Today is the feast of St. Roberto Bellarmino, Doctor of the Church. From Bellarmine's Controversies of the Christian Faith (Book I, Chapter 2):
One can add to this that the providence of God so rules and moderates things according as the nature of each one demands: but the nature of man requires that, since we are endowed with a mind and a body, we grasp bodily things more easily than spiritual things; through the things that are perceived by the sense of the body, as it were by steps and grades, we are led to spiritual and heavenly things. Therefore, God does not teach all generally by an internal inspiration what is to be believed about himself, or what he wishes to be done by his own creatures; but he willed to instruct us through corporal writings which we can both see and read.
[St. Robert Cardinal Bellarmine, SJ, Controversies of the Christian Faith, Baker, tr., Keep the Faith, Inc. (2016), p. 25]
