On the Christian Religion

...devote themselves to pleasures; at length, they think nothing more of religion, except as if of old wives' tales. Others, however, through mildness and modesty, purify their minds from the senses according to the Pythagorean rite, through moral, physical, mathematical, and metaphysical disciplines, so that they might not, like those aforementioned, be compelled to grow dizzy by suddenly directing their still-weak eyes toward the divine sun, but rather, by progressing step by step, they might perceive the divine light first in moral things, as if the sun's light on the earth; second, in physical things, as if in water; third, in mathematics, as if in the moon; fourth, in metaphysics, as if in the sun itself, both super-celestial and celestial, clearly and healthfully. Orpheus calls these the legitimate priests of the Muses, who at length, at a more mature age, feel much better about religion, just as we read in Plato in the letter to King Dionysius, in the Phaedrus, in the first book of the Republic, and in the tenth of the Laws. But the divine Plato warns adolescents not to pass judgment on divine matters rashly, but to trust in the laws until age itself teaches them, whether through those degrees of disciplines which we have described, or through experience, or through a certain separation of the soul from the body, which old age brings—a separation which moderates [the soul] so that the soul in that age may perceive more clearly, as if viewing from nearby, things separated from bodies, than it was accustomed to do. One must always remember that wisdom cannot, according to nature, exist in the young, nor is anything more dangerous in judging or in acting than bold ignorance and the bold ignorant person. Wisdom without boldness is indeed useful, though perhaps not sufficiently magnificent, but it never does harm; whereas boldness without wisdom is a certain untamed and utterly unbridled beast. But since we have discussed the common truth of religion and the divinity of souls most extensively in our theology...