[Dicta de arbore quae dicitur Imago hominis]

as good or evil. Whence Ambrose: "The name of affection imposes itself upon your work. For as the face disposes men, so the will disposes the soul." This is the tree of which the Lord speaks in the Gospel: "A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruits, nor an evil tree good ones." By the name of tree, not human nature but the will is understood; for if it is good, it does good works; if, however, it is evil, it can never bring forth good fruits. Whence Augustine: "Therefore the just man does well even if the good he does is itself the will, and the will is the first cause of sinning and doing good." Alternatively, will is the affection of sensuality and reason. In it, indeed, depends virtue and vice, merit and demerit. Every affection of the soul is judged as virtue or vice by the will. The will is given to man by God as a singular prerogative so that nothing besides the highest good might suffice for him, to which, by the freedom of his choice, he might adhere through love, and thus man by his own will constitutes himself the heir of eternal beatitude. Augustine: "For every creature is good insofar as it is; man, however, insofar as he wills." Whence Gregory: "The hand is never empty of a gift if the chest of the heart is filled with a good will." These three powers, namely memory, intelligence, and will, are more excellent than the others, for through them the rational spirit is raised to the knowledge of its Creator, and in them, as in the most powerful part, the image of the Holy Trinity shines forth in us. Whence Bernard: "The rational spirit is created in the image of God so that it may be turned toward Him, from whom one does not depart except by dissimilarity." Nor is it to be believed, but entirely reprobated, that man or any creature can have some part of the divine nature in itself. Whence in the first book of the Sentences: "God is not changed or used in anything that He works, since the finite cannot contain the infinite." For if the uncircumscribed and infinite essence of the divinity were working in man, then the distance between God and man would be taken away, but the likeness or dissimilarity of man to God does not shine forth to wise men, but to the humble and clean of heart. His sacred scripture testifies with many