On the Christian Religion

The heart burns daily for God. The breast sighs for God; the tongue sings of Him; the head and hands worship Him; and the knees; and the arts of men refer to Him. If God does not hear these things, He is ignorant; if He does not answer, He is ungrateful; if He compels us to shout daily whom He does not hear, He is altogether cruel. But God, who is infinite wisdom, goodness, and charity, cannot be ignorant, or ungrateful, or cruel. Furthermore, since the superior mind understands the inferior rather than the reverse, if the human mind touches the divine mind, it is necessary that the human mind be understood and governed by the divine mind.

Let adolescents take care lest they easily pass judgment on religion. Chapter III.

Although man is religious by nature at any age, with very few exceptions, and those indeed depraved, yet two ages—as Plato also writes—are more religious: namely, childhood and old age. For children are born religious and are raised so, and they remain most steadfast in religion until reason is awakened in adolescence, which by its nature requires the causes and reasons for individual things. If in this age they either take up those studies or fall into conversations in which the causes of things are diligently investigated, they begin, as it were, to wish to assert nothing unless they have perceived the reason for it themselves. Then, for the first time, they largely cast religion behind their backs, unless perhaps they commit themselves to kings and the counsel of elders. Because the reasons for divine things are most hidden, they are perceived by a purged mind only after a long time and with the most exquisite diligence. Those adolescents do not yet reach such reasons, and because they assert almost nothing for which they do not see the reason, if they trust in their own judgment, they neglect religion in a certain way. Some, established in this opinion because of pride and incontinence, like the Aristippian—