[Dicta de arbore quae dicitur Imago hominis]

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by expending energy, producing the perseverance of good works, illuminating, and providing through the taste of wisdom. Whence Augustine in the book De Trinitate On the Trinity: "Because the weak eyesight of the human mind is not fixed in such excellent light unless it is strengthened by the justice of faith." And the same one in the book De Poenitentia On Penance: "In visible things, whoever wishes to touch the high things is raised to the highest. But God, since He is the most excellent of all, is not attained by pride but by humility." Moreover, the order of knowledge is first for a man to know himself, and afterwards God. Whence: "The more I progress in the knowledge of myself, so much the more do I approach the knowledge of God." Whence Augustine: "To ascend to God is nothing other than for a man to enter into himself." Richard: "He estimates nothing by reason who is ignorant of himself." Also Augustine: "By no likeness of a sleeper, by no appearance of a watcher, by no image of reason can God be seen or apprehended in the heart of one who loves." The same Augustine: "Whatever we do, or run in the sublimity of the heavens and the depths of the earth, seeking Him who is within us, we are presumptuous of knowledge, laboring in blind madness, seeking God through external things when God is more internal, and they attend to casting a straw from the eye of a brother and in no way amend their own errors, adulterating the Word of God." And what shall I say? O wisdom, most beautiful spouse, to be preferred over all desirable things, who has proceeded from the mouth of the Most High, if fornicators adulterating you prostitute themselves with the embraces of harlots, these, by the hope of temporal gain, if for fear of future glory they abuse the form of your beauty. I know, however, and truly recognize the stability of your integrity, which if you were violently oppressed, you would deny the kiss of true love to the oppressors, because they are still unworthy of the taste of your sweetness due to the gall of the bitterness of sinners. O wisdom, who thirsts only for true goods to be known, how many captivators of fame has your appearance deceived, who presume themselves to have...