e welcome. For when by
the feebleness of the human race men's knowledge of God began to grow
dim and their morals lax, He was pleased to choose Abraham as a
standard of the restored knowledge of God and of holy living; and
later on when reverence grew weaker, He gave the law to Moses in
writing; and because the gentiles despised it and would not take it
upon themselves, and they who received it would not keep it, being
touched with pity, God sent His Son, to grant to all remission of
their sin and to offer them, justified, to God the Father." But if
this remedy had been put off till the end of the world, all knowledge
and reverence of God and all uprightness of morals would have been
swept away from the earth.

Thirdly, this appears fitting to the manifestation of the Divine
power, which has saved men in several ways--not only by faith in some
future thing, but also by faith in something present and past.

Reply Obj. 1: This gloss has in view the mercy of God, which leads us
to glory. Nevertheless, if it is referred to the mercy shown the
human race by the Incarnation of Christ, we must reflect that, as
Augustine says (Retract. i), the time of the Incarnation may be
compared to the youth of the human race, "on account of the strength
and fervor of faith, which works by charity"; and to old age--i.e.
the sixth age--on account of the number of centuries, for Christ came
in the sixth age. And although youth and old age cannot be together
in a body, yet they can be together in a soul, the former on account
of quickness, the latter on account of gravity. And hence Augustine
says elsewhere (Qq. lxxxiii, qu. 44) that "it was not becoming that
the Master by Whose imitation the human race was to be formed to the
highest virtue should come from heaven, save in the time of youth."
But in another work (De Gen. cont. Manich. i, 23) he says: that
Christ came in the sixth age--i.e. in the old age--of the human race.

Reply Obj. 2: The work of the Incarnation is to be viewed not as
merely the terminus of a movement from imperfection to perfection,
but also as a principle of perfection to human nature, as has been
said.

Reply Obj. 3: As Chrysostom says on John 3:11, "For God sent not His
Son into the world to judge the world" (Hom. xxviii): "There are two
comings of Christ: the first, for the remission of sins; the second,
to judge the world. For if He had not done so, all would have
perished together, since all have sinned and ne