:765    1 Cor. viii. 1 so the mind is overweighed and thrust out, as it were, by its own weight from blessedness; and learns by its own punishment, through that trial of its own intermediateness, what the difference is between the good it has abandoned and the bad to which it has committed itself; and having thrown away and destroyed its strength, it cannot return, unless by the grace of its Maker calling it to repentance, and forgiving its sins. For who will deliver the unhappy soul from the body of this death, unless the grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord?766    Rom. vii. 24, 25 of which grace we will discourse in its place, so far as He Himself enables us.

CAPUT XI.

16. Imago pecudis in homine. Quomodo enim coluber non apertis passibus, sed squamarum minutissimis nisibus repit; sic lubricus deficiendi motus negligentes minutatim occupat, et incipiens a perverso appetitu similitudinis Dei, pervenit ad similitudinem pecorum. Inde est quod nudati stola prima, pelliceas tunicas mortalitate meruerunt. (Gen. III, 21). Honor enim hominis verus est imago et similitudo Dei, quae non custoditur nisi ad ipsum a quo imprimitur. Tanto magis itaque inhaeretur Deo, quanto minus diligitur proprium. Cupiditate vero experiendae potestatis suae, quodam nutu suo ad se ipsum tanquam ad medium proruit. Ita cum vult esse sicut ille sub 1007 nullo, et ab ipsa sui medietate poenaliter ad ima propellitur, id est, ad ea quibus pecora laetantur: atque ita cum sit honor ejus similitudo Dei, dedecus autem ejus similitudo pecoris, homo in honore positus non intellexit; comparatus est jumentis insipientibus, et similis factus est eis (Psal. XLVIII, 13). Qua igitur tam longe transiret a summis ad infima, nisi per medium sui? Cum enim neglecta charitate sapientiae, quae semper eodem modo manet, concupiscitur scientia ex mutabilium temporaliumque experimento, infiat, non aedificat (I Cor. VIII, 1): ita praegravatus animus quasi pondere suo a beatitudine expellitur, et per illud suae medietatis experimentum poena sua discit, quid intersit inter bonum desertum malumque commissum, nec redire potest effusis ac perditis viribus, nisi gratia Conditoris sui ad poenitentiam vocantis et peccata donantis. Quis enim infelicem animam liberabit a corpore mortis hujus, nisi gratia Dei per Jesum Christum Dominum nostrum (Rom. VII, 24, 25)? De qua gratia suo loco, quantum ipse praestiterit, disseremus.