{"collection":"chr","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/chr/ecf/205/2050187.htm","path":"chr/ecf/205/2050187.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/chr/ecf/205/2050187.htm","text":"V. That man is a likeness of the Divine sovereignty 1599 .\n1. It is true, indeed, that the Divine beauty is not adorned with any shape or endowment of form, by any beauty of colour, but is contemplated as excellence in unspeakable bliss. As then painters transfer human forms to their pictures by the means of certain colours, laying on their copy the proper and corresponding tints, so that the beauty of the original may be accurately transferred to the likeness, so I would have you understand that our Maker also, painting the portrait to resemble His own beauty, by the addition of virtues, as it were with colours, shows in us His own sovereignty: and manifold and varied are the tints, so to say, by which His true form is portrayed: not red, or white 1600 , or the blending of these, whatever it may be called, nor a touch of black that paints the eyebrow and the eye, and shades, by some combination, the depressions in the figure, and all such arts which the hands of painters contrive, but instead of these, purity, freedom from passion, blessedness, alienation from all evil, and all those attributes of the like kind which help to form in men the likeness of God: with such hues as these did the Maker of His own image mark our nature.\n2. And if you were to examine the other points also by which the Divine beauty is expressed, you will find that to them too the likeness in the image which we present is perfectly preserved. The Godhead is mind and word: for \u201cin the beginning was the Word 1601 \u201d and the followers of Paul \u201chave the mind of Christ\u201d which \u201cspeaks\u201d in them 1602 : humanity too is not far removed from these: you see in yourself word and understanding, an imitation of the very Mind and Word. Again, God is love, and the fount of love: for this the great John declares, that \u201clove is of God,\u201d and \u201cGod is love 1603 \u201d: the Fashioner of our nature has made this to be our feature too: for \u201chereby,\u201d He says, \u201cshall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye love one another 1604 \u201d:\u2014thus, if this be absent, the whole stamp of the likeness is transformed. The Deity beholds and hears all things, and searches all things out: you too have the power of apprehension of things by means of sight and hearing, and the understanding that inquires into things and searches them out.\nIn the Bodleian Latin ms. the title is:\u2014\u201cHow the human soul is made in the image of God.\u201d\n391:1600\n\u03bb\u03b1\u03bc\u03c0\u03c1\u03cc\u03c4\u03b7\u03c2. The old Latin version translates this by \u201cpurpurissus.\u201d\n391:1601\nS. John i. 1\n391:1602\nCf. 1 Cor. 2:16, 2 Cor. 13:31 Cor. ii. 16; and 2 Cor. xiii. 3\n391:1603\n1 John 4:7, 8John 4:7, 8.\n391:1604\nS. John xiii. 35 (not verbally).","title":"Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Ser. II, Vol. V: Philosophical Works.: That man is a likeness of the Divine sovereignty.","type":"page"}