10. This something else then, by following after which the soul becomes possessed of vir- tue and wisdom, is either a wise man or God. But we have said already that it must be some- thing that we cannot lose against our will. No one can think it necessary to ask whether a wise man, supposing we are content to fol- low after him, can be taken from us in spite of our unwillingness or our persistence. God then remains, in following after whom we live well, and in reaching whom we live both well and happily. If any deny God's existence, why should I consider the method of dealing with them, when it is doubtful whether they ought to be dealt with at all? At any rate, it would require a different starting-point, a different plan, a different investigation from what we are now engaged in. I am now ad- dressing those who do not deny the existence of God, and who, moreover, allow that human affairs are not disregarded by Him. For there is no one, I suppose, who makes any profession of religion but will hold that divine Providence cares at least for our souls.
CHAP. 7. — THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD TO BE OBTAINED FROM THE SCRIPTURE. THE PLAN AND PRINCIPAL MYSTERIES OF THE DIVINE SCHEME OF REDEMPTION.
11. But how can we follow after Him whom we do not see? or how can we see Him, we who are not only men, but also men of weak understanding? For though God is seen not with the eyes but with the mind, where can such a mind be found as shall, while obscured by foolishness, succeed or even attempt to drink in that light? We must therefore have recourse to the instructions of those whom we have reason to think wise. Thus far argu- ment brings us. For in human things reason- ing is employed, not as of greater certainty, but as easier from use. But when we come to divine things, this faculty turns away; it cannot behold; it pants, and gasps, and burns with desire; it falls back from the light of truth, and turns again to its wonted obscurity, not from choice, but from exhaustion. What a dreadful catastrophe is this, that the soul should be reduced to greater helplessness when it is seeking rest from its toil! So, • when we are hasting to retire into darkness, it will be well that by the appointment of ador- able Wisdom we should be met by the friendly shade of authority, and should be attracted by the wonderful character of its contents, and by the utterances of its pages, which, like shadows, typify and attemper the truth.
12. What more could have been done for our salvation? Wnat can be more gracious and bountiful than divine providence, which, when man had fallen from its laws, and, in just retribution for his coveting mortal things, had brought forth a mortal offspring, still did not wholly abandon him? For in this most righteous government, whose ways are strange and inscrutable, there is, by means of unknown connections established in the creatures sub- ject to it, both a severity of punishment and a mercifulness of salvation. How beautiful this is, how great, how worthy of God, in fine, how true, which is all we are seeking for, we shall never be able to perceive, unless, begin- ning with things human and at hand, and holding by the faith and the precepts of true religion, we continue without turning from it in the way which God has secured for us by the separation of the patriarchs, by the bond of the law, by the foresight of the prophets, by the witness of the apostles, by the blood of the martyrs, and by the subjugation of the Gentiles. From this point, then, let no one ask me for my opinion, but let us rather hear the oracles, and submit our weak inferences to the announcements of Heaven.'
CHAP. 8. — GOD IS THE CHIEF GOOD, WHOM WE ARE TO SEEK AFTER WITH SUPREME AFFEC- TION.
13. Let US see how the Lord Himself in the gospel has taught us to live: how, too, Paul the apostle, — for the Manichseans dare not reject these Scriptures. Let us hear, O Christ, what chief end Thou dost prescribe to us; and that is evidently the chief end I [Augiistin's transition from his fine Platonizing discussion of virtue, the chief.i;ood. etc., to the patriarchs, the law, and the prophets is very fine rhetorically and apologetically.— A. H. N.J Chap. IX.]
OF THE MORALS OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH.
45 after which we are told to strive with supreme affection. "Thou slialt love," He says, " the Lord th)- God." Tell me also, I pray Thee, what must be the measure of love; for I fear lest the desire enkindled in my heart should either exceed or come short in fervor. " With all thy heart," He says. Nor is that enough. "With all thy soul." Nor is it enough yet. " With all thy mind." ' What do you wish more? I might, perhaps, wish more if I could see the possibility of more. What does Paul say on this? " We know,'' he says, " that all things issue in good to them that love God." Let him, too, say what is the measure of love. " Who then," he says, "shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or the sword?"- We have heard, then, what and how much we must love; this we must strive after, and to this we must refer all our plans. The perfection of all our good things and our perfect good is God. We must neither come short of this nor go beyond it: the one is dan- gerous, the other impossible.
CHAP. 9. HARMONY OF THE OLD AND NEW TESTAMENT ON THE PRECEPTS OF CHARITY. ^ 14. Come now, let us examine, or rather let us take notice, — for it is obvious and can be seen, at once, — whether the authority of the Old Testament too agrees with those state- ments taken from the gospel and the apostle. What need to speak of the first statement, when it is clear to all that it is a quotation from the law given by Moses? For it is there written, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind."'* And not to go farther for a passage of the Old Testament to com- pare with that of the apostle, he has himself added one. For after saying that no tribula- tion, no distress, no persecution; no pressure of bodily want, no peril, no sword, separates us from the love of Christ, he immediately adds, "As it is written. For Thy sake we are in suffering all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter. '^s The Mani- chseans are in the habit of saying that this is an interpolation, — so unable are they to reply, that they are forced in their extremity to say this. But every one can see that this is all that is left for men to say when it is proved that they are wrong.
3 ['I'he most satisfactory feature of Augiistin's apoIoRy for the. ( )ld Testament Scriptures is his demonstration of the substan- tial asireement of the Old Testament with undisputed portions of the New Testament. — A. H.N.| 4 Deut. vi. 5. S Rom. \ iii. 36; cf. Ps. xliv. 22.
15. And yet I ask them if they deny that this is said in the Old Testament, or if they hold that the passage in the Old Testament does not agree with that of the apostle. For the first, the books will prove it; and as for the second, those prevaricators who fly off at a tangent will be brought to agree with me, if they will only reflect a little and consider what is said, or else I will press upon them the opinion of those who judge impartially. For what could agree more harmoniously than these passages? For tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, peril, cause great suffering to man while in this life. So all these words are implied in the single quo- tation from the law, where it is said, " For Thy sake we are in suffering."^ The only other thing is the sword, which does not in- flict a painful life, but removes whatever life it meets with. Answering to this are the words, " We are accounted as sheep for the slaughter." And love could not have been more plainly expressed than by the words, " For Thy sake." Suppose, then, that this testimony is not found in the Apostle Paul, but is quoted by me, must you not prove, you heretic, either that this is not written in the old law, or that it does not harmonize with the apostle? And if you dare not say either of these things (for you are shut up by the reading of the manuscript, which will show that it is written, and by common sense, which sees that nothing could agree better with what is said by the apostle), why do you imagine that there is any force in accusing the Script- ures of being corrupted? And once more, what will you reply to a man who says to you. This is what I understand, this is my view, this is my belief, and I read these books only because 1 see that everything in them agrees with the Christian faith? Or tell me at once if you will venture deliberately to tell me to the face that we are not to believe that the apostles and martyrs are spoken of as having endured great sufferings for Christ's sake, and as having been accounted by their per- secutors as sheep for the slaughter? If you cannot say this, why should you bring a charge against the book in which I find what you acknowledge I ought to believe?
6 Retract, i. 7, § 2:—" In the book on the morals of the Cath- olic Church, where I have quoted the words, ' For Thy sake we are in suffering all day long, we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter,' the inaccuracy of my manuscript misled me; for my recollection of the Scriptures was defective from my not being at that time familiar with them. For the reading of the other manu- scripts has a different meaning: not, we suffer, but we suffer death, or, in one word, we are killed. That this is tlie true reading is shown by the Greek text of the Septuagint, from which the Old Testament ivas translated into I.atin. I have indeed made a good many remarkson the words,' For thy sake wc suffer," and the things said are not wrong in themselves; but, as regards the harmony of the Oid and New Testaments, thiscase certainly does not prove it. 'I'he error originated in the way mentioned above, and this har- mony is afterwards abundantly proved from other passages."
46 THE WORKS OF ST. AUGUSTIN.
rcHAP. XI.
CHAP. lO. WHAT THE CHURCH TEACHES ABOUT GOD. THE TWO GODS OF THE MANICH^ANS.
1 6. Will you say that you grant that we are bound to love God, but not the God wor- shipped by those who acknowledge the au- thority of the Old Testament? In that case you refuse to worship the God who made heaven and earth, for this is the God set forth all through these books. And you admit that the whole of the world, which is called heaven and earth, had God and a good God for its author and maker. For in speaking to you about God we must make a distinction. For you hold that there are two gods, one good and the other bad.
But if you say that you worship and ap- prove of worshipping the God who made heaven and earth, but not the God supported by the authority of the Old Testament, you act impertinently in trying, though vainly, to attribute to us views and opinions altogether unlike the wholesome and profitable doctrine we really hold. Nor can your silly and pro- fane discourses be at all compared with the expositions in which learned and pious men of the Catholic Church open up those Script- ures to the willing and worthy. Our under- standing of the law and the prophets is quite different from what you suppose. Mistake »us no longer. We do not worship a God who repents, or is envious, or needy, or cruel, or who takes pleasure in the blood of men or beasts, or is pleased with guilt and crime, or whose possession of the earth is limited to a little corner of it. These and such like are the silly notions you are in the habit of de- nouncing at great length. Your denuncia- tion does not touch us. The fancies of old women or of children you attack with a vehemence that is only ridiculous. Any one whom you persuade in this way to join you shows no fault in the teaching of the Church, but only proves his own ignorance of it.
17. If, then, you have any human feeling, — if you have any regard for your own wel- fare,— you should rather examine with dili- gence and piety the meaning of these pas- sages of Scripture. You should examine, un- happy beings that you are; for we condemn with no less severity and copiousness any faith which attributes to God what is unbe- coming Him, and in those by whom these passages are literally understood we correct the mistake of ignorance, and look upon per- sistence in it as absurd. And in many other things which you cannot understand there is in the Catholic teaching a check on the belief of those who have, got beyond mental child- ishness, not in years, but in knowledge and understanding — old in the progress towards wisdom. For we learn the folly of believing that God is bounded by any amount of space, even though infinite; and it is held unlawful to think of God, or any part of Him, as mov- ing from one place to another. And should any one suppose that anything in God's sub- stance or nature can suffer change or conver- sion, he will be held guilty of wild profanity. There are thus among us children who think of God as having a human form, which they suppose He really has, which is a most de- grading idea; and there are many of full age to whose mind the majesty of God appears in its inviolableness and unchangeableness as not only above the human body, but above their own mind itself. These ages, as we said, are distinguished not by time, but by virtue and discretion. Among you, again, there is no one who will picture God in a human form; but neither is there one who sets God apart from the contamination of human error. As regards those who are fed like crying babies at the breast of the Catholic Church, if they are not carried off by heretics, they are nourished according to the vigor and capacity of each, and arrive at last, one in one way and another in another, first to a perfect man, and then to the maturity and hoary hairs of wisdom, when they may get life as they desire, and life in perfect happiness.
CHAP. II. GOD IS THE ONE OBJECT OF LOVE; THEREFORE HE IS MAN's CHIEF GOOD. NOTH- ING IS BETTER THAN GOD. GOD CANNOT BE LOST AGAINST OUR WILL.
18. Following after God is the desire of hap- piness; to reach God is happiness itself. We follow after God by loving Him; we reach Him, not by becoming entirely what He is, but in nearness to Him, and in wonderful and immaterial contact with Him, and in be- ing inwardly illuminated and occupied by His truth and holiness. He is light itself; we get enlightenment from Him. The greatest commandment, therefore, which leads to happy life, and the first, is this: " Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and soul, and mind.^' For to those who love the Lord all things issue in good. Hence Paul adds shortly after, " I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor virtue, nor things present, nor things future, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, ' [Ausfiistin's virtus takes the place of the Greek Suva/iet? and the Vuljrate vtrtntes. It is not quite certain what meanin.i; he attached to the expression. He seems to waver between the idea o{ pomer and that of virtue in the ethical sense, and finally settles down to the use of the term in the latter sense. That this does not accord with the meaning of the Apostle is evident.— A. H. N.]
Chap. XII. J OF THE MORALS OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH.
47 shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord."' If, then, to those who love God all things is- sue in good, and if, as no one doubts, the chief or perfect good is not only to be loved, but to be loved so that nothing shall be loved better, as is expressed in the words, "With all thy soul, with all thy heart, and with all thy mind,'' who, I ask, will not at once con- clude, when these things are all settled and most surely believed, that our chief good which we must hasten to arrive at in prefer- ence to all other things is nothing else than God? And then, if nothing can separate us from His love, must not this be surer as well as better than any other good?
19. But let us consider the points separ- ately. No one separates us from this by threatening death. For that with which we love God cannot die, except in not loving God; for death is not to love God, and that is when we prefer anything to Him in affec- tion and pursuit. No one separates us from this in promising life; for no one separates us from the fountain in promising water. Angels CHAP. 12. WE ARE UNITED TO GOD hV LOVK, IN SUBJECTION TO HIM.
do not separate us; for the mind cleaving to God is not inferior in strength to an angel. Virtue does not separate us; for if what is here called virtue is that which has power in this world, the mind cleaving to God is far above the whole world. Or if this virtue is perfect rectitude of our mind itself, this in the case of another will favor our union with God, and in ourselves will itself unite us with God. Present troubles do not separate us; for we feel their burden less the closer we cling to Him from whom they try to separate us. The promise of future things does not separ- ate us; for both future good of every kind is surest in the promise of God, and nothing is better than God Himself, who undoubtedly is already present to those who truly cleave to Him. Height and depth do not separate us; for if the height and depth of knowledge are what is meant, I will rather not be inquis- itive than be separated from God; nor can any instruction by which error is removed separate me from Him, by separation from whom it is that any one is in error. Or if what is meant are the higher and lower parts of this world, how can the promise of heaven separate me from Him who made heaven?
Or who from beneath can frighten me into forsaking God, when I should not have known "f things beneath but by forsaking Him? In fine, what place can remove me from His love, when He coul^ not be all in every place un- less He were contained in none?
20. "No Other creature," he says, separ- • ates us. O man of profound mysteries! He thought it not enough to say, no creature: but he says no other creature; teaching that that with which we love God and by which we cleave to God, our mind, namely, and understanding, is itself a creature. Thus the body is another creature; and if the mind is an object of intel- lectual perception, and is known only by this means,the other creature is all that is an object of sense, which as it were makes itself known through the eyes, or ears, or smell, or taste, or touch, and this must be inferior to what is perceived by the intellect alone. Now, as • God also can be known by the worthy, only intellectually, => exalted though He is above the intelligent mind as being its Creator and Au- thor, there was danger lest the human mind, • ftom being reckoned among invisible and im- material things, should be thought to be of //le same nature with Him who created it, and so should fall away by pride from Him to whom it should be united by love. For the mind becomes like God, to the extent vouchsafed by its subjection of itself to Him for informa- tion and enlightenment. And if it obtains the greatest nearness by that subjection which produces likeness, it must be far removed from Him by that presumption which would make the likeness greater. It is this presumption which leads the mind to refuse obedience to the laws of God, in the desire to be sovereign, as God is.
21. The farther, then, the mind departs from God, not in space, but in affection and lust after things below Him, the more it is filled with folly and wretchedness. So by love it returns to God, — a love which places it not along with God, but under Him. And the more ardor and eagerness there is in this, the happier and more elevated will the mind be, and with God as sole governor it will be in perfect liberty. Hence it must know that it is a creature. It must believe what is the truth, — that its Creator remains ever possessed of the inviolable and immut- able nature of truth and wisdom, and must confess, even in view of the errors from which it desires deliverance, that it is liable to folly and falsehood. But then again, it must take ^ care that it be not separated by the love of the other creature, that is, of this visible world, from the love of God Himself, which sanctifies it in order to lasting happiness. No ' [/. e. only by the use of the mcnt.il f.qciilty of which God Himself is the Creator and Author; not by any independently ex- isting: power " of the Siinie nature with Him who created it.''— A. H. N.]
48 THE WORKS OF ST. AUGUSTIN.
[Chap. XV.
Other creature, then, — for we are our.selves a creature, — separates us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
CHAP. 13. WE ARE JOINED INSEPArKbLY TO GOD BY CHRIST AND HIS SPIRIT.
22. Let this same Paul tell us who is this Christ Jesus our Lord. "To them that are called," he says, "we preach Christ the vir- tue of God, and the wisdom of God." ' And does not Christ Himself say, " I am the truth?" If, then, we ask what it is to live well,— that is, to strive after happiness by » living well, — it must assuredly be to love vir- tue, to love wisdom, to love truth, and to love with all the heart, with all the soul, and with all the mind; virtue which is inviolable and immutable, wisdom which never gives place to folly, truth which knows no change or va- riation from its uniform character. Through this the Father Himself is seen; for it is said, "No man cometh unto the Father but t^y me." To this we cleave by sanctification. For when sanctified we burn with full and perfect love, which is the only security for our not turning away from God, and for our being conformed to Him rather than to this world; for "He has predestinated ns," says the same apostle, "that we should be con- formed to the image of His Son.^'^ 23. It is through love, then, that we be- come conformed to God; and by this con- formation, and configuration, and circumcis- ion from this world we are not confounded with the things which are properly subject to us. And this is done by tlie Holy Spirit. "For hope," he says, "does not confound us; for the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit, which is given unto us." '* But we could not possibly be restored to perfection by the Holy Spirit, unless He Himself continued always perfect and immut- able. And this plainly could not be unless He were of the nature and of the very sub- stance of God, who alone is always possessed of immutability and invariableness. " The creature," it is affirmed, not by me but by Paul, "has been made subject to vanity." s And what is subject to vanity is unable to separate us from vanity, and to unite us to the truth. But the Holy Spirit does this for us. He is therefore no creature. For what- ever is, must be either God or the creature.
CHAP. 14. — WE CLEAVE TO THE TRINITY, OUR CHIEF GOOD, BY LOVE.
24. We ought then to love God, the Trinity - John xiv. 6. 5 Rom. viii. 20.
3 Rom. viii. 29.
in unity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; for this must be said to be God Himself, for it is said of God, truly and in the most exalted sense, " Of whom are all things, by whom are all things, in whom are all things." Those are Paul's words. And what does he add? " To Him be glory." * All this is exactly true. He does not say. To them; for God is one. And what is meant by. To Him be glory, but to Him be chief and perfect and wide-spread praise? For as the praise improves and ex- tends, so the love and affection increases in fervor. And when this is the case, mankind cannot but advance with sure and firm step to a life of perfection and bliss. This, I sup- pose, is all we wish to find when we speak of the chief good of man, to which all must be referred in life and conduct. For the good plainly exists; and we have shown by reason- ing, as far as we were able, and by the divine authority which goes beyond our reasoning, that it is nothing else but God Himself. For how can any thing be man's chief good but that in cleaving to which he is blessed? Now this is nothing but God, to whom we can cleave only by affection, desire, and love.