religion into practice. “All men have some conception of the gods, and all assign the highest place to a divine being,” writes Aristotle (De Cælo, i. 3). Seneca also says: “The worship of the gods consists first in believing in them; then in acknowledging their majesty and their goodness, without which no majesty exists; then in recognising that it is they who preside over the world, include everything under their dominion, and act as guardians of the human race” (Epist. 96). How closely this resembles what the Apostle says (Hebrews xi. 6): “He that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that seek after him.”
20. Plato also says: “God is the highest good, elevated high above all existence and above nature; towards which all creation strives” (Timaeus). And this is so true (that God is the highest good, which all things seek) that Cicero was able to say: “The first to teach us piety is nature” (De Natura Deorum, i.) And this is because (as Lactantius17 writes, bk. iv. ch. 28): “We receive pardon on condition that we give just and due worship to the God who produced us. Him alone let us know and follow. By this chain of piety we have been bound and linked to God, and it is from this fact that religion derives its name.”
21. It must be confessed that the natural desire for God, as the highest good, has been corrupted by the Fall, and has gone astray, so that no man, of his strength alone, could return to the right way. But in those whom God illumines by the Word and by His Spirit it is so renewed, that we find David exclaiming: “Whom have I in heaven but thee? And there is none on earth that I desire beside thee. My flesh and my heart faileth, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion for ever” (Psalm lxxiii. 25, 26).
22. Therefore, while we are seeking for the remedies of corruption, let none cast corruption in our teeth. For God will remove it through His Holy Ghost and by the intervention of natural means. For as Nebuchadnezzar, when human reason was taken from him and the soul of a
