322 The Faith of Our Fathers the more endearing titles of Savior and Redeemer. But as sin was the greatest evil of man, and as Jesus came to remove from us our greatest evils, He came into the world chiefly as the great Absolver from sin. Magdalen seems to have a consciousness of this. She casts herself at His feet, which she washes with her tears and wipes with her hair, while Jesus pronounces over her the saving words of absolution. The very demons recognized Jesus as the enemy of sin, for they dreaded His approach, knowing that He would drive them out of the bodies of men. Our Lord makes the healing of the body secondary to that of the soul. When He delivers the body from its distempers His object is to win the confidence of the spectators by compelling them to recognize Him as the soul's Physician. He says, for instance, to the palsied man, "Thy sins are forgiven."436 The scribes are offended at our Savior for presuming to forgive sins. He replies, in substance: If you do not believe My words, believe My acts; and He at once heals the man of his disease. After he had cured the man that had been languishing for thirty-eight years He whispered to him this gentle admonition, "Sin no more, lest some worst thing may happen to thee."437 As much as our spiritual substance excels the flesh that surrounds it, so much more did our Savior value the resurrection of a soul from the grave of sin than the resurrection of the body [341] from that of death. Hence St. Augustine pointedly remarks that, while the Gospel relates only three resurrections of the body, our Lord, during His mortal life, raised thousands of souls to the life of grace. As the Church was established by Jesus Christ to perpetuate the work which he had begun, it follows that the reconciliation of sinners to God was to be the principal office of sacred ministers. 436 Matt. ix. 2. 437 John v. 14.