Prologus, §3
by St. Bonaventure
Source text: Public Domain Mark 1.0. English translation/apparatus/encoding: CC BY-NC 4.0, Wroot Press.
https://bonaventure.wrootpress.com/browse/5/d/0/q/bon-brev-prol-s3
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### § 3. *On the sublimity of sacred Scripture.*

Sacred Scripture has nonetheless in its progress a *sublimity*, which consists in the description of the hierarchies graded in order — namely the *ecclesiastical, angelic*, and *divine* hierarchy, or the *sub-celestial, celestial*, and *super-celestial* — such that it describes the *first* openly, the *second* somewhat more hiddenly, and the *third* more hiddenly still. From the description of the *ecclesiastical* hierarchy it is high; from the description of the *angelic*, higher; from the description of the *divine*, highest — so that we may say that word of the Prophet:

*Thy knowledge is become wonderful to me; it is high, and I cannot reach to it.*

And this indeed quite rightly. For since things have *being* in matter, have *being* in the soul through acquired knowledge, have *being* in it also through grace, have *being* in it through glory, and have *being* in the eternal art; philosophy indeed treats of things as they are in nature, or in the soul according to knowledge naturally implanted or also acquired; but theology, as a science founded upon faith and revealed through the Holy Spirit, treats also of those things which pertain to grace and glory and even to eternal Wisdom. Hence theology, laying philosophical cognition under itself as a base and taking from the natures of things as much as it needs for fashioning a mirror through which a representation of divine things may come about, erects as it were a ladder which at its lowest point touches earth, but at its summit touches heaven; and all this through that one hierarch, Jesus Christ, who is hierarch not only by reason of the assumed human nature in the *ecclesiastical* hierarchy, but also in the *angelic*, and is the middle person in that *super-celestial* hierarchy of the most blessed Trinity — so that through him, from the highest head, God, the grace of anointing *comes down* not only *upon the beard*, but also *upon the hem of the garment*, because it comes not only into the heavenly Jerusalem, but even into the Church militant.

For there is great beauty in the machine of the world, but far greater in the Church adorned with the beauty of the holy charisms; greatest, however, in the Jerusalem above; and beyond-greatest in that highest and most blessed Trinity. Therefore Scripture itself has not only the highest matter, through which it delights and through which it lifts the mind's understanding on high, but is itself also most lovely and in a certain wondrous way delights our intellect; and thus by delighting more and more it accustoms us to the contemplations and anagogies of divine spectacles.

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