HKB
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Often appears with: the nature and attributes of God · spiritual mother and catholic church · pride, vanity, and humility · language, naming, and meaning · justice as a virtue · immortality of the soul · immortality · imagination and mental images · human nature and conscience · god as incorruptible and unchangeable · doubt, skepticism, and certainty · disproportion of fortune and virtue
Usually: commentary or gloss (1) · reflection (1) · coming of age (1) · crisis of belief (1) · detachment (1) · skepticism (1) · wonder (1)
Augustine describes his shift from corrupted youth to early manhood, his struggle to conceive of God as incorruptible and unchangeable, and the way his imagination spatializes God against his intention.
Deceased was now that my evil and abominable youth, and I was passing into early manhood; the more defiled by vain things as I grew in years, who could not imagine any substance, but such as is wont to be seen with these eyes. I thought not of Thee, O God, under the figure of a human body; since I began to hear aught of wisdom, I always avoided this; and rejoiced to have found the same in the faith of our spiritual m…
In commentary, Coleridge explains that disproportion between moral worth and worldly fortune leads thoughtful people to infer something essentially different in humans, culminating in an argument for immortality.
COMMENT. A fact may be truly stated, and yet the Cause or Reason assigned for it mistaken; or inadequate; or *pars pro toto*--one only or few of many that might or should have been adduced. The preceding Aphorism is an instance in point. The phenomenon here brought forward by the Bishop, as the ground and occasion of men's belief of a future state--viz. the frequent, not to say ordinary, disproportion between moral …