About 1,500 years ago, Augustine of Hippo thanked God for his mother's milk:

God was the active agent in the ordinary events of life; nothing moved or intended or played except under His prescription and with His knowledge. Of course, as the Western desire to know broadened, the Augustinian “hidden springs” subtly became a significant source of error and of evil. The task of the talented believer became not merely to accept what was but to change the present – and to change it for the better. Over centuries, the core notion of salvation escaped its eschatalogical boundaries and became – almost drunkenly, in the rational explosion of the seventeenth century – the guiding spirit of human action. The shift from salvation as a gift of God, delivered in eternity, over to an immediate and secular consequence of social service was a process that took centuries, that was confined largely to European cultures, and that has never been complete in any culture. The shift had several discernible components – the deification of Nature, the belief in human progress, and the opportunities of scientific analysis, chief among them.