The Ascension of Christ
B y G irolam o Savonaro la 1 4 5 2 - 1 4 9 8
While He blessed them , He was parted from them , and carried up into heaven. —Luke 24:51.
and so by means of the senses knowledge becomes definite and complete. For if the soul out of the body were richer in knowl edge, it would be in vain that it should be in the body, God and nature have done nothing in vain, and therefore the soul’s union with the body ministers to its per fection. INCOMPLETE IN L IF E ' The soul’s knowledge, however, will not be complete so long as it lives in this mor tal body. It does not while here come to the fundamental distinctions and causes of the substances, because it is obliged to know the inner side of things through their exter nals. Therefore man is able only imper fectly to know an incorporeal substance; how much less can he know the uncreated infinite being of God? But if he can not know the being of God, he will not be able to know many other infinite things which are in Him. We ought therefore not to be surprised that there is much in God which we cannot understand, and that very many truths of the faith we Can not yej: prove since we do not yet know everything. The great God in His rich mercy saw our poor knowledge and came into our flesh and assumed it that He might work for us,
Beloved in Christ Jesus, the wise men of this world divide all created things into two classes; one class they name -sub stances, the other accidents. The sub stances are those things that exist through themselves without requiring anything else on which to rest, as the earth, water, air, the heavens, animals, stones, plants, and similar things. The accidents cannot exist by themselves, but only by resting on some thing else, as color, odor, taste, and other such things. But because our knowledge is entirely through the senses, and we are able to know anything only when its acci dents fall upon our senses, we have, there fore, knowledge of the accidents rather than of the substances. The eyes are for colors, the ears for sounds, the nose for scents, the tongue for flavors, the touch for heat and cold, for hard and soft, Each sense has its own sphere of knowledge and brings what it has perceived before the imagination, and this hands it over to the reason, which reads and illustrates the pro ductions of the imagination, judges them, and in this way comes to a knowledge of the substances. But the reason has little light if it is separated from the body, for God has joined soul and body together;
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