Newsgroup: it.scienza.ambiente
Titolo: Re: Pregunta para los que sepan

in taking His place; the stars, the heavens, earth, the
elements, plants, cabbages, leeks, animals, insects, calves, serpents,
fever, pestilence, war, famine, vices, adultery, incest. And since man has
lost the true good, everything can appear equally good to him, even his own
destruction, though so opposed to God, to reason, and to the whole course of
nature.
Some seek good in authority, others in scientific research, others in
pleasure. Others, who are in fact nearer the truth, have considered it
necessary that the universal good, which all men desire, should not consist
in any of the particular things which can only be possessed by one man, and
which, when shared, afflict their possessors more by the want of the part he
has not than they please him by the possession of what he has. They have
learned that the true good should be such as all can possess at once,
without diminution and without envy, and which no one can lose against his
will. And their reason is that this desire, being natural to man, since it
is necessarily in all, and that it is impossible not to have it, they infer
from it...
426. True nature being lost, everything becomes its own nature; as the true
good being lost, everything becomes its own true good.
427. Man does not know in what rank to place himself. He has plainly gone
astray and fallen from his true place without being able to find it again.
He seeks it anxiously and unsuccessfully everywhere in impenetrable
darkness.
428. If it is a sign of weakness to prove God by nature, do not despise
Scripture; if it is a sign of strength to have kno

the knot so high, or, better
speaking, so low, that we are quite incapable of reaching it; so that it is
not by the proud exertions of our reason, but by the simple submissions of
reason, that we can truly know ourselves.
These foundations, solidly established on the inviolable authority of
religion, make us know that there are two truths of faith equally certain:
the one, that man, in the state of creation, or in that of grace, is raised
above all nature, made like unto God and sharing in His divinity; the other,
that in the state of corruption and sin, he is fallen from this state and
made like unto the beasts.
These two propositions are equally sound and certain. Scripture manifestly
declares this to us, when it says in some places: Deliciae meae esse cum
filiis hominum.65 Effundam spiritum meum super omnem carnem.66 Dii estis,67
etc.; and in other places, Omnis caro faenum.68 Homo assimilatus est
jumentis insipientibus, et similis factus est illis.69 Dixi in corde meo de
filiis hominum.70
Whence it clearly seems that man by grace is made like unto God, and a
partaker in His divinity, and that without grace he is like unto the brute
beasts.
435. Without this divine knowledge what could men do but either become
elated by the inner feeling of their past greatness which still remains to
them, or become despondent at the sight of their present weakness? For, not
seeing the whole truth, they could not attain to perfect virtue. Some
considering nature as incorrupt, others as incurable, they could not escape
either pride or sloth, the two sources of all vice; since they cannot but
either abandon themselves to it through cowardice, or escape it by pride.
For if they knew the excellence of man, they were ignorant of his
corruption; so that they easily avoided sloth, but fell into pride. And if
they recognized the infirmity of nature, they were ignorant of its dignity;
so that they could easily avoid vanity, but it was to fall into despair.
Thence arise the