The four spheres of the higher planets had set forth a celestial realisation of the four cardinal virtues, Prudence, Fortitude, Justice, and Temperance, with perfect man according to the capacity of human nature; now, in this sphere of the Cherubim whose name indicates plenitude of the knowledge of God, Dante is examined upon the three theological virtues, which have God for their object as He transcends the knowledge of our reason, and which put man on the way to supernatural happiness. “If we would enter Paradise and the fruition of Truth,” writes St. Bonaventura, “the image of our mind must be clothed with the three theological virtues, whereby the mind is purified, illumined, and rendered perfect, and thus the image is reformed and made fit for the Jerusalem which is above.” Dante’s answers to St. Peter upon Faith (_Par._ xxiv.), to St. James upon Hope (_Par._ xxv.), to St. John upon Charity (_Par._ xxvi.), contain the essence of the devout wisdom of the schoolmen upon those three divine gifts, whereby man participates in the Deity, and “we ascend to philosophise in that celestial Athens, where Stoics and Peripatetics and Epicureans, by the art of the eternal Truth, harmoniously concur in one will” (_Conv._ iii. 14). For the object of Faith and Love alike Dante, even in Paradise, can appeal to the _Metaphysics_ of Aristotle (_Par._ xxiv. 130-132, xxvi. 37-39); and all the celestial music cannot quite drown the poet’s sigh for that fair Florentine sheepfold, from which he is still barred out, though Hell and Heaven have opened for him their eternal gates (_Par._ xxv. 1-12). Within a fourth light the soul of Adam appears, to instruct Dante upon the proper cause of his fall and upon his life in the Earthly Paradise, now that the poet has seen the triumph and ascent of the new Adam. Adam, in whom was directly infused all the light lawful to human nature to have (_Par._ xiii. 43), is the last soul that appears to Dante until the consummation of the vision in the Empyrean. On the close of his discourse, a hymn of glory to the Blessed Trinity resounds through Paradise, a laugh of the Universe in joy of the mystery of Redemption (_Par._ xxvii. 1-9). Then, while all Heaven blushes and there is a celestial eclipse as at the Crucifixion, St. Peter utters a terrible denunciation of the scandals and corruption in the Papacy and the Church, wherein Dante, as in the Epistle to the Italian Cardinals, takes his stand as the Jeremiah of Roman Catholicity.