[Dicta de arbore quae dicitur Imago hominis]

adorned with the image of God, betrothed in likeness, endowed by faith, redeemed by the spirit, deputed by blood, capable of beatitude with the angels, the heir of goodness, participant of reason. What is it that you, with the flesh, say: "If you recognized your dignity, you would not dare to be retracted from the companionship of your Creator by the rot of the flesh." If it is asked why God made the soul, it is answered: because of the flowing forth of His own goodness, so that it might be a participant of divine beatitude. For man is the middle of all creatures, and therefore the most noble.

Man, holding the middle place among all creatures, is the most excellent. Thus the sun is in the middle among the planets and shines forth with all the stars. Inaccessible God, from the creature, not for His own perfection but for the abundance of His goodness, makes Himself accessible to the creature, creating a corporeal, sensible, mortal substance, namely all animals, He created them from the books of scripture; and He made the complement of the whole creature, namely man, a book written within and without, a living intellectual spirit, an immortal corporeal-sensual substance, so that man, going out and coming in, might find pastures. Going out, the humanity of Christ is the utility of creatures. Coming in, the goodness of His divinity. Thus man is made in the middle, placed in the midst of the highest good and the highest evil, in this world where good and evil are mixed, so that, placed in the middle, he may choose what he wishes through the freedom of choice. Whence Augustine:

He who created you without you will not justify you without you.
God has placed many insignia in man. Whence well: Man, decorated with intelligence and free will, is the lord of the creature. Whence the prophet: "You have subjected all things under his feet." Whose flesh is glorified in the Son of God, whose life is taught by the Word and example of the Son of the eternal Father, whose soul is redeemed from eternal death by His blood, whose body and blood is perfected by the sacrament, whose intelligence is illuminated by the sevenfold gift of the Holy Spirit and deputed as a son of the eternal inheritance. It was fitting, indeed, that He who with the spirit showed His spouse with so many insignia of charity might adorn her with all creatures.