“God has made you a rational animal, set you over the cattle, formed you in his own image. Ought you to use your eyes as the cattle do, only to see what to add to your belly, not to your soul?
Stir up the eye of reason, use your eyes as a human being should, consider the heaven and earth, the fruitfulness of the earth, the flight of the birds, the swimming of the fish, the goodness of the seeds; consider the works, and seek for the author. Believe in him you do not see because of these things that you see.
If you think that it is with my own words that I have exhorted you, hear the Apostle: ‘For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities… have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made’ (Rom. 1:20).”
– Augustine of Hippo