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4. Wherefore since, as it is written, "While we are in the body,
we are absent from the Lord; for we walk by faith, not by sight;"
undoubtedly, so long as the just man lives by faith, howsoever he
lives according to the inner man, although he aims at truth and reaches
on to things eternal by this same temporal faith, nevertheless in the
holding, contemplating, and loving this temporal faith, we have not
yet reached such a trinity as is to be called an image of God; lest
that should seem to be constituted in things temporal which ought to be
so in things eternal. For when the human mind sees its own faith,
whereby it believes what it does not see, it does not see a thing
eternal. For that will not always exist, which certainly will not
then exist, when this pilgrimage, whereby we are absent from God, in
such way that we must needs walk by faith, shall be ended, and that
sight shall have succeeded it whereby we shall see face to face; just
as now, because we believe although we do not see, we shall deserve to
see, and shall rejoice at having been brought through faith to sight.
For then it will be no longer faith, by which that is believed which
is not seen; but sight, by which that is seen which is believed. And
then, therefore, although we remember this past mortal life, and call
to mind by recollection that we once believed what we did not see, yet
that faith will be reckoned among things past and done with, not among
things present and always continuing. And hence also that trinity
which now consists in the remembering, contemplating, and loving this
same faith while present and continuing, will then be found to be done
with and past, and not still enduring. And hence it is to be
gathered, that if that trinity is indeed an im age of God, then this
image itself would have to be reckoned, not among things that exist
always, but among things transient.
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