“_The Jews seek a sign, and the Greeks wisdom._ There was a certain wisdom which seemed such to them who knew not the true wisdom. The world found it, and began to be puffed up, thinking itself great in this. Confiding in its wisdom, it presumed, and boasted that it would attain the highest wisdom.... And it made itself a ladder of the face of the creation, shining toward the invisible things of the Creator.... Then those things which were seen were known, and there were other things which were not known; and through those which were manifest they expected to reach those which were hidden; and they stumbled and fell into the falsehoods of their own imaginings.... So God made foolish the wisdom of this world; and He pointed out another wisdom, which seemed foolishness, and was not. For it preached Christ crucified, in order that truth might be sought in humility. But the world despised it, wishing to contemplate the works of God, which He had made to be marvelled at, and it did not wish to venerate what He had set for imitation. Neither did it look to its own disease, and seek a medicine with piety; but presuming on a false health, it gave itself over with vain curiosity to the study of alien matters.” This study made the wisdom of the world, whereby it devised the arts and sciences which we still learn. But the world in its pride did not read aright the great book of nature. It had not the knowledge of the true Exemplar, for the sanitation of its inner vision, to wit, the flesh of the eternal Word in the humanity of Jesus. “There were two images (_simulacra_) set for man, in which he might perceive the unseen: one consisting of nature, the other of grace. The former image was the face of this world; the latter was the humanity of the Word. And God is shown in both, but He is not understood in both; since the appearance of nature discloses the artificer, but cannot illuminate the eyes of him who contemplates it.”