e former is natural.

182. ( iii) _If man beheld divine providence plainly he would either deny
God or make himself god._ The merely natural man says to himself, "What
is divine providence? Is it anything else or more than an expression
which people get from a priest? Who sees anything of it? Is it not by
prudence, wisdom, cunning and malice that all things are done in the
world? Is not all else necessity or consequence? And does not much happen
by chance? Does divine providence lie concealed in this? How can it do so
in deceptions and schemes? Yet it is said that divine providence effects
all things. Then let me see it and I will believe in it. Can one believe
in it until he sees it?"

[2] So speaks the merely natural man, but the spiritual man speaks
differently. Acknowledging God he also acknowledges divine providence and
sees it, too. He cannot make it manifest, however, to anyone whose
thought is on nature only and from nature, for such a person cannot raise
his mind above nature, see anything of divine providence in its
phenomena, or come to conclusions about providence from nature's laws,
which are also laws of divine wisdom. If, therefore, he beheld divine
providence plainly, he would sink it in nature and thus not only enshroud
it in fallacies but profane it. Instead of acknowledging it he would deny
it, and one who denies divine providence in his heart denies God also.

[3] Either one thinks that God governs all things or that nature does. He
who thinks that God does thinks that they are ruled by love itself and
wisdom itself, thus by life itself; but he who thinks that nature governs
all, thinks that all things are ruled by nature's heat and light,
although these in themselves are dead, coming as they do from a dead sun.
Does not what is itself alive govern what is lifeless? Can what is dead
govern anything? If you think that what is lifeless can give life to
itself, you are mad; life must come from life.

183. It does not seem likely that if a man saw divine providence and its
activity plainly he would deny God; it would seem that he could not but
acknowledge it and thus acknowledge God. Yet the contrary is true. Divine
providence never acts in keeping with the love of man's will, but
constantly against it. For the human being by force of his hereditary
evil is ever panting for the lowest hell, but the Lord in His providence
is constantly leading him away and withdrawing him from it, first to a
milder hel