1. While I was already a priest at Hippo Regius, I wrote the book The Advantage of Believing for a friend of mine, whom I knew to have been deceived by the Manicheans and still to be held fast in that error, and to be mocking the discipline of the Catholic faith because people were commanded to believe, but were not taught by some most certain reasoning what the truth was.

In this book I said: yet in those precepts and commandments of the Law which a Christian is now not permitted to observe, such as the Sabbath, or circumcision, or sacrifices, and anything else of this kind, such great mysteries are contained that every devout person understands there is nothing more harmful than to take whatever is there according to the letter, that is, according to the word, and nothing more wholesome than for it to be revealed by the Spirit. Hence it is said: the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life (2 Cor 3:6).

But I have expounded these words of the Apostle Paul otherwise and, as it seems to me, or rather as the matters themselves make plain, much more fittingly in the book entitled The Spirit and the Letter—although this sense too is not to be rejected.

2. Likewise I said: there are two kinds of persons praiseworthy in religion. One is of those who have already found, who must also be judged most blessed; the other is of those who seek most earnestly and most rightly. The first, then, are already in possession itself; the others are on the way, by which nevertheless one most surely arrives. In these words of mine, if those who have already found—whom we said are already in possession itself—are taken to be most blessed in such a way that they are so not in this life but in the life we hope for and toward which we strive by the way of faith, then this sense contains no error.

For they are to be judged to have found what is to be sought who are already there where we, by seeking and believing—that is, by holding to the way of faith—desire to arrive. But if these people are thought to be, or to have been, such in this life, that does not seem to me to be true—not because nothing true at all can be found in this life that is discerned by the mind and not believed by faith, but because whatever there is of it is only so much that it does not make people most blessed. For what the Apostle says, now we see through a glass in a dark manner (1 Cor 13:12), and now I know in part (1 Cor 13:12), is indeed not discerned by the mind; it is plainly discerned, but it does not yet make most blessed. For that does make most blessed which he says: but then face to face (1 Cor 13:12), and then I shall know even as I am known (1 Cor 13:12). Those who have found this are the ones to be said to stand in possession of blessedness, to which the way of faith we hold leads, and to which we desire by believing to arrive. But just who those most blessed are who are already in that possession to which this way leads is a great question. That the holy angels are there, there is no question.

But concerning the holy people already dead, whether at least they are to be said to stand already in that possession is rightly asked. For they have indeed been stripped of the corruptible body by which the soul is weighed down; but they too still await the redemption of their body (Rom 8:23), and their flesh rests in hope (Ps 16:9 (15:9)), not yet shining in the incorruption that is to come. But whether, with respect to contemplating the truth with the eyes of the heart, as it was said, face to face (1 Cor 13:12), they have anything less on this account, this is not the place to inquire by disputation.

Likewise, what I said—for to know great and honorable, or even divine, things is most blessed—we ought to refer to that same blessedness. For in this life, however much of it may be known, it is not yet most blessed, since beyond comparison far more remains unknown of it.

3. And what I said—that it makes a great difference whether something is held by the mind with certain reason, which we call knowing, or is usefully entrusted to those who come after by report or in writing as something to be believed—and a little later—what we know, therefore, we owe to reason; what we believe, to authority—is not to be taken in such a way that in more ordinary speech we should be afraid to say that we know what we believe on the testimony of suitable witnesses.

Strictly speaking, indeed, when we speak we say that we know only what we grasp by the firm reason of the mind. But when we speak in words better suited to common usage, as Sacred Scripture itself also speaks, let us not hesitate to say that we know both what we perceive by the senses of our body and what we believe on the testimony of trustworthy witnesses, provided that we understand what difference lies between these and that.

4. Likewise, what I said—no one doubts that all people are either foolish or wise—can seem to be contrary to what is read in the third book of On Free Will: as though human nature admitted no middle disposition apart from folly and wisdom. But that was said there where the question was about the first man, whether he was made wise or foolish or neither, since we could in no way call foolish one who was made without fault, seeing that folly is a great fault; and how we might call wise one who could be led astray was not sufficiently clear. And so for the sake of brevity I chose to say: as though human nature admitted no middle disposition apart from folly and wisdom. For I had in view also little children, who, although we confess that they contract original sin, nevertheless we cannot properly call either wise or foolish, since they do not yet exercise free choice either for good or for evil. But here I said that all people are either wise or foolish, meaning to have understood those who already exercise reason, by which they are distinguished from beasts so as to be human beings—just as we say that all people want to be happy. For surely in a statement so true and manifest we need not fear that little children too, who cannot yet want this, are meant.

5. In another place, when I had recalled the miracles that the Lord Jesus performed while he was here in the flesh, I added, saying: why, you ask, do these things not happen now? And I answered: because they would not move us unless they were marvelous, and if they were customary, they would not be marvelous. But I said this because they do not happen now in such number nor all of them—not because none happen even now.

6. At the end of the book I said: but since this discourse of ours has gone on much longer than I thought, let us here make an end of the book, in which I want you to remember that I have not yet begun to refute the Manicheans, and have not yet attacked those trifles of theirs, nor disclosed anything great about the Catholic Church itself, but have wished only to root out of you, if I could, the false opinion about true Christians maliciously or ignorantly instilled in us, and to rouse you toward learning certain great and divine things. Therefore let this volume be as it is; and once your mind has been made more at peace, I shall perhaps be more ready in what remains.

I did not say these things as though I had as yet written nothing against the Manicheans, or had committed nothing of Catholic doctrine to writing, since so many volumes published earlier on both subjects bear witness that I had not been silent; but in this book written to him I had not yet begun to refute the Manicheans, and had not yet attacked those trifles, nor disclosed anything great about the Catholic Church itself, because I hoped that, this beginning having been made, I would go on to write to him those very things that I had not yet written here.

This book begins thus: if it seemed to me, Honoratus, to be one and the same thing.

1. If it seemed to me, Honoratus, that a heretic and a person who believes heretics were one and the same thing, I would think I ought to keep silent in this matter, both in speech and in writing. But as it is, since there is a great difference between these two—seeing that a heretic, in my opinion, is one who, for the sake of some temporal advantage and especially for the sake of his own glory and preeminence, either gives rise to or follows false and novel opinions, whereas one who believes people of this sort is a person deceived by a certain semblance of truth and piety—since, then, this is so, I did not think I should keep silent before you about what I hold concerning the finding and the keeping of truth, for which, as you know, we burned with a great love from our early youth. But the matter is far removed from the minds of empty-headed people who, having advanced and fallen too far into these corporeal things, think that nothing exists except what they perceive by those five well-known reports of the body; and the impressions and images they have received from these they turn over within themselves, even when they try to withdraw from the senses; and by the deadly and most deceptive rule drawn from those images they suppose they are measuring most correctly the ineffable inner depths of truth.

Nothing is easier, my dearest friend, than not only to say but even to believe that one has found the truth; but how very difficult this is in reality you will recognize, as I trust, from this letter of mine. That it may profit you, or at least do you no harm, and likewise everyone into whose hands it may happen to come, I have prayed God, and I pray; and I hope it will be so, if I am rightly aware of myself—namely, that I have approached this writing with a devout and dutiful mind, not from a craving for an empty name or for trifling display.

2. My purpose, then, is to prove to you, if I can, that the Manicheans inveigh sacrilegiously and rashly against those who, following the authority of the Catholic faith before they are able to gaze upon that truth which is beheld by a pure mind, are fortified beforehand by believing and are made ready for God who will give them light.

For you know, Honoratus, that we fell in with such people for no other reason than that they said they would, with terrifying authority set aside, lead by pure and simple reason those who were willing to hear them to God and free them from every error. For what else compelled me, for nearly nine years, with the religion implanted in me by my parents as a small boy spurned, to follow those men and listen to them attentively, except that they said we were terrified by superstition and were commanded to have faith before reason, whereas they pressed no one to faith without first the truth being thoroughly examined and unraveled? Who would not be enticed by these promises, especially the mind of a young man eager for truth—and, on account of the disputations of certain learned men in the school, proud and talkative—such as they then found me, spurning, of course, what I took for "old wives' tales," and desiring to grasp and drink in the open and unalloyed truth promised by them?

But what reason, on the other hand, called me back, so that I would not cling to them altogether, so that I kept myself in that rank which they call "hearers," so that I did not give up the hope and business of this world—except that I noticed that they too were more eloquent and copious in refuting others than they remained firm and certain in proving their own teachings? But what shall I say of myself, who was already a Catholic Christian? Those breasts, after a very long thirst, all but drained and dry, I sought again with all eagerness, and, weeping and groaning the more deeply, I shook and pressed them so that there might flow what could suffice to revive me in that condition and to lead me back to the hope of life and salvation.

What, then, shall I say of myself? You, not yet a Christian, who at my urging—though you vehemently detested them—were scarcely brought to think they were worth hearing and examining: by what else, I ask you, were you delighted? Recall, I beg you, was it not by a certain great presumption and promise of reasons? But because for a long time and at great length they disputed most widely and most vehemently about the errors of the unlearned—something very easy for anyone moderately educated—I learned too late; and if they were also inserting any of their own doctrines into us, we thought they had to be retained of necessity, since nothing else presented itself in which we might find rest.

And so they did to us what treacherous fowlers usually do, who set up limed twigs beside water to deceive thirsty birds. For they cover over, and in whatever way they can conceal, the other waters that are nearby, or even frighten the birds away from them by alarming contrivances, so that they may fall into their snares not by choice but from want.

3. But why do I not answer myself that those elegant and witty comparisons and reproaches of this kind can be poured out most urbanely and most cleverly against all who teach anything, by any opponent whatever? But for this reason I thought something of the sort should be inserted into my letter, namely, to admonish them to stop proceeding in such a way: so that, as he says, with the trifles of commonplaces set aside, fact may contend with fact, cause with cause, reason with reason. Therefore let them stop saying that thing which they have on their lips as though it were conclusive, whenever anyone who had listened to them for a good while deserts them: the light has made its passage through him. For you see—you, my greatest care (for about them I do not greatly fret)—how empty this is and how very easy for anyone to reproach. And so I leave this to your prudence to sift.

For I do not fear that you would judge me to have been inhabited by the light when I was entangled in the life of this world, bearing a darksome hope concerning the beauty of a wife, the pomp of riches, the emptiness of honors, and the other harmful and ruinous pleasures. For all these things—as is not hidden from you—I did not cease to desire and hope for while I was listening to them earnestly. Nor do I attribute this to their teaching: for I confess that they too diligently warned that such things should be guarded against.

But to say that I have only now been deserted by the light, when I have turned away from all these shadows of things and have resolved to be content with only the food necessary for the health of the body, and that I was enlightened and resplendent when I loved those things and was held wrapped up in them—that is the mark of a person, to put it most gently, who considers less than acutely the matters about which he much loves to speak. But let us come to the point, if you please.

4. For you know well that the Manicheans, in censuring the Catholic faith and especially in tearing apart and rending the Old Testament, disturb the unlearned, who certainly do not know in what way those things are to be received, and how, drawn in usefully, they descend as it were into the veins and marrow of souls still wailing like infants. And because there are in it certain things that give some offense to minds that are ignorant and careless of themselves—which is the greatest crowd—they can be accused before the people; but they cannot, before the people, be defended by very many, on account of the mysteries contained in them. And the few who do know how to do this do not love certain open and notorious contests in disputation; and on this account they are scarcely known except to those who seek them out most insistently.

Concerning this rashness of the Manicheans, then, by which they censure the Old Testament and the Catholic faith, hear, I beg you, the things that move me. And I wish and hope that you will receive this in the same spirit in which it is said by me. God knows—to whom the secrets of my conscience are known—that I am doing nothing in this discourse maliciously, but rather as I judge it ought to be received, for the sake of proving the truth: to which one thing alone I have now long resolved to live, and with incredible anxiety lest it be most easy for me to go astray with you, while to hold the straight road with you is—not to put it too harshly—most difficult. But I presume that even in this hope, by which I hope you will attain the way of wisdom with me, he will not desert me to whom I am consecrated, whom I try to gaze upon day and night; and since, on account of my sins and on account of habit, bearing the eye of the soul wounded by the blows of drowsy opinions, I know myself to be weak, I often pray with tears. And just as, after a long blindness and darkness, with the eyes scarcely opened to the light, and still, by blinking and turning away, refusing the light they nevertheless desire—especially if someone tries to show them this sun—so it has now happened to me, who do not deny that there is some ineffable and singular good of the soul that is seen by the mind, and who with weeping and groaning confess that I am not yet fit to contemplate it. He will not, then, desert me, if I feign nothing, if I am led by duty, if I love truth, if I cherish friendship, if I greatly fear that you may be deceived.

5. All Scripture, then, which is called the Old Testament, is handed down in four ways to those who desire to know it well: according to history, according to etiology, according to analogy, according to allegory. Do not think me inept for using Greek terms. First, because I received them so, and I do not dare to communicate this to you otherwise than I received it. Then, you too observe that there are no terms in common use among us for these things; and if I had fashioned them by translating, I would surely be more inept; but if I went about by circumlocution, I would be less ready in discussion. This only I beg you to believe: that, in whatever way I err, nothing is done by me out of conceit or self-importance.

According to history, then, it is handed down when it is taught what was written, or what was done; or what was not done, but only written as though done. According to etiology, when it is shown for what cause something was either done or said. According to analogy, when it is demonstrated that the two Testaments, the Old and the New, are not at odds with each other. According to allegory, when it is taught that certain things which are written are not to be taken according to the letter, but understood figuratively.

6. Our Lord Jesus Christ and the apostles used all these methods. For the appeal to history was made when it was objected that his disciples had plucked ears of grain on the Sabbath day: have you not read, he says, what David did when he was hungry, and those who were with him—how he entered into the house of God and ate the bread of the Presence, which it was not lawful for him to eat, nor for those who were with him, but only for the priests? (Matt 12:3-4)

And to etiology belongs this: that when Christ had forbidden a wife to be cast off except for the cause of fornication, and it was reported by those questioning him that Moses had permitted the liberty by the giving of a bill of divorce, he said: this Moses did because of the hardness of your heart (Matt 19:8). For here the cause is rendered why that was rightly permitted by Moses for the time being; so that what Christ was now enjoining might be seen to point to other times already at hand. But to explain the changes of these times and their order—arranged and composed by a certain wondrous disposition of divine providence—would take long.

7. Furthermore, as for analogy, by which the agreement of both Testaments is perceived, why should I say that all those to whose authority they yield made use of it, when they can consider with themselves how many things they are wont to say have been inserted into the Sacred Scriptures by I know not what corrupters of truth? This claim always seemed to me—even when I was listening to them—utterly feeble; and not to me alone, but to you as well (for I remember well) and to all of us who were trying to use a little more diligence in judging than the crowd of believers. But now, after many things have been expounded and unraveled for me which used to move me most—namely, those in which their teaching for the most part vaunts itself, and the more securely it speaks without an opponent, the more lavishly it exults—nothing seems to me to be said by them more shamelessly, or, to put it more mildly, more carelessly and feebly, than that the Sacred Scriptures have been corrupted: since they can prove this by no copies surviving in so recent a memory. For if they said that they thought these Scriptures ought not to be received by them at all, because they were written by those whom they did not judge to have written the truth, then their evasion would in some way be more straightforward, or their error more pardonable.

For this is what they did with that book which is entitled The Acts of the Apostles. When I turn this plan of theirs over with myself, I cannot sufficiently wonder at it. For in this matter I do not look for human wisdom, but for an ordinary heart. For that book contains so many things similar to those they accept that it seems to me a mark of great folly not to accept this one too, and, if anything in it offends them, to call it false and interpolated. Or if such talk is shameless—as it is—why do they think that what is in Paul's Epistles, what is in the four books of the Gospel, has any force, in which I do not know whether there may not be proportionally many more things which they would have us believe were inserted by corrupters than there could have been in that book?

But doubtless this is what seems to me to be the case, which I ask you to consider with me with the calmest and most serene judgment. For you know that, contriving to bring the person of their own author Mani into the number of the apostles, they say that the Holy Spirit, whom the Lord promised he would send to his disciples, came to us through him. And so, if they accepted those Acts of the Apostles, in which the coming of the Holy Spirit is plainly proclaimed, they would not find how they might say it was interpolated. For they want there to have been I know not what corrupters of the Divine Books before the time of Mani himself; and that those corrupted them who desired to mix the Law of the Jews with the Gospel. This they cannot say about the Holy Spirit, unless perhaps they assert that those men divined the future and put in their books what would one day be brought forward against the coming Mani, who would say that the Holy Spirit had been sent through himself. But about the Holy Spirit we shall say something more plainly elsewhere. Now let us return to what I had intended.

8. For that both the history of the Old Testament, and etiology, and analogy are found in the New Testament has, as I think, been sufficiently demonstrated: it remains to show this for allegory. Our Liberator himself uses allegory from the Old Testament in the Gospel: this generation, he says, seeks a sign; it shall not be given except the sign of Jonah the prophet. For as Jonah was in the belly of the whale three days and three nights, so also shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth (Matt 12:39-40). And what shall I say of the Apostle Paul, who signifies that the very history of Exodus was an allegory of the Christian people to come, in the first epistle to the Corinthians? I do not want you to be ignorant, brethren, that our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea; and all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual rock that followed them; and the rock was Christ (1 Cor 10:1-4). But God was not well pleased with most of them, for they were laid low in the desert. Now these things were figures of us, that we should not be desirous of evil things, as they also lusted. Neither let us worship idols, as some of them did, as it is written: And the people sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to play (1 Cor 10:6-7). Neither let us commit fornication, as some of them committed fornication, and there fell in one day twenty-three thousand. Neither let us tempt Christ, as some of them tempted, and perished by serpents. Neither let us murmur, as some of them murmured, and perished by the Destroyer. Now all these things happened to them in figure. And they were written for our correction, upon whom the ends of the ages have come (1 Cor 10:8-11).

There is likewise in the Apostle a certain allegory, one that bears most directly on the matter at hand, and for that reason they themselves are accustomed to bring it forward and parade it in disputation. For the same Paul says to the Galatians: for it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by the slave woman and one by the free woman. But the one by the slave woman was born according to the flesh; while the one by the free woman, through the promise. These things are said by way of allegory. For these are the two Testaments: the one indeed from Mount Sinai, bearing children into slavery, which is Hagar. For Sinai is a mountain in Arabia, which borders on the Jerusalem that now is, and is in slavery with her children. But the Jerusalem that is above is free, and she is the mother of us all (Gal 4:22-26).

9. Here, then, those men—by no means evil—while they try to nullify the Law, compel us to approve those Scriptures. For they notice what was said, that those who are under the Law are in slavery, and beyond all else they bandy about this final saying: you who would be justified by the law are emptied of Christ; you have fallen from grace (Gal 5:4). We grant that all these things are true, and we say that the Law is not necessary except for those for whom slavery is still useful; and that for this reason it was usefully promulgated, because people who could not be called back from sins by reason had to be restrained by such a law—namely, by the threats and terrors of those penalties which can seem penalties to the foolish; from which, when the grace of Christ frees us, it does not condemn that Law, but invites us at last to submit to its love, not to be enslaved by fear of the Law. This grace itself—that is, the benefit—they do not understand to have come to them from God, who still desire to be under the bonds of the Law.

These Paul rightly rebukes as unbelievers, because they do not believe that they have now been freed, through our Lord Jesus, from the slavery to which they were subjected for a fixed time by the most just disposition of God. Hence comes that saying of the same Apostle: for the Law was our schoolmaster in Christ (Gal 3:24). He, then, gave to people a schoolmaster whom they might fear, who afterward gave a master whom they might love. Yet in those precepts and commandments of the Law which Christians are now not permitted to observe—such as the Sabbath, or circumcision, or sacrifices, and anything else of this kind—such great mysteries are contained that every devout person understands there is nothing more harmful than to take whatever is there according to the letter, that is, according to the word; and nothing more wholesome than for it to be revealed by the Spirit. Hence it is said: the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life (2 Cor 3:6). Hence it is said: the same veil remains in the reading of the Old Testament, since it is not removed, because it is done away in Christ (2 Cor 3:14). For what is done away in Christ is not the Old Testament, but its veil; so that through Christ may be understood, and as it were laid bare, what without Christ is obscure and covered over.

For at once the same Apostle adds: but when you pass over to Christ, the veil will be taken away (2 Cor 3:16). For he does not say, "the Law will be taken away," or "the Old Testament." It is not, then, by the grace of the Lord that the things there were taken away as though useless things were being covered; but rather the covering by which useful things were covered.

This is how one proceeds with those who seek the meaning of those Scriptures earnestly and devoutly, not in a confused and shameless way; and there is diligently shown both the order of things, and the causes of deeds and sayings, and so great an agreement of the Old Testament with the New that not the smallest mark is left that does not harmonize; and the secrets of the figures are so great that all the things drawn out by interpretation compel one to confess that those are wretched who wish to condemn these things before learning them.

10. But that I may, leaving aside for the moment the loftiness of knowledge, deal with you as I think I ought to deal with a friend—that is, as I can, not as I have marveled that most learned men can—there are three kinds of error by which people go wrong when they read something. I shall speak of each. The first kind is that in which what is false is thought true, when the writer thought otherwise. The second is one which, though not so far-reaching, is nevertheless no less harmful: when what is false is thought true, yet what is thought is what the writer too thought. The third is when something true is understood from another's writing, although the writer did not understand this. In this kind there is no little usefulness; indeed, if you consider more carefully, the whole fruit of reading is here entire.

An example of the first kind is this: if someone, for instance, says and believes that Rhadamanthus hears and judges the cases of the dead in the underworld, because he has read this in the poem of Maro. For here he errs in two ways: both because he believes a thing not to be believed, and because the one he read is not to be supposed to have believed it.

The second kind can be observed thus: if someone, because Lucretius writes that the soul is made of atoms, and that after death it is dissolved into the same atoms and perishes, judges this to be true and to be believed by himself. For here too he is no less wretched, if about so great a matter he has persuaded himself that what is false is certain; although Lucretius, by whose books he was deceived, did hold that opinion. For what does it profit this man to be certain about the author's view, when he has chosen for himself not one through whom he might avoid error, but one with whom he might err?

To the third kind this is suited: if someone, having read some passage in the books of Epicurus where he praises continence, should affirm that Epicurus placed the highest good in virtue and therefore is not to be blamed. What harm does the error of Epicurus do to this man, even if Epicurus believes the highest good of the human being to be bodily pleasure, since this man has not given himself over to so base and harmful a view, nor does Epicurus please him for any other reason than that he does not think Epicurus held what ought not to be held? This error is not only human, but often even most worthy of a human being.

For what if it were reported to me about someone I loved that he had said, in the hearing of many, that childhood and infancy pleased him so well, now that he was a bearded man, that he had even sworn he wished to live in like manner, and this were so proved to me that I could not shamelessly deny it? Would I seem to be in any way blameworthy if I supposed that, in saying this, he had meant to signify that innocence pleased him, and a mind estranged from those desires in which the human race is entangled, and that on this account I loved him more and more than I had loved him before—even if perhaps in the ages of boyhood he had foolishly come to love a certain freedom in playing and eating and lazy idleness? For suppose that he had died after this was reported to me, and that nothing could be asked of him by me to draw out his meaning: would anyone be so wicked as to be angry with me, when I praised the man's intention and will through those very words I had received? Indeed, would not even a just appraiser of things perhaps not hesitate to praise my opinion and will, since both innocence pleased me, and, in a doubtful matter, I judged well rather than ill of one human being concerning another, when it was even permitted to judge ill?

11. Since these things are so, hear also the same number of conditions and distinctions of those same writings. For just as many necessarily occur. For either someone has written usefully and is not understood usefully by another; or both are done uselessly; or the reader understands usefully, while the one who is read wrote the contrary. Of these three, the first I do not disapprove, the last I do not concern myself with. For I can neither reproach a person who has been ill understood through no fault of his own; nor take it amiss that anyone is read who did not see the truth, since I see that it does no harm to readers.

One kind, then, is the most approved and, as it were, the most purified: when both good things are written and they are received in a good sense by readers. This too, however, is still divided into two; for it does not entirely exclude error. For it generally happens that, when the writer has had a good meaning, the reader too has a good meaning—but a different one from his, and often better, often inferior, yet useful. But when we both mean what the one we read meant, and that is most suited to living well, truth is present in fullest measure, and no room for falsehood is opened anywhere.

This kind, when the reading is about the most obscure matters, is altogether very rare; nor can it, in my view, be known with clarity, but only believed. For by what arguments shall I gather the will of an absent or dead person so as to be able to swear about it, when even if he were present and questioned, there could be many things which, if he were not wicked, he would most dutifully conceal? But I judge that what sort of person the writer was is of no avail for knowing the matter: most honorably, however, one is believed good whose writings have looked to the good of the human race and of posterity.

12. Therefore I should like these people to tell me in which kind they place the error of the Catholic Church, which they suppose it makes. If in the first, it is altogether a grave charge: but it does not require a long defense; for it is enough to deny that we understand in the way they suppose when they inveigh against us. If in the second, it is no less grave: but they will be refuted by the same word. If in the third, there is no charge at all.

Come, then, and consider the Scriptures themselves. For what do they object against the books of what is called the Old Testament? Is it that they are good, but are ill understood by us? But they themselves do not accept them. Or is it that they are neither good nor well received? But the earlier defense sufficiently overthrows this. Or will they say this: "Although they are well received by you, they are nevertheless evil"? What is this but to absolve living opponents, with whom one is dealing, and to accuse the long dead, with whom there is no contest?

I, for my part, believe that those men committed all things usefully to record, and that they were great and divine, and that that Law was promulgated and established by the command and will of God; and this, although I know very few of books of that kind, I can nevertheless easily prove, if a fair and not at all stubborn mind is brought to bear on me; and I will do so when the opportunity of your benevolent ears and mind has been given me. But this when I am able. For now, is it not enough for me, however this matter may stand, not to have been deceived?

13. I call my conscience to witness, Honoratus, and God who dwells in pure souls, that I think nothing more prudent, more chaste, more religious than are all those Scriptures which the Catholic Church retains under the name of the Old Testament. You are surprised, I know. For I cannot pretend that we had been persuaded far otherwise.

But surely nothing is more full of rashness—the rashness that was in us then as boys—than to abandon the expositors of any books whatever, who profess that they hold them and can hand them on to disciples, and to seek their meaning from those who, by some compelling cause I know not what, have declared most bitter war on the founders and authors of those books. For who ever thought that the recondite and obscure books of Aristotle should be expounded to him by Aristotle's enemy—to speak of those disciplines in which a reader can perhaps slip without sacrilege? Who, in short, has wished to read or learn the geometrical writings of Archimedes with Epicurus as his teacher, against which Epicurus discoursed very stubbornly, understanding nothing of them, as I judge? Or are those Scriptures of the Law so very plain, on which these people, as though they were exposed to the common crowd, make their assault in vain and to no purpose?

They seem to me like that little woman whom these same people are accustomed to mock, who, angry that this sun was praised to her and commended for worship by a certain Manichean woman, since she was devoutly simple, sprang up in a fury and, striking with repeated blows of her foot the place which the sun had lit up through the window, began to cry out, "Behold, I trample your sun and god"—altogether foolishly and in womanly fashion; who denies it?

But do not these people seem to you to be such, who, tearing apart with great force of speech and with curses the things they do not understand—why, or what they are at all, or how like to things that lie prostrate, yet subtle and divine to those who understand—suppose, because the unskilled applaud them, that they are accomplishing something?

Whatever is in those Scriptures, believe me, is lofty and divine: there is in them altogether truth, and a teaching most suited to refreshing and restoring souls; and plainly so measured out that no one is unable to draw from it what is enough for himself, provided only that he approach to draw devoutly and reverently, as true religion demands. To prove this to you, there is need of many arguments and a longer discourse. For I must first deal with you so that you do not hate the authors themselves, then so that you love them; and this must be done by any other means rather than by expounding their meanings and texts. For this reason: that if we hated Virgil—or rather, if we did not love him, on the recommendation of our elders, before he was understood—we would never be satisfied concerning those countless problems of his by which grammarians are accustomed to be vexed and troubled; nor would we gladly listen to one who solved them along with praise of him; but we would favor the one who tried to show, through them, that Virgil had erred and raved.

But as it is, since many people try in various ways, each according to his own grasp, to open up those problems, applause goes especially to those through whose exposition the poet is found to be better—who is believed, even by those who do not understand him, not only to have erred in nothing but to have sung nothing that was not praiseworthy. And so, in some little problem, we are angry rather at the teacher who fails and has nothing to answer than we suppose him struck dumb by a fault of Maro. Now if, in his own defense, he should wish to assert a fault of so great an author, his disciples will scarcely remain with him, even for the fees they have paid.

How fitting it would have been to show like goodwill toward those through whom the Holy Spirit has been confirmed to have spoken by so long an antiquity! But, of course, we—most intelligent young men and wonderful examiners of arguments—without so much as unrolling those Writings, without seeking teachers, without accusing our own slowness even a little, without, in short, granting even a moderate measure of heart to those who wished such Writings to be read, guarded, and treated throughout the whole world for so long a time, thought that nothing among them was to be believed, moved by the voice of those who are hostile and inimical to them, among whom, by a false promise of reason, we were compelled to believe and worship unheard-of thousands of fables.

14. But now let me carry through what I have set out to do, if I can, and so deal with you that I do not for the moment disclose the Catholic faith, but, to those whose souls are a care to themselves, show the hope of divine fruit and of finding truth in scrutinizing its great mysteries. No one doubts that one who seeks the true religion either already believes that the soul to which that religion is of benefit is immortal, or wishes to find this very thing in that same religion. It is, then, for the sake of the soul that all religion exists; for the nature of the body, however it may stand, brings no care or anxiety upon one—especially after death—whose soul has held fast to that by which it may be blessed. It is, then, for the sake of the soul, either solely or chiefly, that true religion, if there is any, has been established. But this soul—I shall see for what cause, and I confess that this too is most obscure—nevertheless errs and is foolish, as we see, until it attains and grasps wisdom; and perhaps this is itself the true religion.

Am I sending you to fables? Am I forcing you to believe anything rashly? I say that our soul, ensnared and submerged in error and folly, seeks the way of truth, if there is any. If this is not in you, forgive me, and share with me, I beg, your wisdom; but if you recognize in yourself what I am saying, then let us, I implore, seek the truth together.

15. Suppose that we have as yet heard no one who introduces any religion. Behold, the matter is new to us, and a task has been taken up. We must, I believe, seek out the professors of this matter, if there are any. Suppose we have found different people holding different opinions, and desiring, by the diversity of their opinions, each to draw everyone to himself; but that among these certain ones excel for the time being in renown, and in the regard of almost all peoples. Whether these hold the truth is a great question: but ought they not first to be examined, so that, as long as we err—if indeed we are human beings—we may seem to err along with the human race itself?

16. But, you say, the truth is among certain few. You know already, then, what it is, if you know among whom it is. Had I not said a little before that we should seek as though untaught? But if, from the very force of truth, you conjecture that few hold it, yet do not know who they are—what if there are so few who know the truth that they hold the multitude by their authority, from which the few might disentangle themselves into those secret things and, as it were, filter themselves out? Do we not see how few attain the height of eloquence, while throughout the whole world the schools of rhetoricians ring with flocks of young men?

Surely those who wish to come out good orators are not terrified by the multitude of the unskilled, and do not think they should rather devote their effort to the orations of Caecilius or Erucius than to those of Tullius? All people pursue these things that have been confirmed by the authority of their elders. The crowds of the unskilled labor to learn the same things that the few learned have agreed are to be learned: but very few attain them, fewer practice them, fewest become famous. What if true religion is something of this sort? What if a multitude of the unskilled frequents the churches, but this is no argument that therefore no one has been made perfect in those mysteries?

And yet, if as few studied eloquence as there are eloquent men, our parents would never have thought we should be entrusted to such teachers. Since, then, a multitude—which is abundant in its share of the unskilled—has invited us to these studies, so that we came to love what few can attain, why are we unwilling that the case in religion be similar for us, a case which we perhaps despise at great peril to the soul?

For if the truest and most sincere worship of God, although it is among few, is nevertheless among those with whom the multitude—though wrapped up in desires and removed from purity of understanding—agrees (and who can doubt this can be the case?), I ask, if someone should charge us with rashness and senselessness for not diligently searching out, among the masters of that worship, the worship whose finding is a great care to us, what could we answer?

Did the multitude deter me? From the study of the liberal arts, which bring scarcely any advantage to this present life; from seeking money; from attaining honor; in short, from acquiring and keeping good health; lastly, from the very desire for the happy life—when all are occupied with these, few excel, no multitude deterred me?

17. But absurd things seemed to be said there. On whose assertion? On that of enemies, of course—on whatever ground, by whatever reasoning, for that is not now in question—yet enemies. When I read it, I came to know it for myself.

Is it so? Steeped in no poetic discipline, you would not dare to approach Terentianus Maurus without a teacher; Asper, Cornutus, Donatus, and countless others are sought out, so that any poet may be understood whose songs seem to court the applause of the theater; yet you rush, without a guide, upon those Books which—however they may stand—are nevertheless holy and full of divine things, renowned by the confession of nearly the whole human race, and you dare to pass judgment on them without an instructor; and if anything occurs to you that seems absurd, you do not rather accuse your own slowness and a mind rotted by the corruption of this world, such as is the mind of all the foolish, than those who perhaps cannot be understood by such people!

You should seek out someone at once devout and learned, or one who by the agreement of many was said to be such, by whose precepts you might become better and by whose teaching more skilled. Was he not easily found? Then he should be sought out with labor. Was he lacking in the land you inhabited? What cause could more usefully compel you to travel abroad? Was he hidden on the mainland nearby, or was there none? Then one should set sail.

If he was not found nearby across the sea, you would advance even to those lands in which the things contained in those Books are said to have taken place.

What such thing have we done, Honoratus? And yet a religion perhaps most holy—for I still speak as though it were a matter for doubt—whose repute has by now taken hold of the whole world, we, most wretched boys, condemned at our own discretion and judgment. What if those things which seem to give offense to some unskilled people in those same Scriptures are placed there in such a way that, when matters were read that are repugnant to the sense of any sort of people—not to say of the prudent and holy—we might seek the hidden meaning all the more earnestly?

Do you not see how people try to interpret the catamite of the Bucolics, for whom the hard shepherd pined, and the boy Alexis, about whom Plato too is said to have composed a love poem, as signifying some great thing, but they affirm that it escapes the judgment of the unskilled—when, without any sacrilege, that most fertile poet could be seen to have published lustful little songs?

18. But in truth, was it the sanction of some law, or the power of opponents, or the lowly persons of those consecrated, or a base reputation, or the novelty of the institution, or a hidden mode of profession that was calling us back and forbidding us from seeking? None of these is the case. All divine and human laws permit one to seek the Catholic faith; to hold and practice it is certainly allowed by human law, even if, while we err, it is uncertain by divine law. No enemy terrifies us in our weakness—although truth and the soul's salvation, if, diligently sought where it is most safely allowed, it has not been found, ought to be sought at any risk. The ranks of all dignities and powers serve this divine worship most devotedly; the name of religion is most honorable and most illustrious. What, then, prevents us from examining and discussing, by a devout and earnest investigation, whether this is that which few must most sincerely know and keep, even if the will and favor of all nations should agree upon it?

19. Since these things are so, suppose, as I said, that we are now seeking for the first time to what religion we should entrust our souls to be purified and restored: without doubt the beginning is to be made from the Catholic Church. For there are now more Christians than there would be Jews if the worshippers of idols were joined to them. But among these same Christians, since there are several heresies, and all want to be seen as Catholics and call others besides themselves heretics, there is one Church, as all concede; if you consider the whole world, it is the more crowded with multitude; but, as those who know affirm, it is also purer in truth than all the rest. But about the truth there is another question: what is enough for those who seek is that there is one Catholic Church, on which the other heresies impose various names, while they themselves are each called by their own proper names, which they dare not deny. From this it is given to understand that, when arbiters who are hindered by no favoritism judge, it is to the Catholic Church that the name "Catholic"—which all aspire to—is to be assigned. But lest anyone think this must be discussed too long-windedly or superfluously, there is certainly one Church in which even the human laws themselves are, in a certain way, Christian.

I want no prejudgment to be made from this, but I judge it a most fitting starting point for inquiry. For it is not to be feared that the true worship of God, resting on no strength of its own, should seem to need propping up by those whom it ought to prop up; but surely it is the mark of perfect happiness, if the truth could be found there where both the seeking and the keeping of it are most secure: if it could not, then at last others, at whatever peril, must be approached and explored.

20. These things, then, having been established—which, as I think, are so just that I ought to win this case before you against any opponent whatever—I will tell you, as I can, what sort of way I followed when I sought the true religion with the mind with which I have now set forth that it is to be sought.

For when I had departed from you across the sea, already hesitating and wavering as to what I should hold and what I should let go—a hesitation that arose greater in me day by day from the time I heard that man, whose coming, as you know, was promised to us as though from heaven to explain all the things that moved us, and whom, except for a certain eloquence, I found to be such as I knew the rest to be—I reasoned within myself and deliberated greatly, being now settled in Italy, not whether I should remain in that sect, into which I regretted having fallen, but in what way the truth was to be found, for love of which my sighs are known to none better than to you. Often it seemed to me that it could not be found, and the great waves of my thoughts were carried toward the verdict of the Academics. Often, on the other hand, gazing as far as I could upon the human mind, so lively, so keen, so perspicacious, I did not think truth lay hidden, except that the manner of seeking it lay hidden, and that this very manner was to be taken from some divine authority. It remained to seek what that authority might be, since amid such great dissensions everyone promised that he would deliver it.

There met me, then, an inextricable thicket, into which it greatly irked me to be at last inserted: and amid these things, without any rest, my mind was driven by the desire of finding the truth. Yet I was unstitching myself more and more from those whom I had now resolved to abandon. But nothing else remained, amid such great perils, than to entreat divine providence, with tearful and pitiable cries, to bring me aid. And this I did earnestly: and by now certain disputations of the bishop of Milan had nearly moved me to desire, not without some hope, to inquire many things about the Old Testament itself, which, as you know, ill commended to us, we used to detest. And I had resolved to be a catechumen in the Church to which I had been handed over by my parents, until either I found what I wanted or persuaded myself that it was not to be sought. Most ready, then, and very teachable could one who was able to teach have found me at that time.

In this way, then, and the like, you see that you too have long been affected by a care for your soul; and if you now seem to yourself sufficiently tossed about and wish to put an end to labors of this kind, follow the way of Catholic teaching, which has flowed from Christ himself, through the apostles, down to us, and from here will flow on to those who come after.

21. "That is ridiculous," you say, "since all profess that they hold and teach this." All heretics profess this, I cannot deny; but in such a way that they promise to those whom they entice that they will render reason concerning the most obscure matters: and on this score they especially accuse the Catholic Church, because those who come to it are enjoined to believe; whereas they boast that they do not impose the yoke of believing, but open the fountain of teaching. "What could be said," you say, "that would pertain more to their praise?" It is not so. For they do this endowed with no strength, but in order to win over some multitude by the name of reason: for at this promise the human soul naturally rejoices, and, not considering its own powers and health, in craving the food of the healthy—which is ill committed except to the strong—it rushes into the poisons of deceivers. For true religion, unless those things are believed which each one will afterward attain and grasp, if he conducts himself well and is worthy, can in no way be rightly entered upon at all without some weighty command of authority.

22. But perhaps you wish to receive some reason even about this very thing, by which you may be persuaded that you are to be taught not by reason before faith. This can easily be done, if only you show yourself fair. But that it may be done conveniently, I want you, as it were, to answer my questioning: and first tell me why it seems to you that one should not believe. "Because credulity itself," you say, "from which the credulous are named, seems to me to be a certain fault: otherwise we would not be accustomed to cast this name as a reproach. For if the suspicious person is at fault because he suspects things not ascertained, how much more the credulous, who differs from the suspicious in this, that the one grants some doubt to things unknown, the other none."

For now I accept this opinion and distinction. But you know too that we are accustomed to call someone curious not without reproach; but studious even with praise. Therefore attend, if you please, to what difference also seems to you to lie between these two. This at least you answer: that although each is driven by a great desire of knowing, the curious person nevertheless seeks out things that have nothing to do with him; the studious, on the contrary, seeks out things that have to do with himself. But because we do not deny that a wife and children and their welfare pertain to a man, if someone placed abroad earnestly inquires of all who come how his wife and children fare and conduct themselves, he is certainly led by a great desire of knowing: and yet we do not call this man studious, who both greatly wishes to know, and wishes to know the things that pertain most to himself. Therefore you now understand that this definition of the studious wavers on this point, that every studious person indeed wishes to know the things that pertain to him, yet not everyone who does this is to be called studious; but he who most lavishly seeks out the things that pertain to nourishing and adorning the mind in a liberal way—though we rightly call him a student, especially adding what he is keen to hear.

For we can also call a person studious of his own if he loves only his own: yet without some addition we do not think him worthy of the common name of the studious. But one eager to hear how his own people fared I would not call studious of hearing, unless, rejoicing in good report, he often wanted to hear that very thing; whereas I would call him a student, even if only once.

Now bring your mind back to the curious person, and tell me: if someone gladly listened to a little tale that would profit him nothing at all—that is, of matters not pertaining to him—and that not hatefully and frequently, but very rarely and most modestly, whether at a banquet or in some gathering or any company, would he seem to you curious? I think not: but surely he would seem to have a concern for that thing which he gladly heard. Therefore the definition of the curious too must be amended by the rule by which that of the studious was amended.

See, then, whether those earlier definitions too must be amended. For why should not one be unworthy of the name of the suspicious, who sometimes suspects something; and of the credulous, who sometimes believes something?

And so, just as there is a great difference between one who studies some thing and one who is wholly studious, and again between one who has a concern and one who is curious, so there is a great difference between one who believes and one who is credulous.

23. "But now see," you will say, "whether we ought to believe in religion. For even if we grant that to believe is one thing and to be credulous another, it does not follow that there is no fault in believing in religious matters. For what if both to believe and to be credulous are faulty, just as both to be drunk and to be a drunkard are?" Whoever thinks this certain seems to me unable to have any friend. For if it is shameful to believe anything, either he acts shamefully who believes a friend, or, believing nothing of a friend, I do not see how he can call either that person or himself a friend.

Here perhaps you will say: "I grant that something must sometimes be believed; now explain how in religion it is not shameful to believe before knowing." I will, if I can. "Therefore I ask of you which you think is the graver fault: to hand on religion to one unworthy, or to believe what is said by those who hand it on." If I say someone unworthy, you do not understand; I mean one who approaches with a feigned heart. You grant, as I think, that it is more to be blamed to disclose any holy secrets there may be to such a man than to believe religious men who affirm something about religion itself. For it would not have been fitting for you to answer otherwise.

Therefore now suppose you think there is present one who is to hand on religion to you: in what way will you give him assurance that you approach with a true mind, and that there is in you, as far as this matter is concerned, nothing of guile and pretense? You will say, in your good conscience, that you feign nothing, asserting this very thing in as strong words as you can—but still in words. For you cannot, man to man, open up the hidden places of your mind so as to be known within. But if he says: "Behold, I believe you; but is it not fairer that you too believe me, since you are going to receive a benefit, if I hold something true, and therefore I am the giver?"—what will you answer except that one must believe?

24. "But," you say, "would it not have been better that you render me reason, so that, wherever it led me, I might follow it without any rashness?" Perhaps it would: but since the matter is so great that God is to be known by you through reason, do you think all are fit to grasp the reasonings by which the human mind is led to divine understanding, or many, or few? "Few," you say, "I think." Do you believe yourself to be of their number? "It is not for me," you say, "to answer this." Then you think it is for him to believe even this for you: which indeed he does. Only remember that he has now believed you when you say uncertain things, while you, when he religiously admonishes you, are unwilling to believe him even once.

But suppose it is so, and that you approach with a true mind to receive religion, and that you are so much among the few that you can grasp the reasonings by which the divine power is reached unto certain knowledge: what then? Do you think religion is to be denied to the rest of humankind, who are not endowed with so serene a talent? Or that they are to be led, step by step by certain degrees, to those highest inner depths? You plainly see which is the more religious. For no person whatever, in his desire for so great a thing, can in any way seem to you to be deserted or rejected. But do you not judge that, unless one first believes that he will arrive at what he has set out for, and presents a suppliant mind, and, obeying certain great and necessary precepts, purifies himself thoroughly by a certain conduct of life, he will not otherwise attain those things which are purely true? You surely do judge so.

What harm, then, will it ultimately do these people—of whose kind I now believe you to be, who most easily can grasp the divine secrets by certain reason—if they come by this way, by which those who believe at the outset come? I do not think any. "But still," you say, "what need is there to delay them?" Because, even if by the deed they will do themselves no harm, they will nevertheless harm the rest by their example.

For scarcely anyone judges of himself only as much as he can: but he who judges less is to be roused; he who judges more, to be restrained; so that the one may not be broken by despair, nor the other carried headlong by boldness.

This easily comes about if even those who are able to fly are compelled, for a little while, to walk where it is safe for the rest also, lest they be a perilous enticement to anyone. This is the providence of true religion; this is commanded from on high, this handed down by our blessed forebears, this preserved down to us; to wish to disturb and pervert this is nothing other than to seek a sacrilegious way to true religion. And those who do this, even if what they want were granted them, cannot arrive where they aim. For however excellent the talent with which they excel, unless God is present, they crawl upon the ground. But he is present, if human society is a care to those striving toward God. Than this step nothing firmer can be found for ascending to heaven.

I, for my part, cannot resist this reasoning; for how can I say that nothing is to be believed without knowledge, when even friendship, unless something is believed which cannot be demonstrated by certain reason, is altogether nothing, and when often credit is given to servants entrusted with stewardship without any fault on the masters' part? But in religion what could be done more unjust than that the priests of God should believe us when we promise an unfeigned mind, while we should be unwilling to believe them when they instruct us? Finally, what way can be more wholesome than to become fit at first to grasp the truth, by giving credence to those things which are divinely established for honoring and tending the mind beforehand? Or, if you are already wholly fit, rather to go around a little where it is safest to enter, than both to be to yourself an author of peril and to others an example of rashness?

25. Therefore it now remains for us to consider in what way those are not to be followed who promise that they will lead by reason. For in what way we can, without fault, follow those who command us to believe has already been said: but some think that they come to these sponsors of reason not only without blame, but even with some praise: but it is not so. For there are two kinds of persons praiseworthy in religion: one is of those who have already found, who must also be judged most blessed; the other is of those who seek most earnestly and most rightly. The first, then, are already in possession itself; the others are on the way, by which nevertheless one most surely arrives.

There are three other kinds of people, certainly to be disapproved and detested. One is of those who have opinions, that is, of those who think they know what they do not know. Another is of those who indeed perceive that they do not know, but do not seek in such a way that they can find. The third is of those who neither think they know nor wish to seek. There are likewise three things, as it were bordering on one another, most worthy of distinction in the minds of people: to understand, to believe, to have an opinion. If these are considered in themselves, the first is always without fault; the second, sometimes with fault; the third, never without fault.

For to understand great and honorable, or even divine, things is most blessed. But to understand superfluous things does no harm; though perhaps to learn them did harm, when they took up the time of necessary things. Even with harmful things themselves, it is not to understand them, but to do or to suffer them, that is wretched. For if someone understands how an enemy can be killed without peril to himself, he is guilty by his desire, not by the understanding itself: and if the desire is absent, what can be called more innocent?

But to believe is then to be blamed, when either something unworthy is believed about God, or something is believed too readily about a human being. But in other matters, if someone believes anything, provided he understands that he does not know it, there is no fault. For I believe that the most criminal conspirators were once slain by the courage of Cicero: and not only do I not know this, but I know for certain that I can in no way know it. But to have an opinion is most shameful for two reasons: both because one who has persuaded himself that he already knows cannot learn—if indeed that thing can be learned—and because in itself rashness is the sign of a mind not well disposed.

For even if someone thinks he knows this very thing which I said about Cicero—although nothing prevents him from learning, because the thing itself can be held by no knowledge—

nevertheless, because he does not understand that it makes a great difference whether something is seen by the certain reason of the mind, which we call understanding, or is usefully entrusted to those who come after, to be believed by report or in writing, he surely errs, and no error is free of disgrace.

What we understand, then, we owe to reason; what we believe, to authority; what we hold by opinion, to error. But everyone who understands also believes, and everyone who has an opinion also believes: not everyone who believes understands; no one who has an opinion understands.

If, then, these three are referred to those five kinds of people which we mentioned a little before—that is, the two to be approved which we placed first, and the three remaining ones that are faulty—we find that the first kind, of the blessed, believe truth itself; and the second, of the studious and lovers of truth, believe authority. In these two kinds belief is given praiseworthily. But in the first of the faulty kinds, that is, of those who think they know what they do not know, the credulity is certainly faulty. The other two kinds, to be disapproved, believe nothing—both those who seek the truth with despair of finding it, and those who do not seek at all. And this, to be sure, in matters pertaining to some discipline. For in the other conduct of life, I altogether do not know in what way a person can believe nothing. Although, even in those who say that in acting they follow probable things, they wish rather to be seen as able to know nothing than to believe nothing. For who does not believe what he approves? Or how is that which they follow probable, if it is not approved? Therefore there can be two kinds of those opposing the truth: one of those who attack knowledge only, not faith; the other of those who condemn both; though whether these can be found among human affairs, I again do not know.

These things have been said so that we might understand that, by holding faith, we are also vindicated from the rashness of those who have opinions even concerning those things which we have not yet grasped. For those who say that nothing is to be believed except what we know guard against the one name of "opinion," which must be confessed shameful and most wretched: but if they carefully considered that it makes a great difference whether one thinks he knows, or believes—moved by some authority—what he understands he does not know, they would surely avoid errors and the charge of inhumanity and pride.

26. For I ask, if what is not known is not to be believed, how do children serve their parents and love with mutual piety those whom they do not believe to be their parents? For it cannot in any way be known by reason: but, with the mother's authority interposed, the father is believed in; while concerning the mother herself, credence is generally given not even to the mother, but to midwives, nurses, servants. For one from whom a son can be stolen, and another substituted—can she not, being deceived, deceive? We believe, nevertheless, and without any doubt we believe, what we confess we cannot know.

For who does not see that piety, the most holy bond of the human race, unless it be so, is violated by a most arrogant crime? For who, even if mad, would think that one is to be blamed who has rendered the due offices to those whom he believed to be his parents, even if they were not? Who, on the contrary, would not judge that one is to be banished who perhaps loved his true parents not at all, while he feared to love false ones? Many things can be brought forward by which it is shown that nothing of human society remains unharmed at all, if we resolve to believe nothing that we cannot hold as grasped.

27. But now hear what I trust I shall now more easily persuade you of. When religion is in question—that is, when it is a matter of worshipping and understanding God—those are the less to be followed who forbid us to believe, while most readily promising reason.

For no one doubts that all people are either foolish or wise. Now I call wise, not men who are shrewd and clever, but those in whom there is, as much as can be in a human being, a most firmly grasped knowledge of the human being himself and of God, and a life and conduct in harmony with this knowledge: but the rest, with whatever sort of skills or idle pursuits they are occupied, whatever their way of life, to be approved or disapproved, I would reckon in the number of the foolish. Since these things are so, who of moderate understanding would not plainly see that it is more useful and more wholesome for the foolish to obey the precepts of the wise than to pass their life by their own judgment? For every deed, if it is not rightly done, is a sin: and what does not proceed from right reason can in no way be rightly done. Now right reason is virtue itself. And to which human being is virtue present, except in the mind of the wise? The wise person alone, therefore, does not sin. Every foolish person, then, sins, except in those deeds in which he has obeyed the wise: for such deeds proceed from right reason, and the foolish person, so to speak, is not to be reckoned the master of his own deed, since he is as it were the instrument and ministry of the wise. Therefore, if for all people not to sin is better than to sin, surely all the foolish would live better if they could be servants of the wise. And if no one is in doubt that this is expedient in lesser matters—as in trading or tilling a field, in taking a wife, in begetting and rearing children, in administering the household estate itself—much more so in religion. For human affairs are readier to be discerned than divine ones; and in whatever things are holier and more excellent, the greater the obedience and worship we owe them, the more criminally and dangerously is sin committed.

You see, then, that nothing now remains for us, as long as we are foolish, if the best and most religious life is dear to us, except to seek out the wise, by obeying whom we may both feel the dominion of folly not so very much while it is in us, and may at last escape it.

28. Here again arises a most difficult question. For in what way shall we, being foolish, be able to find the wise person, since most people, even though scarcely anyone dares to do so openly, nevertheless claim this name for themselves obliquely; since about the very matters in whose knowledge wisdom consists they so disagree among themselves that it is necessary that either none of them, or some one of them, be wise? But just who that one is—when he is sought by the foolish person—in what way he can be plainly discerned and grasped, I altogether do not see. For one cannot recognize anything by any signs whatever, unless he has known that very thing of which they are the signs. And yet the foolish person is ignorant of wisdom. For it is not as it is permitted with gold and silver and other things of that kind, both to recognize them when you see them and not to have them—it is not so permitted that wisdom be seen by the eye of a mind that lacks it. For whatever we touch by the sense of the body is offered to us from without: and therefore it is allowed also to behold with the eyes things belonging to others, even though we have nothing of them or of that kind. But what is grasped by the understanding is within, with the mind: and to have it is nothing other than to see it.

But the foolish person lacks wisdom: therefore he does not know wisdom. For he could not see it with his eyes: but he cannot see it and not have it, nor have it and be foolish. He does not know it, then, and while he does not know it, he cannot recognize it in another place. No one, therefore, as long as he is foolish, can by the most certain knowledge find the wise person, by obeying whom he may be freed from so great an evil of folly.

29. This so monstrous difficulty, then—since we are inquiring about religion—God alone can heal: and unless we believe both that he exists and that he aids human minds, we ought not even to seek the true religion itself. For what, after all, do we desire to investigate with such great effort? What do we wish to attain? Where do we desire to arrive? At something which we do not believe to exist or to pertain to us? Nothing is more perverse than such a mind.

When you would not dare to ask a benefit of me—or at least would dare it only shamelessly—unless you believed I would grant it, do you come to demand the finding of religion, when you suppose that God neither exists, nor, if he exists, cares for us?

What if it is so great a thing that it cannot be found unless sought earnestly and with all one's strength? What if the very difficulty of finding it exercises the mind of the seeker, that it may be fit to grasp and to set forth what shall have been found? For what is more pleasant and familiar to our eyes than this light? Yet they cannot endure and bear it after long darkness. What is more suited to a body exhausted by sickness than food and drink?

Yet we see those recovering reined in and restrained, lest they dare to commit themselves to the fullness of the healthy, and bring it about by the very food that they relapse into that disease which was rejecting them. I speak of those recovering: what of the sick themselves—do we not urge them to take something? In which surely they would not obey us with such great reluctance, if they did not believe they would escape that disease.

When, then, will you give yourself to the most laborious and toilsome inquiry? When will you dare to impose upon yourself so great a care and task as the matter itself deserves, when you do not believe that what you seek exists? Rightly, therefore, has it been established by the majesty of Catholic teaching that, for those approaching religion, faith is to be urged before all things.

30. And so that heretic—since our discourse is about those who want to be called Christians—what reason, I ask you, does he bring me? What is there by which he may call me back from believing, as from rashness? If he commands me to believe nothing, I do not believe that this very true religion itself exists at all among human affairs: and since I do not believe it exists, I do not seek it. But he, as I suppose, is going to show it to the one who seeks: for so it is written, he who seeks will find (Matt 7:8). To him, then, who forbids me to believe, I would not come, unless I believed something. Is there any greater madness than that I should be displeasing to him by faith alone—the very faith which has no knowledge to support it, and which alone has brought me to him?

31. What of the fact that all heretics exhort us to believe Christ? Can they be more at odds with themselves? On this point they are to be pressed in two ways. First, it must be asked of them where is the reason they promised, where the rebuke of rashness, where the presumption of knowledge. "For if it is shameful to believe anyone without reason, why do you wait, why do you busy yourself, that I should believe someone without reason, so that I may be more easily led by your reason? Or will your reason build anything firm upon a foundation of rashness?"

I speak according to those to whom we are displeasing by believing. For I judge that to believe before reason, when you are not fit to grasp reason, and by faith itself to cultivate the mind for receiving the seeds of truth, is not only most wholesome, but altogether such that without it health cannot return to ailing minds. And since this seems to them to be deserving of mockery and full of rashness, surely they act shamelessly in bidding us believe Christ.

Then I confess that I have already believed Christ, and have brought it into my mind that what he said is true, even if it is supported by no reason: is it with this beginning, heretic, that you are going to teach me? Let me consider a little with myself—since I have not seen Christ himself, in the way he willed to appear to people, who is proclaimed to have been seen even by those common eyes—on whose word I have believed about him, so that I may come to you already fortified with such a faith. I see that I have believed none but the established opinion and most widely renowned report of peoples and nations: and that these peoples the mysteries of the Catholic Church have everywhere taken hold of. Why, then, should I not above all most diligently inquire, among those by whose authority, moved, I have already believed that Christ commanded something useful, what Christ commanded? Are you going to expound better to me what he said—he whom I would not think to have been or to be, if it were commended to me by you that this is to be believed?

This, then, I have believed, as I said, on report strengthened by renown, by agreement, by antiquity. But you—both so few, and so turbulent, and so new—no one doubts how little worthy of authority you display. What, then, is this so great madness? "Believe them, that Christ is to be believed, and learn from us what he said." Why, I beg you? For if they failed, and could teach me nothing, I would far more easily persuade myself that Christ is not to be believed than that anything is to be learned about him except from those through whom I had believed in him. O enormous presumption, or rather ineptitude!

"I teach you what Christ, whom you believe, commanded." "What if I did not believe him? Could you teach me anything about him? But you must," he says, "believe." "Surely on your commendation of him?" "No," he says: "for we lead by reason those who believe him." "Why, then, should I believe him?" "Because the report is well founded." "Through you, or through others?" "Through others," he says. "Shall I, then, believe them, so that you may teach me? I ought perhaps to, were it not that they especially admonish me of this, that I should not approach you at all: for they say that you hold pernicious doctrines. You will answer: they lie.

How, then, shall I believe them about Christ, whom they did not see, and not believe them about you, whom they refuse to see?" "Believe the writings," he says. "But every writing, if it is brought forward new and unheard of, or commended by few, with no reason confirming it, is not believed on its own account, but on account of those who bring it forward." Therefore, if you bring forward these writings, so few and unknown, I am not inclined to believe them. At the same time you also act contrary to your promise, commanding faith rather than rendering reason. Again you will call me back to the multitude and the report.

"Restrain at last your stubbornness, and your I-know-not-what untamed lust for spreading your name: and admonish me rather to seek the leaders of this multitude, and to seek them most diligently and laboriously, so that from these I may rather learn something about these writings—those without whom I would not even know that anything was to be learned at all. But you, return to your hiding places, and lay no snares, under the name of truth, which you try to take away from those to whom you yourself concede authority."

32. But if they deny that even Christ is to be believed unless an indubitable reason has been rendered, they are not Christians. For this is what certain pagans say against us—foolishly indeed, but not at odds with themselves, nor self-contradicting. But who would bear these people to profess that they belong to Christ, who contend that nothing is to be believed unless they have set forth to the foolish a most evident reason about God? But him we see, as far as that history teaches—to which they too yield—to have wished nothing first, nor more strongly, than that he be believed: since those with whom he had to deal were not yet fit to grasp the divine secrets.

For what else do those so great and so many miracles accomplish—he himself even saying that they were done for no other reason than that he might be believed? By faith he led the foolish, you lead by reason. He cried out that he be believed, you cry out against it. He praised those who believed, you rebuke them. Unless, indeed—to pass over other things—he turned water into wine, that, if people could follow one who did nothing of the sort but only taught: either that saying must be reckoned as nothing, you believe in God; believe also in me (John 14:1); or he is to be blamed for rashness who was unwilling that he should come into his house, believing that the disease of his servant would yield to his command alone.

Therefore he, bringing the medicine that was to heal the most corrupted morals, won authority by miracles, by authority earned faith, by faith gathered a multitude, by the multitude obtained antiquity, by antiquity strengthened religion: which neither the most inept novelty of heretics, working by frauds, nor even the drowsy error of the gentiles, violently opposing, could tear away in any part.

33. Therefore, although I have not the power to teach, I nevertheless do not cease to admonish that—since many wish to seem wise, and it is not easy for the foolish to discern whether they are—with all earnestness, with all vows, and finally with groans, or even, if it can be done, with tears, you entreat God to free you from the evil of error, if the happy life is dear to you.

This will more easily come about if you willingly obey his precepts, which he willed to be confirmed by so great an authority of the Catholic Church. For since the wise person is so joined to God in mind that nothing is interposed to separate him—for God is truth, and no one is in any way wise if he does not touch truth with his mind—we cannot deny that, between the folly of the human being and the most sincere truth of God, there is interposed, as something in the middle, the wisdom of the human being. For the wise person, as far as is granted, imitates God; but to the foolish person, for imitating wholesomely, nothing is nearer than the wise person; and since, as has been said, it is not easy to understand him by reason, it was fitting that certain miracles be brought close to the very eyes, which the foolish use much more conveniently than the mind, so that, by the authority of people thus moved, their life and morals might first be purified, and so they might become apt to receive reason.

Since, then, both a human being was to be imitated, and hope was not to be placed in a human being, what could be done by God's indulgence more gracious and more generous than that the very sincere, eternal, and unchangeable Wisdom of God, to which we ought to cleave, should deign to take on a human being? Who would not only do those things by which we might be invited to follow God, but would also suffer those things by which we were being deterred from following God. For since no one can attain the most certain and highest good unless he has loved it fully and perfectly—which will in no way happen so long as the evils of the body and chance misfortunes are dreaded—he, by being born and by his works, wondrously won love; but by dying and rising again, he shut out fear. And indeed in all other matters, which it would take long to follow through, he showed himself such that we might perceive both how far divine clemency reaches down, and to what height human infirmity can be raised.

34. This, believe me, is the most wholesome authority; this is the first lifting up of our mind from its earthly dwelling, this the turning toward the true God from the love of this world. It is authority alone that moves the foolish to hasten toward wisdom. As long as we cannot understand pure things, it is wretched, indeed, to be deceived by authority: but surely it is more wretched not to be moved. For if the providence of God does not preside over human affairs, there is nothing to be busy about concerning religion. But if both the form of all things—which surely must be believed to flow from some fountain of truest beauty—and some inner conscience exhort all the better souls, as it were publicly and privately, that God is to be sought and God is to be served, then we must not despair that some authority has been established by that same God, leaning upon which as upon a sure step, we may be lifted up into God.

But this authority, setting aside reason—which, as we have often said, it is most difficult for the foolish to understand purely—moves us in two ways: partly by miracles, partly by the multitude of followers. None of these is necessary for the wise person; who denies it? But what is now in hand is that we may become able to be wise, that is, to cleave to truth: which a sordid mind certainly cannot do. But the sordidness of the mind is, to explain briefly, the love of any things whatever apart from the mind and God: and the more anyone is purified of this sordidness, the more easily he beholds the truth. To wish, therefore, to see the truth in order to purify the mind, when it is purified precisely in order that you may see, is certainly perverse and back-to-front.

For the human being, then, who has not the power to behold the truth, that he may become fit for it and allow himself to be purified, authority is at hand; which, as I said a little before, no one is in doubt has force partly by miracles, partly by the multitude. I call a miracle whatever appears arduous or unusual, beyond the hope or capacity of the one who marvels. In this kind nothing is more apt for peoples and altogether for foolish people than that which is brought close to the senses. But again these are divided into two: for there are some that produce only wonder; but some that win also great gratitude and goodwill. For if someone beheld a man flying, since that thing brings the spectator no advantage beyond the spectacle itself, he only marvels. But if someone afflicted with a grave and desperate disease recovers as soon as he has been bidden, he will surpass the wonder at his own health by his love for the one who heals.

Such things were done at that time when God in a true human being appeared to people, as much as was enough. The sick were healed, lepers cleansed; walking was given back to the lame, sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf. The people of that time saw water turned into wine, five thousand filled with five loaves, seas crossed on foot, the dead rising: thus some things looked to the body by a more manifest benefit, some to the mind by a more hidden sign, and all to people by a testimony of majesty: thus did divine authority then move toward itself the wandering souls of mortals.

Why, you ask, do these things not happen now? Because they would not move us unless they were marvelous: but if they were customary, they would not be marvelous. For the changes of day and night, and the most constant order of the heavenly things, the fourfold turning of the year, the leaves falling and returning to the trees, the boundless power of seeds, the beauty of light, the varieties of colors, sounds, odors, and tastes—give me one who sees and perceives them for the first time, one with whom we can nevertheless speak; he is stunned and overwhelmed by miracles:

but we despise all these things—not from ease of knowing them, for what is more obscure than their causes?—but surely from the constancy of perceiving them. Those things, then, were done most opportunely, so that, with a multitude of believers gathered and propagated by them, useful authority might be turned upon the morals themselves.

35. Now morals of any kind have such force for taking hold of the minds of people that even what is depraved in them—which generally happens when lusts prevail—we can sooner disapprove and detest than abandon or change. Do you think too little provision has been made for human affairs, that not a few of the most learned discuss—and that even the unskilled crowd of men and women, in so many and so diverse kinds, both believes and proclaims—that nothing earthly, nothing fiery, nothing, in short, that the sense of the body touches, is to be worshipped as God, who is to be sought by the understanding alone?

That continence is extended even to the slenderest fare of bread and water, and to fasts maintained not only daily but even through several days running together; that chastity is extended even to the contempt of marriage and offspring; that patience even to crosses and flames disregarded; that generosity even to patrimonies distributed to the poor; that, in short, scorn for this whole world is extended even to the desire of death? Few do these things, fewer do them well and prudently: but the peoples approve, the peoples listen, the peoples favor, the peoples in the end love; the peoples accuse their own weakness, that they themselves cannot do these things, neither without an advance of the mind toward God, nor without certain sparks of virtue.

This was brought about by divine providence through the prophecies of the prophets, through the humanity and teaching of Christ, through the journeys of the apostles, through the insults, crosses, blood, deaths of the martyrs, through the praiseworthy life of the saints, and, in all these, miracles worthy of such great matters and virtues, according to the opportunity of the times. Since, then, we see so great a help of God, so great an advance and fruit, shall we hesitate to hide ourselves in the bosom of that Church which, even unto the confession of the human race, has obtained the height of authority from the apostolic See through the successions of bishops—while the heretics bark around it in vain and are condemned partly by the judgment of the people themselves, partly by the weight of councils, partly even by the majesty of miracles?

To be unwilling to give it the first place is surely either the mark of the utmost impiety or of headlong arrogance. For if there is no sure way to wisdom and salvation for souls, except when faith cultivates them beforehand for reason, what else is it to be ungrateful to divine help and aid than to wish to resist an authority endowed with such great strength? And if every discipline, however lowly and easy, even that it may be grasped, requires a teacher or master, what is more full of rash pride than both to be unwilling to learn the books of the divine mysteries from their interpreters, and to wish to dare to condemn them while they are unknown?

36. Therefore, if either reason or our discourse has moved you at all, and if you have, as I believe, a true care for yourself, I should wish you to hear me, and to commit yourself to the good teachers of Catholic Christianity with devout faith, eager hope, and simple charity; and not to cease praying to God himself, by whose goodness alone we were made, by whose justice we pay penalties, and by whose clemency we are freed.

So you will lack neither the precepts and disputations of most learned and truly Christian men, nor the books, nor the very serene thoughts, by which you may easily find what you seek.

For those wordy and wretched men—for what milder thing could I say?—abandon utterly: who, while they seek too much whence evil comes, find nothing but evil. In which question they often rouse their hearers to inquire: but they teach the roused such things that it would be better always to sleep than to wake in that manner. For out of the lethargic they make the frenzied: between which diseases, since each is generally deadly, there is nevertheless this difference, that the lethargic die without troubling others; but the frenzied is to be feared by many who are healthy, and especially by those who wish to come to his aid.

For God is neither the author of evil, nor has he ever repented of having made anything, nor is he troubled by the storm of any agitation of mind, nor is a little patch of earth his kingdom, nor does he approve or command any disgraceful deeds or crimes, nor does he ever lie. For these things and the like used to move us, when they shook them with great inveighings and accused this of being the teaching of the Old Testament: which is altogether most false. And so I grant that they rightly censure these things. What, then, have I learned? What do you think, except that when these things are censured, the Catholic teaching is not censured? Thus I hold what I had learned to be true among them: what I had thought false, I reject.

But the Catholic Church has also taught me many other things, to which those men, bloodless in body but gross in mind, cannot aspire: that God is not corporeal, that no part of him can be perceived by bodily eyes, that nothing of his substance and nature is in any way violable or changeable, or composite, or fashioned; and if you grant me these things—for not otherwise is God to be thought of—all their contrivances are overthrown.

But how it is that God neither begot nor made evil, and that there neither is nor ever was any nature and substance which God did not either beget or make, and that nevertheless he frees us from evil—this is proved by reasons so necessary that it cannot be doubted at all: especially by you, and by people like you; if only to a good talent there is added piety and a certain peace of mind, without which nothing at all can be understood about such great matters.

And here there is no report about smoke, and some Persian fable, to which it is enough to lend an ear, and a mind not subtle but plainly childish. Far otherwise, altogether far otherwise—not as the Manicheans rave—does the truth stand.

But since this discourse of ours has gone on much longer than I thought, let us here make an end of the book: in which I want you to remember that I have not yet begun to refute the Manicheans, and have not yet attacked those trifles; nor disclosed anything great about the Catholic Church itself; but have wished only to root out of you, if I could, the false opinion about true Christians maliciously or ignorantly instilled in us, and to rouse you toward learning certain great and divine things. Therefore let this volume be as it is: and once your mind has been made more at peace, I shall perhaps be more ready in what remains.