1. At that time I also wrote the book True Religion, in which it is argued at length and most fully that the one true God, that is, the Trinity, Father and Son and Holy Spirit, is to be worshipped with true religion, and with how great a mercy of his the Christian religion, which is the true religion, has been granted to human beings through the dispensation in time, and how a person is to be fitted by a certain sweetness of his own life Reading quadam suavitate instead of quadam sua vita. to that same worship of God. This book speaks above all, however, against the two natures of the Manichees.

2. In a certain place in this book I say: let it be clear to you and grasped that no error could have arisen in religion if the soul did not worship, in place of its God, a soul or a body or its own phantasms. True Religion 10.18. Here I used soul for the whole of incorporeal creation, not speaking in the manner of the Scriptures, which, when they use the word "soul" in no transferred sense, mean by it, I think, only that by which mortal animals live, among which human beings too are included, so long as they are mortal. A little later, however, I expressed the same sense better and more briefly, where I said: let us not, then, serve the creature rather than the Creator (See Rom 1:25) nor become vain in our thoughts, (See Rom 1:21) and our religion is perfect. True Religion 10.19. For by the single word "creature" I signified both, that is, the spiritual and the corporeal. I.e., "creation." The Latin creatura could as well be translated here either "creation" or "creature," "creation" suggesting the whole of creation or the act of creation, and "creature" suggesting an individual created being, although neither excludes the other. There remains what I said there: or its own phantasms; on account of which I said here: nor become vain in our thoughts.

3. Likewise, when I said: this is, in our times, the Christian religion, which it is the most secure and most certain salvation to know and follow, True Religion 10.19. this was said with respect to the name, not with respect to the very reality of which this is the name. For the very reality that is now called the Christian religion existed even among the ancients and was not absent from the beginning of the human race, until Christ himself came in the flesh, That the Church, and hence Christians, existed even before the coming of Christ is an idea that can be traced back at least as far as the second century. See, e.g., Justin, 1 Apology 46; 2 Clement 14. And for Augustine see also The Perfection of Human Righteousness 19.42. from which point the true religion, which already existed, began to be called Christian. For when the apostles had begun to preach him after the resurrection and ascension into heaven, and very many believed, at Antioch first, as it is written, the disciples were called Christians. (See Acts 11:26) For this reason I said: this is, in our times, the Christian religion, not because it did not exist in earlier times, but because it received this name in later times.

4. In another place I say: attend, then, to what follows, carefully and devoutly, as far as you can, for such people God helps. True Religion 10.20. This is not to be understood as though he helps only such people, since he also helps those who are not such, that they may become such, that is, that they may seek carefully and devoutly; but such people he helps to find. (See Matt 7:7-8)

And again elsewhere I say: then it will follow that, after the bodily death which we owe to the first sin, this body will, in its own time and its own order, be restored to its former stability. True Religion 12.25. This is to be taken to mean that even the former stability of the body, which we lost by sinning, had such great happiness that it did not incline toward the decline of old age. To this former stability, then, this body will be restored in the resurrection of the dead. But it will have more, so that it is not sustained by bodily nourishment, but is sufficiently made alive by the spirit alone, when it has risen as a life-giving spirit, (See 1 Cor 15:45; 1 Pet 3:18) for which reason it will also be spiritual. But that first body, although it would not have died had man not sinned, was nevertheless made animal, that is, a living soul. (See Gen 2:7)

5. And elsewhere I say: sin is so far a voluntary evil that it is in no way sin if it is not voluntary. True Religion 14.27. This definition can seem false; but if it is examined carefully, it will be found to be most true. For one must think of that sin which is only sin, not that which is also the punishment of sin, as I showed above when I recalled certain things from the third book of On Free Will. See Revisions 1.9.5. And yet even those sins which are not without reason called involuntary, because they are committed either by people who are ignorant or by people who are coerced, cannot be committed altogether without the will, since the one who sins in ignorance does indeed sin by his will, Reading facit instead of peccat. in that he thinks something is to be done that ought not to be done; and the one who, while the flesh lusts against the spirit, (See Gal 5:17) does not do the things he wills, lusts indeed unwillingly, and in this does not do what he wills, but if he is overcome, he consents to the lust willingly, and in this does nothing but what he wills, being free with regard to righteousness and a slave of sin. (See Rom 6:20) And that which in little children is called original sin, although they do not yet use the choice of the will, is not absurdly called "voluntary" too, because, contracted from the first evil will of man, it has become in a way hereditary. And so it is not false that I said: sin is so far a voluntary evil that it is in no way sin if it is not voluntary. True Religion 14.27. Therefore by the grace of God not only is the guilt of all past sins released in all who are baptized in Christ, which happens by the Spirit of regeneration, but in grown people the will itself is also healed and prepared by the Lord, which happens by the spirit of faith and love.

6. In another place, in what I said about the Lord Jesus Christ, he did nothing by force, but everything by persuading and admonishing, True Religion 16.31. it had not occurred to me that he drove the sellers and buyers out of the Temple by scourging them. (See John 2:14-16; Matt 21:12; Mark 11:15; Luke 19:45) But what is this, or how great is it? Even though he also cast out demons unwilling from human beings, not by the word of persuasion but by the force of power? (See Matt 9:32; Mark 1:34; Luke 4:35)

Likewise in another place I say: these are first to be followed, who say that the one highest, only, and true God is alone to be worshipped. Reading unum summum et solum et verum Deum instead of unum Deum summum, solum, verum Deum et solum. If among these the truth does not shine forth, then at last one must move on. True Religion 25.46. This can seem to have been said as though I had doubted the truth of this religion. But I said it as suited the person to whom I was writing. This person was Romanianus, a friend and benefactor of Augustine's. See True Religion 7.12; Letter 15.1. For I said: if among these the truth does not shine forth, in no way doubting that it would shine forth among them, just as the Apostle says: if Christ has not risen, in no way doubting that he has risen.

7. Likewise, when I said: nor have those miracles been allowed to endure into our times, lest the soul should always seek visible things, and the human race should grow cold through familiarity with the very things by whose novelty it had been set aflame, True Religion 25.46. it is indeed true; for it is not the case that even now, when the hand is laid on the baptized, they so receive the Holy Spirit that they speak in the tongues of all nations, (See Acts 2:4, 10:46) nor even now are the sick healed by the shadow of the preachers of Christ as they pass by, (See Acts 5:15) and if any such things were done then, it is clear that they later ceased.

But what I said is not to be taken to mean that no miracles are now believed to be done in the name of Christ. For I myself, when I wrote this very book, already knew that a blind man had been given sight at the bodies of the martyrs of Milan in that same city, These were the martyrs Gervase and Protase. The miracle was a famous one and is mentioned in Confessions 9.7.16; The City of God 22.8; Sermon 286.4; Ambrose, Letter 22; Paulinus of Milan, The Life of Saint Ambrose 14. and several other things, of which so many happen even in these times that we can neither know them all nor enumerate those that we do know. See The City of God 22.8; see as well Revisions 1.14.5, where Augustine also speaks of contemporary miracles but is more modest in suggesting how many there are.

8. And in another place, what I said, as the Apostle says: 'all order is from God', True Religion 41.77. the Apostle did not say in these very words, although the sense seems to be the same. For he says: the things that are, are ordained by God.

And elsewhere I say: let no one at all deceive us: whatever is rightly blamed is rejected in comparison with something better. True Religion 41.78. This was said of substances and natures, for the discussion was about them, not about good actions and sins.

And again elsewhere I say: but not even thus is a man to be loved by a man as carnal brothers or sons or spouses or any kinsfolk, or relations by marriage, or fellow citizens are loved, for that love too is temporal. For we would have no such ties, which come about by being born and dying, if our nature, remaining in the precepts and image of God, were not banished into this corruption. True Religion 46.88.

This sense I wholly disapprove, as I already disapproved it above too in the first book of On Genesis Against the Manichees. See Revisions 1.10.2. For it leads to the belief that those first spouses would not have begotten human descendants had they not sinned, as though it were necessary that mortals be begotten if they were to be begotten from the intercourse of male and female.

For I had not yet seen that it could have been the case that immortals be born of immortals, if human nature had not been changed for the worse by that great sin, and that, on this account, if fruitfulness and happiness had remained both in the parents and in the children, human beings would have been born, up to the fixed number of the saints whom God has predestined, (See Rev 14:1-3; Rom 8:28-30; 1 Cor 2:7; Eph 1:5, 1:12) not to succeed dying parents but to reign with the living. There would therefore be these kinships and relations by marriage as well, if no one sinned and no one died.

9. Likewise in another place I say: tending toward the one God and binding our souls to him alone, from which "religion" is believed to be named, let us be free of all superstition. True Religion 55.111. "Binding . . . religion": religantes . . . religio. In these words of mine, the account that was given of where "religion" gets its name pleased me more. For it does not escape me that authors writing in Latin have set forth another origin of this name, namely that it is called "religion" from being "gathered together again," Cicero, On the Nature of the Gods 2.28.72. which word is compounded from "gathering," that is, from "selecting," so that "religo" would seem to be Latin in the way that "eligo" is. "Is gathered together again . . . selecting . . . choosing . . . gather together again . . . choose": religitur . . . legendo . . . eligendo . . . religo . . . eligo. The explanation as Augustine cites it is found in Cicero, On the Nature of the Gods 2.28.72, where a distinction is made between the superstitious and the religious. "Those who carefully reconsidered and as it were gathered together again everything that pertained to the worship of the gods are called religious from 'gathering together again' (relegendo)."

This book begins thus: since the whole way of a good and blessed life.

1. Since the whole way of a good and blessed life is set in true religion, by which the one God is worshipped and there is recognized, with the purest piety, the source of all natures, from which the universe both begins and is brought to completion and is sustained: from this the error of those peoples is more clearly detected who preferred to worship many gods rather than the one true God and Lord of all, because their wise men, whom they call philosophers, had schools that disagreed with one another and temples held in common.

For it was not hidden either from the peoples or from the priests how diversely they thought about the very nature of the gods, since each was not afraid to profess his own opinion publicly and strove, if he could, to persuade everyone of it; yet all of them, along with their followers who held diverse and opposing views, came with no one forbidding it to the common rites.

The question now is not which of them thought more truly; but surely this much, as it seems to me, is sufficiently clear, that they took up one thing in religion along with the people and defended another privately while that same people was listening.

2. Socrates, however, is reported to have been bolder than the rest in swearing by any dog whatever, and any stone whatever, and whatever was at hand for the one swearing and came as it were to his hand. I believe he understood that the works of nature of whatever kind, which are generated under the administration of divine providence, are far better than those of human beings and of any craftsmen whatever, and therefore more worthy of divine honors (When one swears by anything, one thereby accords it divine status) than the things that were worshipped in the temples.

Not that a stone and a dog were truly to be worshipped by the wise, but that in this way those who could might understand that human beings are sunk in such great superstition that, for those emerging from it, this was the shameful step to be pointed out; and that if they were ashamed to come to it, they might see how much more they ought to be ashamed to remain in something more shameful. I.e., on the grade of worshiping man-made idols—like the great image of the goddess Athena in the Parthenon on the Acropolis at Athens.

At the same time he was also admonishing of their baseness those who supposed that this visible world was the highest God, teaching that it follows that any stone whatever would be worshipped as a particle of the highest God. And if they shrank from this in horror, they would change their opinion and seek the one God,

who alone is above our minds, and by whom every soul and this whole world was fashioned. Afterward Plato wrote in a way more pleasant for reading than powerful for persuading. For these men were not born Non sic nati sunt: literally, "were not so born." At the back of Augustine's mind there is the unspoken comparison of these pagan philosophers with the Hebrew prophets; so the phrase could be cumbrously translated, "Were not born in such a time and place," or "among God's chosen people." But I prefer my rendering, because Augustine did in fact think that these men were not in themselves a patch on men like Isaiah. to turn the opinion of their peoples to the true worship of the true God, away from the superstition of images and from the vanity of this world. And so Socrates himself venerated images along with the people, and after his condemnation and death no one dared to swear by a dog, nor to call any stone whatever Jupiter, but only to commit these things to memory and to writing. Whether they did this out of fear, or from some knowledge of the times, it is not for me to judge.

3. Yet I would say most confidently, with the peace of all those who stubbornly love their books, that in Christian times there is no need to doubt which religion is above all to be held, and which is the way to truth and blessedness. For if Plato himself were alive, and did not scorn me as I questioned him, or rather, if some disciple of his at the very time he was alive, when it was being urged upon him by Plato that truth is seen not with the eyes of the body but with the pure mind; Pura mente in the Latin, but to translate by "pure minds" or even by "purified minds" would give far too narrow an idea of what he is thinking about. that whatever soul clings to it becomes blessed and perfect; that nothing more hinders the grasping of it than a life given over to lusts and the false images of sensible things, which, impressed upon us through the body from this sensible world, generate various opinions and errors;

that, on this account, the mind must be healed so as to behold the unchangeable form of things, a beauty that always holds itself in the same way and is on every side like itself, neither spread out in places nor varied by time, but preserving one and the same thing in every part, a beauty that human beings would not believe to exist, although it truly and supremely is, while other things are born, perish, flow, and slip away; Cicero, On the Orator 10. and yet, insofar as they exist, they hold together as fashioned by that eternal God through his Truth: among which it is granted only to the rational and intellectual soul to enjoy the contemplation of his eternity, and to be affected by it, and to be able to merit eternal life; but while it is wounded by love and grief over things being born and passing away, and, given over to the habit of this life and to the senses of the body, vanishes away into empty images, it laughs at those who say there is something which is neither seen with these eyes nor thought of by any phantasm, but can be discerned by the mind and the understanding alone:

when, therefore, these things were being urged upon him by his master, if that disciple were to ask him whether, if there should arise some great and divine man who persuaded peoples to believe such things, at least if they were not able to grasp them, so that those who could grasp them might not, entangled in the perverse opinions of the multitude, be overwhelmed by common errors, he would judge such a man worthy of divine honors:

he would answer, I believe, that this could not be done by a man, except perhaps one whom the very Power and Wisdom of God, (See 1 Cor 1:24) taking him as an exception from the very nature of things, and illuminating him from the cradle not by the teaching of human beings but by an inward illumination, would honor with so great a grace, strengthen with so great a firmness, and finally raise up with so great a majesty, that, by despising all the things that wicked human beings desire, and enduring all the things they dread, and doing all the things they marvel at, he would turn the human race to so health-giving a faith by his supreme love and authority.

But as for his honors, I would be consulted in vain, since it can easily be reckoned how great are the honors owed to the Wisdom of God, by whose bearing and governing he would merit something great and proper to himself, something that would be above human beings, for the true salvation of the human race.

4. If these things have been done, It's only fair to warn the reader that the apodosis to this conditional, and the innumerable conditions that follow it, will only be found in the question at the end of section 5. if they are celebrated in writings and monuments, (That is, churches and the tombs of the martyrs) if from one region of the earth, in which alone the one God was worshipped, and where such a one had to be born, chosen men sent throughout the whole world stirred up the fires of divine love by their virtues and their words; if, having established a most health-giving teaching, they left the lands enlightened for those who came after; and—not to speak of past things, which anyone is free not to believe—if today it is preached among the nations and peoples: in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God: this was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him nothing was made.

If, in order that the soul may be healed so as to grasp, love, and enjoy this, and that the keen sight of the mind may grow strong to drink in so great a light, it is said to the greedy: do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal; but store up for yourselves treasure in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves do not break in: for where your treasure is, there is your heart also;

it is said to the dissolute: he who sows in the flesh will reap corruption from the flesh: he who sows in the spirit will reap eternal life from the spirit;

it is said to the proud: he who exalts himself will be humbled; and he who humbles himself will be exalted;

it is said to the irascible: you have received a blow, offer the other cheek;

it is said to the quarrelsome: love your enemies;

it is said to the superstitious: the kingdom of God is within you;

it is said to the inquisitive: do not seek the things that are seen, but the things that are not seen. For the things that are seen are temporal: but the things that are not seen are eternal;

finally it is said to all: do not love the world, nor the things that are in the world: for everything that is in the world is the desire of the flesh, and the desire of the eyes, and the ambition of the age.

5. If these things are now read among the peoples throughout the whole world, and are heard most willingly and with veneration. If, after so much blood, so many fires, so many crosses of the martyrs, the churches have sprouted up so much more fruitfully and abundantly, even among the barbarian Augustine's word is barbaras; but "barbarous" in English has harsher and at the same time more limited connotations than the Latin word. nations. If no one any longer marvels at so many thousands of young men and virgins (See Ps 148:12) who despise marriage and live chastely: a thing which, when Plato had done it, he so feared the perverse opinion of his own times that he is reported to have sacrificed to Nature, so that that sin, as it were, might be wiped away.

If these things are so taken that, just as before it was monstrous to argue such things, so now it is monstrous to argue against them. If, throughout all the parts of the earth that human beings inhabit, the Christian rites are handed down with such a promise and pledge. In 390, as Augustine was writing the present work, the Synod of Carthage forbade married bishops, priests, and deacons to have sexual relations with their wives. If these things are read daily in the churches and expounded by the priests.

If those who try to fulfill these things beat their breasts; if so innumerable a multitude takes up this way that, the riches and honors of this world having been abandoned, the once-deserted islands and the wilderness of many lands are filled with those, from every kind of human being, who wish to dedicate their whole life to the one highest God.

If, finally, throughout cities and towns, fortresses, villages, and even fields and private farms, a turning away from earthly things and a turning toward the one true God is so openly urged and sought after that daily, throughout the whole world, the human race responds with almost one voice that it holds its heart up to the Lord: To Augustine, the exhortation to "lift up your hearts" expressed a basic attitude of Christian life. Compare Paul's exhortation in Col 3:1: Seek the things that are above. See also Lam 3:41.

why do we still yawn over yesterday's hangover, (The modern equivalent would be fortune-telling by tea leaves) and search out divine pronouncements in dead beasts; while, whenever it comes to a discussion, we yearn to have our mouths rattling with the name of Plato rather than our breasts full of the truth?

6. Those, then, who think it vain or evil to despise this sensible world and to subject and subordinate to the highest God the soul that is to be purified by virtue, are to be refuted by another argument: if indeed it is worthwhile to dispute with them at all. But those who confess that it is good and to be sought after, let them recognize God and yield to God, through whom these things have now been urged upon all peoples to be believed. This they themselves would surely do, if they had so much power: or if they did not do it, they could not escape the charge of envy. Let them therefore yield to him by whom it was done, and let them not be hindered by curiosity or empty boasting from acknowledging what the difference is between the timid conjectures of a few and the manifest salvation and correction of peoples.

For if those men whose names these people glory in were to come back to life and find the churches packed and the temples deserted, and the human race called and running from the desire for temporal and abundant goods toward the hope of eternal life and spiritual and intelligible goods, they would perhaps say (if they were such as they are recorded to have been): "These are the things which we did not dare to urge upon the peoples, and we yielded to their custom rather than bringing them over to our faith and will."

7. Thus, if those men had been able to live this life again along with us, they would surely see by whose authority human beings could more easily be counseled, (See Letter 118.3.21) and with a few words and opinions changed they would become Christians, as very many Platonists of more recent times and of our own times have done. Or if they would not confess this nor do it, but remained in pride and envy, I do not know whether they could fly back, with this filth and birdlime clinging to them, to the very things which they had said were to be sought and desired.

For by the third vice, that of curiosity in questioning demons, I.e., the third after divination by the dregs in wine cups and by the entrails of sacrificial victims; see section 5. by which especially these pagans, with whom we are now dealing, are called back from Christian salvation, because it is too childish, I do not know whether such men would be hindered.

8. But however the boasting of the philosophers may stand, this is easy for anyone to understand, that religion is not to be sought from them Received the same sacra: the allusion is without doubt primarily to the Eleusinian mysteries, the great mystery cult of Attica and the Athenians. who received the same rites along with the peoples, and who, in their schools, with the same multitude as witness, sounded forth diverse and contrary opinions about the nature of their gods and the highest good. And if we saw only this one vice healed by Christian teaching, no one ought to deny that it must be proclaimed with unspeakable praise.

For the heresies, so innumerable, that have turned away from the rule of Christianity are witnesses that those are not admitted to share in the sacraments who think otherwise about God the Father, and his Wisdom, and the divine Gift, and try to persuade human beings otherwise than the truth requires. For thus it is believed and taught, which is the chief point of human salvation, that philosophy, that is, the pursuit of wisdom, is not one thing and religion another, since those whose teaching we do not approve do not share the sacraments Augustine is of course talking about the sacraments, in fact about the Eucharist; but I translate the word here as mysteries, since that is how I had to render sacra in the previous paragraph. with us.

9. This is less to be wondered at in those who wished to be unlike even in the rite of those sacraments, like certain people called Serpentines, (This is just the Latin form for the Gnostic sect called the Ophites) like the Manichees, The Manicheans were followers of Mani, who lived in Persia in the third century A.D. and who regarded himself as the emissary of the Paraclete, claiming to be the last and the greatest of the prophets. The core of his teaching was a dualism of two eternal principles: light-darkness, good-evil, God-matter. The Manicheans explained events in the world as resulting from the struggle of these two principles. See Heresies 46. like certain others. But it is more to be noted and more to be proclaimed in those who, while celebrating equivalent sacraments, yet, because they are unlike in opinion and have preferred to defend their errors more spiritedly than to correct them more cautiously, have been shut out from Catholic communion and from participation in even equivalent sacraments, and have earned their own names and their own assemblies, not only in speech but even in superstition: such as the Photinians The Photinians derived their name from Photinus, Bishop of Sirmium in Pannonia. No writings of his have survived, but he appears to have compromised the full doctrine of the divinity of Christ, whom he regarded as a mere man whom the Word ensouled; see Confessions 7.19.25. The sect died out after being condemned at the Councils of Antioch (344), Sirmium (348, 351) and Rome (382). and the Arians, Of all the heresies that Augustine mentions here, Arianism was the most significant and the most tenacious, persisting well into the fifth century as a force to be reckoned with. Essentially it denied the divinity of Christ, regarding him as God's first and highest creation. Its chief opponent was Athanasius of Alexandria. It was condemned at the Council of Nicea in 325. See Heresies 49. and many besides.

For about those who have made schisms, there is another question. (Augustine is referring to the Donatists) For the Lord's threshing floor could bear them like chaff until the time of the final winnowing, had they not yielded to the wind of pride through excessive fickleness and separated themselves from us of their own accord.

The Jews, however, although they make supplication to the one almighty God, yet, expecting from him only temporal and visible goods, refused with excessive complacency to notice, in their very own Scriptures, the rudiments of the new people rising up from humility, and so remained in the "old man."

Since these things are so, religion is to be sought neither in the confusion of the pagans, nor in the filth of the heretics, nor in the languor of the schismatics, nor in the blindness of the Jews, (See Isa 6:9-10) but only among those who are called Christian Catholics, or Orthodox, that is, guardians of integrity and followers of what is right.

10. For this Catholic Church, spread strongly and widely throughout the whole world, uses all who go astray for its own advancement and for their correction, when they have been willing to wake up. For it uses the gentiles as the material of its work, the heretics for the testing of its teaching, the schismatics as proof of its stability, and the Jews as a comparison for its beauty.

Some, then, it invites, (See Prov 9:1-6) some it shuts out, some it leaves behind, some it goes before: yet to all it gives the power of sharing in the grace of God, whether they are still to be formed, or to be re-formed, or to be gathered back in, or to be admitted.

But its own carnal members, that is, those who live or perceive carnally, it tolerates like chaff, among which the grain on the threshing floor is the safer, until they are stripped of such coverings. (See Matt 3:12) But because on this threshing floor each person is, according to his will, either chaff or grain, the sin or error of anyone is borne with for as long as it takes either to find an accuser, or to defend a perverse opinion with stubborn spiritedness.

Those who are shut out either return by repenting, or, being wickedly free, drift away into worthlessness, for the admonition of our diligence; or they make a schism, for the exercise of our patience; or they generate some heresy, for the testing or the occasion of our understanding. These are the exits of carnal Christians who could not be corrected or borne with.

11. Often, too, divine providence allows even good men to be expelled from the Christian people through certain overly turbulent seditions of carnal men. When they have borne this insult or injury to themselves most patiently for the peace of the Church, and have not contrived any novelties of either schism or heresy, they will teach human beings with how true an affection and with how great a sincerity of love God is to be served.

The purpose of such men, therefore, is either to return when the storms have been calmed; or, if they are not permitted to do so, either because the same tempest persists, or lest by their return such a storm or a fiercer one should arise, they hold to the will of counseling even those very people to whose movements and disturbances they yielded, defending until death, without any segregation into conventicles, and assisting by their testimony, the faith which they know is preached in the Catholic Church. These the Father, who sees in secret, crowns in secret. (See Ps 5:12)

This kind seems rare, but yet examples are not lacking: indeed they are more than can be believed. Thus divine providence uses all kinds of human beings and of examples for the healing of souls and for the instruction of the spiritual people.

12. For this reason, since a few years ago I promised to write to you, my dearest Romanianus, what I thought about true religion, I judged that now was the time, since I could no longer bear, with that love by which I am bound to you, to see your most pointed questions fluctuating without any fixed end.

Therefore, having rejected all those who neither philosophize in their sacred rites nor are consecrated in their philosophy; As admitted by its own representatives—Scaevola, Varro, Seneca—Rome's state religion was based on custom (consuetudo), not on truth; see The City of God 4.27, 4.29-31; 6.5-10. The "natural theology" of ancient philosophy reached only a divinity that was not responsive to religious individuals, since the supreme principle was understood to be "nature" or a "world soul" or was identified with fire, numbers or atoms; see The City of God 6.5. Augustine was convinced that only in Christianity was a harmony of faith and reason possible. The God whom philosophical thought reached without being able to pray to him entered history and drew near to human beings, so that religious people could now also turn to the God of philosophy. and those who, growing proud either through a perverse opinion or through some rivalry, have deviated from the rule and communion of the Catholic Church; and those who refused to have the light of the holy Scriptures and the grace of the spiritual people, which is called the New Testament, all of whom I have touched on as briefly as I could: we must hold to the Christian religion, and to the communion of that Church which is Catholic, and is named Catholic, not only by its own members but even by all its enemies. For whether they will or not, the heretics themselves too, and the nurslings of schisms, when they speak not with their own people but with strangers, call the Catholic nothing other than "Catholic." For they cannot be understood unless they distinguish it by this name, by which it is called throughout the whole world.

13. The chief means of following this religion is the history and prophecy of the temporal dispensation of divine providence, for the salvation of the human race, which is to be re-formed and repaired for eternal life. "Refashioning and preparation once more" because the first fashioning and preparation was the work of creation before the fall, of which the perfection was symbolized by the first man and woman being placed in paradise, in the garden of delights, that is, of Eden.

When this has been believed, a manner of life reconciled to the divine precepts will purify the mind and make it fit to grasp spiritual things, which are neither past nor future, but always remaining in the same way, subject to no changeableness; that is, the one God himself, Father and Son and Holy Spirit: and when this Trinity has been known as far as is granted in this life, it is perceived without any doubt that every intellectual and animal and corporeal creature both exists, insofar as it exists, from that same creating Trinity, and is administered in the most orderly way.

Not so that the Father is understood to have made one part of the whole of creation, and the Son another, and the Holy Spirit another, but that the Father made all things at once, and each individual nature, through the Son in the gift of the Holy Spirit. For every thing, whether it be called substance, or essence, or nature, or whatever other word better expresses it, has these three at once: that it is some one thing, and that it is distinguished from the rest by its own form, and that it does not exceed the order of things.

14. When this has been known, it will sufficiently appear, as far as a human being can attain it, by what necessary and unconquerable and just laws all things are subjected to God and their Lord: from which all those things which we first believed, following nothing but authority, (See Isa 7:9) are partly so understood that we see them to be most certain; partly so that we see they could be done, and that they ought thus to have been done, Augustine is here giving programmatic expression to his theological concern with the intellectus fidei. and we grieve that those still do not believe these things who preferred to mock us when we believed them rather than to believe them along with us.

For now that the eternity of the Trinity and the changeableness of creation have been known, that sacrosanct assumption of a human being, What we usually call the incarnation. No doubt, as he was aiming this work principally at pagans, Augustine was at some pains to avoid technical terms of Christian theology. and the Virgin's childbearing, and the death of the Son of God for us, and the resurrection from the dead, and the ascension into heaven, and the sitting at the right hand of the Father, and the abolition of sins, and the day of judgment, and the resuscitation of bodies, are no longer merely believed, but are also judged to pertain to the mercy of the highest God which he displays to the human race.

15. But since it was said most truly: there must be many heresies, that those who are approved may be made manifest among you; let us use even this benefit of divine providence. For heretics are made from those human beings who, even if they were in the Church, would nonetheless go astray. But when they are outside, they are of very great profit, not by teaching the truth, which they do not know, but by rousing the carnal Catholics to seek the truth and the spiritual ones to disclose it. For there are innumerable men in the holy Church who are approved by God, (See 1 Cor 11:19) but they are not made manifest among us so long as, delighting in the darkness of our ignorance, we prefer to sleep rather than to look upon the light of the truth. (See John 3:19-21)

Wherefore many, that they may see the day of God and rejoice, (See John 8:56) are roused from sleep through heretics. Let us therefore use even the heretics, not so as to approve their errors, but so that, asserting Catholic teaching against their snares, we may be more vigilant and more cautious, even if we cannot call them back to salvation.

16. I believe, however, that God will be present, so that this writing, with piety going before, may be able to avail for good readers not against some one perverse and false opinion, but against all of them. Yet it has been composed above all against those who think that there are two natures or substances, each with its own principle, rebellious against each other. Augustine is referring to the Manicheans. Romanianus, to whom this work is addressed, Augustine's wealthy patron in Thagaste, was probably still a member of this sect; he had certainly been a Manichean together with Augustine in previous years. For, offended by certain things and again delighted by certain things, they want God to be the author not of those by which they are offended, but of those by which they are delighted. And when they cannot conquer their own habit, already entangled in carnal snares, they suppose that there are two souls in one body: one from God, which is naturally what he himself is; the other from the race of darkness, which God neither begot, nor made, nor brought forth, nor cast away; but which had its own life, its own land, its own offspring and animals, and finally its own kingdom and an unbegotten principle; but which at a certain time rebelled against God, while God, who had nothing else to do, and could find no other way to resist the enemy, pressed by necessity sent here a good soul and a certain particle of his own substance, by whose commingling and mixture they dream that the enemy was tempered and the world fashioned.

17. Nor do we now refute their opinions, which we have partly already done, and will partly do as far as God permits: True Religion was written between 389 and 391; in 388 Augustine had written The Catholic and the Manichean Ways of Life, which he finished in 390, and On Genesis Against the Manichees, completed in 389. All these while he was still a layman, and hoping to spend the rest of his life as a "servant of God" with a group of like-minded friends in his home town of Thagaste. In 391, after being kidnapped and ordained priest in Hippo, he wrote The Two Souls, and in 391-395 he wrote On Free Will. but in this work we show, as far as we can, by the reasons the Lord deigns to give, how the Catholic faith is safe against them, and how the mind is not disturbed by those things by which human beings, being moved, give in to their opinion.

This, indeed, I want you above all to hold, you who know my mind well, that I do not say this, as it were ceremonially, for the sake of avoiding arrogance: that whatever error can be found in these writings is to be attributed to me alone; but whatever is true and suitably set forth, to God alone, the bestower of all good gifts.

18. Therefore let it be clear to you and grasped that no error in religion could have arisen if the soul did not worship, in place of its God, a soul, See Revisions 1.13.2 where Augustine says: "Here I put 'soul' for the whole incorporeal creation, not following the custom of the scriptures." He goes on to make further comments on what he says in this section, which do not affect our understanding of it. or a body, or its own phantasms, or some two of these joined together, or indeed all of them at once: but rather, conforming itself temporally and without deceit to the fellowship of the human race in this life, Augustine is here evidently presupposing the pre-existence of the soul before it is dispatched into this world to animate a body. meditated on eternal things, worshipping the one God; who, unless he remained unchangeable, no changeable nature would remain. But that the soul can be changed, not indeed in place, yet nevertheless in time, each one recognizes by his own affections. And that the body is changeable both in times and in places, is easy for anyone to notice.

Phantasms, moreover, are nothing other than figments drawn from the form of a body by the corporeal sense: and it is very easy, by thinking, to commit them to memory as they were received, or to divide them, or multiply them, or contract them, or stretch them out, or order them, or disturb them, or shape them in any way whatever; but when the truth is being sought, it is difficult to guard against and avoid them.

19. Let us not, then, serve the creature rather than the Creator, nor become vain in our thoughts, and religion is perfect. For clinging to the eternal Creator, we too must necessarily be affected by eternity. But because the soul, overwhelmed and entangled in its own sins, could not see and hold this by itself, with no step interposed in human affairs for laying hold of divine things, by which a human being might strive from earthly life toward the likeness of God, by the unspeakable mercy of God, Here we have, in its essence, the Augustinian teaching on grace that will later be used to refute the views of the Pelagians. through a temporal dispensation, by means of a changeable creature, yet one serving the eternal laws, (I.e., Christ, of course, with whom in effect the Christian religion is simply being identified) aid is given, partly to individual human beings, partly to the very race of human beings, for the recollection of its first and perfect nature. This is, in our times, the Christian religion, See Revisions 1.13.3, where Augustine says: "This is said with reference to the term 'Christian religion,' not with reference to the actual thing. The thing itself, after all, which is now called the Christian religion, existed also among the ancients, and was not lacking from the beginning of the human race, until Christ himself came in the flesh, from which point the true religion, which already existed, began to be called Christian. When, you see, the apostles had begun to preach after his resurrection and ascension, and great numbers were coming to believe, it was first at Antioch, as it is written, that the disciples were called Christians (see Acts 11:26). That's why I said, 'That, in our times, is the Christian religion,' not because it wasn't there in previous times but because it was in later times that it acquired this name." which to know and to follow is the most secure and most certain salvation. Later on, Augustine emphasized even more strongly the claim of the Christian religion to exclusivity; see The City of God 10.32: "This way has never been withheld from mankind. . . . And apart from this way, no one has been set free, no one is being set free, no one will be set free" (trans. Bettenson).

20. But it can be defended against the talkative, and disclosed to those who seek, in many ways; with almighty God himself demonstrating through himself the things that are true, and helping good wills, through good angels and through any human beings whatever, to behold and grasp them.

And each person uses that manner which he sees to be suited to those with whom he is dealing.

And so I, considering long and much what sort of railers and what sort of seekers I have experienced, or what sort I myself was, whether when I was railing or when I was seeking, thought I should use this manner.

What you perceive to be true, hold, and attribute it to the Catholic Church; what is false, reject, and pardon me, who am a man; what is doubtful, believe, until either reason teaches or authority enjoins that it is to be rejected, or is true, or is always to be believed. Attend, then, to what follows, carefully and devoutly, as far as you can: for such people God helps. See Revisions 1.13.4, where Augustine writes: "This is not to be understood as if he only helps people like that, since he also helps those who aren't like that to become like that, namely to seek with pious and diligent attention; while those who are like that he helps to find."

21. There is no life that is not from God, since God is surely the highest life and himself the fountain of life, nor is any life, insofar as it is life, an evil, but insofar as it inclines toward death: but the death of life is nothing other than worthlessness, which is named from "in no way being anything"; and so the most worthless human beings are called men of nothing. None of this makes much sense in English, since Augustine is indulging in some Latin etymology, and dubious etymology at that. The only death of life, he says, is nequitia, wickedness; and this word, he goes on, comes from nequiquam, an adverb meaning fruitlessly, worthlessly; and that's why the most wicked of men are called nihili homines, worthless fellows, indeed nihilists! The sentence, anyway, has been lifted straight from Cicero's Tusculan Disputations 3.8.18. Life, then, failing by a voluntary defect from him who made it, and whose essence it was enjoying, and wishing, against the law of God, to enjoy the bodies over which God set it, inclines toward nothingness; and this is worthlessness: not because the body is already nothing. For it too has some concord of its parts, without which it could not exist at all.

Therefore the body too was made by him who is the head of all concord. The body has a certain peace of its form, without which it would be nothing at all. Therefore he is the founder of the body as well, from whom all peace comes, and who is the unfashioned form, and the most beautiful of all forms. The body has some appearance, without which the body is not a body. If, then, it is asked who established the body, let him be sought who is the most beautiful of all. Calling God first shapely and then good-looking is, I admit, scarcely permissible in English; but it is in fact what Augustine is doing in the Latin. He speaks first of bodies having their own forma, which I translate, quite correctly, as "shape"; then in relation to this noun he says that of all things God is formosissima—"the most shapely" is all I can do, though formosus is just one of several Latin synonyms for "beautiful." Next he says that body, the body, has some species. This in technical philosophical language is practically synonymous with forma. But here Augustine is taking philosophical language back to its literal, everyday roots, where this word does mean the look of things; that being so, the only adjective going along with "look," as speciosissimus of course goes along with species, is "good-looking." English needs sometimes to be taken beyond the permissible back into the raw. For all appearance is from him.

And who is this, but the one God, the one truth, the one salvation of all, and the first and highest essence, from which is everything that is, insofar as it is; because insofar as anything is, it is good.

22. And therefore death is not from God. For God did not make death, nor does he rejoice in the destruction of the living: since the highest Essence makes everything that is to be, whence it is also called Essence. But death forces whatever dies not to be. For if those things that die were to die utterly, they would without doubt come to nothing; but they die only as much as they share less in essence: which can be said more briefly thus: they die the more, the less they are.

But the body is less than any life; since, so far as it remains in its appearance, it remains through life, whether that by which each individual animal, or that by which the whole nature of the world is administered. It looks as if Augustine is subscribing to the notion of a world soul; but it would be fairer to say that he is allowing for such a theory at this point, not committing himself to it. The body, therefore, is more subject to death, and therefore is nearer to nothing: wherefore life, which, delighted by the enjoyment of the body, neglects God, is inclined toward nothing, and this is worthlessness.

23. In this way life is made carnal and earthly, and for this reason it is also called flesh and earth; (See 1 Cor 15:50) and so long as it is so, it will not possess the kingdom of God, and what it loves is snatched from it. For it loves what is even less than life, because it is body; and on account of sin itself, what is loved becomes corruptible, (See Rom 8:10) so that by flowing away it deserts its lover, because that lover too, by loving this, deserted God. For it neglected his precepts when he said: eat this, and do not eat this. (See Gen 2:16-17) It is therefore dragged to punishments: because, by loving lower things, I.e., the dead in the underworld, apud inferos, which is here echoing the inferiora, the low things he has been loving. it is ordered, in the want of its own pleasures and in griefs, among the lower regions.

For what is the pain that is called bodily, but a sudden corruption of the health of that thing which the soul, by using it badly, made subject to corruption? And what is the pain that is called of the mind, but to lack the changeable things which it was enjoying, or had hoped it could enjoy? And this is the whole of what is called evil, that is, sin, and the punishment of sin.

24. But if, while the soul passes through this stadium of human life, Taking part in a foot race, rather a long one presumably, of several stadia or furlongs. See 1 Cor 9:24. it conquers those desires which it nourished against itself by enjoying mortal things, and believes that it is helped to conquer them by the grace of God, serving him with its mind and with a good will; without doubt it will be restored, and will return from the many changeable things to the one unchangeable thing, See Confessions 13.3.4-4.5. re-formed through the Wisdom that is not formed (See Acts 2:38) but through which all things are formed, and it will enjoy God through the Holy Spirit, which is the Gift of God.

Thus a human being becomes spiritual, judging all things, so that he himself is judged by no one, (See 1 Cor 2:15) loving the Lord his God with his whole heart, with his whole soul, with his whole mind, and loving his neighbor not carnally, but as himself. And he loves himself spiritually who loves God with the whole of what lives in him. For on these two precepts the whole Law hangs, and the Prophets. (See Matt 22:37, 22:39-40)

25. From this it will then follow that, after the bodily death which we owe to the first sin, this body will, in its own time and its own order, be restored to its former stability, See Revisions 1.13.4 where Augustine writes again: "This is to be taken in the sense that even the body's original condition of stability, which we lost by sinning, enjoyed such vigor that it would not slip down into the defects of old age. So it is to that original condition of stability that this body will be restored in the resurrection of the dead. But it will have something much more, so that it will not need to be sustained by bodily nourishment but will be kept alive by the spirit alone, when it has risen again into a life-giving spirit (1 Cor 15:45), for which reason the body too will be an embodiment of spirit. As for what it was at first, even though it wasn't going to die if the man didn't sin, it was nonetheless made an embodiment of soul, that is, into a living soul (Gen 2:7)." which it will have not through itself, but through the soul established in God. And the soul, again, is not established through itself, but through God whom it enjoys; and therefore it will be more vigorous than the body: for the body will be vigorous through the soul, and the soul through the unchangeable truth, which is the only-begotten Son of God; and thus the body too will be vigorous through the Son of God himself, because all things are through him.

By his Gift also, which is given to the soul, that is, by the Holy Spirit, not only is the soul, to which it is given, made whole and at peace and holy, but the body itself will also be made alive, and will be in its own nature most clean. (See Rom 8:11) For he said: cleanse the things that are within, and the things that are outside will be clean. And the Apostle says: he will make alive your mortal bodies also, on account of the Spirit remaining in you. With sin taken away, then, the punishment of sin will also be taken away: and where is the evil? Where is your strife, O death? Where is your sting, O death? For essence conquers nothingness, and thus death is swallowed up in victory.

26. Nor will the evil angel, who is called the devil, harm those who have been sanctified; See Rev 12:9. This chapter sounds like an unexpected excursus on the angels, but it serves as a transition to the succeeding reflection on the concept of sin, which in turn is an element in the controversy with the Manicheans. because he too, insofar as he is an angel, is not an evil, but only insofar as he is perverse by his own will. For it must be admitted that angels too are by nature changeable, if God alone is unchangeable: but by that will by which they love God more than themselves, they remain firm and stable in him, and enjoy his majesty, most willingly subject to him alone. But that angel, by loving himself more than God, refused to be subject to him, and swelled up through pride, and fell away from the highest essence, and was cast down: and on this account he is less than he was, because he wished to enjoy what was less, when he wished to enjoy his own power rather than God's.

For although he was not in the highest degree, yet he was more, when he was enjoying that which is in the highest degree, since God alone is in the highest degree. But whatever is less than it was, is evil, not insofar as it is, but insofar as it is less. For by that by which it is less than it was, it tends toward death. And what wonder is it if from defect comes need, and from need comes envy, by which the devil is precisely a devil? Because the Latin diabolus (of which the English "devil" is just a very ancient anglicization) is in fact a Greek word meaning "false accuser"—one who brings his accusations out of envy or jealousy of those he accuses.

27. But this defect, which is called sin, if it seized a person unwillingly like a fever, the punishment that follows the one who sins, and that is called damnation, would rightly seem unjust. As it is, however, sin is so far a voluntary evil that it is in no way sin if it is not voluntary; In Revisions 1.13.5 Augustine has a long comment on this sentence, beginning: "This definition can look as if it is false, but if it is carefully examined, it will be found to be the very truth." But it does not affect our understanding of this passage and can be read in the text of Revisions. and this indeed is so manifest that no small number of the learned, no crowd of the unlearned, dissents from it.

Wherefore it must either be denied that sin is committed, or admitted that it is committed by the will. But he does not rightly deny that the soul has sinned, who admits both that it is corrected by repenting, and that pardon is given to the one who repents, and that the one who perseveres in sins is condemned by the just law of God. Finally, if we do not do evil by the will, no one is to be rebuked at all, or admonished: and once these are removed, the Christian law and the whole discipline of religion must necessarily be taken away.

It is by the will, therefore, that one sins. And since there is no doubt that sin is committed, I see that this too is not to be doubted, that souls have free choice of the will. In English we talk about free will and the freedom of the will. Latin uses a more accurate phrase, liberum voluntatis arbitrium, the free decision or judgment of the will, thus making it clear that what we are concerned with is an act of will, not just the will as a faculty or power of the soul. For God judged that his servants would be better if they served him freely: which could in no way come about if they served not by the will but by necessity.

28. The angels, therefore, serve God freely, The service of freedom is based on love; see Commentary on the Letter to the Galatians 43: "One who serves out of love serves freely, doing what he is told with love and not being forced with fear." and this profits not God, but themselves. For God does not need the good of another, since he is from himself. But that which was begotten of him is the very same thing; because it was not made, but begotten. (I.e., the Word of God, the only begotten Son of the Father) But those things which were made need his good, that is, the highest good, that is, the highest essence.

They are less than they were when, through the sin of the soul, they are moved less toward him: yet they are not utterly separated; for then they would not exist at all. But what happens to the soul by its affections, happens to the body by places: for the soul is moved by the will, but the body by space. And what is said to have been urged upon the human being by the perverse angel, to this too he surely consented by the will. For if he had done it by necessity, he would be held by no charge of sin.

29. But the fact that the body of the human being, though before sin it was best in its own kind, after sin was made feeble and destined for death, although it is a just penalty for sin, nevertheless shows more of the Lord's clemency than of his severity. For thus we are persuaded that our love ought to be turned from the pleasures of the body to the eternal essence of truth. And there is a beauty of justice agreeing with the grace of kindness, so that, since we were deceived by the sweetness of lower goods, we are instructed by the bitterness of punishments. For divine providence has so moderated even our punishments that, even in this body so corruptible, it is permitted to tend toward justice, and, laying aside all pride, to bow the neck to the one true God, to trust in nothing of oneself, and to commit oneself to him alone to be ruled and protected.

Thus, with him as guide, the human being of good will turns the troubles of this life to the use of fortitude: but in the abundance of pleasures and the prosperous successes of temporal things, he proves and strengthens his temperance; he sharpens his prudence in temptations, so that he is not only not led into them, (See Matt 6:13) but becomes even more vigilant, and more ardent in the love of the Truth, which alone does not deceive.

30. But although God heals souls in all ways, according to the opportunities of the times, which are ordered by his wonderful wisdom, about which either nothing is to be treated, or it is to be treated only among the pious and the perfect; in no way did he provide more beneficently for the human race than when the very Wisdom of God, that is, the only-begotten Son, consubstantial with the Father and coeternal, deigned to take up the whole human being, and the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us.

For thus he showed to the carnal, who were not able to behold the truth with the mind and were given over to the corporeal senses, how exalted a place human nature holds among created things, in that he appeared not only visibly (for that he could have done even in some ethereal body, The "ether" was thought of as a region of the purest light, even above the visible heavens. Quite how an ethereal body could reveal to us the superiority of human nature, it's hard to see; Augustine probably had in mind some Manichean concept here, which he is allowing, as we would say, for the sake of argument. tempered to the endurance of our gaze), but to human beings in a true human being: for the very nature that had to be set free was the one that had to be taken up. And lest perhaps either sex should think itself despised by its Creator, he took up a man, and was born of a woman.

31. He did nothing by force, but everything by persuading and admonishing. See Revisions 1.13.6, where Augustine writes: "It had not occurred to me that he cast those who were buying and selling out of the temple with a whip (see John 2:14-15; Mark 11:15). But what did this really amount to? Though he also cast unwilling demons out of human beings not with a word of persuasion but with the force of his authority." For the old slavery being now ended, the time of freedom had dawned, and it was now being urged upon the human being opportunely and health-givingly with how free a choice he had been created. By miracles he won faith for the God that he was, by his passion for the human being that he bore. Thus, speaking to the crowds as God, he denied the mother announced to him: (See Matt 12:48) and yet, as the Gospel says, the boy was subject to his parents. (See Luke 8:19-21, 2:51) For in his teaching he appeared as God, in his ages as a human being.

Likewise, about to turn water into wine, as God he says: depart from me, woman: what is it to me and to you? My hour has not yet come. But when the hour had come in which he was to die as a human being, from the Cross he commended his mother, whom he acknowledged, to the disciple whom he loved beyond the rest. (See John 19:26-27)

The followers of pleasures sought after riches to the people's ruin: he willed to be poor. They gaped after honors and dominions: he refused to be made king. (See 2 Cor 8:9; John 6:15) They thought carnal children a great good: he despised such marriage and offspring. They most proudly shrank from insults: he endured every kind of insult. They reckoned injuries intolerable: what greater injury than that the just and innocent one be condemned? They cursed the pains of the body: he was scourged and tortured. They feared to die: he was punished with death. They thought the cross the most disgraceful kind of death: he was crucified. (See Matt 27:26)

All those things which we, by desiring to have them, did not rightly live, he made cheap by going without them. All those things which we, by desiring to avoid them, swerved away from the pursuit of truth, he cast down by enduring them. For no sin can be committed except either while those things are sought which he despised, or those are fled which he endured.

32. And so his whole life on earth, through the human being whom he deigned to take up, was a teaching of morals. But his resurrection from the dead sufficiently indicated that nothing of the nature of the human being perishes, since all things are safe with God, and how all things serve their Creator, whether for the punishment of sins or for the liberation of the human being, and how easily the body serves the soul when the soul itself is subject to God. When these things are accomplished, not only is no substance an evil, (For the Manicheans all matter, as such, was evil) which can never be the case; but it is also affected by no evil, which could be the case through sin and punishment. And this is the natural teaching, worthy of full faith for Christians who understand less, but for those who understand purged of all error.

33. Now the very manner of the whole teaching, partly most open, partly in likenesses, in sayings, in deeds, in sacraments, accommodated to the whole instruction and exercise of the soul, what else did it do but fulfill the rule of rational discipline? Adopting the threefold division of ancient philosophy, Augustine sees ethics as being brought to completion in the model given by Christ's earthly life (see sections 30-31), physics in the Christian doctrine of creation, sin and resurrection (see section 32), and logic in the linguistic form of biblical preaching. For the exposition of mysteries too is directed to those things that are said most openly. And if there were only those things that are most easily understood, the Truth would neither be sought studiously nor found pleasantly. (See Matt 7:7) Nor, if these were in the Scriptures and in the sacraments, and there were not in the sacraments the seals of truth, would action sufficiently agree with knowledge.

But as it is, since piety is begun in fear and perfected in love, (See Ps 2:11) the people, bound by fear in the time of slavery under the old Law, was burdened with many sacraments. For this was useful for such people, to make them desire the grace of God, which was sung through the Prophets as about to come. And when it came, with a human being assumed by the Wisdom of God itself, and we were called into freedom, (See Gal 5:13) a few most health-giving sacraments were established, which would hold together the fellowship of the Christian people, that is, of a free multitude under one God.

But the many things that had been imposed on the Hebrew people, that is, on a multitude in fetters under the same one God, have been removed from practice, but have remained in faith and interpretation. Thus they now neither bind in a servile way, and they exercise the mind in a free way.

34. But whoever denies, on this account, that both Testaments can be from one God, because our people is not bound by the same sacraments by which the Jews were bound or are still bound, can be told that it is not impossible for one most just head of a household to command one thing to those for whom he judges a harsher servitude useful, and another to those whom he deigns to adopt into the rank of sons. All the ritual requirements of the law, as expounded by the scribes and Pharisees, constituting the slavery of the law, as compared with the simplicity of Christian sacramental rituals and worship, exemplifying the freedom of the gospel.

But if the precepts of life trouble anyone, because in the old Law they are lesser and in the Gospel greater, The precepts of the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5, culminating in the command: You therefore be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect, are more demanding, more total than the ten commandments of the Mosaic law. and therefore it is thought that the two do not pertain to one God; the one who thinks this can be disturbed if one physician should prescribe some things through his assistants for the weaker patients, and other things through himself for the stronger, in order to restore or maintain health.

For just as the art of medicine, while it remains the same, This is untrue, of course, of modern medicine, but in Augustine's time it was universally assumed that the last word in the art and science of medicine had been said by Galen, the doyen of medical studies, in the second century A.D. and is in no way itself changed, nevertheless changes its prescriptions for the sick, because our health is changeable:

so divine providence, although it is itself wholly unchangeable, nevertheless comes to the aid of the changeable creature in various ways, and according to the diversity of diseases commands or forbids one thing to one and another to another; in order to bring back and make firm those things which fail, that is, which tend toward nothing, away from the vice from which death begins, and away from death itself, to their own nature and essence.

35. But you say to me: "Why do they fail?"

Because they are changeable. In order to reach the concept of being, Augustine here raises a series of questions that flow logically each from the preceding. His aim is to show matter as something good. This is an element in the refutation of the Manichean error, which identified matter outright with evil.

"Why are they changeable?"

Because they are not in the highest degree.

"Why are they not in the highest degree?"

Because they are lower than that by which they were made.

"Who made them?"

He who in the highest degree is.

"Who is this?"

The unchangeable Trinity, God, since he both made them through the highest Wisdom and preserves them through the highest Kindness.

"Why did he make them?"

That they might be. For to be, in whatever degree, is itself a good; because the highest Good is to be in the highest degree.

"From what did he make them?"

From nothing. For whatever is, must necessarily have some appearance, however slight.

And so, even if it is a very small good, yet it will be a good, and will be from God. For since the highest appearance is the highest good, the least appearance is the least good. But every good is either God, or from God. Therefore even the least appearance is from God. Indeed, what can be said of appearance can be said of form as well. For it is not in vain that both "most beautiful in appearance" and "most beautiful in form" are placed in his praise. (See section 21) That, therefore, from which God made all things, is that which has no appearance and no form; which is nothing other than nothing. Augustine derives the concept of creation out of nothing from the Old Testament; see 2 Macc 7:28. But he is also able to justify it philosophically. It was entirely foreign to contemporary pagan thought. Moreover, his neat argument here as to the goodness of all matter, however small, however seemingly insignificant, contradicts Manichean thought on the subject. See Music 6.17.57; Unfinished Literal Commentary on Genesis 1.2; Answer to Felix, a Manichean 2.19. For that which, in comparison with perfect things, is called formless, if it has anything of form, however slight, however inchoate, is not yet nothing, and on this account that too, insofar as it is, is only from God.

36. Wherefore, even if the world was made from some formless matter, this very matter was made wholly from nothing. For even what is not yet formed, yet is in some way begun so that it can be formed, is, by the gift of God, formable. For it is good to be formed.

The capacity for form, then, is some good and therefore the author of all goods, who bestowed form, himself also made the very ability to be formed.

Thus everything that is, insofar as it is; and everything that is not yet, insofar as it can be, has it from God. Which is said in another way thus: everything formed, insofar as it is formed; and everything that is not yet formed, insofar as it can be formed, has it from God.

But no thing obtains the integrity of its own nature unless it is whole in its own kind. And from him is all wholeness, from whom is all good; but all good is from God: therefore all wholeness is from God. This language of potentiality and being and form, of posse and esse and forma, suggests the influence of some works of Aristotle on Augustine.

37. From this, now, whoever has the eyes of the mind open, and they are not darkened and disturbed by a pernicious zeal for empty victory, easily understands that all things which are corrupted and die are goods, although corruption itself, and death itself, is an evil. For unless they were deprived of some wholeness, corruption or death would not harm them, but if corruption did not harm, it would in no way be corruption.

If, then, corruption is opposed to wholeness, and, with no one doubting it, wholeness is a good; all things to which corruption is opposed are goods; but the things to which corruption is opposed are themselves corrupted. Therefore the things that are corrupted are goods; but they are corrupted for this reason, that they are not the highest goods.

Because, therefore, they are goods, they are from God, because they are not the highest goods, they are not God. The good, then, which cannot be corrupted, is God. All other goods are from him, which through themselves can be corrupted, because through themselves they are nothing. But through him they are partly not corrupted, and partly, when corrupted, are healed.

38. But the first vice of the rational soul is the will to do those things which the highest and inmost Truth forbids. Thus the human being was expelled from Paradise into this age, In hoc saeculum. Saeculum primarily means "age," secondarily "world," but always signifies time rather than space. It rather looks, therefore, that in Augustine's view Paradise was in the same space frame as this world we know, geographically located somewhere, but in a different time frame; he is indeed suggesting that it was in the same time frame as eternity. I doubt if he retained this idea in his more mature thought. that is, from eternal things to temporal, from abundant to needy, from firmness to weakness. Not, then, from a substantial good to a substantial evil, because no substance is an evil; but from an eternal good to a temporal good, from a spiritual good to a carnal good, from an intelligible good to a sensible good, from the highest good to the lowest good. There is, therefore, a certain good which, if the rational soul loves it, it sins; because it is ordered below the soul. Wherefore the sin itself is an evil, not that substance which is loved by sinning. (See Gen 2:17)

It is not, then, that tree that is the evil which is written to have been planted in the middle of Paradise, (See Gen 3:3) but the transgression of the divine precept. And when this has its consequent just condemnation, there comes about, from that tree which was touched against the prohibition, the knowing of good and evil, (See Gen 2:9-17) because, when the soul has been entangled in its own sin, by paying the penalties it learns what the difference is between the precept which it refused to keep, and the sin which it committed; and in this way the evil, which it did not learn by avoiding, it learns by feeling; and the good, which it loved less by obeying, it loves more ardently by comparison.

39. The vice of the soul, then, is what it did, and the distress arising from the vice is the punishment which it suffers; As is intimated in the next paragraph and explained in the approximately contemporary work On Genesis Against the Manichees 2.29-30, the "distress" consists in the fact that, after the fall into sin, human beings can only painfully overcome fleshly lusts and that they easily fall into error due to an overvaluing of earthly things. It was from this starting point that the doctrine of original sin could develop, which may already be seen, in its main outlines, in the final section of On Free Will. and this is the whole of evil. But to do and to suffer is not a substance, wherefore substance is not an evil. For thus water is not an evil, nor is the animal that lives in the air; for these are substances. But the evil is the voluntary plunging into the water, and the suffocation which the one who is submerged suffers.

An iron stylus has been skillfully made with one part by which we may write, another by which we may erase, and it is beautiful in its own kind, and accommodated to our use. But if anyone should wish to write with that part by which one erases, and to erase with that by which one writes, he would in no way make the stylus evil, since the very thing made is rightly to be blamed. And if he corrects this, where will the evil be?

If anyone should suddenly gaze at the midday sun, his dazzled eyes will be disturbed. Will the sun on that account be an evil, or the eyes? In no way, for they are substances. But the evil is the disordered gaze, and the very disturbance that follows; which will not be an evil when the eyes have been restored and have looked fittingly upon their own light. Nor, when that same light which pertains to the eyes is worshipped in place of the light of wisdom which pertains to the mind, does that light itself become an evil. But the evil is the superstition by which the creature is served rather than the Creator. (See Rom 1:25) Which evil will be no evil at all when the soul, having recognized its Creator, has subjected itself to him alone, and has perceived that the rest, through him, are made subject to itself.

40. Thus all corporeal creation, if it is possessed only by a soul that loves God, is a lowest good, and beautiful in its own kind, since it is contained by form and appearance. But if it is loved by a soul that neglects God, not even then does it become an evil itself; but because the sin by which it is so loved is an evil, it becomes penal to its lover, and entangles him in hardships, and feeds him with deceptive pleasures, because they neither remain, nor satisfy, but torment with griefs.

For when the beautiful changeableness of times carries out its own order, the desired appearance deserts its lover, and through the torment of the one who perceives it departs from the senses, and drives him with errors, so that he thinks that to be the first appearance which is the lowest of all, namely, that of corporeal nature,

which the flesh, badly delighted, has announced to him through the slippery senses, so that when he thinks of something, he believes that he understands, deluded by the shadows of phantasms.

But if at any time, not holding the whole teaching of divine providence, yet reckoning that he holds it, he tries to resist the flesh, he arrives only at the images of visible things, and out of this light, which he sees circumscribed by fixed boundaries, he vainly forms by thought immense spaces and he promises himself this appearance of his future dwelling,

not knowing that the desire of the eyes is dragging him, (See 1 John 2:16) and that he wishes to go outside the world together with this world; which world he on that account thinks is not the world, because by false thought he stretches out its brighter part through the infinite.

This can very easily be done not only with this light, but also with water, and finally with wine, with honey, with gold, with silver, with the very flesh, or blood, or bones of any animals whatever, and other things of this kind. For there is nothing of body which cannot either, once seen, be thought of as multiplied innumerably, or, seen in a small space, be spread out through the infinite by the same faculty of imagining. (See Rom 8:5) But it is very easy to curse the flesh, and very difficult not to be wise in a carnal way.

41. By this perversity of the soul, then, which came about by sin and punishment, all corporeal nature becomes that which is said through Solomon: vanity of vanitators, This is the reading of Augustine's version: vanitantium instead of vanitatum. It does not follow the LXX in any of its variants; perhaps this verb, whose participle I render as "vanitators," was peculiar to the Latin spoken in Africa, whose inhabitants no doubt had the perspicacity to realize the need of a verb to express such generally common behavior. and all is vanity. What abundance is there for a man in all his labor, by which he labors under the sun? For it is not in vain that vanitators was added, because if you take away the vanitators, who pursue the lowest things as though they were the first, the body will not be vanity; but it will display, in its own kind, a beauty, however lowest, without any error.

For the manifoldness of temporal appearances has battered the human being, fallen from the unity of God, through the carnal senses, and has multiplied his affection with changeable variety: thus there has come about a laborious abundance, and, if it can be said, a copious need, while he pursues one thing after another, and nothing remains with him.

Thus from the time of his grain, his wine, and his oil he has been so multiplied, (See Ps 4:7) that he does not find the selfsame, In the expression idipsum ("the selfsame") of the Psalms (4:9, 121:3) Augustine sees a typical way of expressing the mystery of divine being, emphasizing its immutability; see Confessions 9.4.11; The Trinity 3.2.8; Expositions of the Psalms 121.5. that is, the unchangeable and singular nature, which, having followed, he would not go astray, and, having attained, he would not grieve. For he will also have the consequent redemption of his body, (See Rom 8:23) which will no longer be corrupted.

But now the body that is corrupted weighs down the soul, and the earthly dwelling presses down the mind that thinks many things, because the lowest beauty of bodies is snatched up into the order of succession. For it is the lowest for this reason, that it cannot have all things at once; but while some things give way and others come after, they fill out the number of temporal forms into one beauty.

42. And this whole is not on that account an evil, because it passes away. For thus a verse too is beautiful in its own kind, although two syllables can in no way be uttered at once. For the second is not pronounced unless the first has passed; and thus, through order, the end is reached, so that when the last alone sounds, the earlier ones not sounding with it, it nevertheless, woven together with those that have gone before, brings the metrical form and beauty to completion. Nor yet, on that account, is the art by which a verse is fashioned so subject to time that its beauty is parceled out by the measures of intervals:

but it has all things at once, by which it produces a verse that does not have all things at once, but cancels the earlier with the later; yet it is beautiful for this reason, because it displays the last traces of that beauty which the art itself keeps constantly and unchangeably.

43. And so, just as certain perverse people love a verse more than the very art by which the verse is composed, because they have given themselves more to their ears than to understanding: so many love temporal things, but do not seek the divine providence that founds and governs the times; and in their very love of temporal things they are unwilling that what they love should pass away, and they are as absurd as if anyone, during the recitation of a splendid poem, should wish to hear perpetually some one single syllable.

But such hearers of poems are not found; while of such appraisers of things everything is full; for this reason, that there is no one who cannot easily hear not only a whole verse, but even a whole poem; but no human being can perceive the whole order of the ages. To this is added that we are not parts of the poem, but by our condemnation we have been made parts of the ages. The poem, then, is sung under our judgment, but the ages are carried out from our labor.

Now the athletic games please no one who is defeated, but yet they are seemly along with his disgrace: for this too is a certain imitation of the Truth. Nor are we forbidden such spectacles for any other reason than that, deceived by the shadows of things, we may not stray from the very things of which those are the shadows.

Thus the constitution and administration of this universe displeases only impious and condemned souls; but even together with their misery it pleases the many who are either victorious on earth, or watching without peril in heaven: for nothing just displeases the just.

44. Wherefore, since every rational soul is either wretched through its sins or blessed through its right deeds; and every irrational thing either yields to something more powerful, or obeys something better, or is matched with an equal, or exercises one who strives, or harms one who is condemned,

and every body serves its own soul, as far as is allowed according to its merits and according to the order of things: there is no evil in the nature of the universe, but for each one his own fault becomes his evil.

Moreover, when the soul, regenerated through the grace of God, and restored to its integrity, and made subject to him alone by whom it was re-created, with the body too restored to its former firmness, has begun not to be possessed along with the world, but to possess the world, Being possessed, the implication seems to be, by the devil with the world. Augustine is not contrasting possessing the world with being possessed by the world; hence his deliberate use of the preposition "with" (cum).

there will be no evil for it: because that lowest beauty of temporal vicissitudes, which was being carried out along with it, will be carried out under it; and there will be, as it is written, a new heaven and a new earth, with souls not laboring in a part, but reigning in the universe. For all things are yours, says the Apostle, but you are Christ's, and Christ is God's: and, the head of the woman is the man, the head of the man is Christ; and the head of Christ is God.

Since, therefore, the vice of the soul is not its nature, but against its nature, and is nothing other than sin and the punishment of sin; from this it is understood that no nature, or, if it is better so said, no substance or essence is an evil. Nor is it brought about by the sins and punishments of the soul that the universe is disfigured by any deformity. Because the rational substance which is clean from all sin, The reference here seems to be to the good angels, in contrast with the devil, obliquely alluded to at the beginning of this section. being subject to God, has dominion over the other things subject to itself. But that which has sinned is ordered there where it is fitting for such things to be, so that, with God the founder and ruler of the universe, all things are seemly. And the beauty of the whole creation is blameless through these three: the condemnation of sinners, the exercise of the just, the perfection of the blessed.

45. Wherefore the very medicine of the soul, which is carried out by divine providence and unspeakable beneficence, is most beautiful by gradations and distinctions. For it is distributed into authority and reason. Authority demands faith, and prepares the human being for reason. Reason leads through to understanding and knowledge. And yet reason does not wholly desert authority, when it is considered who is to be believed: and certainly the highest authority is that of the Truth itself, now known and clearly perceived.

But because we have come down into temporal things, and are hindered from eternal things by the love of them, a certain temporal medicine, which calls to salvation not those who know but those who believe, is prior, not in nature and excellence, but in the very order of time. For into whatever place anyone has fallen, there he must bend himself so that he may rise. Here I have presumed that a word has dropped out of the Latin text, in which the last phrase reads: ibi debet incumbere, ut surgat: "There one has to stoop down, so that he may get up again." I have supposed that something like medicus or adjutor—or even Samaritanus—has dropped out in the copying process. An even more likely supposition is that incumbere originally read incumbi; literally: "There it has to be stooped down"—a mode of speech that perhaps struck Augustine's amanuensis, or a later copyist, as improbable.

Therefore we must rely on the very carnal forms by which we are detained, in order to come to know those which the flesh does not announce. For I call those carnal which can be perceived through the flesh, that is, through the eyes, through the ears, and the other senses of the body. To these carnal or corporeal forms, then, it is necessary for children to cling with love; for adolescents it is almost necessary; from here on, as age advances, it is not necessary.

46. Since, therefore, divine providence provides not only for individual human beings as it were privately, but for the whole human race as it were publicly; what is done with individuals, God who does it, and so the very persons with whom it is done, know. But what is done with the human race, he willed to be commended through history and through prophecy. But faith in temporal things, whether past or future, avails more by believing than by understanding. But it is for us to consider which human beings or which books are to be believed for worshipping God rightly, which is the one salvation.

The first dispute of this matter is whether we should rather believe those who call us to worship many gods, or those who call us to worship one God. Who would doubt that those who call us to the one are above all to be followed, especially since those worshippers of the many agree about this one Lord and ruler of all? And certainly number begins from one. Behind this statement lies a sense of the innate mystique of numbers, of what you could call mystical arithmetic, that is alien to us and not likely to be approved of by professional mathematicians nowadays. Those, then, are first to be followed who say that the one highest, only, true God is alone to be worshipped. If among these the truth does not elude us, then at last one must move on. See Revisions 1.13.6 again, where Augustine writes: "This could seem as if I had doubts about the truth of this religion. But I said it as applying to the man I was writing to [his old friend and patron Romanianus]. This, after all, is what I actually said: 'If the truth has not shone out of what these are saying,' having no doubts myself that it did shine out of what they said, in the way the apostle says: If Christ has not risen (1 Cor 15:14), without of course doubting that he had risen."

For just as in the very nature of things the authority of the one who reduces all things to one is greater, and in the human race a multitude has no power except when it agrees, that is, when it thinks as one: so in religion the authority of those who call to the one ought to be greater and more worthy of faith.

47. The second consideration concerns that disagreement which has arisen among human beings about the worship of the one God. But we have received that our forebears, on that step of faith by which one ascends from temporal to eternal things, followed visible miracles (for they could not do otherwise): through them it was brought about that such miracles were not necessary for those who came after.

For since the Catholic Church has been spread throughout the whole world and founded, those miracles have not been allowed to endure into our times, lest the soul should always seek visible things, and the human race should grow cold through familiarity with the very things by whose novelty it had been set aflame: See Revisions 1.13.7, where Augustine remarks that this is true, in that people no longer speak with tongues when hands are laid upon the newly baptized for them to receive the Holy Spirit; but he goes on to say that he must not be understood as denying that miracles still happen in his time, and he mentions ones that he had himself witnessed at the tombs of martyrs. nor ought it now to be doubtful to us that those are to be believed who, while they preached the things that few attain, were yet able to persuade peoples to follow them.

For the question now is who is to be believed, before anyone is fit to enter upon reasoning about divine and invisible things; for to the reason of a more purified soul, which has arrived at the clearly perceived Truth, human authority is in no way preferred: but no pride leads to this. And if pride did not exist, there would be no heretics, nor schismatics, nor those circumcised in the flesh, nor worshippers of creatures and images. But if these did not exist before the perfection of the people, which is promised, the Truth would be sought far more sluggishly.

48. The temporal dispensation, then, and the medicine of divine providence toward those who by sin have merited mortality, is handed down thus. First the nature and education of any one individual human being being born is considered. His first infancy is passed in bodily nourishments, to be utterly forgotten as he grows. Boyhood follows it, from which we begin to remember something. Adolescence succeeds to this, to which nature now permits the propagation of offspring, and makes him a father. Then youth takes up adolescence, now to be exercised in public duties and tamed under laws; in which a more vehement prohibition of sins, and the punishment of those who sin, servilely constraining them, generates in carnal souls fiercer assaults of lust, and doubles all their misdeeds. For it is not a simple sin to commit not only what is evil, but also what is forbidden.

But after the labors of youth, some peace is granted to the older man. From there, down to death, the worse and faded age, more subject to diseases and weak, leads him on. This is the life of the human being living from the body, and bound by desires for temporal things.

This is called the old man, and the outer, and the earthly, For the "old man" see Rom 6:6; Eph 4:22-24 gives us the "old man" and also the "new man" in contrast. even if he obtains that which the crowd calls happiness, in a well-constituted earthly city, whether under kings, or under princes, or under laws, or under all of these: for in no other way can a people be well constituted, even one that pursues earthly things; for it too has a certain measure of its own beauty. We already have the seeds here of Augustine's thought about the two cities, or two societies, which will be fully worked out in The City of God.

49. But this human being, whom we have described as the old and the outer and the earthly, whether moderate in his own kind, or even exceeding the measure of servile justice, some people enact entirely from the rising of this life to its setting. But some necessarily begin this life from him, yet are reborn inwardly, and corrupt and slay the remaining parts of him by their spiritual strength and the increases of wisdom, and bind them up under heavenly laws, (See Rom 7:25) until, after visible death, the whole is restored. This is called the new man, and the inner, and the heavenly, (See 1 Cor 15:47-49; Eph 4:24) having also, in proportion, certain spiritual ages of his own, distinguished not by years but by advances.

The first at the breasts of useful history, which nourishes by examples. The second now forgetting human things, and tending toward divine, in which it is no longer held in the bosom of human authority, but leans upon the highest and unchangeable law by the steps of reason.

The third now more confident, and wedding the carnal appetite to the strength of reason, and rejoicing inwardly in a certain conjugal sweetness, when the soul is coupled to the mind, and is veiled with the covering of modesty, so that it is now not compelled to live rightly, but, even if all should allow it, takes no pleasure in sinning. The fourth now doing this same thing much more firmly and in a more orderly way, and shining forth into the perfect man, (See Eph 4:13) and fit and suited for sustaining and breaking all persecutions, and the tempests and waves of this world.

The fifth at peace and tranquil on every side, living in the riches and abundance of the unchangeable kingdom of the highest and unspeakable Wisdom. The sixth passing over, by a complete change, into eternal life, and even to the total forgetting of temporal life, in a perfect form, which was made to the image and likeness of God. (See Gen 1:26) For the seventh is now eternal rest, and perpetual blessedness, to be distinguished by no ages. (See Gen 1:1-3) For just as the end of the old man is death, so the end of the new man (See Rom 6:21-23) is eternal life. For that man is the man of sin, this one the man of justice.

50. But just as, with no one doubting it, these two are such that one human being can enact one of them, that is, the old and earthly, in this whole life, but no one can enact the new and heavenly in this life except along with the old; for he must necessarily begin from the old man, and continue with him down to visible death, although as that one fails, this one advances: so, in proportion, the whole human race, whose life is as that of one man from Adam to the end of this age, is so administered under the laws of divine providence that it appears distributed into two kinds.

In one of these is the throng of the impious, bearing the image of the earthly man from the beginning of the age to the end. (See 1 Cor 15:49) In the other, the succession of the people given over to the one God, but from Adam to John the Baptist bearing the life of the earthly man by a certain servile justice: (See Rom 7; Gal 3-4) whose history is called the Old Testament, as if promising an earthly kingdom; which whole history is nothing other than the image of the new people, and of the New Testament promising the kingdom of heaven.

And the temporal life of this people, for the meantime, begins from the coming of the Lord in humility, down to the day of judgment, when he is to come in glory. (See Matt 24:30) After which judgment, with the old man extinguished, there will be that change which promises the angelic life: for we shall all rise again, but we shall not all be changed. The pious people, then, will rise again, that it may transform the remnants of its old man into the new. But the impious people, which from beginning to end bore the old man, will rise again, that it may be cast headlong into the second death. (See Rev 2:11)

But those who read diligently find the joints of the ages; and they are not troubled by either the tares or the chaff. See Matt 13:30, 13:38-43, 3:12. The Latin says that those who have been careful in passing through the aetatum articulos, the links of the six or seven ages set out in the previous chapter, "neither find the tares nor feel"—inveniunt nec zizania nec paleas perhorrescunt. But this really makes no sense, and certainly does not harmonize with the next sentence where the godless man, the tares, and the sinner, the husks, are said to be of use to the godly and the just. So I have presumed that a word has dropped out, through the oversight of an early copyist, after zizania; which word, I suggest, was perturbantia, "troublesome," "a problem." For the impious man is of use to the pious, and the sinner to the just, so that by comparison with them he may rise up more eagerly, until they are perfected.

51. But whoever, in the times of the earthly people, merited to arrive at the illumination of the inner man, helped the human race according to the time, displaying to it what that age demanded, and intimating through prophecy that which it was not opportune to display: such as the Patriarchs and Prophets are found to be by those who, not leaping in childishly, but piously and diligently, handle so good and so grand a secret of divine and human things.

And I see that even in the times of the new people this is most cautiously provided for by the great and spiritual men, the nurslings of the Catholic Church: that they do nothing in a popular way which they understand it is not yet the time to do with the people; they pour out milky nourishments generously and insistently upon the many who are eager, but upon the stronger foods they feed along with the wise few. (See 1 Cor 3:1-3; Heb 5:12)

For they speak wisdom among the perfect, but from the carnal and "animal," The carnales et animales, this last word being the literal translation of the Greek psychikoi. These are people whose life is only under the direction of the anima, the soul, not yet of the pneuma, the spiritus, the spirit. Augustine, following St. Paul, is here at least not identifying soul with spirit but rather yoking it to flesh, in contrast to spirit. though new men, yet still little ones, they conceal certain things, but lie about none.

For they do not provide for their own vain honors and empty praises; but for the advantage of those with whom they have merited to enter the fellowship of this life. For this is the law of divine providence, that no one be helped by his superiors to know and grasp the grace of God, who has not, with a pure affection, helped his inferiors to the same. Thus from our sin, which our very nature committed in the man who sinned, the human race too has been made a great glory and ornament of the earth, and is so fittingly administered by the management of divine providence that the unspeakable art of medicine turns the very foulness of vices into some beauty of its own kind.

52. And since we have spoken of the beneficence of authority, as far as has seemed sufficient for the present; let us see how far reason can advance, ascending from visible things to invisible, and from temporal to eternal. For it is not in vain and emptily that one ought to behold the beauty of the heaven, the order of the stars, the brightness of light, the vicissitudes of days and nights, the monthly courses of the moon, the fourfold tempering of the year agreeing with the four-part elements, the so great power of seeds generating appearances and numbers, Number, in this context, is practically synonymous with species. The text governing Augustine's use of it in this way is Wis 11:20: You have arranged all things in measure and number and weight. and all things preserving their own measure and nature in their own kind.

In the consideration of these things, not a vain and perishable curiosity is to be exercised, but a step is to be made toward immortal and ever-remaining things. For the nearest thing is to attend to what this living nature is, which perceives all these things: which, surely, since it gives life to the body, must necessarily be more excellent than it. For any mass whatever, although it shines forth with this visible light, if it lacks life, is not to be esteemed of great worth. For any living substance whatever is, by the law of nature, set before any non-living substance whatever.

53. But because no one doubts that irrational animals too live and perceive, the most excellent thing in the human mind is not that by which it perceives sensible things, but that by which it judges concerning sensible things. For most beasts see more keenly than human beings, and touch bodies with the other senses of the body more sharply: but to judge concerning bodies belongs not to a life that merely perceives, but to one that also reasons; which they lack, and in which we excel.

But now it is very easy to see that the one who judges is more excellent than the thing about which judgment is made. But the rational life judges not only concerning sensible things, but also concerning the senses themselves; why an oar must appear broken in water though it is straight, and why it must necessarily be perceived so through the eyes: (See section 62) for the sight of the eyes can report this, but can in no way judge it. Wherefore it is manifest that, just as the sensual life is more excellent than the body, so the rational life is more excellent than both.

54. And so, if the rational life judges according to itself, there is now no nature more excellent. But because it is clear that it is changeable, since it is found now skilled, now unskilled; and it judges so much the better, the more skilled it is; and it is so much the more skilled, the more it shares in some art or discipline or wisdom: the nature of art itself is to be sought. And I do not now wish art to be understood as that which is noted by experience, but as that which is tracked down by reasoning. For what splendid thing does he know who knows that, with that mixture which is made with lime and sand, stones cohere more tenaciously than with mud? Or who builds so elegantly that the things which are several correspond, equal to equal; but the things which are single hold the middle place? Although this perception is now closer to reason and the Truth.

But surely it must be asked why it offends us if, when two windows are placed not over one another but beside one another, one of them is larger or smaller, though they could have been equal: but if they are over one another, both being unequal by a half, that inequality does not so offend; and why we do not much care how much larger or smaller one of them is, because they are two.

But in three, the perception itself seems to demand either that they not be unequal, or that the middle one be so between the largest and the smallest that it exceeds the smaller by as much as it is exceeded by the larger. For thus, first, nature itself, as it were, is consulted as to what it approves. Here it is above all to be noted how that which, looked at alone, would have displeased less, is rejected in comparison with something better.

Thus it is found that common art is nothing other than the memory of things experienced and approved, with a certain practice of the body and of operation joined to it: and if you lack this, you can still judge concerning works, which is far more excellent, although you cannot produce works of art.

55. But since in all the arts it is fittingness that pleases, by which alone all things are whole and beautiful; and fittingness itself seeks equality and unity, whether by the likeness of equal parts, or by the gradation of unequal ones: who is there who finds the highest equality or likeness in bodies, and would dare to say, when he has carefully considered, that any body whatever is truly and simply one; since all things are changed by passing either from appearance to appearance, or from place to place, and consist of parts holding their own places, through which they are divided into diverse spaces?

Moreover, true equality and likeness itself, and true and first unity itself, is beheld not with the eyes of the flesh, nor by any such sense, but understood by the mind. For whence would equality of any kind be sought in bodies, or whence would it be proved to differ very greatly from the perfect, unless that which is perfect were seen by the mind? If indeed that which has not been made is to be called perfect. Augustine is here developing some of his ideas on aesthetics, e.g., order, harmony, and symmetry (congruentia, convenientia, consonantia). He also raises the question of the objective and subjective aspects of the beautiful and acknowledges the existence of a priori criteria in the human mind.

56. And since all things that are sensibly beautiful, whether brought forth by nature or wrought by the arts, are beautiful in places and times, like the body and the motion of the body; that equality and unity, known only to the mind, according to which judgment is made concerning corporeal beauty by the sense as go-between, is neither swollen in place nor unstable in time. For it cannot rightly be said that a chariot-wheel is judged round according to it, and a little vessel not round according to it; or a little vessel round according to it, and a coin not round according to it. Likewise, in times and in the motions of bodies, it is ridiculous to say that equal years are judged according to it, but not equal months according to it; or equal months according to it, but not equal days according to it. But whether something is moved fittingly through these spaces, or through hours, or through shorter moments, it is judged by the same one and unchangeable equality.

But if smaller and larger spaces of figures and of motions are judged according to the same law of likeness, or similarity, or fittingness, the law itself is greater than all these, but in power. Otherwise, in the space of either place or time, it is neither greater nor smaller: because if it were greater, we would not judge smaller things according to the whole of it; but if it were smaller, we would not judge larger things according to it. But as it is, since both a square forum and a square stone and a square tablet and a square gem are judged according to the whole law of squareness; and again the motions of the feet of a running ant, and of a striding elephant, are judged to agree with themselves according to the whole law of equality: who would doubt that, by the intervals of places and times, it is neither greater nor smaller, since in power it surpasses all things?

But since this law of all the arts is altogether unchangeable, while the human mind, to which it has been granted to see such a law, can suffer the changeableness of error, it sufficiently appears that above our mind there is a law, which is called Truth.

57. Nor is this now to be doubted, that the unchangeable nature, which is above the rational soul, is God; and that there is the first life and the first essence, where there is the first Wisdom. For this is that unchangeable Truth, which is rightly called the law of all the arts and the art of the almighty Artificer. And so, when the soul perceives that it does not judge the appearance and motion of bodies according to itself, it must at the same time recognize that its own nature is more excellent than the nature concerning which it judges; but that the nature according to which it judges, and concerning which it can in no way judge, is more excellent than itself.

For I can say why the members of any body ought to correspond, like to like, on either side; because I am delighted by the highest equality, which I behold not with the eyes but with the mind: wherefore I judge that the things I discern with the eyes are so much the better, the closer they are, according to their nature, to those things which I understand with the mind. But why those things are so, no one can say: nor would anyone soberly say that they ought to be so, as though they could be otherwise.

58. But why they please us, and why, when we are wiser, we love them most vehemently, not even this will anyone, if he rightly understands them, dare to say. For just as we, and all rational souls, rightly judge concerning lower things according to the Truth; so concerning us, when we cling to it, the Truth itself alone judges. But concerning it, not even the Father, for he is not less than it, and therefore what the Father judges, he judges through it. (See John 5:22, which is being echoed here and is quoted a few lines further on)

For all things that seek unity have this as their rule, or form, or model, or whatever else it allows itself to be called; since it alone has fulfilled the likeness of him from whom it received being: if indeed "received" is not unfittingly said, in that signification by which it is called Son, because it is not from itself, but from the first and highest principle, who is called Father; from whom all fatherhood in heaven and on earth is named.

The Father, therefore, judges no one, but has given all judgment to the Son: and, the spiritual man judges all things, but is himself judged by no one, that is, by no human being, but only by that very law according to which he judges all things; since that too was said most truly, we must all be shown before the judgment seat of Christ. He judges all things, then, because he is above all things, when he is with God. But he is with him when he understands most purely, and with his whole love loves what he understands. Thus also, as far as he can, he himself becomes the very Law according to which he judges all things, and which no one can judge.

Just as in these temporal laws, although human beings judge concerning them when they establish them, yet when they have been established and confirmed, it will not be permitted to the judge to judge concerning them, but according to them; and yet the founder of temporal laws, if he is a good and wise man, consults that very eternal law, concerning which it is given to no soul to judge; so that according to its unchangeable rules he may discern what is to be commanded and forbidden according to the time.

It is therefore permitted to clean souls to know the eternal law, but not permitted to judge it. But the difference is this, that for knowing it is enough that we see that something is so or not so: but for judging we add something by which we signify that it could also be otherwise; as when we say: "it ought to be so," or "it ought to have been so," or "it ought to be so in the future"; as artificers do in their works.

59. But for many human delight is the end, and they do not wish to tend toward higher things, so as to judge why those visible things please. And so if I ask an artificer, when one arch has been constructed, why he labors to build another equal one opposite it on the other side; he will answer, I believe, that the members of the building may correspond, equal to equal. See Cicero, On the Nature of the Gods 1.19.50.

Then if I go on to ask why he chooses this very thing; he will say that this is fitting, this is beautiful, this delights those who behold it: he will dare nothing further. For he leans bent over upon his eyes, and does not understand on what it depends.

But I will not cease to remind the man who has eyes within, and who sees invisibly, why these things please, so that he may dare to be a judge of human delight itself. For thus he is carried above it, and is not held by it, while he judges not according to it, but judges it itself.

And first I will ask whether they are beautiful because they delight; or whether they delight because they are beautiful. Here I will without doubt be answered that they delight because they are beautiful. I will ask then, next, why they are beautiful; and if there is hesitation, I will suggest, is it because the parts are like one another, and by some coupling are reduced to one fittingness.

60. And when he has found that it is so, I will ask whether they fulfill in the highest degree this very unity which they are proved to seek, or whether they lie far below it, and in a certain way belie it. And if it is so (for who, when reminded, does not see that there is neither any appearance, nor any body at all, which does not have some trace of unity; nor can any body, however beautiful, since by the intervals of places it necessarily has one part in one place and another in another, attain that unity which it pursues?): why, if this is so, I will demand that he answer where he himself sees this unity, or whence he sees it: which, if he did not see it, whence would he know both what the appearance of bodies imitates, and what it cannot fulfill?

But as it is, when he says to bodies: "You indeed, unless some unity held you together, would be nothing, but again, if you were unity itself, you would not be bodies";

it is rightly said to him: "Whence do you know this unity according to which you judge bodies, which, unless you saw it, you could not judge that they do not fulfill it: but if you saw it with these corporeal eyes, you would not truly say that, although they are held by its trace, they nevertheless are far distant from it? For with these eyes you see nothing but corporeal things":

with the mind, therefore, we see it. But where do we see it? If it were in this place where our body is, the one who in this way judges concerning bodies in the East would not see it. Therefore it is not contained by place; and since it is present everywhere to the one judging, it is nowhere through the spaces of places, and through its power it is nowhere absent.

61. But if bodies belie it, the liars are not to be believed, lest we fall into vanities of vanitators: (See Eccl 1:2) but rather it must be sought, since they lie for this reason, that they seem to display it to the eyes of the flesh, though it is seen by the pure mind, whether they lie insofar as they are like it, or insofar as they do not attain it. For if they attained it, they would fulfill what they imitate. But if they fulfilled it, they would in every way be like it. If they were altogether like it, there would be no difference between that nature and this. And if it were so, they would not belie it: for they would be that which it is.

And yet they do not lie to those who consider more diligently: because he lies who wishes to seem what he is not: but that which, unwillingly, is thought to be other than it is, does not lie, but nevertheless deceives. For the liar is distinguished from the deceiver in this, that in every liar there is a will to deceive, even if he is not believed: but there cannot be a deceiver who does not deceive. Therefore corporeal appearance, because it has no will, does not lie: but if it is also not thought to be what it is not, it does not even deceive.

62. But not even the eyes themselves deceive; for they cannot report to the mind anything but their own affection. And if not only they, but all the senses of the body, report just as they are affected; I do not know what more we ought to demand of them. Take away, then, the vanitators, and there will be no vanity. If anyone supposes that an oar is broken in water, and is made whole when it is taken out from there; he does not have a bad go-between, but is a bad judge. For the eye, according to its nature, could not perceive otherwise in water, nor ought it to have: for if air is one thing and water another, it is just that things be perceived otherwise in air and otherwise in water. (See section 53)

Wherefore the eye does rightly; for it was made for this, that it should be capable of so much: but the mind does perversely, for which the mind, not the eye, was made for contemplating the highest beauty. But that man wishes to turn the mind toward bodies, and the eyes toward God. For he seeks to understand carnal things, and to see spiritual things; which cannot be done.

63. Wherefore this perversity is to be corrected, because unless one makes what is above to be below, and what is below to be above, he will not be fit for the kingdom of heaven. Let us not, then, seek the highest things in the lowest, nor envy the lowest things themselves.

Let us judge them, lest we be judged along with them; that is, let us attribute to them only as much as the lowest appearance merits, lest, when we seek the first things among the last, we be numbered by the first among the last. Which does no harm at all to the lowest things themselves, but very much to us.

Nor on that account does the administration of divine providence become less seemly; because both the unjust are justly and the foul are beautifully ordered. And if for this reason the beauty of visible things deceives us, because it is contained by unity and does not fulfill unity; let us understand, if we can, that we are deceived not by that which it is, but by that which it is not.

For every body is a true body, but a false unity. For it is not one in the highest degree, nor does it imitate it so far as to fulfill it: and yet it would not even be a body itself, unless it were in some way one. Moreover, it could not be in some way one, unless it had this from that which is One in the highest degree.

64. O stubborn souls, give me one who sees without any imagining of carnal sights. Give me one who sees that the principle of all that is one is nothing but the one alone from which is every one, whether it fulfill it or not fulfill it. Give me one who sees, not one who quarrels, not one who wishes to seem to see what he does not see. Give me one who resists the senses of the flesh, and the blows by which through them he has been beaten in his soul: who resists the custom of human beings, resists the praises of human beings, who is pricked in his bed, who carves anew his spirit, who does not outwardly love vanities and seek lies, In Confessions 9.4.8-11 Augustine uses the words of Ps 4 to describe his own conversion.

who has already learned to say to himself: "If there is one Rome, which someone called Romulus is said to have founded along the Tiber, then this one which I, thinking of it, fashion is false: for it is not the same, nor am I there in mind; for what is now being done there, I would surely know. If there is one sun, then this one which I, thinking, fashion is false: for that one carries out its courses in fixed places and times; this one I set up where I will, and when I will.

If that friend of mine is one, then this one which I, thinking, fashion is false: for where he is, I do not know; this one is fashioned where I will. I myself, certainly, am one, and I perceive that my body is in this place; and yet by a figment of thought I go wherever I please, I speak with whomever I please. These things are false; nor does anyone understand false things. Therefore I do not understand when I contemplate these things and believe them; because that which I contemplate by understanding must be true: are these perhaps the things which are usually called phantasms? Whence, then, has my soul been filled with illusions? Where is the truth, which is beheld by the mind?"

To one thinking thus it can now be said: "That light is the true light by which you know these things to be not true. Through this you see that One, by which you judge that whatever else you see is one, and yet that, whatever changeable thing you see, it is not that which the One is."

65. But if the gaze of the mind palpitates at beholding these things, be still; do not contend, except with the habit of bodies: conquer that, and all things will be conquered. Surely we seek the One, than which nothing is more simple. Let us, then, seek him in simplicity of heart. (See Wis 1:1) Take leisure, he says, and you shall know that I am the Lord: not the leisure of idleness, but the leisure of thought, that you may be free from places and times. For these phantasms of swelling and instability do not allow us to see the constant unity. Places offer what we may love, times steal away what we love, and leave in the soul throngs of phantasms by which desire is stirred up toward one thing after another. Thus the mind is made restless and wretched, longing in vain to hold the things by which it is held.

It is called, then, to leisure, that is, that it should not love those things which cannot be loved without labor. For thus it will have dominion over them, thus it will not be held by them, but will hold them. My yoke, he says, is light. He who is subject to this yoke has the rest in subjection. He will not labor, then; for what is subject does not resist.

But the wretched friends of this world, (See Jas 4:4) whose lords they would be if they were willing to be the sons of God, since he gave them the power to become the sons of God; (See John 1:12) the friends of this world, then, so fear to be separated from its embrace that nothing is more laborious for them than not to labor.

66. But the one to whom at least this is manifest, that there is a falsity by which that is thought to be which is not, understands that there is a truth which shows that which is. But if bodies deceive insofar as they do not fulfill that one thing which they are proved to imitate, from which Principle whatever is one is one, to whose likeness whatever strives we naturally approve; because we naturally disapprove whatever departs from unity and tends toward unlikeness to it: it is given to understand that there is something which is so like that One alone, from which Principle whatever is in any way one is one, that it wholly fulfills it and is the very thing itself; and this is the Truth, and the Word in the Principle, and the Word, God with God. (See John 1:1)

For if falsity is from those things which imitate the One, not insofar as they imitate it, but insofar as they cannot fulfill it; that is the Truth which was able to fulfill it, and to be that which it is; it is that which shows it as it is: whence it is most rightly called both his Word and his Light. (See John 1:9) Other things can be called like that One insofar as they are, for to that extent they are also true: but this is his very likeness, and therefore the Truth. For just as by truth those things are true which are true; so by likeness those things are like, whatever are like. As, then, truth is the form of true things, so likeness is the form of like things. Wherefore true things, since they are true insofar as they are; but they are insofar as they are like the principal One: that is the form of all things that are, which is the highest likeness of the Principle; and it is the Truth, because it is without any unlikeness.

67. Whence falsity arises, not because things themselves deceive, which show to the one perceiving nothing other than their own appearance, which they received according to the degree of their beauty; nor because the senses themselves deceive, which, affected according to the nature of their body, announce nothing other than their own affections to the presiding mind: but sins deceive souls, when they seek the truth, having abandoned and neglected the Truth.

For because they loved the works more than the Artificer and the art itself, they are punished by this error, that they search for the Artificer and the art among the works; and when they cannot find them (for God is not subject to the corporeal senses, but rises above the mind itself), they reckon that the very works are both the art and the Artificer. (In this way Augustine explains the origins of idolatry)

68. From this arises all impiety, not only of those who sin, but also of those who are condemned for their sins. For they do not only wish to scrutinize the creature against the precept of God, and to enjoy it rather than the Law and the Truth itself, which is found to be the sin of the first human being, who used free choice badly; but they add this too in their very condemnation, that they not only love, but even serve the creature rather than the Creator, (See Rom 1:25) and worship it through its parts, coming down from the highest to the lowest.

But some hold themselves to this, that in place of the highest God they worship the soul, (I.e., the world soul; see section 22) and the first intellectual creature, which the Father fashioned through the Truth, to gaze always upon the Truth itself, and upon itself through it, because in every way it is most like it. Then they come to the generative life, through which creature the eternal and unchangeable God works the begetting of visible and temporal things. From here they slip down to worshipping the animals, and from there to worshipping bodies themselves; and among these they first choose the more beautiful, in which the heavenly bodies most excel.

Therefore first of all the body of the sun presents itself, and in it some remain. Some think the splendor of the moon also worthy of religion: for it is, as is reported, nearer to us; whence it is perceived to have a closer appearance. Others add the bodies of the other stars as well, and the whole heaven with its stars. Others couple the air to the ethereal heaven, and subject their souls to these two higher corporeal elements.

But among these, those seem to themselves most religious who think that the whole of creation at once, that is, the whole world with all that is in it, and the life by which it is breathed through and animated, which some believed to be corporeal, some incorporeal: this whole at once, then, they reckon to be the one great God, of which the rest are parts. For they have not known the author and founder of the whole creation. Thence they are cast headlong into images, and from the works of God they are plunged down even into their own works, which are nonetheless still visible.

69. For there is another, worse and lower, worship of images, by which they worship their own phantasms, and whatever, with a wandering mind, in pride or swelling, they have imagined by thinking, they observe under the name of religion, until it comes about in the soul that there is nothing at all to be worshipped, and that human beings go astray who wrap themselves in superstition and entangle themselves in wretched slavery.

But in vain do they think this: for they do not bring it about that they do not serve; for the very vices remain by which they were drawn to suppose that these things were to be worshipped. For they serve a threefold desire, whether of pleasure, or of excellence, or of spectacle. In this threefold desire Augustine sees the basic cause of man's turning away from the worship of the true God. In the course of the ensuing argument he identifies those desires with the desires of the flesh, for admiration, and of the eyes, which are mentioned in 1 John 2:16. See Confessions 10.30.41-39.64. A similar trio of desires is found in Porphyry, on whom Augustine is probably dependent here; see W. Theiler, Porphyrios und Augustin (Halle 1933), 37-43.

I deny that there is any one of those who reckon that nothing is to be worshipped who is not either subject to carnal joys, or fostering an empty power, or, delighted by some spectacle, raving. Thus, without knowing it, they love temporal things, so as to expect blessedness from them.

But to those things by which each one wishes to be made blessed, he must necessarily be a slave, whether he will or not. For wherever they lead, he follows; and whoever seems able to take them away is feared. But a spark of fire and some little beast can take these things away. Finally, to pass over innumerable adversities, time itself must necessarily take away all passing things. And so, since this world encloses all temporal things, those who think that nothing is to be worshipped, lest they be slaves, are slaves to all the parts of the world.

70. Yet although in this extremity of things they lie wretched, so as to suffer their own vices to have dominion over them, condemned either by lust, or by pride, or by curiosity, or by two of these, or by all: as long as they are in this stadium of human life, it is permitted to them to engage and to conquer, (See 1 Cor 9:24) if they first believe what they are not yet able to understand, and do not love the world; for everything that is in the world, as it was said by God, is the desire of the flesh, and the desire of the eyes, and the ambition of the age. In this way those three are marked: for the desire of the flesh signifies the lovers of the lowest pleasure; the desire of the eyes, the curious; the ambition of the age, the proud.

71. A threefold temptation, too, in the human being whom the Truth itself took up, has been shown to be guarded against. Tell, says the tempter, these stones to become loaves. But that one and only master: man does not live on bread alone, but on every word of God. For thus he taught that the desire of pleasure ought to be tamed in such a way that one must not yield even to hunger.

But perhaps the one who could not be deceived by the pleasure of the flesh could be deceived by the pomp of temporal dominion; therefore all the kingdoms of the world were shown, and it was said: I will give you all these, if you fall down and adore me. To whom it was answered: you shall adore the Lord your God, and him alone you shall serve. (See Deut 6:13-14) Thus pride was trodden underfoot.

And the extreme enticement of curiosity too was set before him: for he urged him to cast himself down from the pinnacle of the temple only for the sake of experiencing something. But neither here was he conquered, and therefore he answered thus, that we might understand that there is no need, for knowing God, of temptations striving to explore divine things visibly: you shall not tempt, he says, the Lord your God. (See Deut 6:16)

Wherefore whoever is fed within by the word of God does not seek pleasure in that desert. He who is subject to the one God alone does not seek on the mountain, that is, in earthly elevation, boastfulness. Whoever clings to the eternal spectacle of the unchangeable Truth is not cast down through the pinnacle of this body, that is, through these eyes, to know temporal and lower things. See The Catholic and the Manichean Ways of Life 1.21.38: "There are those who have abandoned the virtues and have no idea of what God is and how majestic his nature is, which abides ever the same. They think that they are doing something great if they inquire very attentively and with much eagerness into the entire mass of this body that we call the world." See also Letter 11.2.

72. What, then, remains by which the soul cannot recall the first beauty which it abandoned, when it can do so from its very own vices? For thus the Wisdom of God reaches mightily even to the end. See Wis 8:1; the writer has Wisdom stretching from end to end, i.e. from one end of the earth to the other; Augustine, by modifying the quotation, has her stretching as far as the end of time. Thus through her that highest Artificer wove together his works, ordered toward the one end of beauty. Thus that goodness, from the highest to the lowest, envied no beauty which could be only from himself; so that no one is cast down from the Truth itself who is not caught up by some image of the Truth.

Seek in the pleasure of the body what holds you, and you will find nothing other than fittingness: for if resistances bring forth pain, fittingnesses bring forth pleasure. Recognize, then, what the highest fittingness is. Do not go outside, return into yourself; in the inner man dwells the Truth; and if you find your nature to be changeable, transcend yourself too. But remember, when you transcend yourself, that you transcend a reasoning soul. Strive, therefore, to where the very light of reason is kindled.

For where does every good reasoner arrive, but at the truth? Since the Truth does not arrive at itself by reasoning, but is that which those who reason seek. See there a fittingness than which there can be none higher, and yourself agree with it. Confess that you are not what it is: since it does not seek itself; but you came to it by seeking, not by the space of places, but by the affection of the mind, so that the inner man himself may agree with his inhabitant, not with the lowest and carnal, but with the highest and spiritual pleasure.

73. Or if you do not discern what I say, and doubt whether these things are true, discern at least whether you do not doubt that you doubt of them; and if it is certain that you are doubting, seek whence it is certain: there it will not be the light of this sun that meets you, but the true light which enlightens every man coming into this world. This cannot be seen with these eyes; nor with those by which phantasms are thought, dashed against the soul through these same eyes;

but with those by which it is said to the phantasms themselves: "You are not what I seek, nor are you that by which I order you; and what among you meets me as foul, I disapprove; what is beautiful, I approve; since that is more beautiful by which I disapprove and approve: therefore this very thing I approve more, and I set it before not only you, but all those bodies from which I drew you."

Then conceive the very rule which you see in this way: Everyone who understands that he is doubting understands something true, and is certain about this thing which he understands: he is therefore certain about something true. Everyone, then, who doubts whether there is truth has within himself something true about which he does not doubt; nor is any true thing true except by truth. And so he ought not to doubt about truth, who was able to doubt about anything whatever.

Where these things are seen, there is light without the space of places and times, and without any phantasm of such spaces. Can these things in any part be corrupted, even if every reasoner should perish, or grow old among the carnal lower regions? Apud carnales inferos: a most peculiar expression. Inferi, though a masculine plural, originally no doubt referring to the gods of the underworld, Pluto and Proserpine, nearly always meant simply the underworld, the realm of the dead. Here it presumably refers to the inhabitants of that realm. For reasoning does not make such things, but finds them. Therefore, before they are found, they remain in themselves, and when they are found, they renew us.

74. Thus the inner man is reborn, (See 2 Cor 4:16) and the outer is corrupted from day to day. But the inner looks back upon the outer, and in comparison with itself sees it as foul; yet in its own kind beautiful, and rejoicing in the fittingness of bodies, and corrupting what it turns to its own good, namely the nourishments of the flesh:

which nourishments, however, once corrupted, that is, losing their own form, migrate into the fabric of these members, and being corrupted refashion them, passing into another form through fittingness; and by the vital motion they are in a way sorted out, so that from them those things which are apt are taken up into the structure of this visible beauty, but those which are not apt are cast out through the fitting passages.

Of these one part, the most dreggish, is rendered back to the earth to take up other forms, another part exhales through the whole body, and another receives the hidden formulae Numeros in the Latin, in the sense it has, for Augustine at least, in Wis 11:20. This is also the word rendered by "formulae," "formula" in the next paragraph. But as well as this text from Wisdom, the next section shows that he probably had in mind first and foremost Ps 147:5 (146), where numerus can only mean "limit" or "measure." Here, however, I think "formulae" is the only possible translation. of the whole animal, and is begun into offspring, and, moved either by the fittingness of two bodies, or by some such phantasm, flows down through the generative ways from the very crown of the head into the lowest pleasure.

Now in the mother, through fixed formulae of times, it is fitted into a number of places, so that each member may occupy its own regions; and if they have kept the measure of equality, with the light of color added, there is born a body which is called beautiful, and is loved most keenly by its lovers: yet in it the form which is moved does not please more than the life which moves.

For if that animal loves us, it allures more violently: but if it hates us, we are angry, and cannot bear it, even if it offers its very form to the one enjoying it. This whole is the kingdom of pleasure, and the lowest beauty; for it is subject to corruption: and if it were not, it would be thought the highest.

75. But divine providence is present, which shows this beauty to be not evil, on account of the so manifest traces of the first formulae, in which there is no number of the Wisdom of God; (See Ps 147:5 (146)) and yet to be the lowest, mixing with it pains and diseases and distortions of the members, and the darkness of color, and the rivalries and dissensions of minds, so that from these we may be admonished to seek something unchangeable. And this it does through the lowest ministries, by which it is a pleasure to do this: which the Divine Scriptures name destroyers and angels of wrath, For "destroyers" see Jdt 8:25 in the Latin Vulgate, which here differs rather widely from the Greek original; see also Exod 12:23; 1 Cor 10:10; Rev 15:7. although they themselves do not know what good is being done concerning them.

Like these are the human beings who rejoice in the miseries of others, and provide for themselves laughter and ludicrous spectacles, or wish such to be provided, out of the overturnings and errors of others.

And so in all these the good are admonished, and exercised, and conquer, and triumph, and reign. But the evil are deceived, tortured, conquered, condemned, and serve; not the one highest Lord of all, but the lowest servants, namely those angels who are fed on the pains and misery of the condemned, and for this malevolence are tormented by the liberation of the good.

76. Thus all are ordered by their offices and ends into the beauty of the universe, so that what we shrink from in a part, if we consider it together with the whole, pleases very greatly: because in judging a building we ought not to consider only one corner, nor in a beautiful man only the hair, nor in one who speaks well only the motion of the fingers, nor in the course of the moon only some figures of three days.

For these things, which are lowest for this reason, that they are wholes perfect with imperfect parts, whether they are perceived as beautiful in rest or in motion, are to be considered as wholes, if we wish to judge rightly. In this and the following sections Augustine is taking up thoughts that Plotinus had developed in his treatise on providence in Enneads 3.2.3-4.17. For our true judgment, whether it judges of the whole or of the part, is beautiful: for it is carried above the whole world, nor do we cling, insofar as we judge truly, to any part of it. But our error, clinging to a part of it, is itself in itself foul.

But just as the color black in a picture becomes beautiful together with the whole; so unchangeable divine providence fittingly puts on this whole contest, assigning one thing to the conquered, another to those who strive, another to the victors, another to the spectators, another to those who are at rest and contemplate God alone: since in all these there is no evil except sin, and the punishment of sin, that is, a voluntary defect from the highest Essence, and a non-voluntary labor in the lowest things; which can be said in another way thus, freedom from justice, and slavery under sin. (See Rom 6:20)

77. But the outer man is corrupted either by the advance of the inner, or by his own defect. But by the advance of the inner he is so corrupted that the whole is re-formed for the better, and restored to integrity at the last trumpet, (See 1 Cor 15:52) so that it is no longer corrupted nor corrupts. But by his own defect he is cast headlong into more corruptible beauties, that is, the order of punishments. And let us not wonder that I still call them beauties: for nothing is ordered that is not beautiful; and, as the Apostle says, all order is from God. (Augustine slightly rephrases and rearranges this verse to suit his purpose)

But we must necessarily confess that a weeping man is better than a rejoicing little worm: The immediate reference here is to Exod 35:25, where the Vulgate and other Latin versions have vermiculum instead of what the Greek LXX has, coccinum, meaning scarlet. But either the Latin word had come by that time also to mean scarlet (hence ultimately our "vermilion"), or at any rate this little worm was thought of as producing or even being scarlet. Hence what Augustine goes on to say about its bright color. and yet I can speak the praise of a little worm copiously and without any lie, considering the brightness of its color, the rounded figure of its body, the front parts agreeing with the middle, the middle with the hinder parts, and preserving an appetite for unity according to the humility of its nature; nothing formed on one side which does not correspond on the other by an equal dimension. What now shall I say of the soul itself, quickening the small frame of its body, how it moves it numerically, how it seeks fitting things, how it conquers or avoids, as far as it can, the things that oppose it, and, referring all things to the one sense of its safety, intimates that unity, the founder of all natures, far more evidently than the body does?

I am speaking of any little worm whatever as a living thing. (I.e., even those we find in our gardens, as well as the one found in Exod 35:25) Very many have spoken the praise of ashes and dung most truly and fully. For example Cicero, De senectute 15.54. What wonder, then, if I say that the soul of a human being, which, wherever it may be and of whatever kind it may be, is better than every body, is beautifully ordered, and that from its punishments other beauties are made, since it is not, when it is wretched, where it is fitting for the blessed to be, but is there where it is fitting for the wretched to be?

78. Let no one at all deceive us. Whatever is rightly blamed is rejected in comparison with something better. But every nature, however lowest, however lowest, is rightly praised in comparison with nothing. And then it is not well with anyone, if he can be better. Wherefore, if it can be well with us along with the Truth itself, it is ill with us along with any trace of the Truth: far worse, then, with the lowest trace, when we cling to the pleasures of the flesh.

Let us therefore conquer the blandishments or the troubles of this desire; let us subjugate to ourselves this woman, if we are men. Under our leadership she too will be better, and will no longer be called desire, but temperance. For when she leads and we follow, she is called desire and lust, but we are called rashness and folly.

Let us follow Christ our head, that he too may follow us, whose head we are. (See 1 Cor 11:3; Eph 5:23) This can be enjoined upon women too, not by a marital but by a brotherly right; by which right in Christ we are neither male nor female. (See Gal 3:28) For they too have something virile by which they subjugate feminine pleasures, by which they serve Christ and command desire. This is manifest, in the dispensation of the Christian people, in many widows and virgins of God, and in many married women too, who now keep the conjugal rights in a brotherly way.

But if from that part which God commands us to rule, and which he both exhorts and helps us to restore to our own possession: if, then, on this side, through negligence and impiety, the man, that is, the mind and reason, has become subject, the human being will indeed be base and wretched; but he is destined in this life, and after this life is ordered, where that highest ruler and Lord judges that he is to be destined and ordered. And so the whole creation is not permitted to be stained by any foulness.

79. Let us therefore walk while we have the day, that is, while we can use reason, so that, turned toward God, we may merit to be enlightened by his Word, which is the true light, lest the darkness overtake us. (See John 12:35) For the day is the presence of that light which enlightens every man coming into this world. He said man, who can use reason, and, where he has fallen, there bend himself so that he may rise.

If, then, the pleasure of the flesh is loved, let it itself be considered more diligently; and when traces of certain numbers have been recognized there, it must be sought where they are without swelling. For there that which is is more one.

And if such numbers are in that vital motion itself which works in seeds, they are more to be wondered at there than in the body. For if the numbers of seeds swelled like the seeds themselves, from half a fig grain half a tree would be born, nor would whole and entire animals be generated from the seeds of animals, even when these are not whole, nor would so tiny and single a seed have the innumerable power of its own each kind.

For from one seed, according to its nature, can be propagated through the ages either crops of crops, or forests of forests, or flocks of flocks, or peoples of peoples, so that there is no leaf, or no hair, through so numerous a succession, whose formula was not in that first and single seed.

Next this is to be thought of: how numerous, how sweet beauties of sounds the beaten air carries across when the nightingale sings, which the soul of that little bird would not fashion, when it pleased, unless it had them impressed incorporeally by the vital motion. This can be observed in the other living things too, which, though they lack reason, do not lack sense. For there is none of these which does not bear, either in the sound of its voice, or in the other motion and operation of its members, something numerical and, in its own kind, measured, not by any knowledge, but nevertheless within the inmost bounds of nature, measured by that unchangeable law of numbers.

80. Let us return to ourselves, and leave aside those things which we have in common with shrubs and beasts. For in one way the swallow builds its nest, and each kind of bird in some one way of its own. What, then, is there in us by which we judge both concerning all those things, what figures they seek, and how far they fulfill them, and by which we, in buildings and other corporeal works, as lords of all such figures, contrive innumerable things? What is there in us which inwardly understands that these very visible masses of bodies are, by proportion, great or small; and that every body has a half, however small it may be; and if a half, innumerable parts: and so that every grain of millet is, to its own part as great as our body holds in this world, as great as the world is to us, and that this whole world is beautiful by the formula of its figures, not by mass; but seems great, not according to its own quantity, but according to our smallness, that is, of the animals with which it is full; which, again, since they have an infinity of division, are so small, not in themselves, but in comparison with others, and especially with the universe itself?

Nor is the case otherwise with the span of times; because, just as every length of place, so every length of time has its half: for although it may be very brief, it both begins, and proceeds, and ceases. And so it cannot but have a half, while it is divided there at the point where it passes over to its end.

And on this account both the time of a short syllable, in comparison with a longer one, is short, and a winter hour, compared with a summer hour, is smaller. Hours were not yet artificially measured by clocks; these were an invention of monks in the Middle Ages. In Augustine's time, in any event, people thought of the day from sunrise to sunset as divided into twelve hours; consequently the hour had a different length in summer than in winter. Thus the duration of one hour relative to a day, and of a day to a month, and of a month to a year, and of a year to a lustrum, Augustine says "with a lustrum"; this was a sacred period of time, normally being five years, but then it could be extended to any long period of time. and of a lustrum to greater cycles, and of these themselves referred to the whole of time, are short; while that very numerous succession, and a certain gradation, whether of local or of temporal spaces, is judged beautiful not by swelling or duration, but by ordered fittingness.

81. But the very measure of order lives in perpetual Truth, neither vast in mass, nor unstable by protraction; but in power great above all places, in eternity immovable above all times: without which, nevertheless, neither can the vastness of any mass be reduced to one, nor can the prolongation of any time be kept from error, nor can anything be either a body, so as to be a body, or a motion, so as to be a motion. It is itself the one principal, neither dense through the finite nor through the infinite, neither changeable through the finite nor through the infinite. For it does not have one thing here, another there; or one thing now, another afterward: because in the highest degree one is the Father of Truth, the Father of his own Wisdom, which, being in no part unlike, is called his likeness and Image, because it is from him. Twins are very like one another, but they are not from each other; whereas they can properly be called the image of their father or mother, because they not only resemble them but are from them. An image in the literal sense, a statue or a picture, a portrait, is made by the artist according to what he observes the original to be like; it is in a real sense from the original as well as being its likeness.

And so the Son too is rightly said to be from him, the rest through him. For there went before the form of all things, in the highest degree fulfilling the One from which it is, so that the other things which are, insofar as they are like the One, might come to be through that form.

82. Of these, some are so through it that they also exist toward it, The formula ut ad ipsam etiam sint ("as also to be to it") is also a reminder of an inner movement toward the creator as confessed by Augustine in a programmatic statement in Confessions 1.1.1: "Our heart is restless until it rests in you." as is every rational and intellectual creature, in which the human being is most rightly said to have been made to the image and likeness of God: (See Gen 1:27) for otherwise he could not behold the unchangeable truth with his mind. But others are so made through it that they do not exist toward it.

And therefore the rational soul, if it serves its Creator, by whom it was made, through whom it was made, and toward whom it was made, all the rest will serve it: both the lowest life, which is so close to it, and is its helper, through which it commands the body; and the body itself, the lowest nature and essence, over which, yielding to it in every way at its will, it will have dominion, perceiving no trouble from it; because it will no longer seek blessedness from it, nor through it, but will receive it from God through itself.

It will therefore administer the body, re-formed and sanctified, without the detriment of corruption, and without the burden of difficulty. For in the resurrection they will neither marry nor be given in marriage, but will be like the angels in heaven. Food indeed is for the belly, and the belly for food: but God will destroy both this and these; since the kingdom of God is not food and drink, but justice and peace and joy.

83. Wherefore, even in this pleasure of the body we find that by which we are reminded to despise it; not because the nature of the body is evil, but because it wallows basely in the love of the lowest good, the soul to which it was granted to cling to and enjoy the first goods.

When a charioteer is dragged along and pays the penalty of his rashness, he accuses whatever it was that he was using: but let him implore aid, let the lord of the games command, The dominus rerum: the wealthy man who put on the games and the races and who presided over them. let the horses be checked, now making other spectacles out of his fall, and about to make his death too unless he is helped, let him be restored to his place, set upon the wheels, the rights of the reins given back, let him rule the obeying and tamed beasts more cautiously;

then he will perceive how well the chariot, and that whole rig, was fashioned, which by his ruin both afflicted him and had lost the course of most seemly control:

because for this body too the greed of the soul using it badly in Paradise brought forth feebleness, usurping the forbidden food against the discipline of the physician, (See Gen 3:6-7. "She" here is the soul—represented indeed by Eve) by whom her everlasting safety is preserved.

84. If, then, in this very feebleness of the visible flesh, where the blessed life cannot be, there is found an admonition of the blessed life, on account of the appearance coming down from the highest even to the lowest; how much more in the appetite for nobility and excellence, and in all the pride and vain pomp of this world? For what else does a human being seek in it, but to be alone, if it could be done, to whom all things are subject, by a perverse imitation, namely, of almighty God?

And if, being subject, he imitated him, by living according to his precepts, he would, through him, have the rest in subjection, and would not come to so great a deformity that he who wishes to command human beings fears a little beast. (The serpent; our thoughts should still be in Paradise with Adam and Eve, representing the entire human race) Pride, then, also has a certain appetite for unity and omnipotence; (In wanting to be like God, knowing good and evil, Gen 3:5) but in the rule over temporal things, which all pass away like a shadow. (See Ps 102:11 (101), 109:23 (108); Wis 5:9; Job 8:9; 1 Chr 29:15)

85. We wish to be unconquered, and rightly; for the nature of our mind has this after God, by whom it was made to his image: but his precepts were to be kept, and with these kept no one would conquer us. But as it is, while she whose words we basely consented to is tamed by the pain of childbearing, (See Gen 3:16-19) we too labor on the earth, and with great disgrace are overcome by all the things that could move and disturb us.

And so we are unwilling to be conquered by human beings, and we cannot conquer anger. What can be said more execrable than this disgrace? We confess that the human being is what we are, who, even if he has vices, is nevertheless not himself a vice. How much more honorable, then, is it that a human being should conquer us than that a vice should? But who would doubt that envy is a monstrous vice, by which one who is unwilling to be conquered in temporal things must necessarily be tormented and made subject? It is better, then, that a human being conquer us, than envy or any other vice.

86. But neither can he be conquered by a human being who has conquered his own vices. For no one is conquered except the one from whom what he loves is snatched by an adversary. He, then, who loves only that which cannot be snatched from the one who loves it, is undoubtedly unconquered, nor is he tormented by any envy. For he loves that which, the more come to love and receive it, the more abundantly he rejoices for them.

For he loves God with his whole heart, and with his whole soul, and with his whole mind; and he loves his neighbor as himself. (See Matt 22:37-39) He does not, then, envy him, that he should be what he himself is; rather he even helps him as much as he can. Nor can he lose the neighbor whom he loves as himself; because he does not love in himself either those things which are subject to the eyes, or to any other senses of the body. Therefore within himself he has the one whom he loves as himself.

87. But the rule of love is this, that whatever good he wishes to come to himself, he wishes also to come to the other; and whatever evils he does not wish to happen to himself, he does not wish to happen to the other: this will he keeps toward all human beings. For toward no one is evil to be done: and love of the neighbor works no evil. (See Tob 4:16; Luke 6:31; Rom 13:10) Let us therefore love, as it is commanded, even our enemies, (See Matt 5:44) if we truly wish to be unconquered.

For no human being is unconquered through himself; but through that unchangeable law, which whoever serve, they alone are free. For thus what they love cannot be taken from them: which one thing makes men unconquered and perfect. For if a human being should love even a human being himself, not as himself, but as a beast of burden, or a bath, or a painted or chattering little bird, that is, in order to take from him some temporal pleasure or advantage; he must necessarily be a slave, not to a human being, but, what is more base, to so foul and detestable a vice, by which he does not love a human being as a human being is to be loved. And with this vice dominant, he is led on even to the extremity of life, or rather of death.

88. But not even thus is a man to be loved by a man as carnal brothers, or sons, or spouses, or any kinsfolk, or relations by marriage, or fellow citizens are loved. For that love too is temporal. For we would have no such ties, which come about by being born and dying, if our nature, remaining in the precepts and image of God, were not banished into this corruption. The reader will be relieved, I think, to know that about this indefensible statement Augustine himself writes in his Revisions 1.13.8: "I utterly reject this idea, which I have already rejected above [10.9], when correcting the first book of On Genesis Against the Manichees. For what it leads to is that we would have to believe that the first couple were not going to produce any further human beings, as if it were necessary that any born of the intercourse of male and female would be born only to die. The fact is, I had not yet seen that from ones who were not going to die would be born children who were not going to die, if human nature were not changed for the worse by that great sin; and thus that, if in both parents and offspring there had remained both felicity and fecundity, human beings would go on being born until the definite number of saints was reached which God had predetermined, born not in order to succeed their parents on their deaths but to reign with them as they continued to live. So these relationships and connections would have existed, even if nobody trespassed and nobody died."

And so the Truth itself, calling us back to our former and perfect nature, commands that we resist carnal habit, teaching that no one is fit for the kingdom of God who does not hate these carnal ties. (See Luke 9:62, 14:26) Nor ought this to seem inhuman to anyone. For it is more inhuman not to love in a human being that which is human, but to love that which is one's son: for this is not to love in him that which pertains to God, but to love that which pertains to oneself. What wonder, then, if he does not arrive at the kingdom, who loves not the common but the private thing?

"Indeed, both," someone says:

"Indeed, that one thing," says God. For the Truth says most truly: no one can serve two masters. For no one can perfectly love that to which we are called, unless he hates that from which we are called back. But we are called to the perfect human nature, such as God made it before our sin: but we are called back from the love of it, which by sinning we deserved. Wherefore we ought to hate that from which we long to be set free.

89. Let us therefore hate temporal ties, if we burn with the love of eternity. Let a human being love his neighbor as himself. (See Luke 10:27) For surely no one is to himself a father, or a son, or a relation by marriage, or anything of this kind, but only a human being: he, then, who loves someone as himself, ought to love in him that which he himself is to himself. But bodies are not what we are: therefore in a human being the body is not to be sought after or desired. For this also avails to what was commanded: you shall not covet your neighbor's thing. Wherefore whoever loves in his neighbor anything other than what he himself is to himself, does not love him as himself.

Human nature itself, then, is to be loved without the carnal condition, whether it is to be perfected or is perfected. All are kinsmen under one God the Father who love him and do his will. And they are to one another both fathers, when they counsel one another, and sons, when they obey one another, and brothers above all, because one Father calls them by his testament to one inheritance. (See Matt 12:48-50)

90. Wherefore, why should he not be unconquered in loving a human being, when in him he loves nothing but the human being, that is, the creature of God made to his image, nor can the perfect nature which he loves be lacking to him, since he himself is perfect?

For just as, for example, if anyone should love one who sings well, not this one or that one, but only anyone whatever who sings well, since he is himself a perfect singer; so he wishes all such people to exist, so that nevertheless what he loves may not be lacking to him, because he himself sings well. To get this sense, which seems to me to be the sense required, and the only one that makes good sense, I have had to re-arrange the Latin and add another tamen, the one rendered "still," while the one in the text as it stands is rendered "at least." I suggest it is the presence of this word twice, so close together, that caused some copyist to get the phrases in the wrong order. So what I am suggesting is that the original text ran thus: cum sit ipse cantator perfectus, ut tamen non ei desit quod diligit, quia ipse bene cantat; ita tamen vult omnes tales esse. The CCSL text, and that of all the editors, has: cum sit ipse cantator pefectus, ita vult omnes esse, ut tamen ei non desit quod diligit, quia ipse bene cantat. This would mean: "Being himself an excellent singer, he thus wants all singers to be such as he is, so that at least he does not go without what he loves, because he sings so well himself." For if he envies one who sings well, he no longer loves that, but either praise, or something else which he wishes to attain by singing well; and it can be lessened or taken from him, if another too sings well. He, then, who envies one who sings well, does not love one who sings well: but again, he who needs this does not sing well.

This can be said much more fittingly of one who lives well, because he can envy no one: for that to which those who live well arrive is just as much for all, nor does it become less when more have had it. And there can be a time when a good singer cannot sing fittingly, and needs the voice of another, by which what he loves may be displayed to him; as if he should dine somewhere where it is base for him to sing, but fitting to hear another singing: but to live well is always fitting. Wherefore whoever both loves this and does it, not only does not envy those who imitate him, but even offers himself to them most willingly and most humanely as far as he can; nor yet does he need them. For what he loves in them, he has in himself whole and perfect. Thus, since he loves his neighbor as himself, he does not envy him, because he does not envy himself either; he provides for him what he can, because he does for himself too;

he does not need him, because he does not need himself either: he needs only that to which, by clinging, he is blessed. But no one snatches God from him. He, then, is most truly and most certainly the unconquered human being who clings to God, not so as to merit from him some good outside, but for whom nothing else is good than to cling to God himself. (See Ps 73:28 (72))

91. This man, as long as he is in this life, uses a friend to repay kindness, uses an enemy to practice patience, uses those he can for beneficence, uses all for benevolence. And although he does not love temporal things, he himself rightly uses temporal things, and provides for human beings according to their lot, if he cannot provide for all equally. See Teaching Christianity 1 for the distinction between uti and frui, "to use" and "to enjoy."

Wherefore, if he addresses one of his intimates more readily than anyone else, he does not love him more, but has greater confidence in him, and a more open door of time. Because he has for him apertiorem temporis januam—a more open door of time. This is a rather striking metaphorical phrase, for which I cannot think of an English equivalent. For he handles those given over to time so much the better, the less he himself is bound to time. And so, since he cannot benefit all whom he equally loves, unless he preferred to benefit those more closely joined to him, he would be unjust.

But the joining of the mind is greater than that of the places or times in which we are born in this body, yet that joining is greatest which prevails over all. This man, then, is not afflicted by anyone's death, since he who loves God with his whole mind knows that what does not perish for God does not perish for him either. But God is the Lord both of the living and of the dead. (See Rom 14:9; 1 Thess 4:13) He is not wretched by anyone's wretchedness, because he is not made unjust by anyone's injustice. And as no one takes justice and God from him, so no one takes blessedness. And if at any time he is perhaps moved by someone's peril, or error, or grief; he allows it to avail only to that person's help, or correction, or consolation, not to his own subversion.

92. But in all his dutiful labors, by the sure expectation of future rest, he is not broken. For what will harm him who can use even an enemy well? For by the protection and defense of him by whose precept and gift he loves his enemies, he does not greatly fear enmities.

For this man, in tribulations, it is too little not to be saddened, unless he even rejoices, knowing that tribulation works patience, patience proof, proof hope, but hope does not confound: because the love of God is poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.

Who will harm this man? Who will subjugate him? The man who advances in prosperous circumstances learns, in harsh ones, what advance he has made.

For when there is an abundance of changeable goods, he does not trust in them; but when they are withdrawn, he recognizes whether they had not taken hold of him: because for the most part, when they are present with us, we think that we do not love them; but when they begin to be absent, we find out who we are. For that was present without our love which departs without our grief.

He seems, then, to conquer when he is conquered, who by overcoming arrives at that which he will lose with grief: and he conquers when he seems to be conquered, whoever by yielding arrives at that which he does not lose unwillingly.

93. He, then, whom freedom delights, let him seek to be free from the love of changeable things; and he whom it delights to reign, let him cling, made subject, to the one ruler of all, God, loving him more than himself. And this is perfect justice, by which we love better things more, and lesser things less. Let him love a wise and perfect soul as such as he sees it; a foolish one not as such, but because it can be perfect and wise: because he ought not to love even himself as foolish. For he who loves himself as foolish will not advance to wisdom; nor will anyone become such as he desires to be, unless he hates himself as he is.

But until one comes to wisdom and perfection, let him bear the folly of his neighbor with that mind with which he would bear his own, if he were foolish and loved wisdom. Wherefore, if even pride itself is a shadow of true freedom and of a true kingdom, even through it divine providence reminds us what we signify when we are vicious, and to what we ought to return when corrected.

94. Now indeed all spectacles, and all that is called curiosity, what else does it seek but joy from the knowledge of things? What, then, is more admirable, what more beautiful, than the Truth itself, to which every spectator confesses that he desires to arrive, when he watches vehemently lest he be deceived, and boasts of it if he knows and judges something more keenly and more vivaciously than the rest in watching?

The very conjurer, finally, professing nothing but deceit, they watch diligently, and observe most cautiously; and if they are deluded, because they cannot do his tricks, they are delighted by the knowledge of the one who deludes them. For if he too did not know by what causes the spectators are deceived, or were believed not to know, no one would applaud one who was equally going astray. But if one from the crowd catches him out, he thinks that he merits greater praise than that man, for no other reason than that he could not be deceived and tricked. But if he is exposed to many, that man is not praised; but the rest are laughed at who cannot catch out such things.

Thus every palm is given to knowledge, and to skill, and to the grasping of the Truth: to which those in no way arrive who seek it outside.

95. And so we are sunk in such great trifles and basenesses that, when asked which is better, the true or the false, we answer with one mouth that the true is better; yet in jokes and games, where it is surely not true things but feigned ones that delight us, we cling much more readily than to the precepts of the Truth itself. Thus we are punished by our own judgment and mouth, approving one thing by reason, pursuing another by vanity. (See Rom 7:14–23)

But something is ludicrous and laughable only so long as we know in comparison with what true thing it is laughed at. But by loving such things we fall away from the true, and no longer find the things of which they are imitations, the things at which we gape as though they were the first beautiful things, and, departing from them, we embrace our own phantasms.

For as we return to investigate the truth, these very things meet us on the way, and do not allow us to pass, robbing us by no strength, but by great ambushes, I suggest the text should read: sed magnis insidiis latrocinantur, instead of what we actually have: ". . . latrocinantia." This is syntactically unsound; but the translation remains the same either way. while we do not understand how widely what was said extends: beware of images.

96. And so some have rolled about with wandering thought through innumerable worlds. (I.e., the Epicureans) Others have thought that God could not be anything but a fiery body. (I.e., the Stoics) Others, supposing two opposing kingdoms, the brightness of an immense light stretched out everywhere through infinite spaces, yet split on one side as it were by a certain black wedge, and establishing such principles for things, have told fables with their own phantasms. I.e., the Manicheans, Augustine's particular concern in this work, since his friend and patron, the landowner Romanianus, to whom it is addressed, was still a member of the sect.

If I should compel them to swear whether they know these things to be true, perhaps they would not dare, but would say in turn: "You, then, show what is true." And if I answered them nothing, except that they should seek that light by which it appears to them, and is certain, that to believe is one thing and to understand another; (See Isa 7:9) they too would swear that this light can neither be seen with the eyes, nor thought of with any vastness of places, and that it is everywhere present to those who seek, and that nothing is found more certain and more serene than it.

97. And again all these things, which have now been said by me about this light of the mind, are manifest by no other than that same light. For through it I understand that the things which have been said are true, and that I understand these things I again understand through it.

And when again and again anyone understands that he understands something, and again understands this very thing, I understand that it goes on to infinity, and I understand that there are here no spaces of any swelling or instability: I understand also that I cannot understand unless I am alive, and I understand more certainly that I am made more alive by understanding. For eternal life surpasses temporal life by its very liveliness: nor do I behold what eternity is except by understanding.

For by the gaze of the mind I separate all changeableness from eternity, and in eternity itself I discern no spaces of time; because spaces of time consist of past and future motions of things. But nothing passes away in the eternal, and nothing is future; because both what passes away ceases to be, and what is future has not yet begun to be: but eternity only is; nor was it, as though it now were not; nor will it be, as though it were not yet. Wherefore it alone could most truly say to the human mind, I am who am, and of it could most truly be said, he who is has sent me.

98. And if we cannot yet cling to it, let us at least rebuke our phantasms, and cast such trifling and deceptive games out of the spectacle of the mind. Let us use the steps which divine providence has deigned to fashion for us. Above all in the scriptures, primarily those of the Old Testament; and, as he is just about to mention dreams, Augustine may well have had in mind first and foremost Jacob's ladder, Gen 28:12–13, and the way in which that episode is recalled by Jesus in John 1:51. For when, too greatly delighted by ludicrous figments, we vanished away in our thoughts, and turned our whole life into certain vain dreams; the unspeakable mercy of God, with the rational creature serving its laws, did not disdain, through sounds and letters, fire, smoke, cloud, pillar, as if certain visible words, in a way to play with our infancy by parables and likenesses, and to treat our inner eyes with mud of this kind. (See John 9:6)

99. Let us therefore distinguish what faith we owe to history, what faith we owe to understanding, what we commit to memory, not knowing it to be true, but nevertheless believing it.

And where the true is, which does not come and pass away, but always remains in the same way. What the manner of interpreting allegory is, In Expositions of the Psalms 103, sermon 1.13, Augustine gives the following definition of allegory: "Allegory occurs when words seem to point to one thing, while they signify something else to the mind." which is believed to have been said through Wisdom in the Holy Spirit: whether it suffices to lead it from older visible things to more recent visible things; (From the Old Testament to the events, the history, of the New Testament) or even up to the affections and nature of the soul, or even up to unchangeable eternity: whether some signify visible deeds, others the motions of minds, others the law of eternity; or whether some are found in which all these things are to be tracked down.

And what the stable faith is, whether historical and temporal, or spiritual and eternal, toward which every interpretation of authority is to be directed. And what profit there is, for understanding and obtaining eternal things, where the end of all good actions is, in faith concerning temporal things. And what the difference is between the allegory of history, and the allegory of deed, and the allegory of speech, and the allegory of sacrament.

And according to what properties of language the very speech of the divine Scriptures is to be taken. For every language has certain proper kinds of expressions of its own, which, when they are transferred into another language, seem absurd. What profit there is in so great a humility of speech, that not only the anger of God, and sadness, and awakening from sleep, and memory, and forgetting, and several other things which can befall good human beings, but even the names of repentings, of zeal, of drunkenness, and other such things, are found in the sacred Books. And whether the eyes of God, and hands, and feet, and other members of this kind which are named in the Scriptures, are to be referred to the visible form of the human body; or to the significations of intelligible and spiritual powers, like a helmet, and a shield, and a sword, and a belt, and other such things. (See Eph 6:14–17)

And what is above all to be sought, what profit there is for the human race that divine providence spoke with us thus, through the rational, and generative, and corporeal creature serving it. And when this one thing is known, all childish willfulness is excluded from minds, and the sacrosanct religion is introduced.

100. Having therefore left aside and repudiated theatrical and poetic trifles, let us feed and give drink to the mind, weary and seething with the hunger and thirst of empty curiosity and longing in vain to be refreshed and satisfied with empty phantasms, as though with painted feasts, by the consideration and treatment of the divine Scriptures: let us be instructed healthily by this truly liberal and noble play. If the marvels of spectacles and their beauty delight us, let us desire to see that Wisdom which reaches mightily even to the end, and disposes all things sweetly. For what is more marvelous than an incorporeal power fashioning and administering the corporeal world? Or what more beautiful than one ordering and adorning it?

101. But if all confess that these things are perceived through the body, and that the mind is better than the body, will the mind itself behold nothing through itself, or can what it beholds be anything but much more excellent and far more outstanding?

Indeed, rather, reminded by the things which we judge, to behold what that is according to which we judge, and turned from the works of the arts to the law of the arts, we shall behold with the mind that form, in comparison with which those things are foul which by its kindness are beautiful. For the invisible things of God, from the creation of the world, are clearly seen, being understood through the things that are made, and his eternal power and divinity.

This is the return from temporal to eternal things, and the re-formation from the life of the old man into the new man. But what is there from which a human being cannot be reminded to lay hold of the virtues, when he can be so from the vices themselves? For what does curiosity seek but knowledge, which cannot be certain except of eternal things, things that always hold themselves in the same way? What does pride seek but power, which is referred to ease of acting, which the soul does not find except when made subject to God, and turned to his kingdom with the highest love? What does the pleasure of the body seek but rest, which is not except where there is no want and no corruption?

The lower regions below, then, are to be guarded against, that is, the heavier punishments after this life, where there can be no recollection of truth, because no reasoning: and there is no reasoning, because the true light, which enlightens every man coming into this world, does not flood it. Wherefore let us make haste, and walk while the day is at hand, lest the darkness overtake us. (See John 12:35) Let us make haste to be freed from the second death, (See Rev 20:14) where there is no one who is mindful of God, and from hell, where no one will confess to God. (See Ps 6:5)

102. But wretched human beings, to whom things known grow cheap, and who rejoice in novelties, would rather learn than know, although knowledge is the end of learning. And those to whom ease of action is cheap would rather contend than conquer, although victory is the end of contending. And those to whom the health of the body is cheap would rather eat than be satisfied, and would rather enjoy the generative members than suffer no such excitement; there are found even those who would rather sleep than not be drowsy: although the end of all that pleasure is not to hunger and thirst, and not to desire intercourse, and not to be fatigued in body.

103. Wherefore those who desire the ends themselves first lack curiosity, knowing that knowledge which is within is the certain knowledge, and enjoying it as much as they can in this life. Then they receive ease of action, willfulness laid aside, knowing that the greater and easier victory is not to resist anyone's spiritedness; and this, as far as they can in this life, they perceive: finally, even the rest of the body, by abstaining from those things without which this life can be carried on;

and thus they taste how sweet the Lord is. (See Ps 34:8 (33)) Nor will there be any doubt about what is to come after this life; and by the faith, hope, and charity of their perfection (See 1 Cor 13:13) they are nourished. But after this life knowledge too will be perfected; because now we know in part, but when that which is perfect has come, it will not be in part: and all peace will be present; for now another law in my members fights against the law of my mind, but the grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord will free us from the body of this death; (See Rom 7:23–25)

because in great part we are in concord with our adversary, while we are with him on the way: (See Matt 5:25. The opponent in this case, of course, is understood to be Jesus Christ) and full health, and no want, and no fatigue will be present to the body; because this corruptible, in its own time and order in which the resurrection of the flesh is to come, will be clothed with incorruption. (See 1 Cor 15:53)

And it is no wonder if this is given to those who, in knowledge, love only truth, and in action only peace, and in the body only health. For that will be perfected in them after this life which in this life they love more.

104. Those, then, who so badly use so great a good of the mind that, outside it, they seek rather the visible things by which they ought to have been reminded to behold and love intelligible things, to them will be given the outer darkness. (See Matt 22:13) For the beginning of this darkness is the prudence of the flesh, and the feebleness of the corporeal senses. (See Rom 8:6) And those who are delighted by contests will be estranged from peace, and entangled in the greatest difficulties.

For the beginning of the greatest difficulty is war and strife. And this, I think, is what is signified by his hands and feet being bound, that is, all ease of acting is taken away. And those who wish to thirst and hunger, and to burn with lust and to be wearied, so that they may eat and drink and lie together and sleep gladly, love want, which is the beginning of the greatest pains. There will therefore be perfected in them what they love, so that there will be for them weeping and gnashing of teeth. See Matt 22:13, the fate of the man who came to the feast without a wedding garment, which gives the context for the whole of this section.

105. For there are many who love all these things at once viciously, and whose life is to watch, contend, eat, drink, lie together, sleep, and to embrace in their thought nothing but the phantasms which they gather from such a life; and from their fallacy to fix rules of superstition or impiety, by which they are deceived, and to which they cling, even if they try to abstain from the enticements of the flesh. Because they do not use well the talent committed to them, that is, the keenness of mind by which all who are called learned or witty or clever seem to excel. But they have it tied up in a napkin, or buried in the ground, (See the parable in Matt 25:14–30, with a glance at the parallel version, Luke 19:20) that is, wrapped up and oppressed by delicate and superfluous things, or by earthly desires.

Their hands and feet, then, will be bound, and they will be cast into the outer darkness; there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Not because they loved these things; (for who would love these things?) but because the things they loved are the beginnings of these things, and necessarily lead their lovers to them. For those who love going more than returning or arriving are to be sent into more distant places; since they are flesh, a spirit walking and not returning.

106. But he who uses well even the five senses of the body for believing and proclaiming the works of God, and for nourishing love of him, whether by action or by knowledge, for making his nature peaceful and for knowing God, enters into the joy of his Lord. (See Matt 25:21–23 and the whole parable, Matt 25:14–28, for the background to this section; also Luke 19:15–26) For this reason the talent which is taken from the one who uses it badly is given to the one who used the five talents well: not because the keenness of understanding can be transferred, but it was thus signified that ingenious people who are negligent and impious can lose this, and that diligent and pious people, though slower in talent, can attain it. An instance of how Augustine is being rather careless in his writing of this work, especially as he is drawing to the end of it and perhaps getting tired: he writes (dictates) ad eam, the feminine accusative pronoun, though its antecedent is the neuter noun acumen. Two MSS change this aberrant feminine to a correct neuter pronoun, illud; but, as all the others have the grammatically incorrect one, that is undoubtedly what Augustine dictated, no doubt assuming that its antecedent was the shorter form of acumen, which he nearly always uses, has just used, and will use again shortly, the feminine noun, acies.

For that talent was not given to the one who had received two; for he too has it who already lives well in action and knowledge; but to the one who had received five. For he does not yet have a keenness of mind fit for contemplating eternal things who believes only visible things, that is, temporal things: but he can have it who praises God the Artificer of all these sensible things, and is persuaded of him by faith, and awaits him by hope, and seeks him by charity. (See 1 Cor 13:13)

107. Since these things are so, I exhort you, my dearest fellow human beings and neighbors, and I exhort myself along with you, that we run with as great speed as we can toward that to which God exhorts us through his Wisdom. Let us not love the world, since all the things that are in the world are the desire of the flesh, and the desire of the eyes, and the ambition of the age. Let us not love, through the pleasure of the flesh, to corrupt and be corrupted, lest we come to the more wretched corruption of pains and torments. Let us not love contests, lest we be given into the power of the angels who rejoice in such things, to be humbled, bound, and beaten. Let us not love visible spectacles, lest, by straying from the Truth itself and loving shadows, we be cast into darkness. (See Matt 25:30)

108. Let our religion not be in our phantasms. For any true thing whatever is better than everything that can be feigned at will; and yet we ought not to worship the soul itself, although the soul is a true thing when it imagines false things. A true stalk of straw is better than a light formed by empty thought according to the will of the one supposing it; and yet it is the mark of a madman to believe that the stalk of straw, which we perceive and touch, is to be worshipped.

Let our religion not be the worship of human works. For the very artificers who fashion such things are better, whom yet we ought not to worship. Let our religion not be the worship of beasts. For the lowest human beings are better, whom yet we ought not to worship. Let our religion not be the worship of dead human beings: because if they lived piously, they are not so regarded as to seek such honors; but they wish him to be worshipped by us, by whose illuminating they rejoice that we are partners of their merit. (See Rev 19:10) They are therefore to be honored for imitation, not adored for religion. But if they lived badly, wherever they are they are not to be worshipped.

Let our religion not be the worship of demons; because all superstition, since it is a great punishment for human beings, and a most dangerous baseness, is the honor and triumph of those demons.

109. Let our religion not be the worship of lands and waters; because purer and clearer than these is the air, even when foggy, which yet we ought not to worship. Let our religion not be the worship even of purer and more serene air: because, when light is absent, it is shadowed over; and brighter than it is the gleam of fire, even of this fire, which yet, since we kindle and extinguish it at will, we surely ought not to worship. Let our religion not be the worship of the ethereal and heavenly bodies, which, although they are rightly set before all other bodies, yet any life whatever is better than they. Wherefore, if they are animate, any soul whatever is, through itself, better than any animate body whatever; and yet no one would judge that a vicious soul is to be worshipped.

Let our religion not be the worship of that life by which trees are said to live: since there is no sense in it; and of that kind is this life by which the numerousness of our body too is driven, by which even hairs and bones live, which are cut without sense: but better than this is the sentient life; and yet we ought not to worship the life of beasts.

110. Let our religion not be even the perfect and wise rational soul itself, whether established in the ministry of the universe, or in the ministry of its parts, or which, in the highest human beings, awaits the change and re-formation of its portion; since every rational life, if it is perfect, obeys the unchangeable truth speaking to it within, with itself, without noise, but, not obeying, becomes vicious. It does not, then, excel through itself, but through that which it willingly obeys.

What, then, the highest angel worships, that is to be worshipped even by the lowest human being, The reference of course is to the sin of Adam and Eve in Paradise—failure to worship the true God being seen, perhaps, in their hiding from him when they heard his voice in the garden, rather than in their "first disobedience" in eating of the tree of knowledge. because the very nature of the human being became lowest by not worshipping it. For the wise angel is not wise from one source, the human being from another; that one truthful from one source, the human being from another; but from one unchangeable Wisdom and Truth.

For this very thing was done by the temporal dispensation for our salvation, that the very Power of God, and the unchangeable Wisdom of God, (See 1 Cor 1:24) consubstantial with the Father and coeternal, deigned to take up human nature, through which he might teach us that that is to be worshipped by the human being which is to be worshipped by every intellectual and rational creature. Let us believe that the best angels too, and the most excellent ministries of God, wish this, that we worship along with them the one God by whose contemplation they are blessed.

For neither are we blessed by seeing an angel; but by seeing the Truth, by which we love even the angels themselves, and rejoice together with them. Nor do we envy them because they enjoy it more readily, and with no troubles intervening: but rather we love them, since we too have been commanded to hope for some such thing from the common Lord. (See Luke 20:36)

Wherefore we honor them by love, not by servitude. Nor do we establish temples for them: for they do not wish to be so honored by us; because they know that we ourselves, when we are good, are temples of the highest God. (See 1 Cor 3:16) And so it is rightly written that a human being was forbidden by an angel to adore him, but rather to adore the one Lord under whom that angel too was his fellow servant. (See Rev 22:8–9)

111. But those who invite us to serve them, and to worship them as gods, are like proud human beings, who, if they were allowed, would likewise wish to be worshipped: but to endure these human beings is less dangerous. For all dominion of human beings over human beings ends with the death either of those who rule or of those who serve: but slavery under the pride of evil angels is the more to be feared, on account of that very time which is after death. This too is easy for anyone to recognize, that under a human ruler it is permitted to have free thoughts: but those lords we dread in our very minds, which is the one eye for beholding and grasping the Truth.

Wherefore, if we are subject, according to our bond, to all the powers which are given to human beings for ruling the commonwealth, rendering to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's, (See Mark 12:17) there is no need to fear that anyone will demand this after our death. And the slavery of the soul is one thing, the slavery of the body another.

But just human beings, who have all their joys in the one God, when God is blessed through their deeds, then rejoice with those who praise; but when they themselves are praised as themselves, they correct those who err whom they can; and those whom they cannot, they do not rejoice with, and wish them to be corrected of that vice.

And if the good angels, and all the holy ministries of God, are like these, or even cleaner and holier; why do we fear lest we offend any of them, if we are not superstitious, when, with their help, tending toward the one God, and binding our souls to him alone, from which "religion" is believed to be named, On this the author has this to say in his Revisions 1.13.9: "The account given by these words of mine of where religion gets its name from was the one I favored the more. It did not escape me, I mean, that Latin authors had explained the origin of this word differently, saying that it was called religion because it had to do with binding (religitur). This word comes from legendo, that is eligendo (choosing), so that the Latin religo seems to be the same as eligo." The Latin word Augustine is deriving religio from is the verb religare, to bind tight or fasten. Modern etymologists are inclined to agree with him against Cicero. we are free of all superstition?

112. Behold, I worship one God, the one Principle of all things, and the Wisdom by which every wise soul is wise, and the very Gift by which every blessed thing is blessed. Whatever angel loves this God, I am certain that he also loves me. Whoever remains in him, and can perceive human prayers, hears me in him. Whoever has him as his own good, helps me in him, nor can he envy me my participation in him.

Let the adorers, then, or flatterers of the parts of the world, (The worshipers, that is, of the pagan gods of ancient Greece and Rome) tell me whom he does not win over to himself as the best, who worships this one thing which every best one loves, and in whose knowledge he rejoices, and to which Principle, by running back, he becomes the best.

But whatever angel loves his own excesses, and is unwilling to be subject to the Truth, and, desiring to rejoice in what is private to himself, has fallen from the common good of all good things and from true blessedness, to whom all the evil are given to be subjugated and pressed down, but no good one except to be exercised; with no one doubting it, he is not to be worshipped; whose joy is our misery, and whose loss is our return.

113. Let religion, then, bind us to the one almighty God; because between our mind, by which we understand him as Father, and the truth, that is, the inner light through which we understand him, there is no creature interposed. Wherefore let us venerate also the Truth itself, in no part unlike, in him and with him, which is the form of all things that were made by the One, and strive toward the One.

Whence it appears to spiritual minds that all things were made through this form, which alone fulfills what all things seek. Yet all these things would neither be made by the Father through the Son, nor be whole within their own bounds, unless God were in the highest degree good: who both envied no nature, which through him could be good, and in the good itself granted to some to remain as much as they would, to others as much as they could.

Wherefore it befits us to worship and hold the very Gift of God, equally unchangeable with the Father and the Son: the Trinity of one substance, one God from whom we are, through whom we are, in whom we are: (See Rom 11:36) from whom we departed, to whom we were made unlike, by whom we have not been permitted to perish: the Principle to which we run back, and the Form which we follow, and the Grace by which we are reconciled: the One by whose authorship we were founded, and his Likeness through which we are formed into unity, and the Peace by which we cling to unity: God who said, let it be made; (See John 1:3) and the Word through which was made everything that was made substantially and naturally; and the Gift of his kindness, because through him whatever was made by him through the Word both pleased and was reconciled to its author, so that it should not perish: one God, by whose creating we live, through whom, being re-formed, we live wisely, whom loving and enjoying we live blessedly: one God from whom are all things, through whom are all things, in whom are all things, to him be glory forever and ever. Amen. (See Rom 11:36)