"Thus
speaks the eternal wisdom: If ye will behold me in my eternal divinity
ye must know and love me in my suffering humanity. For this is the
quickest road to eternal salvation." The brutality of the tenet which
maintains that all those are eternally lost who, without their own
fault, have no knowledge of the salvation of the world (especially
therefore, those who died before the event), was a stumbling-block to
many thoughtful minds. The patriarchs of the Old Testament were looked
upon as saved--to some extent--by the fact of their being the ancestors
or prophets of Christ; but pagans and Greeks, including Aristotle, were
condemned even by the great Dante. At the conclusion of his _Divine
Comedy_ Dante proved himself a truly inspired mystic, for he gave to us
the profoundest vision of the divinity which has ever been vouchsafed to
man. But his genius was directed and restricted by the dogmas of the
Church; his religious standpoint was the standpoint of the early Middle
Ages and dogmatic Catholicism.
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