[16] Matt. xvi. 26.
[17] Luke xvii. 21.
[18] Albert the Great supposes here that we give ourselves equally to God and to creatures, which would be wrong, and not that creatures are subordinated to God, which would be a virtue.
[19] This must be understood to mean that God is the principal and supreme end of all created activities.
[20] The perfect image of God in man does not consist merely in the possession of those faculties by which we resemble Him, but rather in performing by faith and love, as far as is in our power, acts like those which He performs, in knowing Him as He knows Himself, in loving Him as He loves Himself.
[21] In scholastic theology the term "form" is used of that which gives to anything its accidental or substantial being. God is the "accidental form" of the soul, because in giving it its activity He bestows upon it something of His own activity, by means of sanctifying grace. Yet more truly may it be said that God is also the "form" of the soul in the sense that it is destined by the ordinary workings of Providence to participate by sanctifying grace in the Being of God, enjoying thus a participation real, though created, in the Divine nature.
[22] We must avoid these things in so far as they separate us from God, but they may also serve to draw us nearer to Him if we regard them in God and for God.
[23] It is by the intelligence and will that man actually attains to this, but the use of the sensitive faculties is presupposed.
[24] The sensitive faculties, if used as a means, often help us to draw near to God, but when used as an end, their activity becomes an obstacle.
[25] This teaching is the Christian rendering of the axiom formulated by the Philosopher: "Homo sedendo fit sapiens"—"It is in quiet that man gains wisdom."