Craiislatelr 6u tjjt REV. ARTHUR WEST HAD DAN, B.D.
HON. CANON OF WORCESTER, AND RECTOR OF BARTON-ON-THE-HEATH, WARWICKSHIRE.
EDINBUEGH: T. & T. CLAEK, 38, GEOEGE STEEET.
MDCCCLXXIII.
ihi INSTITUTE' OF MFDIAEVAl ^rtUSlS^^' s^ JO ELMSLEY PLACE '^' Toronto &^ Canada, "While the last sheet of this volume was passing through the press, the labours of the accomplished translator were terminated by death. Mr. Haddan is mourned by all who knew him as an accurate and careful scholar, and an able and earnest man.
TRANSLATOE'S PREFACE.
THE history of St. Augustine's treatise on the Trinity, as gathered by Tillemont and others from his own allusions to it, may be briefly given. It is placed by him in his Retrac- tations among the works written (w^hich in the present case, it appears, must mean begun) in a.d. 400. In letters of a.d. 410, 414, and the end of a.d. 415 (Ad Consentmm, Ep. 120, and two Ad JEvodmm, Epp. 162, 169), it is referred to as still unfinished and unpublished. But a letter of A.D. 412 (Ad Marcellinum, Ep. 143) intimates that -friends were at that time importuning him, although without success, to complete and publish it. And the letter to Aurelius, which was sent to that bishop with the treatise itself when actually completed, informs us that a portion of it, while it was still unrevised and incomplete, was in fact surreptitiously made public, — a pro- ceeding which the letters above cited postpone apparently until at least after a.d. 415. It was certainly still in hand in A.D. 416, inasmuch as in Book XIII. a quotation occurs from the 12th Book of the De Civitate Dei; and another quotation in Book XV., from the 90 th lecture on St. John, indicates most probably a date of at least a year later, viz. A.D, 417. The Retractations, which refer to it, are usually dated not later than A.D. 428. The letter to Bishop Aurelius also informs us that the work was many years in progress, and was begun in St. Augustine's early manhood, and finished in his old age. We may infer from this evidence that it was written by him between a.d. 400, when he was forty-six years old, and had been Bishop of Hippo about four years, and A.D. 428 at the latest; but probably it was published ten or twelve years before this date. He writes of it, indeed, himself, as if the " nonum prematur in annum " very inadequately represented Vi TRANSLATOR S PREFACE.
the amount of deliberate and patient thought which a subject so profound and so sacred demanded, and which he had striven to give to it; and as if, even at the very last, he shrank from publishing his work, and was only driven to do so in order to remedy the mischief of its partial and unauthorized publication. His motive for writing on the subject may be learned from the treatise itself It was not directed against any individual antagonist, or occasioned by any particular controversial emer- gency. In fact, his labours upon it were, he says, continually interrupted by the distraction of such controversies. Certain ingenious and subtle theories respecting types or resemblances of the Holy Trinity, traceable in human nature as being the image of God, seemed to him to supply, not indeed a logical proof, but a strong rational presumption, of the truth of the doctrine itself; and thus to make it incumbent upon him to expound and unfold them in order to meet rationalizing objectors upon (so to say) their own ground. He is careful not to deal with these analogies or images as if they either constituted a purely argumentative proof or exhausted the full meaning of the doctrine, upon both which assumptions such speculations have at all times been the fruitful parent both of presumptuous theorizing and of grievous heresy. But he nevertheless employs them more affirmatively than would perhaps have been the case. While modern theologians would argue negatively, from the triplicity of independent faculties, — united, nevertheless, in the unity of a single human person, — that any presumption of reason against the Trinity of persons in the Godhead is thereby, if not removed, at least materially and enormously lessened, St. Augustine seems to argue positively from analogous grounds, as though they con- stituted a direct intimation of the doctrine itself But he takes especial pains, at the same time, to dwell upon the incapacity of human thought to fathom the depths of the nature of God; and he carefully prefaces his reasonings by a statement of the Scripture evidence of the catholic doctrine as a matter of faith and not of reason, and by an explanation of difficult texts upon the subject. One of the most valuable portions, indeed, of the treatise is the eloquent and profound exposition given in this part of it of the rule of interpretation to be applied to Scripture TRANSLATOE S PREFACE. Vll language respecting the person of our Lord. It should be noticed, however, that a large proportion of St. Augustine's scriptural exegesis is founded upon a close verbal exposition of the old Latin version, and is frequently not borne out by the original text. And the rule followed in rendering Scrip- ture texts in the present translation has been, accordingly, wher- ever the argument in the context rests upon the variations of the old Latin, there to translate the words as St. Augustine gives them, while adhering otherwise to the language of the autho- rized English version. The reader's attention may allowably be drawn to the language of Book V. c. 10, and to its close resem- blance to some of the most remarkable phrases of the Atha- nasian Creed, and again to the striking passage respecting miracles in Book III. c. 5, and to that upon the nature of God at the beginning of Book V.; the last named of which seems to have suggested one of the profoundest passages in the pro- foundest of Dr. N'ewman's University Sermons (p. 353, ed. 1843). It may be added, that the writings of the Greek Fathers on the subject were, if not wholly unknown, yet un- familiar to Augustine, who quotes directly only the Latin work of Hilary of Poictiers.
It remains to say, that the translation here printed was niade about four years since by a friend of the writer of this preface, and that the latter's share in the work has been that of thoroughly revising and correcting it, and of seeing it through the press. He is therefore answerable for the work as now published.
In the Retractations (ii. 15) Augustine speaks of this work in the following terms: — " I spent some years in writing fifteen books concerning the Trinity, which is God. When, however, I had not yet finished the thirteenth Book, and some who were exceedingly anxious to have the work were kept waiting longer than they could bear, it was stolen from me in a less correct state than it either 6Q Vlll TRANSLATOR S PREFACE.
could or would have been had it appeared when I intended. And as soon as I discovered this, having other copies of it, I had determined at first not to publish it myself, but to mention what had happened in the matter in some other work; but at the urgent request of brethren, whom I could not refuse, I corrected it as much as I thought fit, and finished and pub- lished it, with the addition, at the beginning, of a letter that I had written to the venerable Aurelius, Bishop of Carthage, in which I set forth, in the way of prologue, what had happened, what I had intended to do of myself, and what love of my brethren had forced me to do."
The letter to which he here alludes is the following: — "To the most blessed Lord, whom he reveres with most sincere love, to his holy brother and fellow - priest. Pope Aurelius, Augustine sends health in the Lord.
" I began as a very young man, and have published in my old age, some books concerning the Trinity, who is the supreme and true God. I had in truth laid the work aside, upon dis- covering that it had been prematurely, or rather surreptitiously, stolen from me before I had completed it, and before I had revised and put the finishing touches to it, as had been my intention. For I had not designed to publish the Books one by one, but all together, inasmuch as the progress of the in- quiry led me to add the later ones to those which precede them. When, therefore, these people had hindered the fulfil- ment of my purpose (in that some of them had obtained access to the work before I intended), I had given over dictating it, with the idea of mailing my complaint public in some other work that I might write, in order that whoso could might know that the Books had not been published by myself, but had been taken away from my possession before they were in my own judgment fit for publication. Compelled, however, by the eager demands of many of my brethren, and above all by your command, I have taken the pains, by God's help, to complete the work, laborious as it is; and as now corrected (not as I wished, but as I could, lest the Books should differ very widely from those which had surreptitiously got into people's hands), I have sent them to your Eeverence by my very dear son and fellow - deacon, and have allowed them TEANSLATOR S PREFACE. IX to be heard, copied, and read by every one that pleases. Doubtless, if I could have fulfilled my original intention, although they would have contained the same sentiments, they would have been worked out much more thoroughly and clearly, so far as the difficulty of unfolding so profound a subject, and so far, too, as my own powers, might have allowed. There are some persons, however, who have the first four, or rather five. Books, without the prefaces, and the twelfth with no small part of its later chapters omitted. But these, if they please and can, will amend the whole, if they become acquainted with the present edition. At any rate, I have to request that you will order this letter to be prefixed separately, but at the beginning of the Books. Farewell. Pray for me."
i CONTENTS.
BOOK I.
PAGE The unity and equality of the Trinity are demonstrated out of the Scrip- tures; and the true interpretation is given of those texts which are wrongly alleged against the equality of the Son, 1 BOOK II.
The equality of the Trinity maintained against objections drawn from those texts which speak of the sending of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,. 42 BOOK III.
The appearances of God to the Old Testament saints are discussed,..79 BOOK IV.
Augustine explains for what the Son of God was sent; but, however, that the Son of God, although made less by being sent, is not therefore less because the Father sent Him; nor yet the Holy Spirit less because both the Father sent Him and the Son, 107 BOOK V.
He proceeds to refute those arguments which the heretics put forward, not out of the Scriptures, but from their own conceptions. And first he refutes the objection, that to beget and to be begotten, or that to be begotten and not-begotten, being different, are therefore difierent sub- stances, and shows that these things are spoken of God relatively, and not according to substance, 145 BOOK VI.
In reply to the argument alleged against the equality of the Son from the apostle's words, saying that Christ is the "power of God and the wis- dom of God," he propounds the question whether the Father Himself is not wisdom. But deferring for a while the answer to this, he adduces xii CONTENTS.
xii CONTENTS.
further proof of the unity and equality of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit; and that God ought to be said and believed to be a Trinity, not threefold. And he adds an explanation of the saying of Hilary — Eternity in the Father, Appearance in the Image, and Use in the Gift, 165 BOOK VIl.
He resolves the question he had deferred, and teaches us that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit is one power and one wisdom, no other- wise than one God and one essence. And he then inquires how it is that, in speaking of God, the Latins say, One essence, three persons; but the Greeks, One essence, three substances or hypostases, BOOK VIII.
He advances reasons to show not only that the Father is not greater than the Son, but that neither are both together anything greater than the Holy Spirit, nor any two together in the same Trinity anything greater than one, nor all three together anything greater than each singly. He also intimates that the nature of God may be understood from our understanding of truth, from our knowledge of the supreme good, and from our implanted love of righteousness; but above all, that our knowledge of God is to be sought through love, in which he notices a trio of things which contains a trace of the Trinity,...
BOOK IX.
He instructs us that there is a kind of trinity discernible in man, who is the image of God, viz. the mind, and the knowledge by which the mind knows itself, and the love wherewith it loves both itself and its own knowledge; these three being mutually equal and of one essence,. 222 BOOK X.
That there is yet another and a more manifest trinity to be found in the mind of man, viz, in his memory, understanding, and will,..241 BOOK XI.
That even in the outer man some traces of a trinity may be detected, as e.g. in the bodily sight, and in the recollection of objects seen with the bodily sight, 261 BOOK XII.
After premising the difference between wisdom and knowledge, he points out a kind of trinity in that Avhich is properly called knowledge; but one which, although we have reached in it the inner man, is not yet to be called the image of God, 284 CONTENTS. Xlll BOOK XIII.
PAGE He expounds this trinity that he has found in knowledge by commending Christian faith, 307 BOOK XIV.
He speaks of the true wisdom of man, viz. that by which he remembers, understands, and loves God; and shows that it is in this very thing that the mind of man is the image of God, although his mind, which is here renewed in the knowledge of God, will only then be made the perfect likeness of God in that image when there shall be a perfect BOOK XV.
He embraces in a brief compendium the contents of the previous books; and finally shows that the Trinity, in the perfect sight of which con- sists the blessed life that is promised us, is here seen by us as in a glass and in an enigma, so long as it is seen through that image of God which we ourselves are, 377 THE FIFTEEN BOOKS OF AURELIUS AUGUSTINUS, BISHOP OF HIPPO, ON THE TRINITY. BOOK I IN WHICH THE UNITY AND EQUALITY OF THE SUPREME TPJNITY IS ESTABLISHED FROM THE SACRED SCRIPTURES, AND SOME TEXTS ALLEGED AGAINST THE EQUALITY OF THE SON ARE EXPLAINED.
Chap. i. — This work is written against those who sophistically assail the faith of the Trinity, through misuse of reason. They who dispute concerning God err from a threefold cause. Holy Scripture, removing what is false, leads us on by degrees to things divine. What true immortality is. We are nourished by faith, that ice may be enabled to apprehend things divine.
1. npHE foHowing dissertation concerning the Trinity, as the JL reader ought to be informed, has been written in order to guard against the sophistries of those who disdain to begin with faith, and are deceived by a crude and perverse love of reason. Now one class of such men endeavour to transfer to things incorporeal and spiritual the ideas they have formed, whether through experience of the bodily senses, or by natural human wit and diligent quickness, or by the aid of art, from things corporeal; so as to seek to measure and conceive of the former by the latter. Others, again, frame whatever senti- ments they may have concerning God according to the nature or affections of the human mind; and through this error they govern their discourse, in disputing concerning God, by dis- torted and fallacious rules. While yet a third class strive indeed to transcend the whole creation, which doubtless is DE TRIN. A ON THE TRINITY. [BOOK I.
changeable, in order to raise their thought to the unchange- able substance, which is God; but being weighed down by the burden of mortality, whilst they both would seem to know what they do not, and cannot know what they would, preclude themselves from entering the very path of understanding, by an over-bold affirmation of their own presumptuous judgments; choosing rather not to correct their own opinion when it is perverse, than to change that which they have once defended. And, indeed, this is the common disease of all the three classes which I have mentioned, — viz., both of those who frame their thoughts of God according to things corporeal, and of those who do so according to the spiritual creature, such as is the soul; and of those who neither regard the body nor the spiri- tual creature, and yet think falsely about God; and are indeed so much the further from the truth, that nothing can be found answering to their conceptions, either in the body, or in the made or created spirit, or in the Creator Himself. For he who thinks, for instance, that God is white or red, is in error; and yet these things are found in the body. Again, he who thinks of God as now forgetting and now remembering, or anything of the same kind, is none the less in error; and yet these things are found in the mind. But he who thinks that God is of such power as to have generated Himself, is so much the more in error, because not only does God not so exist, but neither does the spiritual nor the bodily creature; for there is nothing whatever that generates its own existence.
2. In order, therefore, that the human mind might be purged from falsities of this kind, Holy Scripture, which suits itself to babes, has not avoided words drawn from any class of things really existing, through which, as by nourishment, our understanding might rise gradually to things divine and transcendent. For, in speaking of God, it has both used words taken from things corporeal, as when it says, " Hide me under the shadow of Thy wings; " ^ and it has borrowed many things from the spiritual creature, whereby to signify that which indeed is not so, but must needs so be said: as, for instance, "I the Lord thy God am a jealous God;"^ and, "It repenteth me that I have made man." ^ But it has drawn 1 Ps. xvii. 8. 2 Ex. XX. 5. » Gen. vi. 7.
CHAP. I.] ANTHROPOMOEPHISM.
no words whatever, whereby to frame either figures of speech or enigmatic sayings, from things which do not exist at all. And hence it is that they who are shut out from the truth by that third kind of error are more mischievously and emptily vain than their fellows; in that they surmise respecting God, what can neither be found in Himself nor in any creature. Tor divine Scripture is wont to frame, as it were, allurements for children, from the things which are found in the creature; whereby, according to their measure, and as it were by steps, the affections of the weak may be moved to seek those things that are above, and to leave those things that are below. But the same Scripture rarely employs those things which are spoken properly of God, and are not found in any creature; as, for instance, that which was said to Moses, " I am that I am; " and, " I Am hath sent me to you." ^ For since both body and soul also are said in some sense to he, Holy Scrip- ture certainly would not so express itself unless it meant to be understood in some special sense of the term. So, too, that which the apostle says, " Who only hath immortality." ^ Since the soul also both is said to be, and is, in a certain manner immortal. Scripture would not say " only hath," unless because true immortality is unchangeableness; which no creature can possess, since it belongs to the Creator alone. So also James says, " Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of Lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning." ^ So also David, " Thou shalt change them, and they shall be changed; but Thou art the same." * 3. Further, it is difficult to contemplate and fully know the substance of God; who fashions things changeable, yet without any change in Himself, and creates things temporal, yet with- out any temporal movement in Himself And it is necessary, therefore, to purge our minds, in order to be able to see inef- fably that which is ineffable; whereto not having yet attained, we are to be nourished by faith, and led by such ways as are more suited to our capacity, that we may be rendered apt and able to comprehend it. And hence the apostle says, that " in Christ indeed are hid all the treasures of wisdom and know- ON THE TRINITY. [BOOK I.
ledge; " ^ and yet has commended Him to us, as to babes in Christ, who, although already born again by His grace, yet are still carnal and psychical, not by that divine virtue wherein He is equal to the Father, but by that human infirmity whereby He was crucified. Tor he says, " I determined not to know anything among you, save Jesus Christ and Him crucified; " ^ and then he continues, " And I was with you in weakness, and in fear, and in much trembling." And a little after he says to them, " And I, brethren, could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal, even as unto babes in Christ. I have fed you with milk, and not with meat: for hitherto ye were not able to bear it, neither yet now are ye able." ^ There are some who are angry at language of this kind, and think it is used in slight to themselves, and for the most part prefer rather to believe that they who so speak to them have nothing to say, than that they themselves cannot understand what they have said. And sometimes, indeed, we do allege to them, not certainly that account of the case which they seek in their inquiries about God, — because neither can they themselves receive it, nor can we perhaps either ap- prehend or express it, — but such an account of it as to demonstrate to them how incapable and utterly unfit they are to understand that which they require of us. But they, on their parts, because they do not hear what they desire, think that we are either playing them false in order to conceal our own ignorance, or speaking in malice because we grudge them knowledge; and so go away indignant and perturbed.
Chap. ii. — In what manner this ivorh proposes to discourse concerning the T^'inity.
4. Wherefore, our Lord God helping, we will undertake to render, as far as we are able, that very account which they so importunately demand: viz., that the Trinity is the one and only and true God, and also how the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are rightly said, believed, understood, to be of one and the same substance or essence; in such wise that they may not fancy themselves mocked by excuses on our part, but may find by actual trial, both that the highest good is that which is discerned by the most purified minds, and that for » Col. ii. 3. 2 2 Cor. ii. 2, 3. * 1 Cor. iii. 1, 2.
CHA.P. III.] PRELIMINARY REMARKS. 5 this reason it cannot be discerned or understood by themselves, because the eye of the human mind, being weak, is dazzled in that so transcendent light, unless it be invigorated by the nourishment of the righteousness of faith. First, however, we must demonstrate, according to the authority of the Holy Scrip- tures, whether the faith be so. Then, if God be willing and aid us, we may perhaps at least so far serve these talkative arguers — more puffed up than capable, and therefore labouring under the more danc^erous disease — as to enable them to find something which they are not able to doubt, that so, in that case where they cannot find the like, they may be led to lay the fault to their own minds, rather than to the truth itself or to our reasonings; and thus, if there be anything in them of either love or fear towards God, they may return and begin from faith in due order: perceiving at length how healthful a medicine has been provided for the faithful in the holy Church, whereby a heedful piety, healing the feebleness of the mind, may render it able to perceive the unchangeable truth, and hinder it from falling headlong, through disorderly rashness, into pestilent and false opinion. ISTeither will I myself shrink from inquiry, if I am anywhere in doubt; nor be ashamed to learn, if I am anywhere in error.