CHAPTER 17
XVI. A Contemplation of the Divine Utterance Which Said -- "Let Us Make Man After Our Image and Likeness"; Wherein Is Examined What Is the Definition of the Image, and How the Passible and Mortal Is Like to the Blessed and Impassible, and How in the Image There Are Male and Female, Seeing These Are Not in the Prototype
CHAPTER 17Visible text2 paragraphs
Let us now resume our consideration of the Divine word, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. " How mean and how unworthy of the majesty of man are the fancies of some heathen writers, who magnify humanity, as they supposed, by their comparison of it to this world! for they say that man is a little world, composed of the same elements with the universe. Those who bestow on human nature such praise as this by a high-sounding name, forget that they are dignifying man with the attributes of the gnat and the mouse: for they too are composed of these four elements -- because assuredly about the animated nature of every existing thing we behold a part, greater or less, of those elements without which it is not natural that any sensitive being should exist. What great thing is there, then, in man's being accounted a representation and likeness of the world -- of the heaven that passes away, of the earth that changes, of all things that they contain, which pass away with the departure of that which compasses them round?
In what then does the greatness of man consist, according to the doctrine of the Church? Not in his likeness to the created world, but in his being in the image of the nature of the Creator.