Quis Rerum Divinarum Heres Sit

This diseased generation or age must be remedied by some third age, acting towards it the part of medical philosophy, so that it shall be charmed with salutary and saving words, by means of which it will receive an evacuation of the immoderate satiety of evil actions, and a fulness of a sort of hungry emptiness, and terrible desolation of good deeds.

Therefore, after the application of this cure, there comes first the age, in which power and vigour grow up in the soul, in accordance with the most certain comprehension of wisdom, and the undeviating and solid character which exists in all the virtues. This is the meaning of the expression, "And in the fourth generation they shall return hither." For according to the fourth number thus pointed out the soul, which has turned away from doing evil, is proclaimed as the inheritor of wisdom;

for the first number is that into which it is not possible to receive any idea of either good or evil, since the soul is as yet destitute of all impressions; and the second is that in which we indulge in a rapid course of the passions; and the third is that in which we are healed, repelling the infections of disease, and at last ceasing to feel the evil vigour of the passions; the fourth is that in which we acquire complete and perfect health and vigour, when rejecting what is bad we appear to endeavour to apply to what is good, which previously was not in our power.

But up to what time this is to be he tells us himself, when he says, "For the wickednesses of the Amorites are not yet fulfilled." [*](Genesis xv. 11. ) And such words as these give an occasion to weaker brethren to fancy, that Moses represents fate and necessity as the causes of all things that exist or take place;