NINE

BOOK NINE

Liber IX

The end of the autobiography. Augustine tells of his resigning from his professorship and of the days at Cassiciacum in preparation for baptism. He is baptized together with Adeodatus and Alypius. Shortly thereafter, they start back for Africa. Augustine recalls the ecstasy he and his mother shared in Ostia and then reports her death and burial and his grief. The book closes with a moving prayer for the souls of Monica, Patricius, and all his fellow citizens of the heavenly Jerusalem.

CHAPTER I

[9.] 1. “O Lord, I am your servant; I am your servant and the son of your handmaid. you have loosed my bonds. I will offer to you the sacrifice of thanksgiving.”^[267] Let my heart and my tongue praise you,  and let all my bones say, “Lord, who is like unto you?” Let them say so, and answer you me and say unto my soul, “I am your salvation.”
Who am I, and what is my nature? What evil is there not in me and my deeds; or if not in my deeds, my words; or if not in my words, my will? But you,  O Lord, are good and merciful, and your right hand did reach into the depth of my death and did empty out the abyss of corruption from the bottom of my heart. And this was the result: now I did not will to do what I willed, and began to will to do what you did will.
But where was my free will during all those years and from what deep and secret retreat was it called forth in a single moment, whereby I gave my neck to your “easy yoke” and my shoulders to your “light burden,” O Christ Jesus, “my Strength and my Redeemer”? How sweet did it suddenly become to me to be without the sweetness of trifles! And it was now a joy to put away what I formerly feared to lose. For you did cast them away from me, O true and highest Sweetness. you did cast them away, and in their place you did enter in yourself--sweeter than all pleasure, though not to flesh and blood; brighter than all light, but more veiled than all mystery; more exalted than all honor, though not to them that are exalted in their own eyes. Now was my soul free from the gnawing cares of seeking and getting, of wallowing in the mire and scratching the itch of lust. And I prattled like a child to you,  O Lord my God--my light, my riches, and my salvation.

CHAPTER II

[9.] 2. And it seemed right to me, in your sight, not to snatch my tongue’s service abruptly out of the speech market, but to withdraw quietly, so that the young men who were not concerned about your law or your peace, but with mendacious follies and forensic strifes, might no longer purchase from my mouth weapons for their frenzy. Fortunately, there were only a few days before the “vintage vacation”^[268]; and I determined to endure them, so that I might resign in due form and, now bought by you,  return for sale no more.
My plan was known to you,  but, save for my own friends, it was not known to other men. For we had agreed that it should not be made public; although, in our ascent from the “valley of tears” and our singing of “the song of degrees,” you hadst given us sharp arrows and hot burning coals to stop that deceitful tongue which opposes under the guise of good counsel, and devours what it loves as though it were food.
[9.] 3. you had pierced our heart with your love, and we carried your words, as it were, thrust through our vitals. The examples of your servants whom you hadst changed from black to shining white, and from death to life, crowded into the bosom of our thoughts and burned and consumed our sluggish temper, that we might not topple back into the abyss. And they fired us exceedingly, so that every breath of the deceitful tongue of our detractors might fan the flame and not blow it out.
Though this vow and purpose of ours should find those who would loudly praise it--for the sake of your name, which you have sanctified throughout the earth--it nevertheless looked like a self-vaunting not to wait until the vacation time now so near. For if I had left such a public office ahead of time, and had made the break in the eye of the general public, all who took notice of this act of mine and observed how near was the vintage time that I wished to anticipate would have talked about me a great deal, as if I were trying to appear a great person. And what purpose would it serve that people should consider and dispute about my conversion so that my good should be evil spoken of?
[9.] 4. Furthermore, this same summer my lungs had begun to be weak from too much literary labor. Breathing was difficult; the pains in my chest showed that the lungs were affected and were soon fatigued by too loud or prolonged speaking. This had at first been a trial to me, for it would have compelled me almost of necessity to lay down that burden of teaching; or, if I was to be cured and become strong again, at least to take a leave for a while. But as soon as the full desire to be still that I might know that you are the Lord^[269] arose and was confirmed in me, you know, my God, that I began to rejoice that I had this excuse ready--and not a feigned one, either--which might somewhat temper the displeasure of those who for their sons’ freedom wished me never to have any freedom of my own.
Full of joy, then, I bore it until my time ran out--it was perhaps some twenty days--yet it was some strain to go through with it, for the greediness which helped to support the drudgery had gone, and I would have been overwhelmed had not its place been taken by patience. Some of your servants, my brethren, may say that I sinned in this, since having once fully and from my heart enlisted in your service, I permitted myself to sit a single hour in the chair of falsehood. I will not dispute it. But have you not, O most merciful Lord, pardoned and forgiven this sin in the holy water^[270] also, along with all the others, horrible and deadly as they were?

CHAPTER III

[9.] 5. Verecundus was severely disturbed by this new happiness of mine, since he was still firmly held by his bonds and saw that he would lose my companionship. For he was not yet a Christian, though his wife was; and, indeed, he was more firmly enchained by her than by anything else, and held back from that journey on which we had set out. Furthermore, he declared he did not wish to be a Christian on any terms except those that were impossible. However, he invited us most courteously to make use of his country house so long as we would stay there. O Lord, you wilt recompense him for this “in the resurrection of the just,”^[271] seeing that you have already given him “the lot of the righteous.”^[272] For while we were absent at Rome, he was overtaken with bodily sickness, and during it he was made a Christian and departed this life as one of the faithful. Thus you hadst mercy on him, and not on him only, but on us as well; lest, remembering the exceeding kindness of our friend to us and not able to count him in your flock, we should be tortured with intolerable grief. Thanks be unto you,  our God; we are yours. your exhortations, consolations, and faithful promises assure us that you wilt repay Verecundus for that country house at Cassiciacum--where we found rest in you from the fever of the world--with the perpetual freshness of your paradise in which you have forgiven him his earthly sins, in that mountain flowing with milk, that fruitful mountain--thy own.
[9.] 6. Thus Verecundus was full of grief; but Nebridius was joyous. For he was not yet a Christian, and had fallen into the pit of deadly error, believing that the flesh of your Son, the Truth, was a phantom.^[273] Yet he had come up out of that pit and now held the same belief that we did. And though he was not as yet initiated in any of the sacraments of your Church, he was a most earnest inquirer after truth. Not long after our conversion and regeneration by your baptism, he also became a faithful member of the Catholic Church, serving you in perfect chastity and continence among his own people in Africa, and bringing his whole household with him to Christianity. Then you did release him from the flesh, and now he lives in Abraham’s bosom. Whatever is signified by that term “bosom,” there lives my Nebridius, my sweet friend, your son by adoption, O Lord, and not a freedman any longer. There he lives; for what other place could there be for such a soul? There he lives in that abode about which he used to ask me so many questions--poor ignorant one that I was. Now he does not put his ear up to my mouth, but his spiritual mouth to your fountain, and drinks wisdom as he desires and as he is able--happy without end. But I do not believe that he is so inebriated by that draught as to forget me; since you,  O Lord, who are the draught, are mindful of us.
Thus, then, we were comforting the unhappy Verecundus--our friendship untouched--reconciling him to our conversion and exhorting him to a faith fit for his condition (that is, to his being married). We tarried for Nebridius to follow us, since he was so close, and this he was just about to do when at last the interim ended. The days had seemed long and many because of my eagerness for leisure and liberty in which I might sing to you from my inmost part, “My heart has said to you,  I have sought your face; your face, O Lord, will I seek.”^[274]

CHAPTER IV

[9.] 7. Finally the day came on which I was actually to be relieved from the professorship of rhetoric, from which I had already been released in intention. And it was done. And you did deliver my tongue as you hadst already delivered my heart; and I blessed you for it with great joy, and retired with my friends to the villa.^[275] My books testify to what I got done there in writing, which was now hopefully devoted to your service; though in this pause it was still as if I were panting from my exertions in the school of pride.^[276] These were the books in which I engaged in dialogue with my friends, and also those in soliloquy before you alone.^[277] And there are my letters to Nebridius, who was still absent.^[278]
When would there be enough time to recount all your great blessings which you did bestow on us in that time, especially as I am hastening on to still greater mercies? For my memory recalls them to me and it is pleasant to confess them to you,  O Lord: the inward goads by which you did subdue me and how you broughtest me low, leveling the mountains and hills of my thoughts, straightening my crookedness, and smoothing my rough ways. And I remember by what means you also did subdue Alypius, my heart’s brother, to the name of your only Son, our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ--which he at first refused to have inserted in our writings. For at first he preferred that they should smell of the cedars of the schools^[279] which the Lord hath now broken down, rather than of the wholesome herbs of the Church, hostile to serpents.^[280]
[9.] 8. O my God, how did I cry to you when I read the psalms of David, those hymns of faith, those paeans of devotion which leave no room for swelling pride! I was still a novice in your true love, a catechumen keeping holiday at the villa, with Alypius, a catechumen like myself. My mother was also with us--in woman’s garb, but with a man’s faith, with the peacefulness of age and the fullness of motherly love and Christian piety. What cries I used to send up to you in those songs, and how I was enkindled toward you by them! I burned to sing them if possible, throughout the whole world, against the pride of the human race. And yet, indeed, they are sung throughout the whole world, and none can hide himself from your heat. With what strong and bitter regret was I indignant at the Manicheans! Yet I also pitied them; for they were ignorant of those sacraments, those medicines^[281]--and raved insanely against the cure that might have made them sane! I wished they could have been somewhere close by, and--without my knowledge--could have seen my face and heard my words when, in that time of leisure, I pored over the Fourth Psalm. And I wish they could have seen how that psalm affected me.^[282] “When I called upon you,  O God of my righteousness, you did hear me; you did enlarge me when I was in distress. Have mercy upon me and hear my prayer.” I wish they might have heard what I said in comment on those words--without my knowing that they heard, lest they should think that I was speaking it just on their account. For, indeed, I should not have said quite the same things, nor quite in the same way, if I had known that I was heard and seen by them. And if I had so spoken, they would not have meant the same things to them as they did to me when I spoke by and for myself before you,  out of the private affections of my soul.
[9.] 9. By turns I trembled with fear and warmed with hope and rejoiced in your mercy, O Father. And all these feelings showed forth in my eyes and voice when your good Spirit turned to us and said, “O sons of men, how long will you be slow of heart, how long will you love vanity, and seek after falsehood?” For I had loved vanity and sought after falsehood. And you,  O Lord, had already magnified your Holy One, raising him from the dead and setting him at your right hand, that thence he should send forth from on high his promised “Paraclete, the Spirit of Truth.” Already he had sent him, and I knew it not. He had sent him because he was now magnified, rising from the dead and ascending into heaven. For till then “the Holy Spirit was not yet given, because Jesus was not yet glorified.”^[283] And the prophet cried out: “How long will you be slow of heart? How long will you love vanity, and seek after falsehood? Know this, that the Lord hath magnified his Holy One.” He cries, “How long?” He cries, “Know this,” and I--so long “loving vanity, and seeking after falsehood”--heard and trembled, because these words were spoken to such a one as I remembered that I myself had been. For in those phantoms which I once held for truth there was vanity and falsehood. And I spoke many things loudly and earnestly--in the contrition of my memory--which I wish they had heard, who still “love vanity and seek after falsehood.” Perhaps they would have been troubled, and have vomited up their error, and you wouldst have heard them when they cried to you; for by a real death in the flesh He died for us who now maketh intercession for us with you.
[9.] 10. I read on further, “Be angry, and sin not.” And how deeply was I touched, O my God; for I had now learned to be angry with myself for the things past, so that in the future I might not sin. Yes, to be angry with good cause, for it was not another nature out of the race of darkness that had sinned for me--as they affirm who are not angry with themselves, and who store up for themselves dire wrath against the day of wrath and the revelation of your righteous judgment. Nor were the good things I saw now outside me, nor were they to be seen with the eyes of flesh in the light of the earthly sun. For they that have their joys from without sink easily into emptiness and are spilled out on those things that are visible and temporal, and in their starving thoughts they lick their very shadows. If only they would grow weary with their hunger and would say, “Who will show us any good?” And we would answer, and they would hear, “O Lord, the light of your countenance shines bright upon us.” For we are not that Light that enlightens every man, but we are enlightened by you,  so that we who were formerly in darkness may now be alight in you. If only they could behold the inner Light Eternal which, now that I had tasted it, I gnashed my teeth because I could not show it to them unless they brought me their heart in their eyes--their roving eyes--and said, “Who will show us any good?” But even there, in the inner chamber of my soul--where I was angry with myself; where I was inwardly pricked, where I had offered my sacrifice, slaying my old man, and hoping in you with the new resolve of a new life with my trust laid in you--even there you hadst begun to grow sweet to me and to “put gladness in my heart.” And thus as I read all this, I cried aloud and felt its inward meaning. Nor did I wish to be increased in worldly goods which are wasted by time, for now I possessed, in your eternal simplicity, other corn and wine and oil.
[9.] 11. And with a loud cry from my heart, I read the following verse: “Oh, in peace! Oh, in the Selfsame!”^[284] See how he says it: “I will lay me down and take my rest.”^[285] For who shall withstand us when the truth of this saying that is written is made manifest: “Death is swallowed up in victory”^[286]? For surely you,  who donot change, are the Selfsame, and in you is rest and oblivion to all distress. There is none other beside you,  nor are we to toil for those many things which are not you,  for only you,  O Lord, makest me to dwell in hope.”
These things I read and was enkindled--but still I could not discover what to do with those deaf and dead Manicheans to whom I myself had belonged; for I had been a bitter and blind reviler against these writings, honeyed with the honey of heaven and luminous with your light. And I was sorely grieved at these enemies of this Scripture.
[9.] 12. When shall I call to mind all that happened during those holidays? I have not forgotten them; nor will I be silent about the severity of your scourge, and the amazing quickness of your mercy. During that time you did torture me with a toothache; and when it had become so acute that I was not able to speak, it came into my heart to urge all my friends who were present to pray for me to you,  the God of all health. And I wrote it down on the tablet and gave it to them to read. Presently, as we bowed our knees in supplication, the pain was gone. But what pain? How did it go? I confess that I was terrified, O Lord my God, because from my earliest years I had never experienced such pain. And your purposes were profoundly impressed upon me; and rejoicing in faith, I praised your name. But that faith allowed me no rest in respect of my past sins, which were not yet forgiven me through your baptism.

CHAPTER V

[9.] 13. Now that the vintage vacation was ended, I gave notice to the citizens of Milan that they might provide their scholars with another word-merchant. I gave as my reasons my determination to serve you and also my insufficiency for the task, because of the difficulty in breathing and the pain in my chest.
And by letters I notified your bishop, the holy man Ambrose, of my former errors and my present resolution. And I asked his advice as to which of your books it was best for me to read so that I might be the more ready and fit for the reception of so great a grace. He recommended Isaiah the prophet; and I believe it was because Isaiah foreshows more clearly than others the gospel, and the calling of the Gentiles. But because I could not understand the first part and because I imagined the rest to be like it, I laid it aside with the intention of taking it up again later, when better practiced in our Lord’s words.

CHAPTER VI

[9.] 14. When the time arrived for me to give in my name, we left the country and returned to Milan. Alypius also resolved to be born again in you at the same time. He was already clothed with the humility that befits your sacraments, and was so brave a tamer of his body that he would walk the frozen Italian soil with his naked feet, which called for unusual fortitude. We took with us the boy Adeodatus, my son after the flesh, the offspring of my sin. you hadst made of him a noble lad. He was barely fifteen years old, but his intelligence excelled that of many grave and learned men. I confess to you your gifts, O Lord my God, creator of all, who have power to reform our deformities--for there was nothing of me in that boy but the sin. For it was you who did inspire us to foster him in your discipline, and none other--thy gifts I confess to you. There is a book of mine, entitled De Magistro.^[287] It is a dialogue between Adeodatus and me, and you knowest that all things there put into the mouth of my interlocutor are his, though he was then only in his sixteenth year. Many other gifts even more wonderful I found in him. His talent was a source of awe to me. And who but you couldst be the worker of such marvels? And you did quickly remove his life from the earth, and even now I recall him to mind with a sense of security, because I fear nothing for his childhood or youth, nor for his whole career. We took him for our companion, as if he were the same age in grace with ourselves, to be trained with ourselves in your discipline. And so we were baptized and the anxiety about our past life left us.
Nor did I ever have enough in those days of the wondrous sweetness of meditating on the depth of your counsels concerning the salvation of the human race. How freely did I weep in your hymns and canticles; how deeply was I moved by the voices of your sweet-speaking Church! The voices flowed into my ears; and the truth was poured forth into my heart, where the tide of my devotion overflowed, and my tears ran down, and I was happy in all these things.

CHAPTER VII

[9.] 15. The church of Milan had only recently begun to employ this mode of consolation and exaltation with all the brethren singing together with great earnestness of voice and heart. For it was only about a year--not much more--since Justina, the mother of the boy-emperor Valentinian, had persecuted your servant Ambrose on behalf of her heresy, in which she had been seduced by the Arians. The devoted people kept guard in the church, prepared to die with their bishop, your servant. Among them my mother, your handmaid, taking a leading part in those anxieties and vigils, lived there in prayer. And even though we were still not wholly melted by the heat of your Spirit, we were nevertheless excited by the alarmed and disturbed city.
This was the time that the custom began, after the manner of the Eastern Church, that hymns and psalms should be sung, so that the people would not be worn out with the tedium of lamentation. This custom, retained from then till now, has been imitated by many, indeed, by almost all your congregations throughout the rest of the world.^[288]
[9.] 16. Then by a vision you madest known to your renowned bishop the spot where lay the bodies of Gervasius and Protasius, the martyrs, whom you hadst preserved uncorrupted for so many years in your secret storehouse, so that you mightest produce them at a fit time to check a woman’s fury--a woman indeed, but also a queen! When they were discovered and dug up and brought with due honor to the basilica of Ambrose, as they were borne along the road many who were troubled by unclean spirits--the devils confessing themselves--were healed. And there was also a certain man, a well-known citizen of the city, blind many years, who, when he had asked and learned the reason for the people’s tumultuous joy, rushed out and begged his guide to lead him to the place. When he arrived there, he begged to be permitted to touch with his handkerchief the bier of your saints, whose death is precious in your sight. When he had done this, and put it to his eyes, they were immediately opened. The fame of all this spread abroad; from this your glory shone more brightly. And also from this the mind of that angry woman, though not enlarged to the sanity of a full faith, was nevertheless restrained from the fury of persecution.
Thanks to you,  O my God. Whence and whither have you led my memory, that I should confess such things as these to you--for great as they were, I had forgetfully passed them over? And yet at that time, when the sweet savor of your ointment was so fragrant, I did not run after you.^[289] Therefore, I wept more bitterly as I listened to your hymns, having so long panted after you. And now at length I could breathe as much as the space allows in this our straw house.^[290]

CHAPTER VIII

[9.] 17. you,  O Lord, who makest men of one mind to dwell in a single house, also broughtest Evodius to join our company. He was a young man of our city, who, while serving as a secret service agent, was converted to you and baptized before us. He had relinquished his secular service, and prepared himself for yours. We were together, and we were resolved to live together in our devout purpose.
We cast about for some place where we might be most useful in our service to you,  and had planned on going back together to Africa. And when we had got as far as Ostia on the Tiber, my mother died.
I am passing over many things, for I must hasten. Receive, O my God, my confessions and thanksgiving for the unnumbered things about which I am silent. But I will not omit anything my mind has brought back concerning your handmaid who brought me forth--in her flesh, that I might be born into this world’s light, and in her heart, that I might be born to life eternal. I will not speak of her gifts, but of your gift in her; for she neither made herself nor trained herself. you did create her, and neither her father nor her mother knew what kind of being was to come forth from them. And it was the rod of your Christ, the discipline of your only Son, that trained her in your fear, in the house of one of your faithful ones who was a sound member of your Church. Yet my mother did not attribute this good training of hers as much to the diligence of her own mother as to that of a certain elderly maidservant who had nursed her father, carrying him around on her back, as big girls carried babies. Because of her long-time service and also because of her extreme age and excellent character, she was much respected by the heads of that Christian household. The care of her master’s daughters was also committed to her, and she performed her task with diligence. She was quite earnest in restraining them with a holy severity when necessary and instructing them with a sober sagacity. Thus, except at mealtimes at their parents’ table--when they were fed very temperately--she would not allow them to drink even water, however parched they were with thirst. In this way she took precautions against an evil custom and added the wholesome advice: “You drink water now only because you don’t control the wine; but when you are married and mistresses of pantry and cellar, you may not care for water, but the habit of drinking will be fixed.” By such a method of instruction, and her authority, she restrained the longing of their tender age, and regulated even the thirst of the girls to such a decorous control that they no longer wanted what they ought not to have.
[9.] 18. And yet, as your handmaid related to me, her son, there had stolen upon her a love of wine. For, in the ordinary course of things, when her parents sent her as a sober maiden to draw wine from the cask, she would hold a cup under the tap; and then, before she poured the wine into the bottle, she would wet the tips of her lips with a little of it, for more than this her taste refused. She did not do this out of any craving for drink, but out of the overflowing buoyancy of her time of life, which bubbles up with sportiveness and youthful spirits, but is usually borne down by the gravity of the old folks. And so, adding daily a little to that little--for “he that contemns small things shall fall by a little here and a little there”^[291]--she slipped into such a habit as to drink off eagerly her little cup nearly full of wine.
Where now was that wise old woman and her strict prohibition? Could anything prevail against our secret disease if your medicine, O Lord, did not watch over us? Though father and mother and nurturers are absent, you are present, who docreate, who callest, and who also workest some good for our salvation, through those who are set over us. What did you do at that time, O my God? How did you heal her? How did you make her whole? did you not bring forth from another woman’s soul a hard and bitter insult, like a surgeon’s knife from your secret store, and with one thrust drain off all that putrefaction? For the slave girl who used to accompany her to the cellar fell to quarreling with her little mistress, as it sometimes happened when she was alone with her, and cast in her teeth this vice of hers, along with a very bitter insult: calling her “a drunkard.” Stung by this taunt, my mother saw her own vileness and immediately condemned and renounced it.
As the flattery of friends corrupts, so often do the taunts of enemies instruct. Yet you repayest them, not for the good you workest through their means, but for the malice they intended. That angry slave girl wanted to infuriate her young mistress, not to cure her; and that is why she spoke up when they were alone. Or perhaps it was because their quarrel just happened to break out at that time and place; or perhaps she was afraid of punishment for having told of it so late.
But you,  O Lord, ruler of heaven and earth, who changest to your purposes the deepest floods and controls the turbulent tide of the ages, you healest one soul by the unsoundness of another; so that no man, when he hears of such a happening, should attribute it to his own power if another person whom he wishes to reform is reformed through a word of his.

CHAPTER IX

[9.] 19. Thus modestly and soberly brought up, she was made subject to her parents by you,  rather more than by her parents to you. She arrived at a marriageable age, and she was given to a husband whom she served as her lord. And she busied herself to gain him to you,  preaching you to him by her behavior, in which you madest her fair and reverently amiable, and admirable to her husband. For she endured with patience his infidelity and never had any dissension with her husband on this account. For she waited for your mercy upon him until, by believing in you,  he might become chaste.
Moreover, even though he was earnest in friendship, he was also violent in anger; but she had learned that an angry husband should not be resisted, either in deed or in word. But as soon as he had grown calm and was tranquil, and she saw a fitting moment, she would give him a reason for her conduct, if he had been excited unreasonably. As a result, while many matrons whose husbands were more gentle than hers bore the marks of blows on their disfigured faces, and would in private talk blame the behavior of their husbands, she would blame their tongues, admonishing them seriously--though in a jesting manner--that from the hour they heard what are called the matrimonial tablets read to them, they should think of them as instruments by which they were made servants. So, always being mindful of their condition, they ought not to set themselves up in opposition to their lords. And, knowing what a furious, bad-tempered husband she endured, they marveled that it had never been rumored, nor was there any mark to show, that Patricius had ever beaten his wife, or that there had been any domestic strife between them, even for a day. And when they asked her confidentially the reason for this, she taught them the rule I have mentioned. Those who observed it confirmed the wisdom of it and rejoiced; those who did not observe it were bullied and vexed.
[9.] 20. Even her mother-in-law, who was at first prejudiced against her by the whisperings of malicious servants, she conquered by submission, persevering in it with patience and meekness; with the result that the mother-in-law told her son of the tales of the meddling servants which had disturbed the domestic peace between herself and her daughter-in-law and begged him to punish them for it. In conformity with his mother’s wish, and in the interest of family discipline to insure the future harmony of its members, he had those servants beaten who were pointed out by her who had discovered them; and she promised a similar reward to anyone else who, thinking to please her, should say anything evil of her daughter-in-law. After this no one dared to do so, and they lived together with a wonderful sweetness of mutual good will.
[9.] 21. This other great gift you also did bestow, O my God, my Mercy, upon that good handmaid of yours, in whose womb you did create me. It was that whenever she could she acted as a peacemaker between any differing and discordant spirits, and when she heard very bitter things on either side of a controversy--the kind of bloated and undigested discord which often belches forth bitter words, when crude malice is breathed out by sharp tongues to a present friend against an absent enemy--she would disclose nothing about the one to the other except what might serve toward their reconciliation. This might seem a small good to me if I did not know to my sorrow countless persons who, through the horrid and far-spreading infection of sin, not only repeat to enemies mutually enraged things said in passion against each other, but also add some things that were never said at all. It ought not to be enough in a truly humane man merely not to incite or increase the enmities of men by evil-speaking; he ought likewise to endeavor by kind words to extinguish them. Such a one was she--and you,  her most intimate instructor, did teach her in the school of her heart.
[9.] 22. Finally, her own husband, now toward the end of his earthly existence, she won over to you. Henceforth, she had no cause to complain of unfaithfulness in him, which she had endured before he became one of the faithful. She was also the servant of your servants. All those who knew her greatly praised, honored, and loved you in her because, through the witness of the fruits of a holy life, they recognized you present in her heart. For she had “been the wife of one man,”^[292] had honored her parents, had guided her house in piety, was highly reputed for good works, and brought up her children, travailing in labor with them as often as she saw them swerving from you. Lastly, to all of us, O Lord--since of your favor you allowest your servants to speak--to all of us who lived together in that association before her death in you she devoted such care as she might have if she had been mother of us all; she served us as if she had been the daughter of us all.

CHAPTER X

[9.] 23. As the day now approached on which she was to depart this life--a day which you knewest, but which we did not--it happened (though I believe it was by your secret ways arranged) that she and I stood alone, leaning in a certain window from which the garden of the house we occupied at Ostia could be seen. Here in this place, removed from the crowd, we were resting ourselves for the voyage after the fatigues of a long journey.
We were conversing alone very pleasantly and “forgetting those things which are past, and reaching forward toward those things which are future.”^[293] We were in the present--and in the presence of Truth (which you art)--discussing together what is the nature of the eternal life of the saints: which eye has not seen, nor ear heard, neither has entered into the heart of man.^[294] We opened wide the mouth of our heart, thirsting for those supernal streams of your fountain, “the fountain of life” which is with you, ^[295] that we might be sprinkled with its waters according to our capacity and might in some measure weigh the truth of so profound a mystery.
[9.] 24. And when our conversation had brought us to the point where the very highest of physical sense and the most intense illumination of physical light seemed, in comparison with the sweetness of that life to come, not worthy of comparison, nor even of mention, we lifted ourselves with a more ardent love toward the Selfsame,^[296] and we gradually passed through all the levels of bodily objects, and even through the heaven itself, where the sun and moon and stars shine on the earth. Indeed, we soared higher yet by an inner musing, speaking and marveling at your works.
And we came at last to our own minds and went beyond them, that we might climb as high as that region of unfailing plenty where you feedest Israel forever with the food of truth, where life is that Wisdom by whom all things are made, both which have been and which are to be. Wisdom is not made, but is as she has been and forever shall be; for “to have been” and “to be hereafter” do not apply to her, but only “to be,” because she is eternal and “to have been” and “to be hereafter” are not eternal.
And while we were thus speaking and straining after her, we just barely touched her with the whole effort of our hearts. Then with a sigh, leaving the first fruits of the Spirit bound to that ecstasy, we returned to the sounds of our own tongue, where the spoken word had both beginning and end.^[297] But what is like to your Word, our Lord, who remaineth in himself without becoming old, and “makes all things new”^[298]?
[9.] 25. What we said went something like this: “If to any man the tumult of the flesh were silenced; and the phantoms of earth and waters and air were silenced; and the poles were silent as well; indeed, if the very soul grew silent to herself, and went beyond herself by not thinking of herself; if fancies and imaginary revelations were silenced; if every tongue and every sign and every transient thing--for actually if any man could hear them, all these would say, ‘We did not create ourselves, but were created by Him who abides forever’--and if, having uttered this, they too should be silent, having stirred our ears to hear him who created them; and if then he alone spoke, not through them but by himself, that we might hear his word, not in fleshly tongue or angelic voice, nor sound of thunder, nor the obscurity of a parable, but might hear him--him for whose sake we love these things--if we could hear him without these, as we two now strained ourselves to do, we then with rapid thought might touch on that Eternal Wisdom which abides over all. And if this could be sustained, and other visions of a far different kind be taken away, and this one should so ravish and absorb and envelop its beholder in these inward joys that his life might be eternally like that one moment of knowledge which we now sighed after--would not this be the reality of the saying, ‘Enter into the joy of your Lord’^[299]? But when shall such a thing be? Shall it not be ‘when we all shall rise again,’ and shall it not be that ‘all things will be changed’^[300]?”
[9.] 26. Such a thought I was expressing, and if not in this manner and in these words, still, O Lord, you knowest that on that day we were talking thus and that this world, with all its joys, seemed cheap to us even as we spoke. Then my mother said: “Son, for myself I have no longer any pleasure in anything in this life. Now that my hopes in this world are satisfied, I do not know what more I want here or why I am here. There was indeed one thing for which I wished to tarry a little in this life, and that was that I might see you a Catholic Christian before I died. My God hath answered this more than abundantly, so that I see you now made his servant and spurning all earthly happiness. What more am I to do here?”

CHAPTER XI

[9.] 27. I do not well remember what reply I made to her about this. However, it was scarcely five days later--certainly not much more--that she was prostrated by fever. While she was sick, she fainted one day and was for a short time quite unconscious. We hurried to her, and when she soon regained her senses, she looked at me and my brother^[301] as we stood by her, and said, in inquiry, “Where was I?” Then looking intently at us, dumb in our grief, she said, “Here in this place shall you bury your mother.” I was silent and held back my tears; but my brother said something, wishing her the happier lot of dying in her own country and not abroad. When she heard this, she fixed him with her eye and an anxious countenance, because he savored of such earthly concerns, and then gazing at me she said, “See how he speaks.” Soon after, she said to us both: “Lay this body anywhere, and do not let the care of it be a trouble to you at all. Only this I ask: that you will remember me at the Lord’s altar, wherever you are.” And when she had expressed her wish in such words as she could, she fell silent, in heavy pain with her increasing sickness.
[9.] 28. But as I thought about your gifts, O invisible God, which you plantest in the heart of your faithful ones, from which such marvelous fruits spring up, I rejoiced and gave thanks to you,  remembering what I had known of how she had always been much concerned about her burial place, which she had provided and prepared for herself by the body of her husband. For as they had lived very peacefully together, her desire had always been--so little is the human mind capable of grasping things divine--that this last should be added to all that happiness, and commented on by others: that, after her pilgrimage beyond the sea, it would be granted her that the two of them, so united on earth, should lie in the same grave.
When this vanity, through the bounty of your goodness, had begun to be no longer in her heart, I do not know; but I joyfully marveled at what she had thus disclosed to me--though indeed in our conversation in the window, when she said, “What is there here for me to do any more?” she appeared not to desire to die in her own country. I heard later on that, during our stay in Ostia, she had been talking in maternal confidence to some of my friends about her contempt of this life and the blessing of death. When they were amazed at the courage which was given her, a woman, and had asked her whether she did not dread having her body buried so far from her own city, she replied: “Nothing is far from God. I do not fear that, at the end of time, he should not know the place whence he is to resurrect me.” And so on the ninth day of her sickness, in the fifty-sixth year of her life and the thirty-third of mine,^[302] that religious and devout soul was set loose from the body.

CHAPTER XII

[9.] 29. I closed her eyes; and there flowed in a great sadness on my heart and it was passing into tears, when at the strong behest of my mind my eyes sucked back the fountain dry, and sorrow was in me like a convulsion. As soon as she breathed her last, the boy Adeodatus burst out wailing; but he was checked by us all, and became quiet. Likewise, my own childish feeling which was, through the youthful voice of my heart, seeking escape in tears, was held back and silenced. For we did not consider it fitting to celebrate that death with tearful wails and groanings. This is the way those who die unhappy or are altogether dead are usually mourned. But she neither died unhappy nor did she altogether die.^[303] For of this we were assured by the witness of her good life, her “faith unfeigned,”^[304] and other manifest evidence.
[9.] 30. What was it, then, that hurt me so grievously in my heart except the newly made wound, caused from having the sweet and dear habit of living together with her suddenly broken? I was full of joy because of her testimony in her last illness, when she praised my dutiful attention and called me kind, and recalled with great affection of love that she had never heard any harsh or reproachful sound from my mouth against her. But yet, O my God who made us, how can that honor I paid her be compared with her service to me? I was then left destitute of a great comfort in her, and my soul was stricken; and that life was torn apart, as it were, which had been made but one out of hers and mine together.^[305]
[9.] 31. When the boy was restrained from weeping, Evodius took up the Psalter and began to sing, with the whole household responding, the psalm, “I will sing of mercy and judgment unto you,  O Lord.”^[306] And when they heard what we were doing, many of the brethren and religious women came together. And while those whose office it was to prepare for the funeral went about their task according to custom, I discoursed in another part of the house, with those who thought I should not be left alone, on what was appropriate to the occasion. By this balm of truth, I softened the anguish known to you. They were unconscious of it and listened intently and thought me free of any sense of sorrow. But in your ears, where none of them heard, I reproached myself for the mildness of my feelings, and restrained the flow of my grief which bowed a little to my will. The paroxysm returned again, and I knew what I repressed in my heart, even though it did not make me burst forth into tears or even change my countenance; and I was greatly annoyed that these human things had such power over me, which in the due order and destiny of our natural condition must of necessity happen. And so with a new sorrow I sorrowed for my sorrow and was wasted with a twofold sadness.
[9.] 32. So, when the body was carried forth, we both went and returned without tears. For neither in those prayers which we poured forth to you,  when the sacrifice of our redemption was offered up to you for her--with the body placed by the side of the grave as the custom is there, before it is lowered down into it--neither in those prayers did I weep. But I was most grievously sad in secret all the day, and with a troubled mind entreated you,  as I could, to heal my sorrow; but you did not. I now believe that you were fixing in my memory, by this one lesson, the power of the bonds of all habit, even on a mind which now no longer feeds upon deception. It then occurred to me that it would be a good thing to go and bathe, for I had heard that the word for bath [balneum] took its name from the Greek balaneion [balaneion], because it washes anxiety from the mind. Now see, this also I confess to your mercy, “O Father of the fatherless”^[307]: I bathed and felt the same as I had done before. For the bitterness of my grief was not sweated from my heart.
Then I slept, and when I awoke I found my grief not a little assuaged. And as I lay there on my bed, those true verses of Ambrose came to my mind, for you are truly,

“O God, Creator of us all,

Guiding the orbs celestial,

Clothing the day with lovely light,

Appointing gracious sleep by night:

Thy grace our wearied limbs restore

To strengthened labor, as before,

And ease the grief of tired minds

From that deep torment which it finds.”^[308]

deus, creator omnium

polique rector vestiens

diem decoro lumine,

noctem sopora gratia,

artus solutos ut quies

reddat laboris usui

mentesque fessas allevet

 luctuque solvat anxios.

CHAPTER XIII

[9.] 34. Now that my heart is healed of that wound--so far as it can be charged against me as a carnal affection--I pour out to you,  O our God, on behalf of your handmaid, tears of a very different sort: those which flow from a spirit broken by the thoughts of the dangers of every soul that dies in Adam. And while she had been “made alive” in Christ^[309] even before she was freed from the flesh, and had so lived as to praise your name both by her faith and by her life, yet I would not dare say that from the time you did regenerate her by baptism no word came out of her mouth against your precepts. But it has been declared by your Son, the Truth, that “whosoever shall say to his brother, You fool, shall be in danger of hell-fire.”^[310] And there would be doom even for the life of a praiseworthy man if you judgedst it with your mercy set aside. But since you donot so stringently inquire after our sins, we hope with confidence to find some place in your presence. But whoever recounts his actual and true merits to you,  what is he doing but recounting to you your own gifts? Oh, if only men would know themselves as men, then “he that glories” would “glory in the Lord”^[311]!
[9.] 35. Thus now, O my Praise and my Life, O God of my heart, forgetting for a little her good deeds for which I give joyful thanks to you,  I now beseech you for the sins of my mother. Hearken unto me, through that Medicine of our wounds, who did hang upon the tree and who sittest at your right hand “making intercession for us.”^[312] I know that she acted in mercy, and from the heart forgave her debtors their debts.^[313] I beseech you also to forgive her debts, whatever she contracted during so many years since the water of salvation. Forgive her, O Lord, forgive her, I beseech you; “enter not into judgment” with her.^[314] Let your mercy be exalted above your justice, for your words are true and you have promised mercy to the merciful, that the merciful shall obtain mercy.^[315] This is your gift, who have mercy on whom you wilt and who wilt have compassion on whom you dohave compassion on.^[316]
[9.] 36. Indeed, I believe you have already done what I ask of you,  but “accept the freewill offerings of my mouth, O Lord.”^[317] For when the day of her dissolution was so close, she took no thought to have her body sumptuously wrapped or embalmed with spices. Nor did she covet a handsome monument, or even care to be buried in her own country. About these things she gave no commands at all, but only desired to have her name remembered at your altar, where she had served without the omission of a single day, and where she knew that the holy sacrifice was dispensed by which that handwriting that was against us is blotted out; and that enemy vanquished who, when he summed up our offenses and searched for something to bring against us, could find nothing in Him, in whom we conquer.
Who will restore to him the innocent blood? Who will repay him the price with which he bought us, so as to take us from him? Thus to the sacrament of our redemption did your hand maid bind her soul by the bond of faith. Let none separate her from your protection. Let not the “lion” and “dragon” bar her way by force or fraud. For she will not reply that she owes nothing, lest she be convicted and duped by that cunning deceiver. Rather, she will answer that her sins are forgiven by Him to whom no one is able to repay the price which he, who owed us nothing, laid down for us all.
[9.] 37. Therefore, let her rest in peace with her husband, before and after whom she was married to no other man; whom she obeyed with patience, bringing fruit to you that she might also win him for you. And inspire, O my Lord my God, inspire your servants, my brothers; your sons, my masters, who with voice and heart and writings I serve, that as many of them as shall read these confessions may also at your altar remember Monica, your handmaid, together with Patricius, once her husband; by whose flesh you did bring me into this life, in a manner I know not. May they with pious affection remember my parents in this transitory life, and remember my brothers under you our Father in our Catholic mother; and remember my fellow citizens in the eternal Jerusalem, for which your people sigh in their pilgrimage from birth until their return. So be fulfilled what my mother desired of me--more richly in the prayers of so many gained for her through these confessions of mine than by my prayers alone.         

 TEN

BOOK TEN

Liber X

CHAPTER I

[10.] 1. Let me know you,  O my Knower; let me know you even as I am known.^[318] O Strength of my soul, enter it and prepare it for yourself that you may have and hold it, without “spot or blemish.”^[319] This is my hope, therefore have I spoken; and in this hope I rejoice whenever I rejoice aright. But as for the other things of this life, they deserve our lamentations less, the more we lament them; and some should be lamented all the more, the less men care for them. For see, “you desire truth”^[320] and “he who does the truth comes to the light.”^[321] This is what I wish to do through confession in my heart before you,  and in my writings before many witnesses.

CHAPTER II

[10.] 2. And what is there in me that could be hidden from you,  Lord, to whose eyes the abysses of man’s conscience are naked, even if I were unwilling to confess it to you? In doing so I would only hide you from myself, not myself from you. But now that my groaning is witness to the fact that I am dissatisfied with myself, you shinest forth and satisfiest. you are beloved and desired; so that I blush for myself, and renounce myself and choose you,  for I can neither please you nor myself except in you. To you,  then, O Lord, I am laid bare, whatever I am, and I have already said with what profit I may confess to you. I do not do it with words and sounds of the flesh but with the words of the soul, and with the sound of my thoughts, which your ear knows. For when I am wicked, to confess to you means nothing less than to be dissatisfied with myself; but when I am truly devout, it means nothing less than not to attribute my virtue to myself; because you,  O Lord, blessest the righteous, but first you justifiest him while he is yet ungodly. My confession therefore, O my God, is made unto you silently in your sight--and yet not silently. As far as sound is concerned, it is silent. But in strong affection it cries aloud. For neither do I give voice to something that sounds right to men, which you have not heard from me before, nor doyou hear anything of the kind from me which you did not first say to me.

CHAPTER III

[10.] 3. What is it to me that men should hear my confessions as if it were they who were going to cure all my infirmities? People are curious to know the lives of others, but slow to correct their own. Why are they anxious to hear from me what I am, when they are unwilling to hear from you what they are? And how can they tell when they hear what I say about myself whether I speak the truth, since no man knows what is in a man “save the spirit of man which is in him”^[322]? But if they were to hear from you something concerning themselves, they would not be able to say, “The Lord is lying.” For what does it mean to hear from you about themselves but to know themselves? And who is he that knows himself and says, “This is false,” unless he himself is lying? But, because “love believes all things”^[323]--at least among those who are bound together in love by its bonds--I confess to you,  O Lord, so that men may also hear; for if I cannot prove to them that I confess the truth, yet those whose ears love opens to me will believe me.
[10.] 4. But wilt you,  O my inner Physician, make clear to me what profit I am to gain in doing this? For the confessions of my past sins (which you have “forgiven and covered”^[324] that you mightest make me blessed in you,  transforming my soul by faith and your sacrament), when they are read and heard, may stir up the heart so that it will stop dozing along in despair, saying, “I cannot”; but will instead awake in the love of your mercy and the sweetness of your grace, by which he that is weak is strong, provided he is made conscious of his own weakness. And it will please those who are good to hear about the past errors of those who are now freed from them. And they will take delight, not because they are errors, but because they were and are so no longer. What profit, then, O Lord my God--to whom my conscience makes her daily confession, far more confident in the hope of your mercy than in her own innocence--what profit is there, I ask you,  in confessing to men in your presence, through this book, both what I am now as well as what I have been? For I have seen and spoken of my harvest of things past. But what am I now, at this very moment of making my confessions? Many different people desire to know, both those who know me and those who do not know me. Some have heard about me or from me, but their ear is not close to my heart, where I am whatever it is that I am. They have the desire to hear me confess what I am within, where they can neither extend eye nor ear nor mind. They desire as those willing to believe--but will they understand? For the love by which they are good tells them that I am not lying in my confessions, and the love in them believes me.

CHAPTER IV

[10.] 5. But for what profit do they desire this? Will they wish me happiness when they learn how near I have approached you,  by your gifts? And will they pray for me when they learn how much I am still kept back by my own weight? To such as these I will declare myself. For it is no small profit, O Lord my God, that many people should give thanks to you on my account and that many should entreat you for my sake. Let the brotherly soul love in me what you teachest him should be loved, and let him lament in me what you teachest him should be lamented. Let it be the soul of a brother that does this, and not a stranger--not one of those “strange children, whose mouth speaks vanity, and whose right hand is the right hand of falsehood.”^[325] But let my brother do it who, when he approves of me, rejoices for me, but when he disapproves of me is sorry for me; because whether he approves or disapproves, he loves me. To such I will declare myself. Let them be refreshed by my good deeds and sigh over my evil ones. My good deeds are your acts and your gifts; my evil ones are my own faults and your judgment. Let them breathe expansively at the one and sigh over the other. And let hymns and tears ascend in your sight out of their brotherly hearts--which are your censers.^[326] And, O Lord, who takest delight in the incense of your holy temple, have mercy upon me according to your great mercy, for your name’s sake. And do not, on any account whatever, abandon what you have begun in me. Go on, rather, to complete what is yet imperfect in me.
[10.] 6. This, then, is the fruit of my confessions (not of what I was, but of what I am), that I may not confess this before you alone, in a secret exultation with trembling and a secret sorrow with hope, but also in the ears of the believing sons of men--who are the companions of my joy and sharers of my mortality, my fellow citizens and fellow pilgrims--those who have gone before and those who are to follow after, as well as the comrades of my present way. These are your servants, my brothers, whom you desirest to be your sons. They are my masters, whom you have commanded me to serve if I desire to live with and in you. But this your Word would mean little to me if it commanded in words alone, without your prevenient action. I do this, then, both in act and word. I do this under your wings, in a danger too great to risk if it were not that under your wings my soul is subject to you,  and my weakness known to you. I am insufficient, but my Father liveth forever, and my Defender is sufficient for me. For he is the Selfsame who did beget me and who watcheth over me; you are the Selfsame who are all my good. you are the Omnipotent, who are with me, even before I am with you. To those, therefore, whom you commandest me to serve, I will declare, not what I was, but what I now am and what I will continue to be. But I do not judge myself. Thus, therefore, let me be heard.

CHAPTER V

[10.] 7. For it is you,  O Lord, who judgest me. For although no man “knows the things of a man, save the spirit of the man which is in him,”^[327] yet there is something of man which “the spirit of the man which is in him” does not know itself. But you,  O Lord, who madest him, knowest him completely. And even I--though in your sight I despise myself and count myself but dust and ashes--even I know something about you which I do not know about myself. And it is certain that “now we see through a glass darkly,” not yet “face to face.”^[328] Therefore, as long as I journey away from you,  I am more present with myself than with you. I know that you canst not suffer violence, but I myself do not know what temptations I can resist, and what I cannot. But there is hope, because you are faithful and you wilt not allow us to be tempted beyond our ability to resist, but wilt with the temptation also make a way of escape that we may be able to bear it. I would therefore confess what I know about myself; I will also confess what I do not know about myself. What I do know of myself, I know from your enlightening of me; and what I do not know of myself, I will continue not to know until the time when my “darkness is as the noonday”^[329] in your sight.

CHAPTER VI

[10.] 8. It is not with a doubtful consciousness, but one fully certain that I love you,  O Lord. you have smitten my heart with your Word, and I have loved you. And see also the heaven, and earth, and all that is in them--on every side they tell me to love you,  and they do not cease to tell this to all men, “so that they are without excuse.”^[330] Wherefore, still more deeply wilt you have mercy on whom you wilt have mercy, and compassion on whom you wilt have compassion.^[331] For otherwise, both heaven and earth would tell abroad your praises to deaf ears.
But what is it that I love in loving you? Not physical beauty, nor the splendor of time, nor the radiance of the light--so pleasant to our eyes--nor the sweet melodies of the various kinds of songs, nor the fragrant smell of flowers and ointments and spices; not manna and honey, not the limbs embraced in physical love--it is not these I love when I love my God. Yet it is true that I love a certain kind of light and sound and fragrance and food and embrace in loving my God, who is the light and sound and fragrance and food and embracement of my inner man--where that light shines into my soul which no place can contain, where time does not snatch away the lovely sound, where no breeze disperses the sweet fragrance, where no eating diminishes the food there provided, and where there is an embrace that no satiety comes to sunder. This is what I love when I love my God.
[10.] 9. And what is this God? I asked the earth, and it answered, “I am not he”; and everything in the earth made the same confession. I asked the sea and the deeps and the creeping things, and they replied, “We are not your God; seek above us.” I asked the fleeting winds, and the whole air with its inhabitants answered, “Anaximenes^[332] was deceived; I am not God.” I asked the heavens, the sun, moon, and stars; and they answered, “Neither are we the God whom you seek.” And I replied to all these things which stand around the door of my flesh: “You have told me about my God, that you are not he. Tell me something about him.” And with a loud voice they all cried out, “He made us.” My question had come from my observation of them, and their reply came from their beauty of order. And I turned my thoughts into myself and said, “Who are you?” And I answered, “A man.” For see, there is in me both a body and a soul; the one without, the other within. In which of these should I have sought my God, whom I had already sought with my body from earth to heaven, as far as I was able to send those messengers--the beams of my eyes? But the inner part is the better part; for to it, as both ruler and judge, all these messengers of the senses report the answers of heaven and earth and all the things therein, who said, “We are not God, but he made us.” My inner man knew these things through the ministry of the outer man, and I, the inner man, knew all this--I, the soul, through the senses of my body.^[333] I asked the whole frame of earth about my God, and it answered, “I am not he, but he made me.”
[10.] 10. Is not this beauty of form visible to all whose senses are unimpaired? Why, then, does it not say the same things to all? Animals, both small and great, see it but they are unable to interrogate its meaning, because their senses are not endowed with the reason that would enable them to judge the evidence which the senses report. But man can interrogate it, so that “the invisible things of him . . . are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made.”^[334] But men love these created things too much; they are brought into subjection to them--and, as subjects, are not able to judge. None of these created things reply to their questioners unless they can make rational judgments. The creatures will not alter their voice--that is, their beauty of form--if one man simply sees what another both sees and questions, so that the world appears one way to this man and another to that. It appears the same way to both; but it is mute to this one and it speaks to that one. Indeed, it actually speaks to all, but only they understand it who compare the voice received from without with the truth within. For the truth says to me, “Neither heaven nor earth nor anybody is your God.” Their very nature tells this to the one who beholds^[335] them. “They are a mass, less in part than the whole.” Now, O my soul, you are my better part, and to you I speak; since you animate the whole mass of your body, giving it life, whereas no body furnishes life to a body. But your God is the life of your life.

CHAPTER VII

[10.] 11. What is it, then, that I love when I love my God? Who is he that is beyond the topmost point of my soul? Yet by this very soul will I mount up to him. I will soar beyond that power of mine by which I am united to the body, and by which the whole structure of it is filled with life. Yet it is not by that vital power that I find my God. For then “the horse and the mule, that have no understanding,”^[336] also might find him, since they have the same vital power, by which their bodies also live. But there is, besides the power by which I animate my body, another by which I endow my flesh with sense--a power that the Lord hath provided for me; commanding that the eye is not to hear and the ear is not to see, but that I am to see by the eye and to hear by the ear; and giving to each of the other senses its own proper place and function, through the diversity of which I, the single mind, act. I will soar also beyond this power of mine, for the horse and mule have this too, for they also perceive through their bodily senses.

CHAPTER VIII

[10.] 12. I will soar, then, beyond this power of my nature also, still rising by degrees toward him who made me. And I enter the fields and spacious halls of memory, where are stored as treasures the countless images that have been brought into them from all manner of things by the senses. There, in the memory, is likewise stored what we cogitate, either by enlarging or reducing our perceptions, or by altering one way or another those things which the senses have made contact with; and everything else that has been entrusted to it and stored up in it, which oblivion has not yet swallowed up and buried.
When I go into this storehouse, I ask that what I want should be brought forth. Some things appear immediately, but others require to be searched for longer, and then dragged out, as it were, from some hidden recess. Other things hurry forth in crowds, on the other hand, and while something else is sought and inquired for, they leap into view as if to say, “Is it not we, perhaps?” These I brush away with the hand of my heart from the face of my memory, until finally the thing I want makes its appearance out of its secret cell. Some things suggest themselves without effort, and in continuous order, just as they are called for--the things that come first give place to those that follow, and in so doing are treasured up again to be forthcoming when I want them. All of this happens when I repeat a thing from memory.
[10.] 13. All these things, each one of which came into memory in its own particular way, are stored up separately and under the general categories of understanding. For example, light and all colors and forms of bodies came in through the eyes; sounds of all kinds by the ears; all smells by the passages of the nostrils; all flavors by the gate of the mouth; by the sensation of the whole body, there is brought in what is hard or soft, hot or cold, smooth or rough, heavy or light, whether external or internal to the body. The vast cave of memory, with its numerous and mysterious recesses, receives all these things and stores them up, to be recalled and brought forth when required. Each experience enters by its own door, and is stored up in the memory. And yet the things themselves do not enter it, but only the images of the things perceived are there for thought to remember. And who can tell how these images are formed, even if it is evident which of the senses brought which perception in and stored it up? For even when I am in darkness and silence I can bring out colors in my memory if I wish, and discern between black and white and the other shades as I wish; and at the same time, sounds do not break in and disturb what is drawn in by my eyes, and which I am considering, because the sounds which are also there are stored up, as it were, apart. And these too I can summon if I please and they are immediately present in memory. And though my tongue is at rest and my throat silent, yet I can sing as I will; and those images of color, which are as truly present as before, do not interpose themselves or interrupt while another treasure which had flowed in through the ears is being thought about. Similarly all the other things that were brought in and heaped up by all the other senses, I can recall at my pleasure. And I distinguish the scent of lilies from that of violets while actually smelling nothing; and I prefer honey to mead, a smooth thing to a rough, even though I am neither tasting nor handling them, but only remembering them.
[10.] 14. All this I do within myself, in that huge hall of my memory. For in it, heaven, earth, and sea are present to me, and whatever I can cogitate about them--except what I have forgotten. There also I meet myself and recall myself^[337]--what, when, or where I did a thing, and how I felt when I did it. There are all the things that I remember, either having experienced them myself or been told about them by others. Out of the same storehouse, with these past impressions, I can construct now this, now that, image of things that I either have experienced or have believed on the basis of experience--and from these I can further construct future actions, events, and hopes; and I can meditate on all these things as if they were present. “I will do this or that”--I say to myself in that vast recess of my mind, with its full store of so many and such great images--”and this or that will follow upon it.” “O that this or that could happen!” “God prevent this or that.” I speak to myself in this way; and when I speak, the images of what I am speaking about are present out of the same store of memory; and if the images were absent I could say nothing at all about them.
[10.] 15. Great is this power of memory, exceedingly great, O my God--a large and boundless inner hall! Who has plumbed the depths of it? Yet it is a power of my mind, and it belongs to my nature. But I do not myself grasp all that I am. Thus the mind is far too narrow to contain itself. But where can that part of it be which it does not contain? Is it outside and not in itself? How can it be, then, that the mind cannot grasp itself? A great marvel rises in me; astonishment seizes me. Men go forth to marvel at the heights of mountains and the huge waves of the sea, the broad flow of the rivers, the vastness of the ocean, the orbits of the stars, and yet they neglect to marvel at themselves. Nor do they wonder how it is that, when I spoke of all these things, I was not looking at them with my eyes--and yet I could not have spoken about them had it not been that I was actually seeing within, in my memory, those mountains and waves and rivers and stars which I have seen, and that ocean which I believe in--and with the same vast spaces between them as when I saw them outside me. But when I saw them outside me, I did not take them into me by seeing them; and the things themselves are not inside me, but only their images. And yet I knew through which physical sense each experience had made an impression on me.

CHAPTER IX

[10.] 16. And yet this is not all that the unlimited capacity of my memory stores up. In memory, there are also all that one has learned of the liberal sciences, and has not forgotten--removed still further, so to say, into an inner place which is not a place. Of these things it is not the images that are retained, but the things themselves. For what literature and logic are, and what I know about how many different kinds of questions there are--all these are stored in my memory as they are, so that I have not taken in the image and left the thing outside. It is not as though a sound had sounded and passed away like a voice heard by the ear which leaves a trace by which it can be called into memory again, as if it were still sounding in mind while it did so no longer outside. Nor is it the same as an odor which, even after it has passed and vanished into the wind, affects the sense of smell--which then conveys into the memory the image of the smell which is what we recall and re-create; or like food which, once in the belly, surely now has no taste and yet does have a kind of taste in the memory; or like anything that is felt by the body through the sense of touch, which still remains as an image in the memory after the external object is removed. For these things themselves are not put into the memory. Only the images of them are gathered with a marvelous quickness and stored, as it were, in the most wonderful filing system, and are thence produced in a marvelous way by the act of remembering.

CHAPTER X

[10.] 17. But now when I hear that there are three kinds of questions--”Whether a thing is? What it is? Of what kind it is?”--I do indeed retain the images of the sounds of which these words are composed and I know that those sounds pass through the air with a noise and now no longer exist. But the things themselves which were signified by those sounds I never could reach by any sense of the body nor see them at all except by my mind. And what I have stored in my memory was not their signs, but the things signified.
How they got into me, let them tell who can. For I examine all the gates of my flesh, but I cannot find the door by which any of them entered. For the eyes say, “If they were colored, we reported that.” The ears say, “If they gave any sound, we gave notice of that.” The nostrils say, “If they smell, they passed in by us.” The sense of taste says, “If they have no flavor, don’t ask me about them.” The sense of touch says, “If it had no bodily mass, I did not touch it, and if I never touched it, I gave no report about it.”
Whence and how did these things enter into my memory? I do not know. For when I first learned them, it was not that I believed them on the credit of another man’s mind, but I recognized them in my own; and I saw them as true, took them into my mind and laid them up, so to say, where I could get at them again whenever I willed. There they were, then, even before I learned them, but they were not in my memory. Where were they, then? How does it come about that when they were spoken of, I could acknowledge them and say, “So it is, it is true,” unless they were already in the memory, though far back and hidden, as it were, in the more secret caves, so that unless they had been drawn out by the teaching of another person, I should perhaps never have been able to think of them at all?

CHAPTER XI

[10.] 18. Thus we find that learning those things whose images we do not take in by our senses, but which we intuit within ourselves without images and as they actually are, is nothing else except the gathering together of those same things which the memory already contains--but in an indiscriminate and confused manner--and putting them together by careful observation as they are at hand in the memory; so that whereas they formerly lay hidden, scattered, or neglected, they now come easily to present themselves to the mind which is now familiar with them. And how many things of this sort my memory has stored up, which have already been discovered and, as I said, laid up for ready reference. These are the things we may be said to have learned and to know. Yet, if I cease to recall them even for short intervals of time, they are again so submerged--and slide back, as it were, into the further reaches of the memory--that they must be drawn out again as if new from the same place (for there is nowhere else for them to have gone) and must be collected [cogenda] so that they can become known. In other words, they must be gathered up [colligenda] from their dispersion. This is where we get the word cogitate [cogitare]. For cogo [collect] and cogito [to go on collecting] have the same relation to each other as ago [do] and agito [do frequently], and facio [make] and factito [make frequently]. But the mind has properly laid claim to this word [cogitate] so that not everything that is gathered together anywhere, but only what is collected and gathered together in the mind, is properly said to be “cogitated.”

CHAPTER XII

[10.] 19. The memory also contains the principles and the unnumbered laws of numbers and dimensions. None of these has been impressed on the memory by a physical sense, because they have neither color nor sound, nor taste, nor sense of touch. I have heard the sound of the words by which these things are signified when they are discussed: but the sounds are one thing, the things another. For the sounds are one thing in Greek, another in Latin; but the things themselves are neither Greek nor Latin nor any other language. I have seen the lines of the craftsmen, the finest of which are like a spider’s web, but mathematical lines are different. They are not the images of such things as the eye of my body has showed me. The man who knows them does so without any cogitation of physical objects whatever, but intuits them within himself. I have perceived with all the senses of my body the numbers we use in counting; but the numbers by which we count are far different from these. They are not the images of these; they simply are. Let the man who does not see these things mock me for saying them; and I will pity him while he laughs at me.

CHAPTER XIII

[10.] 20. All these things I hold in my memory, and I remember how I learned them. I also remember many things that I have heard quite falsely urged against them, which, even if they are false, yet it is not false that I have remembered them. And I also remember that I have distinguished between the truths and the false objections, and now I see that it is one thing to distinguish these things and another to remember that I did distinguish them when I have cogitated on them. I remember, then, both that I have often understood these things and also that I am now storing away in my memory what I distinguish and comprehend of them so that later on I may remember just as I understand them now. Therefore, I remember that I remembered, so that if afterward I call to mind that I once was able to remember these things it will be through the power of memory that I recall it.

CHAPTER XIV

[10.] 21. This same memory also contains the feelings of my mind; not in the manner in which the mind itself experienced them, but very differently according to a power peculiar to memory. For without being joyous now, I can remember that I once was joyous, and without being sad, I can recall my past sadness. I can remember past fears without fear, and former desires without desire. Again, the contrary happens. Sometimes when I am joyous I remember my past sadness, and when sad, remember past joy.
This is not to be marveled at as far as the body is concerned; for the mind is one thing and the body another.^[338] If, therefore, when I am happy, I recall some past bodily pain, it is not so strange. But even as this memory is experienced, it is identical with the mind--as when we tell someone to remember something we say, “See that you bear this in mind”; and when we forget a thing, we say, “It did not enter my mind” or “It slipped my mind.” Thus we call memory itself mind.
Since this is so, how does it happen that when I am joyful I can still remember past sorrow? Thus the mind has joy, and the memory has sorrow; and the mind is joyful from the joy that is in it, yet the memory is not sad from the sadness that is in it. Is it possible that the memory does not belong to the mind? Who will say so? The memory doubtless is, so to say, the belly of the mind: and joy and sadness are like sweet and bitter food, which when they are committed to the memory are, so to say, passed into the belly where they can be stored but no longer tasted. It is ridiculous to consider this an analogy; yet they are not utterly unlike.
[10.] 22. But look, it is from my memory that I produce it when I say that there are four basic emotions of the mind: desire, joy, fear, sadness. Whatever kind of analysis I may be able to make of these, by dividing each into its particular species, and by defining it, I still find what to say in my memory and it is from my memory that I draw it out. Yet I am not moved by any of these emotions when I call them to mind by remembering them. Moreover, before I recalled them and thought about them, they were there in the memory; and this is how they could be brought forth in remembrance. Perhaps, therefore, just as food is brought up out of the belly by rumination, so also these things are drawn up out of the memory by recall. But why, then, does not the man who is thinking about the emotions, and is thus recalling them, feel in the mouth of his reflection the sweetness of joy or the bitterness of sadness? Is the comparison unlike in this because it is not complete at every point? For who would willingly speak on these subjects, if as often as we used the term sadness or fear, we should thereby be compelled to be sad or fearful? And yet we could never speak of them if we did not find them in our memories, not merely as the sounds of the names, as their images are impressed on it by the physical senses, but also the notions of the things themselves--which we did not receive by any gate of the flesh, but which the mind itself recognizes by the experience of its own passions, and has entrusted to the memory; or else which the memory itself has retained without their being entrusted to it.

CHAPTER XV

[10.] 23. Now whether all this is by means of images or not, who can rightly affirm? For I name a stone, I name the sun, and those things themselves are not present to my senses, but their images are present in my memory. I name some pain of the body, yet it is not present when there is no pain; yet if there were not some such image of it in my memory, I could not even speak of it, nor should I be able to distinguish it from pleasure. I name bodily health when I am sound in body, and the thing itself is indeed present in me. At the same time, unless there were some image of it in my memory, I could not possibly call to mind what the sound of this name signified. Nor would sick people know what was meant when health was named, unless the same image were preserved by the power of memory, even though the thing itself is absent from the body. I can name the numbers we use in counting, and it is not their images but themselves that are in my memory. I name the image of the sun, and this too is in my memory. For I do not recall the image of that image, but that image itself, for the image itself is present when I remember it. I name memory and I know what I name. But where do I know it, except in the memory itself? Is it also present to itself by its image, and not by itself?

CHAPTER XVI

[10.] 24. When I name forgetfulness, and understand what I mean by the name, how could I understand it if I did not remember it? And if I refer not to the sound of the name, but to the thing which the term signifies, how could I know what that sound signified if I had forgotten what the name means? When, therefore, I remember memory, then memory is present to itself by itself, but when I remember forgetfulness then both memory and forgetfulness are present together--the memory by which I remember the forgetfulness which I remember. But what is forgetfulness except the privation of memory? How, then, is that present to my memory which, when it controls my mind, I cannot remember? But if what we remember we store up in our memory; and if, unless we remembered forgetfulness, we could never know the thing signified by the term when we heard it--then, forgetfulness is contained in the memory. It is present so that we do not forget it, but since it is present, we do forget.
From this it is to be inferred that when we remember forgetfulness, it is not present to the memory through itself, but through its image; because if forgetfulness were present through itself, it would not lead us to remember, but only to forget. Now who will someday work this out? Who can understand how it is?
[10.] 25. Truly, O Lord, I toil with this and labor in myself. I have become a troublesome field that requires hard labor and heavy sweat. For we are not now searching out the tracts of heaven, or measuring the distances of the stars or inquiring about the weight of the earth. It is I myself--I, the mind--who remember. This is not much to marvel at, if what I myself am is not far from me. And what is nearer to me than myself? For see, I am not able to comprehend the force of my own memory, though I could not even call my own name without it. But what shall I say, when it is clear to me that I remember forgetfulness? Should I affirm that what I remember is not in my memory? Or should I say that forgetfulness is in my memory to the end that I should not forget? Both of these views are most absurd. But what third view is there? How can I say that the image of forgetfulness is retained by my memory, and not forgetfulness itself, when I remember it? How can I say this, since for the image of anything to be imprinted on the memory the thing itself must necessarily have been present first by which the image could have been imprinted? Thus I remember Carthage; thus, also, I remember all the other places where I have been. And I remember the faces of men whom I have seen and things reported by the other senses. I remember the health or sickness of the body. And when these objects were present, my memory received images from them so that they remain present in order for me to see them and reflect upon them in my mind, if I choose to remember them in their absence. If, therefore, forgetfulness is retained in the memory through its image and not through itself, then this means that it itself was once present, so that its image might have been imprinted. But when it was present, how did it write its image on the memory, since forgetfulness, by its presence, blots out even what it finds already written there? And yet in some way or other, even though it is incomprehensible and inexplicable, I am still quite certain that I also remember forgetfulness, by which we remember that something is blotted out.

CHAPTER XVII

[10.] 26. Great is the power of memory. It is a true marvel, O my God, a profound and infinite multiplicity! And this is the mind, and this I myself am. What, then, am I, O my God? Of what nature am I? A life various, and manifold, and exceedingly vast. Behold in the numberless halls and caves, in the innumerable fields and dens and caverns of my memory, full without measure of numberless kinds of things--present there either through images as all bodies are; or present in the things themselves as are our thoughts; or by some notion or observation as our emotions are, which the memory retains even though the mind feels them no longer, as long as whatever is in the memory is also in the mind--through all these I run and fly to and fro. I penetrate into them on this side and that as far as I can and yet there is nowhere any end.
So great is the power of memory, so great the power of life in man whose life is mortal! What, then, shall I do, O you my true life, my God? I will pass even beyond this power of mine that is called memory--I will pass beyond it, that I may come to you,  O lovely Light. And what are you saying to me? See, I soar by my mind toward you,  who remainest above me. I will also pass beyond this power of mine that is called memory, desiring to reach you where you canst be reached, and wishing to cleave to you where it is possible to cleave to you. For even beasts and birds possess memory, or else they could never find their lairs and nests again, nor display many other things they know and do by habit. Indeed, they could not even form their habits except by their memories. I will therefore pass even beyond memory that I may reach Him who has differentiated me from the four-footed beasts and the fowls of the air by making me a wiser creature. Thus I will pass beyond memory; but where shall I find you,  who are the true Good and the steadfast Sweetness? But where shall I find you? If I find you without memory, then I shall have no memory of you; and how could I find you at all, if I do not remember you?

CHAPTER XVIII

[10.] 27. For the woman who lost her small coin^[339] and searched for it with a light would never have found it unless she had remembered it. For when it was found, how could she have known whether it was the same coin, if she had not remembered it? I remember having lost and found many things, and I have learned this from that experience: that when I was searching for any of them and was asked: “Is this it? Is that it?” I answered, “No,” until finally what I was seeking was shown to me. But if I had not remembered it--whatever it was--even though it was shown to me, I still would not have found it because I could not have recognized it. And this is the way it always is when we search for and find anything that is lost. Still, if anything is accidentally lost from sight--not from memory, as a visible body might be--its image is retained within, and the thing is searched for until it is restored to sight. And when the thing is found, it is recognized by the image of it which is within. And we do not say that we have found what we have lost unless we can recognize it, and we cannot recognize it unless we remember it. But all the while the thing lost to the sight was retained in the memory.

CHAPTER XIX

[10.] 28. But what happens when the memory itself loses something, as when we forget anything and try to recall it? Where, finally, do we search, but in the memory itself? And there, if by chance one thing is offered for another, we refuse it until we meet with what we are looking for; and when we do, we recognize that this is it. But we could not do this unless we recognized it, nor could we have recognized it unless we remembered it. Yet we had indeed forgotten it.
Perhaps the whole of it had not slipped out of our memory; but a part was retained by which the other lost part was sought for, because the memory realized that it was not operating as smoothly as usual and was being held up by the crippling of its habitual working; hence, it demanded the restoration of what was lacking.
For example, if we see or think of some man we know, and, having forgotten his name, try to recall it--if some other thing presents itself, we cannot tie it into the effort to remember, because it was not habitually thought of in association with him. It is consequently rejected, until something comes into the mind on which our knowledge can rightly rest as the familiar and sought-for object. And where does this name come back from, save from the memory itself? For even when we recognize it by another’s reminding us of it, still it is from the memory that this comes, for we do not believe it as something new; but when we recall it, we admit that what was said was correct. But if the name had been entirely blotted out of the mind, we should not be able to recollect it even when reminded of it. For we have not entirely forgotten anything if we can remember that we have forgotten it. For a lost notion, one that we have entirely forgotten, we cannot even search for.

CHAPTER XX

[10.] 29. How, then, do I seek you,  O Lord? For when I seek you,  my God, I seek a happy life. I will seek you that my soul may live.^[340] For my body lives by my soul, and my soul lives by you. How, then, do I seek a happy life, since happiness is not mine till I can rightly say: “It is enough. This is it.” How do I seek it? Is it by remembering, as though I had forgotten it and still knew that I had forgotten it? Do I seek it in longing to learn of it as though it were something unknown, which either I had never known or had so completely forgotten as not even to remember that I had forgotten it? Is not the happy life the thing that all desire, and is there anyone who does not desire it at all?^[341] But where would they have gotten the knowledge of it, that they should so desire it? Where have they seen it that they should so love it? It is somehow true that we have it, but how I do not know.
There is, indeed, a sense in which when anyone has his desire he is happy. And then there are some who are happy in hope. These are happy in an inferior degree to those that are actually happy; yet they are better off than those who are happy neither in actuality nor in hope. But even these, if they had not known happiness in some degree, would not then desire to be happy. And yet it is most certain that they do so desire. How they come to know happiness, I cannot tell, but they have it by some kind of knowledge unknown to me, for I am very much in doubt as to whether it is in the memory. For if it is in there, then we have been happy once on a time--either each of us individually or all of us in that man who first sinned and in whom also we all died and from whom we are all born in misery. How this is, I do not now ask; but I do ask whether the happy life is in the memory. For if we did not know it, we should not love it. We hear the name of it, and we all acknowledge that we desire the thing, for we are not delighted with the name only. For when a Greek hears it spoken in Latin, he does not feel delighted, for he does not know what has been spoken. But we are as delighted as he would be in turn if he heard it in Greek, because the thing itself is neither Greek nor Latin, this happiness which Greeks and Latins and men of all the other tongues long so earnestly to obtain. It is, then, known to all; and if all could with one voice be asked whether they wished to be happy, there is no doubt they would all answer that they would. And this would not be possible unless the thing itself, which we name “happiness,” were held in the memory.

CHAPTER XXI

[10.] 30. But is it the same kind of memory as one who having seen Carthage remembers it? No, for the happy life is not visible to the eye, since it is not a physical object. Is it the sort of memory we have for numbers? No, for the man who has these in his understanding does not keep striving to attain more. Now we know something about the happy life and therefore we love it, but still we wish to go on striving for it that we may be happy. Is the memory of happiness, then, something like the memory of eloquence? No, for although some, when they hear the term eloquence, call the thing to mind, even if they are not themselves eloquent--and further, there are many people who would like to be eloquent, from which it follows that they must know something about it--nevertheless, these people have noticed through their senses that others are eloquent and have been delighted to observe this and long to be this way themselves. But they would not be delighted if it were not some interior knowledge; and they would not desire to be delighted unless they had been delighted. But as for a happy life, there is no physical perception by which we experience it in others.
Do we remember happiness, then, as we remember joy? It may be so, for I remember my joy even when I am sad, just as I remember a happy life when I am miserable. And I have never, through physical perception, either seen, heard, smelled, tasted, or touched my joy. But I have experienced it in my mind when I rejoiced; and the knowledge of it clung to my memory so that I can call it to mind, sometimes with disdain and at other times with longing, depending on the different kinds of things I now remember that I rejoiced in. For I have been bathed with a certain joy even by unclean things, which I now detest and execrate as I call them to mind. At other times, I call to mind with longing good and honest things, which are not any longer near at hand, and I am therefore saddened when I recall my former joy.
[10.] 31. Where and when did I ever experience my happy life that I can call it to mind and love it and long for it? It is not I alone or even a few others who wish to be happy, but absolutely everybody. Unless we knew happiness by a knowledge that is certain, we should not wish for it with a will which is so certain. Take this example: If two men were asked whether they wished to serve as soldiers, one of them might reply that he would, and the other that he would not; but if they were asked whether they wished to be happy, both of them would unhesitatingly say that they would. But the first one would wish to serve as a soldier and the other would not wish to serve, both from no other motive than to be happy. Is it, perhaps, that one finds his joy in this and another in that? Thus they agree in their wish for happiness just as they would also agree, if asked, in wishing for joy. Is this joy what they call a happy life? Although one could choose his joy in this way and another in that, all have one goal which they strive to attain, namely, to have joy. This joy, then, being something that no one can say he has not experienced, is therefore found in the memory and it is recognized whenever the phrase “a happy life” is heard.

CHAPTER XXII

[10.] 32. Forbid it, O Lord, put it far from the heart of your servant, who confesses to you--far be it from me to think I am happy because of any and all the joy I have. For there is a joy not granted to the wicked but only to those who worship you thankfully--and this joy you yourself art. The happy life is this--to rejoice to you,  in you,  and for you. This it is and there is no other. But those who think there is another follow after other joys, and not the true one. But their will is still not moved except by some image or shadow of joy.

CHAPTER XXIII

[10.] 33. Is it, then, uncertain that all men wish to be happy, since those who do not wish to find their joy in you--which is alone the happy life--do not actually desire the happy life? Or, is it rather that all desire this, but because “the flesh lusts against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh,” so that they “prevent you from doing what you would,”^[342] you fall to doing what you are able to do and are content with that. For you do not want to do what you cannot do urgently enough to make you able to do it.
Now I ask all men whether they would rather rejoice in truth or in falsehood. They will no more hesitate to answer, “In truth,” than to say that they wish to be happy. For a happy life is joy in the truth. Yet this is joy in you,  who are the Truth, O God my Light, “the health of my countenance and my God.”^[343] All wish for this happy life; all wish for this life which is the only happy one: joy in the truth is what all men wish.
I have had experience with many who wished to deceive, but not one who wished to be deceived.^[344] Where, then, did they ever know about this happy life, except where they knew also what the truth is? For they love it, too, since they are not willing to be deceived. And when they love the happy life, which is nothing else but joy in the truth, then certainly they also love the truth. And yet they would not love it if there were not some knowledge of it in the memory.
Why, then, do they not rejoice in it? Why are they not happy? Because they are so fully preoccupied with other things which do more to make them miserable than those which would make them happy, which they remember so little about. Yet there is a little light in men. Let them walk--let them walk in it, lest the darkness overtake them.
[10.] 34. Why, then, does truth generate hatred, and why does your servant who preaches the truth come to be an enemy to them who also love the happy life, which is nothing else than joy in the truth--unless it be that truth is loved in such a way that those who love something else besides her wish that to be the truth which they do love. Since they are unwilling to be deceived, they are unwilling to be convinced that they have been deceived. Therefore, they hate the truth for the sake of whatever it is that they love in place of the truth. They love truth when she shines on them; and hate her when she rebukes them. And since they are not willing to be deceived, but do wish to deceive, they love truth when she reveals herself and hate her when she reveals them. On this account, she will so repay them that those who are unwilling to be exposed by her she will indeed expose against their will, and yet will not disclose herself to them.
Thus, thus, truly thus: the human mind so blind and sick, so base and ill-mannered, desires to lie hidden, but does not wish that anything should be hidden from it. And yet the opposite is what happens--the mind itself is not hidden from the truth, but the truth is hidden from it. Yet even so, for all its wretchedness, it still prefers to rejoice in truth rather than in known falsehoods. It will, then, be happy only when without other distractions it comes to rejoice in that single Truth through which all things else are true.

CHAPTER XXIV

[10.] 35. Behold how great a territory I have explored in my memory seeking you,  O Lord! And in it all I have still not found you. Nor have I found anything about you,  except what I had already retained in my memory from the time I learned of you. For where I found Truth, there found I my God, who is the Truth. From the time I learned this I have not forgotten. And thus since the time I learned of you,  you have dwelt in my memory, and it is there that I find you whenever I call you to remembrance, and delight in you. These are my holy delights, which you have bestowed on me in your mercy, mindful of my poverty.

CHAPTER XXV

[10.] 36. But where in my memory doyou abide, O Lord? Where doyou dwell there? What sort of lodging have you made for yourself there? What kind of sanctuary have you built for yourself? you have done this honor to my memory to take up your abode in it, but I must consider further in what part of it you doabide. For in calling you to mind, I soared beyond those parts of memory which the beasts also possess, because I did not find you there among the images of corporeal things. From there I went on to those parts where I had stored the remembered affections of my mind, and I did not find you there. And I entered into the inmost seat of my mind, which is in my memory, since the mind remembers itself also--and you were not there. For just as you are not a bodily image, nor the emotion of a living creature (such as we feel when we rejoice or are grief-stricken, when we desire, or fear, or remember, or forget, or anything of that kind), so neither are you the mind itself. For you are the Lord God of the mind and of all these things that are mutable; but you abidest immutable over all. Yet you have elected to dwell in my memory from the time I learned of you. But why do I now inquire about the part of my memory you do dwell in, as if indeed there were separate parts in it? Assuredly, you dwellest in it, since I have remembered you from the time I learned of you,  and I find you in my memory when I call you to mind.

CHAPTER XXVI

[10.] 37. Where, then, did I find you so as to be able to learn of you? For you were not in my memory before I learned of you. Where, then, did I find you so as to be able to learn of you--save in yourself beyond me.^[345] Place there is none. We go “backward” and “forward” and there is no place. Everywhere and at once, O Truth, you guidest all who consult you,  and simultaneously answerest all even though they consult you on quite different things. you answerest clearly, though all do not hear in clarity. All take counsel of you on whatever point they wish, though they do not always hear what they wish. He is your best servant who does not look to hear from you what he himself wills, but who wills rather to will what he hears from you.

CHAPTER XXVII

[10.] 38. Belatedly I loved you,  O Beauty so ancient and so new, belatedly I loved you. For see, you were within and I was without, and I sought you out there. Unlovely, I rushed heedlessly among the lovely things you have made. you were with me, but I was not with you. These things kept me far from you; even though they were not at all unless they were in you. you did call and cry aloud, and did force open my deafness. you did gleam and shine, and did chase away my blindness. you did breathe fragrant odors and I drew in my breath; and now I pant for you. I tasted, and now I hunger and thirst. you did touch me, and I burned for your peace.

CHAPTER XXVIII

[10.] 39. When I come to be united to you with all my being, then there will be no more pain and toil for me, and my life shall be a real life, being wholly filled by you. But since he whom you fillest is the one you liftest up, I am still a burden to myself because I am not yet filled by you. Joys of sorrow contend with sorrows of joy, and on which side the victory lies I do not know.
Woe is me! Lord, have pity on me; my evil sorrows contend with my good joys, and on which side the victory lies I do not know. Woe is me! Lord, have pity on me. Woe is me! Behold, I do not hide my wounds. you are the Physician, I am the sick man; you are merciful, I need mercy. Is not the life of man on earth an ordeal? Who is he that wishes for vexations and difficulties? you commandest them to be endured, not to be loved. For no man loves what he endures, though he may love to endure. Yet even if he rejoices to endure, he would prefer that there were nothing for him to endure. In adversity, I desire prosperity; in prosperity, I fear adversity. What middle place is there, then, between these two, where human life is not an ordeal? There is woe in the prosperity of this world; there is woe in the fear of misfortune; there is woe in the distortion of joy. There is woe in the adversities of this world--a second woe, and a third, from the desire of prosperity--because adversity itself is a hard thing to bear and makes shipwreck of endurance. Is not the life of man upon the earth an ordeal, and that without surcease?

CHAPTER XXIX

[10.] 40. My whole hope is in your exceeding great mercy and that alone. Give what you commandest and command what you wilt. you commandest continence from us, and when I knew, as it is said, that no one could be continent unless God gave it to him, even this was a point of wisdom to know whose gift it was.^[346] For by continence we are bound up and brought back together in the One, whereas before we were scattered abroad among the many.^[347] For he loves you too little who loves along with you anything else that he does not love for your sake, O Love, who do burn forever and are never quenched. O Love, O my God, enkindle me! you commandest continence; give what you commandest, and command what you wilt.

CHAPTER XXX

[10.] 41. Obviously you commandest that I should be continent from “the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life.”^[348] you commandest me to abstain from fornication, and as for marriage itself, you have counseled something better than what you do allow. And since you gavest it, it was done--even before I became a minister of your sacrament. But there still exist in my memory--of which I have spoken so much--the images of such things as my habits had fixed there. These things rush into my thoughts with no power when I am awake; but in sleep they rush in not only so as to give pleasure, but even to obtain consent and what very closely resembles the deed itself. Indeed, the illusion of the image prevails to such an extent, in both my soul and my flesh, that the illusion persuades me when sleeping to what the reality cannot do when I am awake. Am I not myself at such a time, O Lord my God? And is there so much of a difference between myself awake and myself in the moment when I pass from waking to sleeping, or return from sleeping to waking?
Where, then, is the power of reason which resists such suggestions when I am awake--for even if the things themselves be forced upon it I remain unmoved? Does reason cease when the eyes close? Is it put to sleep with the bodily senses? But in that case how does it come to pass that even in slumber we often resist, and with our conscious purposes in mind, continue most chastely in them, and yield no assent to such allurements? Yet there is at least this much difference: that when it happens otherwise in dreams, when we wake up, we return to peace of conscience. And it is by this difference between sleeping and waking that we discover that it was not we who did it, while we still feel sorry that in some way it was done in us.
[10.] 42. Is not your hand, O Almighty God, able to heal all the diseases of my soul and, by your more and more abundant grace, to quench even the lascivious motions of my sleep? you wilt increase your gifts in me more and more, O Lord, that my soul may follow me to you,  wrenched free from the sticky glue of lust so that it is no longer in rebellion against itself, even in dreams; that it neither commits nor consents to these debasing corruptions which come through sensual images and which result in the pollution of the flesh. For it is no great thing for the Almighty, who is “able to do . . . more than we can ask or think,”^[349] to bring it about that no such influence--not even one so slight that a nod might restrain it--should afford gratification to the feelings of a chaste person even when sleeping. This could come to pass not only in this life but even at my present age. But what I am still in this way of wickedness I have confessed unto my good Lord, rejoicing with trembling in what you have given me and grieving in myself for that in which I am still imperfect. I am trusting that you wilt perfect your mercies in me, to the fullness of that peace which both my inner and outward being shall have with you when death is swallowed up in victory.^[350]

CHAPTER XXXI

[10.] 43. There is yet another “evil of the day”^[351] to which I wish I were sufficient. By eating and drinking we restore the daily losses of the body until that day when you destroyest both food and stomach, when you wilt destroy this emptiness with an amazing fullness and wilt clothe this corruptible with an eternal incorruption. But now the necessity of habit is sweet to me, and against this sweetness must I fight, lest I be enthralled by it. Thus I carry on a daily war by fasting, constantly “bringing my body into subjection,”^[352] after which my pains are banished by pleasure. For hunger and thirst are actual pain. They consume and destroy like fever does, unless the medicine of food is at hand to relieve us. And since this medicine at hand comes from the comfort we receive in your gifts (by means of which land and water and air serve our infirmity), even our calamity is called pleasure.
[10.] 44. This much you have taught me: that I should learn to take food as medicine. But during that time when I pass from the pinch of emptiness to the contentment of fullness, it is in that very moment that the snare of appetite lies baited for me. For the passage itself is pleasant; there is no other way of passing thither, and necessity compels us to pass. And while health is the reason for our eating and drinking, yet a perilous delight joins itself to them as a handmaid; and indeed, she tries to take precedence in order that I may want to do for her sake what I say I want to do for health’s sake. They do not both have the same limit either. What is sufficient for health is not enough for pleasure. And it is often a matter of doubt whether it is the needful care of the body that still calls for food or whether it is the sensual snare of desire still wanting to be served. In this uncertainty my unhappy soul rejoices, and uses it to prepare an excuse as a defense. It is glad that it is not clear as to what is sufficient for the moderation of health, so that under the pretense of health it may conceal its projects for pleasure. These temptations I daily endeavor to resist and I summon your right hand to my help and cast my perplexities onto you,  for I have not yet reached a firm conclusion in this matter.
[10.] 45. I hear the voice of my God commanding: “Let not your heart be overcharged with surfeiting and drunkenness.”^[353] Drunkenness is far from me. you wilt have mercy that it does not come near me. But “surfeiting” sometimes creeps upon your servant. you wilt have mercy that it may be put far from me. For no man can be continent unless you give it.^[354] Many things that we pray for you givest us, and whatever good we receive before we prayed for it, we receive it from you,  so that we might afterward know that we did receive it from you. I never was a drunkard, but I have known drunkards made into sober men by you. It was also your doing that those who never were drunkards have not been--and likewise, it was from you that those who have been might not remain so always. And it was likewise from you that both might know from whom all this came.
I heard another voice of yours: “Do not follow your lusts and refrain yourself from your pleasures.”^[355] And by your favor I have also heard this saying in which I have taken much delight: “Neither if we eat are we the better; nor if we eat not are we the worse.”^[356] This is to say that neither shall the one make me to abound, nor the other to be wretched. I heard still another voice: “For I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content. I know how to be abased and I know how to abound. . . . I can do all things through Christ who strengtheneth me.”^[357] See here a soldier of the heavenly army; not the sort of dust we are. But remember, O Lord, “that we are dust”^[358] and that you did create man out of the dust,^[359] and that he “was lost, and is found.”^[360] Of course, he [the apostle Paul] could not do all this by his own power. He was of the same dust--he whom I loved so much and who spoke of these things through the afflatus of your inspiration: “I can,” he said, “do all things through him who strengtheneth me.” Strengthen me, that I too may be able. Give what you commandest, and command what you wilt. This man [Paul] confesses that he received the gift of grace and that, when he glories, he glories in the Lord. I have heard yet another voice praying that he might receive. “Take from me,” he said, “the greediness of the belly.”^[361] And from this it appears, O my holy God, that you do give it, when what you commandest to be done is done.
[10.] 46. you have taught me, good Father, that “to the pure all things are pure”^[362]; but “it is evil for that man who gives offense in eating”^[363]; and that “every creature of yours is good, and nothing is to be refused if it is received with thanksgiving”^[364]; and that “meat does not commend us to God”^[365]; and that “no man should judge us in meat or in drink.”^[366] “Let not him who eats despise him who eats not, and let him that does not eat judge not him who does eat.”^[367] These things I have learned, thanks and praise be to you,  O my God and Master, who knockest at my ears and enlightenest my heart. Deliver me from all temptation!
It is not the uncleanness of meat that I fear, but the uncleanness of an incontinent appetite. I know that permission was granted Noah to eat every kind of flesh that was good for food; that Elijah was fed with flesh; that John, blessed with a wonderful abstinence, was not polluted by the living creatures (that is, the locusts) on which he fed. And I also know that Esau was deceived by his hungering after lentils and that David blamed himself for desiring water, and that our King was tempted not by flesh but by bread. And, thus, the people in the wilderness truly deserved their reproof, not because they desired meat, but because in their desire for food they murmured against the Lord.
[10.] 47. Set down, then, in the midst of these temptations, I strive daily against my appetite for food and drink. For it is not the kind of appetite I am able to deal with by cutting it off once for all, and thereafter not touching it, as I was able to do with fornication. The bridle of the throat, therefore, must be held in the mean between slackness and tightness. And who, O Lord, is he who is not in some degree carried away beyond the bounds of necessity? Whoever he is, he is great; let him magnify your name. But I am not such a one, “for I am a sinful man.”^[368] Yet I too magnify your name, for he who hath “overcome the world”^[369] intercedeth with you for my sins, numbering me among the weak members of his body; for your eyes did see what was imperfect in him, and in your book all shall be written down.^[370]

CHAPTER XXXII

[10.] 48. I am not much troubled by the allurement of odors. When they are absent, I do not seek them; when they are present, I do not refuse them; and I am always prepared to go without them. At any rate, I appear thus to myself; it is quite possible that I am deceived. For there is a lamentable darkness in which my capabilities are concealed, so that when my mind inquires into itself concerning its own powers, it does not readily venture to believe itself, because what already is in it is largely concealed unless experience brings it to light. Thus no man ought to feel secure in this life, the whole of which is called an ordeal, ordered so that the man who could be made better from having been worse may not also from having been better become worse. Our sole hope, our sole confidence, our only assured promise, is your mercy.

CHAPTER XXXIII

[10.] 49. The delights of the ear drew and held me much more powerfully, but you did unbind and liberate me. In those melodies which your words inspire when sung with a sweet and trained voice, I still find repose; yet not so as to cling to them, but always so as to be able to free myself as I wish. But it is because of the words which are their life that they gain entry into me and strive for a place of proper honor in my heart; and I can hardly assign them a fitting one. Sometimes, I seem to myself to give them more respect than is fitting, when I see that our minds are more devoutly and earnestly inflamed in piety by the holy words when they are sung than when they are not. And I recognize that all the diverse affections of our spirits have their appropriate measures in the voice and song, to which they are stimulated by I know not what secret correlation. But the pleasures of my flesh--to which the mind ought never to be surrendered nor by them enervated--often beguile me while physical sense does not attend on reason, to follow her patiently, but having once gained entry to help the reason, it strives to run on before her and be her leader. Thus in these things I sin unknowingly, but I come to know it afterward.
[10.] 50. On the other hand, when I avoid very earnestly this kind of deception, I err out of too great austerity. Sometimes I go to the point of wishing that all the melodies of the pleasant songs to which David’s Psalter is adapted should be banished both from my ears and from those of the Church itself. In this mood, the safer way seemed to me the one I remember was once related to me concerning Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria, who required the readers of the psalm to use so slight an inflection of the voice that it was more like speaking than singing.
However, when I call to mind the tears I shed at the songs of your Church at the outset of my recovered faith, and how even now I am moved, not by the singing but by what is sung (when they are sung with a clear and skillfully modulated voice), I then come to acknowledge the great utility of this custom. Thus I vacillate between dangerous pleasure and healthful exercise. I am inclined--though I pronounce no irrevocable opinion on the subject--to approve of the use of singing in the church, so that by the delights of the ear the weaker minds may be stimulated to a devotional mood.^[371] Yet when it happens that I am more moved by the singing than by what is sung, I confess myself to have sinned wickedly, and then I would rather not have heard the singing. See now what a condition I am in! Weep with me, and weep for me, those of you who can so control your inward feelings that good results always come forth. As for you who do not act this way at all, such things do not concern you. But do you,  O Lord, my God, give ear; look and see, and have mercy upon me; and heal me--you, in whose sight I am become an enigma to myself; this itself is my weakness.

CHAPTER XXXIV

[10.] 51. There remain the delights of these eyes of my flesh, about which I must make my confession in the hearing of the ears of your temple, brotherly and pious ears. Thus I will finish the list of the temptations of carnal appetite which still assail me--groaning and desiring as I am to be clothed upon with my house from heaven.^[372]
The eyes delight in fair and varied forms, and bright and pleasing colors. Let these not take possession of my soul! Rather let God possess it, he who did make all these things very good indeed. He is still my good, and not these. The pleasures of sight affect me all the time I am awake. There is no rest from them given me, as there is from the voices of melody, which I can occasionally find in silence. For daylight, that queen of the colors, floods all that we look upon everywhere I go during the day. It flits about me in manifold forms and soothes me even when I am busy about other things, not noticing it. And it presents itself so forcibly that if it is suddenly withdrawn it is looked for with longing, and if it is long absent the mind is saddened.
[10.] 52. O Light, which Tobit saw even with his eyes closed in blindness, when he taught his son the way of life--and went before him himself in the steps of love and never went astray^[373]; or that Light which Isaac saw when his fleshly “eyes were dim, so that he could not see”^[374] because of old age, and it was permitted him unknowingly to bless his sons, but in the blessing of them to know them; or that Light which Jacob saw, when he too, blind in old age yet with an enlightened heart, threw light on the nation of men yet to come--presignified in the persons of his own sons--and laid his hands mystically crossed upon his grandchildren by Joseph (not as their father, who saw them from without, but as though he were within them), and distinguished them aright^[375]: this is the true Light; it is one, and all are one who see and love it.
But that corporeal light, of which I was speaking, seasons the life of the world for her blind lovers with a tempting and fatal sweetness. Those who know how to praise you for it, “O God, Creator of Us All,” take it up in your hymn,^[376] and are not taken over by it in their sleep. Such a man I desire to be. I resist the seductions of my eyes, lest my feet be entangled as I go forward in your way; and I raise my invisible eyes to you,  that you wouldst be pleased to “pluck my feet out of the net.”^[377] you do continually pluck them out, for they are easily ensnared. you ceasest not to pluck them out, but I constantly remain fast in the snares set all around me. However, you who “keepest Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep.”^[378]
[10.] 53. What numberless things there are: products of the various arts and manufactures in our clothes, shoes, vessels, and all such things; besides such things as pictures and statuary--and all these far beyond the necessary and moderate use of them or their significance for the life of piety--which men have added for the delight of the eye, copying the outward forms of the things they make; but inwardly forsaking Him by whom they were made and destroying what they themselves have been made to be!
And I, O my God and my Joy, I also raise a hymn to you for all these things, and offer a sacrifice of praise to my Sanctifier, because those beautiful forms which pass through the medium of the human soul into the artist’s hands come from that beauty which is above our minds, which my soul sighs for day and night. But the craftsmen and devotees of these outward beauties discover the norm by which they judge them from that higher beauty, but not the measure of their use. Still, even if they do not see it, it is there nevertheless, to guard them from wandering astray, and to keep their strength for you,  and not dissipate it in delights that pass into boredom. And for myself, though I can see and understand this, I am still entangled in my own course with such beauty, but you wilt rescue me, O Lord, you wilt rescue me, “for your loving-kindness is before my eyes.”^[379] For I am captivated in my weakness but you in your mercy do rescue me: sometimes without my knowing it, because I had only lightly fallen; at other times, the rescue is painful because I was stuck fast.

CHAPTER XXXV

[10.] 54. Besides this there is yet another form of temptation still more complex in its peril. For in addition to the fleshly appetite which strives for the gratification of all senses and pleasures--in which its slaves perish because they separate themselves from you--there is also a certain vain and curious longing in the soul, rooted in the same bodily senses, which is cloaked under the name of knowledge and learning; not having pleasure in the flesh, but striving for new experiences through the flesh. This longing--since its origin is our appetite for learning, and since the sight is the chief of our senses in the acquisition of knowledge--is called in the divine language “the lust of the eyes.”^[380] For seeing is a function of the eyes; yet we also use this word for the other senses as well, when we exercise them in the search for knowledge. We do not say, “Listen how it glows,” “Smell how it glistens,” “Taste how it shines,” or “Feel how it flashes,” since all of these are said to be seen. And we do not simply say, “See how it shines,” which only the eyes can perceive; but we also say, “See how it sounds, see how it smells, see how it tastes, see how hard it is.” Thus, as we said before, the whole round of sensory experience is called “the lust of the eyes” because the function of seeing, in which the eyes have the principal role, is applied by analogy to the other senses when they are seeking after any kind of knowledge.
[10.] 55. From this, then, one can the more clearly distinguish whether it is pleasure or curiosity that is being pursued by the senses. For pleasure pursues objects that are beautiful, melodious, fragrant, savory, soft. But curiosity, seeking new experiences, will even seek out the contrary of these, not with the purpose of experiencing the discomfort that often accompanies them, but out of a passion for experimenting and knowledge.
For what pleasure is there in the sight of a lacerated corpse, which makes you shudder? And yet if there is one lying close by we flock to it, as if to be made sad and pale. People fear lest they should see such a thing even in sleep, just as they would if, when awake, someone compelled them to go and see it or if some rumor of its beauty had attracted them.
This is also the case with the other senses; it would be tedious to pursue a complete analysis of it. This malady of curiosity is the reason for all those strange sights exhibited in the theater. It is also the reason why we proceed to search out the secret powers of nature--those which have nothing to do with our destiny--which do not profit us to know about, and concerning which men desire to know only for the sake of knowing. And it is with this same motive of perverted curiosity for knowledge that we consult the magical arts. Even in religion itself, this prompting drives us to make trial of God when signs and wonders are eagerly asked of him--not desired for any saving end, but only to make trial of him.
[10.] 56. In such a wilderness so vast, crammed with snares and dangers, behold how many of them I have lopped off and cast from my heart, as you,  O God of my salvation, have enabled me to do. And yet, when would I dare to say, since so many things of this sort still buzz around our daily lives--when would I dare to say that no such motive prompts my seeing or creates a vain curiosity in me? It is true that now the theaters never attract me, nor do I now care to inquire about the courses of the stars, and my soul has never sought answers from the departed spirits. All sacrilegious oaths I abhor. And yet, O Lord my God, to whom I owe all humble and singlehearted service, with what subtle suggestion the enemy still influences me to require some sign from you! But by our King, and by Jerusalem, our pure and chaste homeland, I beseech you that where any consenting to such thoughts is now far from me, so may it always be farther and farther. And when I entreat you for the salvation of any man, the end I aim at is something more than the entreating: let it be that as you do what you wilt, you do also give me the grace willingly to follow your lead.
[10.] 57. Now, really, in how many of the most minute and trivial things my curiosity is still daily tempted, and who can keep the tally on how often I succumb? How often, when people are telling idle tales, we begin by tolerating them lest we should give offense to the sensitive; and then gradually we come to listen willingly! I do not nowadays go to the circus to see a dog chase a rabbit, but if by chance I pass such a race in the fields, it quite easily distracts me even from some serious thought and draws me after it--not that I turn aside with my horse, but with the inclination of my mind. And unless, by showing me my weakness, you do speedily warn me to rise above such a sight to you by a deliberate act of thought--or else to despise the whole thing and pass it by--then I become absorbed in the sight, vain creature that I am.
How is it that when I am sitting at home a lizard catching flies, or a spider entangling them as they fly into her webs, oftentimes arrests me? Is the feeling of curiosity not the same just because these are such tiny creatures? From them I proceed to praise you,  the wonderful Creator and Disposer of all things; but it is not this that first attracts my attention. It is one thing to get up quickly and another thing not to fall--and of both such things my life is full and my only hope is in your exceeding great mercy. For when this heart of ours is made the depot of such things and is overrun by the throng of these abounding vanities, then our prayers are often interrupted and disturbed by them. Even while we are in your presence and direct the voice of our hearts to your ears, such a great business as this is broken off by the inroads of I know not what idle thoughts.

CHAPTER XXXVI

[10.] 58. Shall we, then, also reckon this vain curiosity among the things that are to be but lightly esteemed? Shall anything restore us to hope except your complete mercy since you have begun to change us? you knowest to what extent you have already changed me, for first of all you did heal me of the lust for vindicating myself, so that you mightest then forgive all my remaining iniquities and heal all my diseases, and “redeem my life from corruption and crown me with loving-kindness and tender mercies, and satisfy my desires with good things.”^[381] It was you who did restrain my pride with your fear, and bowed my neck to your “yoke.”^[382] And now I bear the yoke and it is “light” to me, because you did promise it to be so, and have made it to be so. And so in truth it was, though I knew it not when I feared to take it up.
[10.] 59. But, O Lord--you who alone reignest without pride, because you alone are the true Lord, who have no Lord--has this third kind of temptation left me, or can it leave me during this life: the desire to be feared and loved of men, with no other view than that I may find in it a joy that is no joy? It is, rather, a wretched life and an unseemly ostentation. It is a special reason why we do not love you,  nor devotedly fear you. Therefore “you resistest the proud but givest grace to the humble.”^[383] you thunderest down on the ambitious designs of the world, and “the foundations of the hills” tremble.^[384]
And yet certain offices in human society require the officeholder to be loved and feared of men, and through this the adversary of our true blessedness presses hard upon us, scattering everywhere his snares of “well done, well done”; so that while we are eagerly picking them up, we may be caught unawares and split off our joy from your truth and fix it on the deceits of men. In this way we come to take pleasure in being loved and feared, not for your sake but in your stead. By such means as this, the adversary makes men like himself, that he may have them as his own, not in the harmony of love, but in the fellowship of punishment--the one who aspired to exalt his throne in the north,^[385] that in the darkness and the cold men might have to serve him, mimicking you in perverse and distorted ways.
But see, O Lord, we are your little flock. Possess us, stretch your wings above us, and let us take refuge under them. Be you our glory; let us be loved for your sake, and let your word be feared in us. Those who desire to be commended by the men whom you condemnest will not be defended by men when you judgest, nor will they be delivered when you do condemn them. But when--not as a sinner is praised in the wicked desires of his soul nor when the unrighteous man is blessed in his unrighteousness--a man is praised for some gift that you have given him, and he is more gratified at the praise for himself than because he possesses the gift for which he is praised, such a one is praised while you do condemn him. In such a case the one who praised is truly better than the one who was praised. For the gift of God in man was pleasing to the one, while the other was better pleased with the gift of man than with the gift of God.

CHAPTER XXXVII

[10.] 60. By these temptations we are daily tried, O Lord; we are tried unceasingly. Our daily “furnace” is the human tongue.^[386] And also in this respect you commandest us to be continent. Give what you commandest and command what you wilt. In this matter, you knowest the groans of my heart and the rivers of my eyes, for I am not able to know for certain how far I am clean of this plague; and I stand in great fear of my “secret faults,”^[387] which your eyes perceive, though mine do not. For in respect of the pleasures of my flesh and of idle curiosity, I see how far I have been able to hold my mind in check when I abstain from them either by voluntary act of the will or because they simply are not at hand; for then I can inquire of myself how much more or less frustrating it is to me not to have them. This is also true about riches, which are sought for in order that they may minister to one of these three “lusts,” or two, or the whole complex of them. The mind is able to see clearly if, when it has them, it despises them so that they may be cast aside and it may prove itself.
But if we desire to test our power of doing without praise, must we then live wickedly or lead a life so atrocious and abandoned that everyone who knows us will detest us? What greater madness than this can be either said or conceived? And yet if praise, both by custom and right, is the companion of a good life and of good works, we should as little forgo its companionship as the good life itself. But unless a thing is absent I do not know whether I should be contented or troubled at having to do without it.
[10.] 61. What is it, then, that I am confessing to you,  O Lord, concerning this sort of temptation? What else, than that I am delighted with praise, but more with the truth itself than with praise. For if I were to have any choice whether, if I were mad or utterly in the wrong, I would prefer to be praised by all men or, if I were steadily and fully confident in the truth, would prefer to be blamed by all, I see which I should choose. Yet I wish I were unwilling that the approval of others should add anything to my joy for any good I have. Yet I admit that it does increase it; and, more than that, dispraise diminishes it. Then, when I am disturbed over this wretchedness of mine, an excuse presents itself to me, the value of which you knowest, O God, for it renders me uncertain. For since it is not only continence that you have enjoined on us--that is, what things to hold back our love from--but righteousness as well--that is, what to bestow our love upon--and have wished us to love not only you,  but also our neighbor, it often turns out that when I am gratified by intelligent praise I seem to myself to be gratified by the competence or insight of my neighbor; or, on the other hand, I am sorry for the defect in him when I hear him dispraise either what he does not understand or what is good. For I am sometimes grieved at the praise I get, either when those things that displease me in myself are praised in me, or when lesser and trifling goods are valued more highly than they should be. But, again, how do I know whether I feel this way because I am unwilling that he who praises me should differ from me concerning myself not because I am moved with any consideration for him, but because the good things that please me in myself are more pleasing to me when they also please another? For in a way, I am not praised when my judgment of myself is not praised, since either those things which are displeasing to me are praised, or those things which are less pleasing to me are more praised. Am I not, then, quite uncertain of myself in this respect?
[10.] 62. Behold, O Truth, it is in you that I see that I ought not to be moved at my own praises for my own sake, but for the sake of my neighbor’s good. And whether this is actually my way, I truly do not know. On this score I know less of myself than you dost. I beseech you now, O my God, to reveal myself to me also, that I may confess to my brethren, who are to pray for me in those matters where I find myself weak.
Let me once again examine myself the more diligently. If, in my own praise, I am moved with concern for my neighbor, why am I less moved if some other man is unjustly dispraised than when it happens to me? Why am I more irritated at that reproach which is cast on me than at one which is, with equal injustice, cast upon another in my presence? Am I ignorant of this also? Or is it still true that I am deceiving myself, and do not keep the truth before you in my heart and tongue? Put such madness far from me, O Lord, lest my mouth be to me “the oil of sinners, to anoint my head.”^[388]

CHAPTER XXXVIII

[10.] 63. “I am needy and poor.”^[389] Still, I am better when in secret groanings I displease myself and seek your mercy until what is lacking in me is renewed and made complete for that peace which the eye of the proud does not know. The reports that come from the mouth and from actions known to men have in them a most perilous temptation to the love of praise. This love builds up a certain complacency in one’s own excellency, and then goes around collecting solicited compliments. It tempts me, even when I inwardly reprove myself for it, and this precisely because it is reproved. For a man may often glory vainly in the very scorn of vainglory--and in this case it is not any longer the scorn of vainglory in which he glories, for he does not truly despise it when he inwardly glories in it.

CHAPTER XXXIX

[10.] 64. Within us there is yet another evil arising from the same sort of temptation. By it they become empty who please themselves in themselves, although they do not please or displease or aim at pleasing others. But in pleasing themselves they displease you very much, not merely taking pleasure in things that are not good as if they were good, but taking pleasure in your good things as if they were their own; or even as if they were yours but still as if they had received them through their own merit; or even as if they had them through your grace, still without this grace with their friends, but as if they envied that grace to others. In all these and similar perils and labors, you perceivest the agitation of my heart, and I would rather feel my wounds being cured by you than not inflicted by me on myself.

CHAPTER XL

[10.] 65. Where have you not accompanied me, O Truth, teaching me both what to avoid and what to desire, when I have submitted to you what I could understand about matters here below, and have sought your counsel about them?
With my external senses I have viewed the world as I was able and have noticed the life which my body derives from me and from these senses of mine. From that stage I advanced inwardly into the recesses of my memory--the manifold chambers of my mind, marvelously full of unmeasured wealth. And I reflected on this and was afraid, and could understand none of these things without you and found you to be none of them. Nor did I myself discover these things--I who went over them all and labored to distinguish and to value everything according to its dignity, accepting some things upon the report of my senses and questioning about others which I thought to be related to my inner self, distinguishing and numbering the reporters themselves; and in that vast storehouse of my memory, investigating some things, depositing other things, taking out still others. Neither was I myself when I did this--that is, that ability of mine by which I did it--nor was it you,  for you are that never-failing light from which I took counsel about them all; whether they were what they were, and what was their real value. In all this I heard you teaching and commanding me. And this I often do--and this is a delight to me--and as far as I can get relief from my necessary duties, I resort to this kind of pleasure. But in all these things which I review when I consult you,  I still do not find a secure place for my soul save in you,  in whom my scattered members may be gathered together and nothing of me escape from you. And sometimes you introducest me to a most rare and inward feeling, an inexplicable sweetness. If this were to come to perfection in me I do not know to what point life might not then arrive. But still, by these wretched weights of mine, I relapse into these common things, and am sucked in by my old customs and am held. I sorrow much, yet I am still closely held. To this extent, then, the burden of habit presses us down. I can exist in this fashion but I do not wish to do so. In that other way I wish I were, but cannot be--in both ways I am wretched.

CHAPTER XLI

[10.] 66. And now I have thus considered the infirmities of my sins, under the headings of the three major “lusts,” and I have called your right hand to my aid. For with a wounded heart I have seen your brightness, and having been beaten back I cried: “Who can attain to it? I am cut off from before your eyes.”^[390] you are the Truth, who presidest over all things, but I, because of my greed, did not wish to lose you. But still, along with you,  I wished also to possess a lie--just as no one wishes to lie in such a way as to be ignorant of what is true. By this I lost you,  for you wilt not condescend to be enjoyed along with a lie.

CHAPTER XLII

[10.] 67. Whom could I find to reconcile me to you? Should I have approached the angels? What kind of prayer? What kind of rites? Many who were striving to return to you and were not able of themselves have, I am told, tried this and have fallen into a longing for curious visions and deserved to be deceived. Being exalted, they sought you in their pride of learning, and they thrust themselves forward rather than beating their breasts.^[391] And so by a likeness of heart, they drew to themselves the princes of the air,^[392] their conspirators and companions in pride, by whom they were deceived by the power of magic. Thus they sought a mediator by whom they might be cleansed, but there was none. For the mediator they sought was the devil, disguising himself as an angel of light.^[393] And he allured their proud flesh the more because he had no fleshly body.
They were mortal and sinful, but you,  O Lord, to whom they arrogantly sought to be reconciled, are immortal and sinless. But a mediator between God and man ought to have something in him like God and something in him like man, lest in being like man he should be far from God, or if only like God he should be far from man, and so should not be a mediator. That deceitful mediator, then, by whom, by your secret judgment, human pride deserves to be deceived, had one thing in common with man, that is, his sin. In another respect, he would seem to have something in common with God, for not being clothed with the mortality of the flesh, he could boast that he was immortal. But since “the wages of sin is death,”^[394] what he really has in common with men is that, together with them, he is condemned to death.

CHAPTER XLIII

[10.] 68. But the true Mediator, whom you in your secret mercy have revealed to the humble, and have sent to them so that through his example they also might learn the same humility--that “Mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus,”^[395] appeared between mortal sinners and the immortal Just One. He was mortal as men are mortal; he was righteous as God is righteous; and because the reward of righteousness is life and peace, he could, through his righteousness united with God, cancel the death of justified sinners, which he was willing to have in common with them. Hence he was manifested to holy men of old, to the end that they might be saved through faith in his Passion to come, even as we through faith in his Passion which is past. As man he was Mediator, but as the Word he was not something in between the two; because he was equal to God, and God with God, and, with the Holy Spirit, one God.
[10.] 69. How have you loved us, O good Father, who did not spare your only Son, but did deliver him up for us wicked ones!^[396] How have you loved us, for whom he who did not count it robbery to be equal with you “became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross”^[397]! He alone was “free among the dead.”^[398] He alone had power to lay down his life and power to take it up again, and for us he became to you both Victor and Victim; and Victor because he was the Victim. For us, he was to you both Priest and Sacrifice, and Priest because he was the Sacrifice. Out of slaves, he maketh us your sons, because he was born of you and did serve us. Rightly, then, is my hope fixed strongly on him, that you wilt “heal all my diseases”^[399] through him, who sitteth at your right hand and maketh intercession for us.^[400] Otherwise I should utterly despair. For my infirmities are many and great; indeed, they are very many and very great. But your medicine is still greater. Otherwise, we might think that your word was removed from union with man, and despair of ourselves, if it had not been that he was “made flesh and dwelt among us.”^[401]
[10.] 70. Terrified by my sins and the load of my misery, I had resolved in my heart and considered flight into the wilderness. But you did forbid me, and you did strengthen me, saying that “since Christ died for all, they who live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto him who died for them.”^[402] Behold, O Lord, I cast all my care on you,  that I may live and “behold wondrous things out of your law.”^[403] you knowest my incompetence and my infirmities; teach me and heal me. your only Son--he “in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge”^[404]--hath redeemed me with his blood. Let not the proud speak evil of me, because I keep my ransom before my mind, and eat and drink and share my food and drink. For, being poor, I desire to be satisfied from him, together with those who eat and are satisfied: “and they shall praise the Lord that seek Him.”^[405]

 ELEVEN

BOOK ELEVEN

Liber XI

The eternal Creator and the Creation in time. Augustine ties together his memory of his past life, his present experience, and his ardent desire to comprehend the mystery of creation. This leads him to the questions of the mode and time of creation. He ponders the mode of creation and shows that it was de nihilo and involved no alteration in the being of God. He then considers the question of the beginning of the world and time and shows that time and creation are cotemporal. But what is time? To this Augustine devotes a brilliant analysis of the subjectivity of time and the relation of all temporal process to the abiding eternity of God. From this, he prepares to turn to a detailed interpretation of Gen. 1:1, 2.

CHAPTER I

[11.] 1. Is it possible, O Lord, that, since you are in eternity, you are ignorant of what I am saying to you? Or, do you see in time an event at the time it occurs? If not, then why am I recounting such a tale of things to you? Certainly not in order to acquaint you with them through me; but, instead, that through them I may stir up my own love and the love of my readers toward you,  so that all may say, “Great is the Lord and greatly to be praised.” I have said this before^[406] and will say it again: “For love of your love I do it.” So also we pray--and yet Truth tells us, “Your Father knoweth what things you need before you ask him.”^[407] Consequently, we lay bare our feelings before you,  that, through our confessing to you our plight and your mercies toward us, you mayest go on to free us altogether, as you have already begun; and that we may cease to be wretched in ourselves and blessed in you--since you have called us to be poor in spirit, meek, mourners, hungering and athirst for righteousness, merciful and pure in heart.^[408] Thus I have told you many things, as I could find ability and will to do so, since it was your will in the first place that I should confess to you,  O Lord my God--for “you are good and your mercy endureth forever.”^[409]

CHAPTER II

[11.] 2. But how long would it take for the voice of my pen to tell enough of your exhortations and of all your terrors and comforts and leadings by which you did bring me to preach your Word and to administer your sacraments to your people? And even if I could do this sufficiently, the drops of time^[410] are very precious to me and I have for a long time been burning with the desire to meditate on your law, and to confess in your presence my knowledge and ignorance of it--from the first streaks of your light in my mind and the remaining darkness, until my weakness shall be swallowed up in your strength. And I do not wish to see those hours drained into anything else which I can find free from the necessary care of the body, the exercise of the mind, and the service we owe to our fellow men--and what we give even if we do not owe it.
[11.] 3. O Lord my God, hear my prayer and let your mercy attend my longing. It does not burn for itself alone but longs as well to serve the cause of fraternal love. you seest in my heart that this is so. Let me offer the service of my mind and my tongue--and give me what I may in turn offer back to you. For “I am needy and poor”; you are rich to all who call upon you--you who, in your freedom from care, carest for us. Trim away from my lips, inwardly and outwardly, all rashness and lying. Let your Scriptures be my chaste delight. Let me not be deceived in them, nor deceive others from them. O Lord, hear and pity! O Lord my God, light of the blind, strength of the weak--and also the light of those who see and the strength of the strong--hearken to my soul and hear it crying from the depths.^[411] Unless your ears attend us even in the depths, where should we go? To whom should we cry?
“Thine is the day and the night is yours as well.”^[412] At your bidding the moments fly by. Grant me in them, then, an interval for my meditations on the hidden things of your law, nor close the door of your law against us who knock. you have not willed that the deep secrets of all those pages should have been written in vain. Those forests are not without their stags which keep retired within them, ranging and walking and feeding, lying down and ruminating.^[413] Perfect me, O Lord, and reveal their secrets to me. Behold, your voice is my joy; your voice surpasses in abundance of delights. Give me what I love, for I do love it. And this too is your gift. Abandon not your gifts and despise not your “grass” which thirsts for you.^[414] Let me confess to you everything that I shall have found in your books and “let me hear the voice of your praise.”^[415] Let me drink from you and “consider the wondrous things out of your law”^[416]--from the very beginning, when you madest heaven and earth, and thenceforward to the everlasting reign of your Holy City with you.
[11.] 4. O Lord, have mercy on me and hear my petition. For my prayer is not for earthly things, neither gold nor silver and precious stones, nor gorgeous apparel, nor honors and power, nor fleshly pleasures, nor of bodily necessities in this life of our pilgrimage: all of these things are “added” to those who seek your Kingdom and your righteousness.^[417]
Observe, O God, from whence comes my desire. The unrighteous have told me of delights but not such as those in your law, O Lord. Behold, this is the spring of my desire. See, O Father, look and see--and approve! Let it be pleasing in your mercy’s sight that I should find favor with you--that the secret things of your Word may be opened to me when I knock. I beg this of you by our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, the Man of your right hand, the Son of Man; whom you madest strong for your purpose as Mediator between you and us; through whom you did seek us when we were not seeking you,  but did seek us so that we might seek you; your Word, through whom you madest all things, and me among them; your only Son, through whom you have called your faithful people to adoption, and me among them. I beseech it of you through him who sitteth at your right hand and maketh intercession for us, “in whom are hid all treasures of wisdom and knowledge.”^[418] It is he I seek in your books. Moses wrote of him. He tells us so himself; the Truth tells us so.

CHAPTER III

[11.] 5. Let me hear and understand how in the beginning you madest heaven and earth.^[419] Moses wrote of this; he wrote and passed on--moving from you to you--and he is now no longer before me. If he were, I would lay hold on him and ask him and entreat him solemnly that in your name he would open out these things to me, and I would lend my bodily ears to the sounds that came forth out of his mouth. If, however, he spoke in the Hebrew language, the sounds would beat on my senses in vain, and nothing would touch my mind; but if he spoke in Latin, I would understand what he said. But how should I then know whether what he said was true? If I knew even this much, would it be that I knew it from him? Indeed, within me, deep inside the chambers of my thought, Truth itself--neither Hebrew, nor Greek, nor Latin, nor barbarian, without any organs of voice and tongue, without the sound of syllables--would say, “He speaks the truth,” and I should be assured by this. Then I would confidently say to that man of yours, “You speak the truth.”^[420] However, since I cannot inquire of Moses, I beseech you,  O Truth, from whose fullness he spoke truth; I beseech you,  my God, forgive my sins, and as you gavest your servant the gift to speak these things, grant me also the gift to understand them.

CHAPTER IV

[11.] 6. Look around; there are the heaven and the earth. They cry aloud that they were made, for they change and vary. Whatever there is that has not been made, and yet has being, has nothing in it that was not there before. This having something not already existent is what it means to be changed and varied. Heaven and earth thus speak plainly that they did not make themselves: “We are, because we have been made; we did not exist before we came to be so that we could have made ourselves!” And the voice with which they speak is simply their visible presence. It was you,  O Lord, who madest these things. you are beautiful; thus they are beautiful. you are good, thus they are good. you art; thus they are. But they are not as beautiful, nor as good, nor as truly real as you their Creator art. Compared with you,  they are neither beautiful nor good, nor do they even exist. These things we know, thanks be to you. Yet our knowledge is ignorance when it is compared with your knowledge.

CHAPTER V

[11.] 7. But how did you make the heaven and the earth, and what was the tool of such a mighty work as yours? For it was not like a human worker fashioning body from body, according to the fancy of his mind, able somehow or other to impose on it a form which the mind perceived in itself by its inner eye (yet how should even he be able to do this, if you hadst not made that mind?). He imposes the form on something already existing and having some sort of being, such as clay, or stone or wood or gold or such like (and where would these things come from if you hadst not furnished them?). For you madest his body for the artisan, and you madest the mind which directs the limbs; you madest the matter from which he makes anything; you did create the capacity by which he understands his are and sees within his mind what he may do with the things before him; you gavest him his bodily sense by which, as if he had an interpreter, he may communicate from mind to matter what he proposes to do and report back to his mind what has been done, that the mind may consult with the Truth which presideth over it as to whether what is done is well done.
All these things praise you,  the Creator of them all. But how did you make them? How, O God, did you make the heaven and earth? For truly, neither in heaven nor on earth did you make heaven and earth--nor in the air nor in the waters, since all of these also belong to the heaven and the earth. Nowhere in the whole world did you make the whole world, because there was no place where it could be made before it was made. And you did not hold anything in your hand from which to fashion the heaven and the earth,^[421] for where couldst you have gotten what you hadst not made in order to make something with it? Is there, indeed, anything at all except because you art? Thus you did speak and they were made,^[422] and by your Word you did make them all.

CHAPTER VI

[11.] 8. But how did you speak? Was it in the same manner in which the voice came from the cloud saying, “This is my beloved Son”^[423]? For that voice sounded forth and died away; it began and ended. The syllables sounded and passed away, the second after the first, the third after the second, and thence in order, till the very last after all the rest; and silence after the last. From this it is clear and plain that it was the action of a creature, itself in time, which sounded that voice, obeying your eternal will. And what these words were which were formed at that time the outer ear conveyed to the conscious mind, whose inner ear lay attentively open to your eternal Word. But it compared those words which sounded in time with your eternal word sounding in silence and said: “This is different; quite different! These words are far below me; they are not even real, for they fly away and pass, but the Word of my God remains above me forever.” If, then, in words that sound and fade away you did say that heaven and earth should be made, and thus madest heaven and earth, then there was already some kind of corporeal creature before heaven and earth by whose motions in time that voice might have had its occurrence in time. But there was nothing corporeal before the heaven and the earth; or if there was, then it is certain that already, without a time-bound voice, you hadst created whatever it was out of which you did make the time-bound voice by which you did say, “Let the heaven and the earth be made!” For whatever it was out of which such a voice was made simply did not exist at all until it was made by you. Was it decreed by your Word that a body might be made from which such words might come?

CHAPTER VII

[11.] 9. you do call us, then, to understand the Word--the God who is God with you--which is spoken eternally and by which all things are spoken eternally. For what was first spoken was not finished, and then something else spoken until the whole series was spoken; but all things, at the same time and forever. For, otherwise, we should have time and change and not a true eternity, nor a true immortality.
This I know, O my God, and I give thanks. I know, I confess to you,  O Lord, and whoever is not ungrateful for certain truths knows and blesses you along with me. We know, O Lord, this much we know: that in the same proportion as anything is not what it was, and is what it was not, in that very same proportion it passes away or comes to be. But there is nothing in your Word that passes away or returns to its place; for it is truly immortal and eternal. And, therefore, unto the Word coeternal with you,  at the same time and always you sayest all that you sayest. And whatever you sayest shall be made is made, and you makest nothing otherwise than by speaking. Still, not all the things that you do make by speaking are made at the same time and always.

CHAPTER VIII

[11.] 10. Why is this, I ask of you,  O Lord my God? I see it after a fashion, but I do not know how to express it, unless I say that everything that begins to be and then ceases to be begins and ceases when it is known in your eternal Reason that it ought to begin or cease--in your eternal Reason where nothing begins or ceases. And this is your Word, which is also “the Beginning,” because it also speaks to us.^[424] Thus, in the gospel, he spoke through the flesh; and this sounded in the outward ears of men so that it might be believed and sought for within, and so that it might be found in the eternal Truth, in which the good and only Master teacheth all his disciples.^[425] There, O Lord, I hear your voice, the voice of one speaking to me, since he who teacheth us speaketh to us. But he that doth not teach us doth not really speak to us even when he speaketh. Yet who is it that teacheth us unless it be the Truth immutable? For even when we are instructed by means of the mutable creation, we are thereby led to the Truth immutable. There we learn truly as we stand and hear him, and we rejoice greatly “because of the bridegroom’s voice,”^[426] restoring us to the source whence our being comes. And therefore, unless the Beginning remained immutable, there would then not be a place to which we might return when we had wandered away. But when we return from error, it is through our gaining knowledge that we return. In order for us to gain knowledge he teacheth us, since he is the Beginning, and speaketh to us.

CHAPTER IX

[11.] 11. In this Beginning, O God, you have made heaven and earth--through your Word, your Son, your Power, your Wisdom, your Truth: all wondrously speaking and wondrously creating. Who shall comprehend such things and who shall tell of it? What is it that shineth through me and striketh my heart without injury, so that I both shudder and burn? I shudder because I am unlike it; I burn because I am like it. It is Wisdom itself that shineth through me, clearing away my fog, which so readily overwhelms me so that I faint in it, in the darkness and burden of my punishment. For my strength is brought down in neediness, so that I cannot endure even my blessings until you,  O Lord, who have been gracious to all my iniquities, also healest all my infirmities--for it is you who “shalt redeem my life from corruption, and crown me with loving-kindness and tender mercy, and shalt satisfy my desire with good things so that my youth shall be renewed like the eagle’s.”^[427] For by this hope we are saved, and through patience we await your promises. Let him that is able hear you speaking to his inner mind. I will cry out with confidence because of your own oracle, “How wonderful are your works, O Lord; in wisdom you have made them all.”^[428] And this Wisdom is the Beginning, and in that Beginning you have made heaven and earth.

CHAPTER X

12. Now, are not those still full of their old carnal nature^[429] who ask us: “What was God doing before he made heaven and earth? For if he was idle,” they say, “and doing nothing, then why did he not continue in that state forever--doing nothing, as he had always done? If any new motion has arisen in God, and a new will to form a creature, which he had never before formed, how can that be a true eternity in which an act of will occurs that was not there before? For the will of God is not a created thing, but comes before the creation--and this is true because nothing could be created unless the will of the Creator came before it. The will of God, therefore, pertains to his very Essence. Yet if anything has arisen in the Essence of God that was not there before, then that Essence cannot truly be called eternal. But if it was the eternal will of God that the creation should come to be, why, then, is not the creation itself also from eternity?”^[430]

CHAPTER XI

13. Those who say these things do not yet understand you,  O Wisdom of God, O Light of souls. They do not yet understand how the things are made that are made by and in you. They endeavor to comprehend eternal things, but their heart still flies about in the past and future motions of created things, and is still unstable. Who shall hold it and fix it so that it may come to rest for a little; and then, by degrees, glimpse the glory of that eternity which abides forever; and then, comparing eternity with the temporal process in which nothing abides, they may see that they are incommensurable? They would see that a long time does not become long, except from the many separate events that occur in its passage, which cannot be simultaneous. In the Eternal, on the other hand, nothing passes away, but the whole is simultaneously present. But no temporal process is wholly simultaneous. Therefore, let it^[431] see that all time past is forced to move on by the incoming future; that all the future follows from the past; and that all, past and future, is created and issues out of that which is forever present. Who will hold the heart of man that it may stand still and see how the eternity which always stands still is itself neither future nor past but expresses itself in the times that are future and past? Can my hand do this, or can the hand of my mouth bring about so difficult a thing even by persuasion?

CHAPTER XII

14. How, then, shall I respond to him who asks, “What was God doing before he made heaven and earth?” I do not answer, as a certain one is reported to have done facetiously (shrugging off the force of the question). “He was preparing hell,” he said, “for those who pry too deep.” It is one thing to see the answer; it is another to laugh at the questioner--and for myself I do not answer these things thus. More willingly would I have answered, “I do not know what I do not know,” than cause one who asked a deep question to be ridiculed--and by such tactics gain praise for a worthless answer.
Rather, I say that you,  our God, are the Creator of every creature. And if in the term “heaven and earth” every creature is included, I make bold to say further: “Before God made heaven and earth, he did not make anything at all. For if he did, what did he make unless it were a creature?” I do indeed wish that I knew all that I desire to know to my profit as surely as I know that no creature was made before any creature was made.

CHAPTER XIII

15. But if the roving thought of someone should wander over the images of past time, and wonder that you,  the Almighty God, the All-creating and All-sustaining, the Architect of heaven and earth, did for ages unnumbered abstain from so great a work before you did actually do it, let him awake and consider that he wonders at illusions. For in what temporal medium could the unnumbered ages that you did not make pass by, since you are the Author and Creator of all the ages? Or what periods of time would those be that were not made by you? Or how could they have already passed away if they had not already been? Since, therefore, you are the Creator of all times, if there was any time before you madest heaven and earth, why is it said that you were abstaining from working? For you madest that very time itself, and periods could not pass by before you madest the whole temporal procession. But if there was no time before heaven and earth, how, then, can it be asked, “What were you doing then?” For there was no “then” when there was no time.
16. Nor do you precede any given period of time by another period of time. Else you wouldst not precede all periods of time. In the eminence of your ever-present eternity, you precedest all times past, and extendest beyond all future times, for they are still to come--and when they have come, they will be past. But “you are always the Selfsame and your years shall have no end.”^[432] your years neither go nor come; but ours both go and come in order that all separate moments may come to pass. All your years stand together as one, since they are abiding. Nor do your years past exclude the years to come because your years do not pass away. All these years of ours shall be with you,  when all of them shall have ceased to be. your years are but a day, and your day is not recurrent, but always today. your “today” yields not to tomorrow and does not follow yesterday. your “today” is eternity. Therefore, you did generate the Coeternal, to whom you did say, “This day I have begotten you.”^[433] you madest all time and before all times you art, and there was never a time when there was no time.

CHAPTER XIV

17. There was no time, therefore, when you hadst not made anything, because you hadst made time itself. And there are no times that are coeternal with you,  because you do abide forever; but if times should abide, they would not be times.
For what is time? Who can easily and briefly explain it? Who can even comprehend it in thought or put the answer into words? Yet is it not true that in conversation we refer to nothing more familiarly or knowingly than time? And surely we understand it when we speak of it; we understand it also when we hear another speak of it.
What, then, is time? If no one asks me, I know what it is. If I wish to explain it to him who asks me, I do not know. Yet I say with confidence that I know that if nothing passed away, there would be no past time; and if nothing were still coming, there would be no future time; and if there were nothing at all, there would be no present time.
But, then, how is it that there are the two times, past and future, when even the past is now no longer and the future is now not yet? But if the present were always present, and did not pass into past time, it obviously would not be time but eternity. If, then, time present--if it be time--comes into existence only because it passes into time past, how can we say that even this is, since the cause of its being is that it will cease to be? Thus, can we not truly say that time is only as it tends toward nonbeing?

CHAPTER XV

18. And yet we speak of a long time and a short time; but never speak this way except of time past and future. We call a hundred years ago, for example, a long time past. In like manner, we should call a hundred years hence a long time to come. But we call ten days ago a short time past; and ten days hence a short time to come. But in what sense is something long or short that is nonexistent? For the past is not now, and the future is not yet. Therefore, let us not say, “It is long”; instead, let us say of the past, “It was long,” and of the future, “It will be long.” And yet, O Lord, my Light, shall not your truth make mockery of man even here? For that long time past: was it long when it was already past, or when it was still present? For it might have been long when there was a period that could be long, but when it was past, it no longer was. In that case, that which was not at all could not be long. Let us not, therefore, say, “Time past was long,” for we shall not discover what it was that was long because, since it is past, it no longer exists. Rather, let us say that “time present was long, because when it was present it was long.” For then it had not yet passed on so as not to be, and therefore it still was in a state that could be called long. But after it passed, it ceased to be long simply because it ceased to be.
19. Let us, therefore, O human soul, see whether present time can be long, for it has been given you to feel and measure the periods of time. How, then, will you answer me?
Is a hundred years when present a long time? But, first, see whether a hundred years can be present at once. For if the first year in the century is current, then it is present time, and the other ninety and nine are still future. Therefore, they are not yet. But, then, if the second year is current, one year is already past, the second present, and all the rest are future. And thus, if we fix on any middle year of this century as present, those before it are past, those after it are future. Therefore, a hundred years cannot be present all at once.
Let us see, then, whether the year that is now current can be present. For if its first month is current, then the rest are future; if the second, the first is already past, and the remainder are not yet. Therefore, the current year is not present all at once. And if it is not present as a whole, then the year is not present. For it takes twelve months to make the year, from which each individual month which is current is itself present one at a time, but the rest are either past or future.
20. Thus it comes out that time present, which we found was the only time that could be called “long,” has been cut down to the space of scarcely a single day. But let us examine even that, for one day is never present as a whole. For it is made up of twenty-four hours, divided between night and day. The first of these hours has the rest of them as future, and the last of them has the rest as past; but any of those between has those that preceded it as past and those that succeed it as future. And that one hour itself passes away in fleeting fractions. The part of it that has fled is past; what remains is still future. If any fraction of time be conceived that cannot now be divided even into the most minute momentary point, this alone is what we may call time present. But this flies so rapidly from future to past that it cannot be extended by any delay. For if it is extended, it is then divided into past and future. But the present has no extension^[434] whatever.
Where, therefore, is that time which we may call “long”? Is it future? Actually we do not say of the future, “It is long,” for it has not yet come to be, so as to be long. Instead, we say, “It will be long.” When will it be? For since it is future, it will not be long, for what may be long is not yet. It will be long only when it passes from the future which is not as yet, and will have begun to be present, so that there can be something that may be long. But in that case, time present cries aloud, in the words we have already heard, that it cannot be “long.”

CHAPTER XVI

21. And yet, O Lord, we do perceive intervals of time, and we compare them with each other, and we say that some are longer and others are shorter. We even measure how much longer or shorter this time may be than that time. And we say that this time is twice as long, or three times as long, while this other time is only just as long as that other. But we measure the passage of time when we measure the intervals of perception. But who can measure times past which now are no longer, or times future which are not yet--unless perhaps someone will dare to say that what does not exist can be measured? Therefore, while time is passing, it can be perceived and measured; but when it is past, it cannot, since it is not.

CHAPTER XVII

22. I am seeking the truth, O Father; I am not affirming it. O my God, direct and rule me.
Who is there who will tell me that there are not three times--as we learned when boys and as we have also taught boys--time past, time present, and time future? Who can say that there is only time present because the other two do not exist? Or do they also exist; but when, from the future, time becomes present, it proceeds from some secret place; and when, from times present, it becomes past, it recedes into some secret place? For where have those men who have foretold the future seen the things foretold, if then they were not yet existing? For what does not exist cannot be seen. And those who tell of things past could not speak of them as if they were true, if they did not see them in their minds. These things could in no way be discerned if they did not exist. There are therefore times present and times past.

CHAPTER XVIII

23. Give me leave, O Lord, to seek still further. O my Hope, let not my purpose be confounded. For if there are times past and future, I wish to know where they are. But if I have not yet succeeded in this, I still know that wherever they are, they are not there as future or past, but as present. For if they are there as future, they are there as “not yet”; if they are there as past, they are there as “no longer.” Wherever they are and whatever they are they exist therefore only as present. Although we tell of past things as true, they are drawn out of the memory--not the things themselves, which have already passed, but words constructed from the images of the perceptions which were formed in the mind, like footprints in their passage through the senses. My childhood, for instance, which is no longer, still exists in time past, which does not now exist. But when I call to mind its image and speak of it, I see it in the present because it is still in my memory. Whether there is a similar explanation for the foretelling of future events--that is, of the images of things which are not yet seen as if they were already existing--I confess, O my God, I do not know. But this I certainly do know: that we generally think ahead about our future actions, and this premeditation is in time present; but that the action which we premeditate is not yet, because it is still future. When we shall have started the action and have begun to do what we were premeditating, then that action will be in time present, because then it is no longer in time future.
24. Whatever may be the manner of this secret foreseeing of future things, nothing can be seen except what exists. But what exists now is not future, but present. When, therefore, they say that future events are seen, it is not the events themselves, for they do not exist as yet (that is, they are still in time future), but perhaps, instead, their causes and their signs are seen, which already do exist. Therefore, to those already beholding these causes and signs, they are not future, but present, and from them future things are predicted because they are conceived in the mind. These conceptions, however, exist now, and those who predict those things see these conceptions before them in time present.
Let me take an example from the vast multitude and variety of such things. I see the dawn; I predict that the sun is about to rise. What I see is in time present, what I predict is in time future--not that the sun is future, for it already exists; but its rising is future, because it is not yet. Yet I could not predict even its rising, unless I had an image of it in my mind; as, indeed, I do even now as I speak. But that dawn which I see in the sky is not the rising of the sun (though it does precede it), nor is it a conception in my mind. These two^[435] are seen in time present, in order that the event which is in time future may be predicted.
Future events, therefore, are not yet. And if they are not yet, they do not exist. And if they do not exist, they cannot be seen at all, but they can be predicted from things present, which now are and are seen.

CHAPTER XIX

25. Now, therefore, O Ruler of your creatures, what is the mode by which you teachest souls those things which are still future? For you have taught your prophets. How do you,  to whom nothing is future, teach future things--or rather teach things present from the signs of things future? For what does not exist certainly cannot be taught. This way of yours is too far from my sight; it is too great for me, I cannot attain to it.^[436] But I shall be enabled by you,  when you wilt grant it, O sweet Light of my secret eyes.

CHAPTER XX

26. But even now it is manifest and clear that there are neither times future nor times past. Thus it is not properly said that there are three times, past, present, and future. Perhaps it might be said rightly that there are three times: a time present of things past; a time present of things present; and a time present of things future. For these three do coexist somehow in the soul, for otherwise I could not see them. The time present of things past is memory; the time present of things present is direct experience; the time present of things future is expectation.^[437] If we are allowed to speak of these things so, I see three times, and I grant that there are three. Let it still be said, then, as our misapplied custom has it: “There are three times, past, present, and future.” I shall not be troubled by it, nor argue, nor object--always provided that what is said is understood, so that neither the future nor the past is said to exist now. There are but few things about which we speak properly--and many more about which we speak improperly--though we understand one another’s meaning.

CHAPTER XXI

27. I have said, then, that we measure periods of time as they pass so that we can say that this time is twice as long as that one or that this is just as long as that, and so on for the other fractions of time which we can count by measuring.
So, then, as I was saying, we measure periods of time as they pass. And if anyone asks me, “How do you know this?”, I can answer: “I know because we measure. We could not measure things that do not exist, and things past and future do not exist.” But how do we measure present time since it has no extension? It is measured while it passes, but when it has passed it is not measured; for then there is nothing that could be measured. But whence, and how, and whither does it pass while it is being measured? Whence, but from the future? Which way, save through the present? Whither, but into the past? Therefore, from what is not yet, through what has no length, it passes into what is now no longer. But what do we measure, unless it is a time of some length? For we cannot speak of single, and double, and triple, and equal, and all the other ways in which we speak of time, except in terms of the length of the periods of time. But in what “length,” then, do we measure passing time? Is it in the future, from which it passes over? But what does not yet exist cannot be measured. Or, is it in the present, through which it passes? But what has no length we cannot measure. Or is it in the past into which it passes? But what is no longer we cannot measure.

CHAPTER XXII

28. My soul burns ardently to understand this most intricate enigma. O Lord my God, O good Father, I beseech you through Christ, do not close off these things, both the familiar and the obscure, from my desire. Do not bar it from entering into them; but let their light dawn by your enlightening mercy, O Lord. Of whom shall I inquire about these things? And to whom shall I confess my ignorance of them with greater profit than to you,  to whom these studies of mine (ardently longing to understand your Scriptures) are not a bore? Give me what I love, for I do love it; and this you have given me. O Father, who truly knowest how to give good gifts to your children, give this to me. Grant it, since I have undertaken to understand it, and hard labor is my lot until you openest it. I beseech you,  through Christ and in his name, the Holy of Holies, let no man interrupt me. “For I have believed, and therefore do I speak.”^[438] This is my hope; for this I live: that I may contemplate the joys of my Lord.^[439] Behold, you have made my days grow old, and they pass away--and how I do not know.
We speak of this time and that time, and these times and those times: “How long ago since he said this?” “How long ago since he did this?” “How long ago since I saw that?” “This syllable is twice as long as that single short syllable.” These words we say and hear, and we are understood and we understand. They are quite commonplace and ordinary, and still the meaning of these very same things lies deeply hid and its discovery is still to come.

CHAPTER XXIII

29. I once heard a learned man say that the motions of the sun, moon, and stars constituted time; and I did not agree. For why should not the motions of all bodies constitute time? What if the lights of heaven should cease, and a potter’s wheel still turn round: would there be no time by which we might measure those rotations and say either that it turned at equal intervals, or, if it moved now more slowly and now more quickly, that some rotations were longer and others shorter? And while we were saying this, would we not also be speaking in time? Or would there not be in our words some syllables that were long and others short, because the first took a longer time to sound, and the others a shorter time? O God, grant men to see in a small thing the notions that are common^[440] to all things, both great and small. Both the stars and the lights of heaven are “for signs and seasons, and for days and years.”^[441] This is doubtless the case, but just as I should not say that the circuit of that wooden wheel was a day, neither would that learned man say that there was, therefore, no time.
30. I thirst to know the power and the nature of time, by which we measure the motions of bodies, and say, for example, that this motion is twice as long as that. For I ask, since the word “day” refers not only to the length of time that the sun is above the earth (which separates day from night), but also refers to the sun’s entire circuit from east all the way around to east--on account of which we can say, “So many days have passed” (the nights being included when we say, “So many days,” and their lengths not counted separately)--since, then, the day is ended by the motion of the sun and by his passage from east to east, I ask whether the motion itself is the day, or whether the day is the period in which that motion is completed; or both? For if the sun’s passage is the day, then there would be a day even if the sun should finish his course in as short a period as an hour. If the motion itself is the day, then it would not be a day if from one sunrise to another there were a period no longer than an hour. But the sun would have to go round twenty-four times to make just one day. If it is both, then that could not be called a day if the sun ran his entire course in the period of an hour; nor would it be a day if, while the sun stood still, as much time passed as the sun usually covered during his whole course, from morning to morning. I shall, therefore, not ask any more what it is that is called a day, but rather what time is, for it is by time that we measure the circuit of the sun, and would be able to say that it was finished in half the period of time that it customarily takes if it were completed in a period of only twelve hours. If, then, we compare these periods, we could call one of them a single and the other a double period, as if the sun might run his course from east to east sometimes in a single period and sometimes in a double period.
Let no man tell me, therefore, that the motions of the heavenly bodies constitute time. For when the sun stood still at the prayer of a certain man in order that he might gain his victory in battle, the sun stood still but time went on. For in as long a span of time as was sufficient the battle was fought and ended.^[442]
I see, then, that time is a certain kind of extension. But do I see it, or do I only seem to? you,  O Light and Truth, wilt show me.

CHAPTER XXIV

31. Dost you command that I should agree if anyone says that time is “the motion of a body”? you do not so command. For I hear that no body is moved but in time; this you tellest me. But that the motion of a body itself is time I do not hear; you do not say so. For when a body is moved, I measure by time how long it was moving from the time when it began to be moved until it stopped. And if I did not see when it began to be moved, and if it continued to move so that I could not see when it stopped, I could not measure the movement, except from the time when I began to see it until I stopped. But if I look at it for a long time, I can affirm only that the time is long but not how long it may be. This is because when we say, “How long?”, we are speaking comparatively as: “This is as long as that,” or, “This is twice as long as that”; or other such similar ratios. But if we were able to observe the point in space where and from which the body, which is moved, comes and the point to which it is moved; or if we can observe its parts moving as in a wheel, we can say how long the movement of the body took or the movement of its parts from this place to that. Since, therefore, the motion of a body is one thing, and the norm by which we measure how long it takes is another thing, we cannot see which of these two is to be called time. For, although a body is sometimes moved and sometimes stands still, we measure not only its motion but also its rest as well; and both by time! Thus we say, “It stood still as long as it moved,” or, “It stood still twice or three times as long as it moved”--or any other ratio which our measuring has either determined or imagined, either roughly or precisely, according to our custom. Therefore, time is not the motion of a body.

CHAPTER XXV

32. And I confess to you,  O Lord, that I am still ignorant as to what time is. And again I confess to you,  O Lord, that I know that I am speaking all these things in time, and that I have already spoken of time a long time, and that “very long” is not long except when measured by the duration of time. How, then, do I know this, when I do not know what time is? Or, is it possible that I do not know how I can express what I do know? Alas for me! I do not even know the extent of my own ignorance. Behold, O my God, in your presence I do not lie. As my heart is, so I speak. you shalt light my candle; you,  O Lord my God, wilt enlighten my darkness.^[443]

CHAPTER XXVI

33. Does not my soul most truly confess to you that I do measure intervals of time? But what is it that I thus measure, O my God, and how is it that I do not know what I measure? I measure the motion of a body by time, but the time itself I do not measure. But, truly, could I measure the motion of a body--how long it takes, how long it is in motion from this place to that--unless I could measure the time in which it is moving?
How, then, do I measure this time itself? Do we measure a longer time by a shorter time, as we measure the length of a crossbeam in terms of cubits?^[444] Thus, we can say that the length of a long syllable is measured by the length of a short syllable and thus say that the long syllable is double. So also we measure the length of poems by the length of the lines, and the length of the line by the length of the feet, and the length of the feet by the length of the syllable, and the length of the long syllables by the length of the short ones. We do not measure by pages--for in that way we would measure space rather than time--but when we speak the words as they pass by we say: “It is a long stanza, because it is made up of so many verses; they are long verses because they consist of so many feet; they are long feet because they extend over so many syllables; this is a long syllable because it is twice the length of a short one.”
But no certain measure of time is obtained this way; since it is possible that if a shorter verse is pronounced slowly, it may take up more time than a longer one if it is pronounced hurriedly. The same would hold for a stanza, or a foot, or a syllable. From this it appears to me that time is nothing other than extendedness;^[445] but extendedness of what I do not know. This is a marvel to me. The extendedness may be of the mind itself. For what is it I measure, I ask you,  O my God, when I say either, roughly, “This time is longer than that,” or, more precisely, “This is twice as long as that.” I know that I am measuring time. But I am not measuring the future, for it is not yet; and I am not measuring the present because it is extended by no length; and I am not measuring the past because it no longer is. What is it, therefore, that I am measuring? Is it time in its passage, but not time past [praetereuntia tempora, non praeterita]? This is what I have been saying.

CHAPTER XXVII

34. Press on, O my mind, and attend with all your power. God is our Helper: “it is he that hath made us and not we ourselves.”^[446] Give heed where the truth begins to dawn.^[447] Suppose now that a bodily voice begins to sound, and continues to sound--on and on--and then ceases. Now there is silence. The voice is past, and there is no longer a sound. It was future before it sounded, and could not be measured because it was not yet; and now it cannot be measured because it is no longer. Therefore, while it was sounding, it might have been measured because then there was something that could be measured. But even then it did not stand still, for it was in motion and was passing away. Could it, on that account, be any more readily measured? For while it was passing away, it was being extended into some interval of time in which it might be measured, since the present has no length. Supposing, though, that it might have been measured--then also suppose that another voice had begun to sound and is still sounding without any interruption to break its continued flow. We can measure it only while it is sounding, for when it has ceased to sound it will be already past and there will not be anything there that can be measured. Let us measure it exactly; and let us say how much it is. But while it is sounding, it cannot be measured except from the instant when it began to sound, down to the final moment when it left off. For we measure the time interval itself from some beginning point to some end. This is why a voice that has not yet ended cannot be measured, so that one could say how long or how briefly it will continue. Nor can it be said to be equal to another voice or single or double in comparison to it or anything like this. But when it is ended, it is no longer. How, therefore, may it be measured? And yet we measure times; not those which are not yet, nor those which no longer are, nor those which are stretched out by some delay, nor those which have no limit. Therefore, we measure neither times future nor times past, nor times present, nor times passing by; and yet we do measure times.
35. Deus Creator omnium^[448]: this verse of eight syllables alternates between short and long syllables. The four short ones--that is, the first, third, fifth, and seventh--are single in relation to the four long ones--that is, the second, fourth, sixth, and eighth. Each of the long ones is double the length of each of the short ones. I affirm this and report it, and common sense perceives that this indeed is the case. By common sense, then, I measure a long syllable by a short one, and I find that it is twice as long. But when one sounds after another, if the first be short and the latter long, how can I hold the short one and how can I apply it to the long one as a measure, so that I can discover that the long one is twice as long, when, in fact, the long one does not begin to sound until the short one leaves off sounding? That same long syllable I do not measure as present, since I cannot measure it until it is ended; but its ending is its passing away.
What is it, then, that I can measure? Where is the short syllable by which I measure? Where is the long one that I am measuring? Both have sounded, have flown away, have passed on, and are no longer. And still I measure, and I confidently answer--as far as a trained ear can be trusted--that this syllable is single and that syllable double. And I could not do this unless they both had passed and were ended. Therefore I do not measure them, for they do not exist any more. But I measure something in my memory which remains fixed.
36. It is in you, O mind of mine, that I measure the periods of time. Do not shout me down that it exists [objectively]; do not overwhelm yourself with the turbulent flood of your impressions. In you, as I have said, I measure the periods of time. I measure as time present the impression that things make on you as they pass by and what remains after they have passed by--I do not measure the things themselves which have passed by and left their impression on you. This is what I measure when I measure periods of time. Either, then, these are the periods of time or else I do not measure time at all.
What are we doing when we measure silence, and say that this silence has lasted as long as that voice lasts? Do we not project our thought to the measure of a sound, as if it were then sounding, so that we can say something concerning the intervals of silence in a given span of time? For, even when both the voice and the tongue are still, we review--in thought--poems and verses, and discourse of various kinds or various measures of motions, and we specify their time spans--how long this is in relation to that--just as if we were speaking them aloud. If anyone wishes to utter a prolonged sound, and if, in forethought, he has decided how long it should be, that man has already in silence gone through a span of time, and committed his sound to memory. Thus he begins to speak and his voice sounds until it reaches the predetermined end. It has truly sounded and will go on sounding. But what is already finished has already sounded and what remains will still sound. Thus it passes on, until the present intention carries the future over into the past. The past increases by the diminution of the future until by the consumption of all the future all is past.^[449]

CHAPTER XXVIII

37. But how is the future diminished or consumed when it does not yet exist? Or how does the past, which exists no longer, increase, unless it is that in the mind in which all this happens there are three functions? For the mind expects, it attends, and it remembers; so that what it expects passes into what it remembers by way of what it attends to. Who denies that future things do not exist as yet? But still there is already in the mind the expectation of things still future. And who denies that past things now exist no longer? Still there is in the mind the memory of things past. Who denies that time present has no length, since it passes away in a moment? Yet, our attention has a continuity and it is through this that what is present may proceed to become absent. Therefore, future time, which is nonexistent, is not long; but “a long future” is “a long expectation of the future.” Nor is time past, which is now no longer, long; a “long past” is “a long memory of the past.”
38. I am about to repeat a psalm that I know. Before I begin, my attention encompasses the whole, but once I have begun, as much of it as becomes past while I speak is still stretched out in my memory. The span of my action is divided between my memory, which contains what I have repeated, and my expectation, which contains what I am about to repeat. Yet my attention is continually present with me, and through it what was future is carried over so that it becomes past. The more this is done and repeated, the more the memory is enlarged--and expectation is shortened--until the whole expectation is exhausted. Then the whole action is ended and passed into memory. And what takes place in the entire psalm takes place also in each individual part of it and in each individual syllable. This also holds in the even longer action of which that psalm is only a portion. The same holds in the whole life of man, of which all the actions of men are parts. The same holds in the whole age of the sons of men, of which all the lives of men are parts.

CHAPTER XXIX

39. But “since your loving-kindness is better than life itself,”^[450] observe how my life is but a stretching out, and how your right hand has upheld me in my Lord, the Son of Man, the Mediator between you,  the One, and us, the many--in so many ways and by so many means. Thus through him I may lay hold upon him in whom I am also laid hold upon; and I may be gathered up from my old way of life to follow that One and to forget that which is behind, no longer stretched out but now pulled together again--stretching forth not to what shall be and shall pass away but to those things that are before me. Not distractedly now, but intently, I follow on for the prize of my heavenly calling,^[451] where I may hear the sound of your praise and contemplate your delights, which neither come to be nor pass away.
But now my years are spent in mourning.^[452] And you,  O Lord, are my comfort, my eternal Father. But I have been torn between the times, the order of which I do not know, and my thoughts, even the inmost and deepest places of my soul, are mangled by various commotions until I shall flow together into you,  purged and molten in the fire of your love.

CHAPTER XXX

40. And I will be immovable and fixed in you,  and your truth will be my mold. And I shall not have to endure the questions of those men who, as if in a morbid disease, thirst for more than they can hold and say, “What did God make before he made heaven and earth?” or, “How did it come into his mind to make something when he had never before made anything?” Grant them, O Lord, to consider well what they are saying; and grant them to see that where there is no time they cannot say “never.” When, therefore, he is said “never to have made” something--what is this but to say that it was made in no time at all? Let them therefore see that there could be no time without a created world, and let them cease to speak vanity of this kind. Let them also be stretched out to those things which are before them, and understand that you,  the eternal Creator of all times, are before all times and that no times are coeternal with you; nor is any creature, even if there is a creature “above time.”

CHAPTER XXXI

41. O Lord my God, what a chasm there is in your deep secret! How far short of it have the consequences of my sins cast me? Heal my eyes, that I may enjoy your light. Surely, if there is a mind that so greatly abounds in knowledge and foreknowledge, to which all things past and future are as well known as one psalm is well known to me, that mind would be an exceeding marvel and altogether astonishing. For whatever is past and whatever is yet to come would be no more concealed from him than the past and future of that psalm were hidden from me when I was chanting it: how much of it had been sung from the beginning and what and how much still remained till the end. But far be it from you,  O Creator of the universe, and Creator of our souls and bodies--far be it from you that you shouldst merely know all things past and future. Far, far more wonderfully, and far more mysteriously you knowest them. For it is not as the feelings of one singing familiar songs, or hearing a familiar song in which, because of his expectation of words still to come and his remembrance of those that are past, his feelings are varied and his senses are divided. This is not the way that anything happens to you,  who are unchangeably eternal, that is, the truly eternal Creator of minds. As in the beginning you knewest both the heaven and the earth without any change in your knowledge, so you did make heaven and earth in their beginnings without any division in your action.^[453] Let him who understands this confess to you; and let him who does not understand also confess to you! Oh, exalted as you art, still the humble in heart are your dwelling place! For you liftest them who are cast down and they fall not for whom you are the Most High.^[454]

 TWELVE

BOOK TWELVE

Liber XII

The mode of creation and the truth of Scripture. Augustine explores the relation of the visible and formed matter of heaven and earth to the prior matrix from which it was formed. This leads to an intricate analysis of “unformed matter” and the primal “possibility” from which God created, itself created de nihilo. He finds a reference to this in the misconstrued Scriptural phrase “the heaven of heavens.” Realizing that his interpretation of Gen. 1:1, 2, is not self-evidently the only possibility, Augustine turns to an elaborate discussion of the multiplicity of perspectives in hermeneutics and, in the course of this, reviews the various possibilities of true interpretation of his Scripture text. He emphasizes the importance of tolerance where there are plural options, and confidence where basic Christian faith is concerned.

CHAPTER I

[12.]1. My heart is deeply stirred, O Lord, when in this poor life of mine the words of your Holy Scripture strike upon it. This is why the poverty of the human intellect expresses itself in an abundance of language. Inquiry is more loquacious than discovery. Demanding takes longer than obtaining; and the hand that knocks is more active than the hand that receives. But we have the promise, and who shall break it? “If God be for us, who can be against us?”^[455] “Ask, and you shall receive; seek, and you shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you; for everyone that asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him that knocks, it shall be opened.”^[456] These are your own promises, and who need fear to be deceived when truth promises?

CHAPTER II

[12.]2. In lowliness my tongue confesses to your exaltation, for you madest heaven and earth. This heaven which I see, and this earth on which I walk--from which came this “earth” that I carry about me--you did make.
But where is that heaven of heavens, O Lord, of which we hear in the words of the psalm, “The heaven of heavens is the Lord’s, but the earth he hath given to the children of men”?^[457] Where is the heaven that we cannot see, in relation to which all that we can see is earth? For this whole corporeal creation has been beautifully formed--though not everywhere in its entirety--and our earth is the lowest of these levels. Still, compared with that heaven of heavens, even the heaven of our own earth is only earth. Indeed, it is not absurd to call each of those two great bodies^[458] “earth” in comparison with that ineffable heaven which is the Lord’s, and not for the sons of men.

CHAPTER III

CAPUT 3

[12.]3. And truly this earth was invisible and unformed,^[459] and there was an inexpressibly profound abyss^[460] above which there was no light since it had no form. you did command it written that “darkness was on the face of the deep.”^[461] What else is darkness except the absence of light? For if there had been light, where would it have been except by being over all, showing itself rising aloft and giving light? Therefore, where there was no light as yet, why was it that darkness was present, unless it was that light was absent? Darkness, then, was heavy upon it, because the light from above was absent; just as there is silence where there is no sound. And what is it to have silence anywhere but simply not to have sound? have you not, O Lord, taught this soul which confesses to you? have you not thus taught me, O Lord, that before you did form and separate this formless matter there was nothing: neither color, nor figure, nor body, nor spirit? Yet it was not absolutely nothing; it was a certain formlessness without any shape.

CHAPTER IV

[12.] 4. What, then, should that formlessness be called so that somehow it might be indicated to those of sluggish mind, unless we use some word in common speech? But what can be found anywhere in the world nearer to a total formlessness than the earth and the abyss? Because of their being on the lowest level, they are less beautiful than are the other and higher parts, all translucent and shining. Therefore, why may I not consider the formlessness of matter--which you did create without shapely form, from which to make this shapely world--as fittingly indicated to men by the phrase, “The earth invisible and unformed”?

CHAPTER V

[12.] 5. When our thought seeks something for our sense to fasten to [in this concept of unformed matter], and when it says to itself, “It is not an intelligible form, such as life or justice, since it is the material for bodies; and it is not a former perception, for there is nothing in the invisible and unformed which can be seen and felt”--while human thought says such things to itself, it may be attempting either to know by being ignorant or by knowing how not to know.

CHAPTER VI

[12.] 6. But if, O Lord, I am to confess to you,  by my mouth and my pen, the whole of what you have taught me concerning this unformed matter, I must say first of all that when I first heard of such matter and did not understand it--and those who told me of it could not understand it either--I conceived of it as having countless and varied forms. Thus, I did not think about it rightly. My mind in its agitation used to turn up all sorts of foul and horrible “forms”; but still they were “forms.” And still I called it formless, not because it was unformed, but because it had what seemed to me a kind of form that my mind turned away from, as bizarre and incongruous, before which my human weakness was confused. And even what I did conceive of as unformed was so, not because it was deprived of all form, but only as it compared with more beautiful forms. Right reason, then, persuaded me that I ought to remove altogether all vestiges of form whatever if I wished to conceive matter that was wholly unformed; and this I could not do. For I could more readily imagine that what was deprived of all form simply did not exist than I could conceive of anything between form and nothing--something which was neither formed nor nothing, something that was unformed and nearly nothing.
Thus my mind ceased to question my spirit--filled as it was with the images of formed bodies, changing and varying them according to its will. And so I applied myself to the bodies themselves and looked more deeply into their mutability, by which they cease to be what they had been and begin to be what they were not. This transition from form to form I had regarded as involving something like a formless condition, though not actual nothingness.^[462]
But I desired to know, not to guess. And, if my voice and my pen were to confess to you all the various knots you have untied for me about this question, who among my readers could endure to grasp the whole of the account? Still, despite this, my heart will not cease to give honor to you or to sing your praises concerning those things which it is not able to express.^[463]
For the mutability of mutable things carries with it the possibility of all those forms into which mutable things can be changed. But this mutability--what is it? Is it soul? Is it body? Is it the external appearance of soul or body? Could it be said, “Nothing was something,” and “That which is, is not”? If this were possible, I would say that this was it, and in some such manner it must have been in order to receive these visible and composite forms.^[464]

CHAPTER VII

[12.] 7. Whence and how was this, unless it came from you,  from whom all things are, in so far as they are? But the farther something is from you,  the more unlike you it is--and this is not a matter of distance or place.
Thus it was that you,  O Lord, who are not one thing in one place and another thing in another place but the Selfsame, and the Selfsame, and the Selfsame--”Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty”^[465]--thus it was that in the beginning, and through your Wisdom which is from you and born of your substance, you did create something and that out of nothing.^[466] For you did create the heaven and the earth--not out of yourself, for then they would be equal to your only Son and thereby to you. And there is no sense in which it would be right that anything should be equal to you that was not of you. But what else besides you was there out of which you mightest create these things, O God, one Trinity, and trine Unity?^[467] And, therefore, it was out of nothing at all that you did create the heaven and earth--something great and something small--for you are Almighty and Good, and able to make all things good: even the great heaven and the small earth. you were, and there was nothing else from which you did create heaven and earth: these two things, one near you,  the other near to nothing; the one to which only you are superior, the other to which nothing else is inferior.

CHAPTER VIII

[12.] 8. That heaven of heavens was yours, O Lord, but the earth which you did give to the sons of men to be seen and touched was not then in the same form as that in which we now see it and touch it. For then it was invisible and unformed and there was an abyss over which there was no light. The darkness was truly over the abyss, that is, more than just in the abyss. For this abyss of waters which now is visible has even in its depths a certain light appropriate to its nature, perceptible in some fashion to fishes and the things that creep about on the bottom of it. But then the entire abyss was almost nothing, since it was still altogether unformed. Yet even there, there was something that had the possibility of being formed. For you,  O Lord, hadst made the world out of unformed matter, and this you did make out of nothing and did make it into almost nothing. From it you have then made these great things which we, the sons of men, marvel at. For this corporeal heaven is truly marvelous, this firmament between the water and the waters which you did make on the second day after the creation of light, saying, “Let it be done,” and it was done.^[468] This firmament you did call heaven, that is, the heaven of this earth and sea which you madest on the third day, giving a visible shape to the unformed matter which you hadst made before all the days. For even before any day you hadst already made a heaven, but that was the heaven of this heaven: for in the beginning you hadst made heaven and earth.
But this earth itself which you hadst made was unformed matter; it was invisible and unformed, and darkness was over the abyss. Out of this invisible and unformed earth, out of this formlessness which is almost nothing, you did then make all these things of which the changeable world consists--and yet does not fully consist in itself^[469]--for its very changeableness appears in this, that its times and seasons can be observed and numbered. The periods of time are measured by the changes of things, while the forms, whose matter is the invisible earth of which we have spoken, are varied and altered.

CHAPTER IX

[12.] 9. And therefore the Spirit, the Teacher of your servant,^[470] when he mentions that “in the beginning you madest heaven and earth,” says nothing about times and is silent as to the days. For, clearly, that heaven of heavens which you did create in the beginning is in some way an intellectual creature, although in no way coeternal with you,  O Trinity. Yet it is nonetheless a partaker in your eternity. Because of the sweetness of its most happy contemplation of you,  it is greatly restrained in its own mutability and cleaves to you without any lapse from the time in which it was created, surpassing all the rolling change of time. But this shapelessness--this earth invisible and unformed--was not numbered among the days itself. For where there is no shape or order there is nothing that either comes or goes, and where this does not occur there certainly are no days, nor any vicissitude of duration.

CHAPTER X

[12.] 10. O Truth, O Light of my heart, let not my own darkness speak to me! I had fallen into that darkness and was darkened thereby. But in it, even in its depths, I came to love you. I went astray and still I remembered you. I heard your voice behind me, bidding me return, though I could scarcely hear it for the tumults of my boisterous passions. And now, behold, I am returning, burning and thirsting after your fountain. Let no one hinder me; here will I drink and so have life. Let me not be my own life; for of myself I have lived badly. I was death to myself; in you I have revived. Speak to me; converse with me. I have believed your books, and their words are very deep.

CHAPTER XI

[12.] 11. you have told me already, O Lord, with a strong voice in my inner ear, that you are eternal and alone have immortality. you are not changed by any shape or motion, and your will is not altered by temporal process, because no will that changes is immortal. This is clear to me, in your sight; let it become clearer and clearer, I beseech you. In that light let me abide soberly under your wings.
you have also told me, O Lord, with a strong voice in my inner ear, that you have created all natures and all substances, which are not what you are yourself; and yet they do exist. Only that which is nothing at all is not from you,  and that motion of the will away from you,  who art, toward something that exists only in a lesser degree--such a motion is an offense and a sin. No one’s sin either hurts you or disturbs the order of your rule, either first or last. All this, in your sight, is clear to me. Let it become clearer and clearer, I beseech you,  and in that light let me abide soberly under your wings.
[12.] 12. Likewise, you have told me, with a strong voice in my inner ear, that this creation--whose delight you alone art--is not coeternal with you. With a most persevering purity it draws its support from you and nowhere and never betrays its own mutability, for you are ever present with it; and it cleaves to you with its entire affection, having no future to expect and no past that it remembers; it is varied by no change and is extended by no time.
O blessed one--if such there be--clinging to your blessedness! It is blest in you,  its everlasting Inhabitant and its Light. I cannot find a term that I would judge more fitting for “the heaven of the heavens of the Lord” than “Thy house”--which contemplates your delights without any declination toward anything else and which, with a pure mind in most harmonious stability, joins all together in the peace of those saintly spirits who are citizens of your city in those heavens that are above this visible heaven.
[12.] 13. From this let the soul that has wandered far away from you understand--if now it thirsts for you; if now its tears have become its bread, while daily they say to it, “Where is your God?”^[471]; if now it requests of you just one thing and seeks after this: that it may dwell in your house all the days of its life (and what is its life but you? And what are your days but your eternity, like your years which do not fail, since you are the Selfsame?)--from this, I say, let the soul understand (as far as it can) how far above all times you are in your eternity; and how your house has never wandered away from you; and, although it is not coeternal with you,  it continually and unfailingly clings to you and suffers no vicissitudes of time. This, in your sight, is clear to me; may it become clearer and clearer to me, I beseech you,  and in this light may I abide soberly under your wings.
[12.] 14. Now I do not know what kind of formlessness there is in these mutations of these last and lowest creatures. Yet who will tell me, unless it is someone who, in the emptiness of his own heart, wanders about and begins to be dizzy in his own fancies? Who except such a one would tell me whether, if all form were diminished and consumed, formlessness alone would remain, through which a thing was changed and turned from one species into another, so that sheer formlessness would then be characterized by temporal change? And surely this could not be, because without motion there is no time, and where there is no form there is no change.

CHAPTER XII

[12.] 15. These things I have considered as you have given me ability, O my God, as you have excited me to knock, and as you have opened to me when I knock. Two things I find which you have made, not within intervals of time, although neither is coeternal with you. One of them is so formed that, without any wavering in its contemplation, without any interval of change--mutable but not changed--it may fully enjoy your eternity and immutability. The other is so formless that it could not change from one form to another (either of motion or of rest), and so time has no hold upon it. But you did not leave this formless, for, before any “day” in the beginning, you did create heaven and earth--these are the two things of which I spoke.
But “the earth was invisible and unformed, and darkness was over the abyss.” By these words its formlessness is indicated to us--so that by degrees they may be led forward who cannot wholly conceive of the privation of all form without arriving at nothing. From this formlessness a second heaven might be created and a second earth--visible and well formed, with the ordered beauty of the waters, and whatever else is recorded as created (though not without days) in the formation of this world. And all this because such things are so ordered that in them the changes of time may take place through the ordered processes of motion and form.

CHAPTER XIII

[12.] 16. Meanwhile this is what I understand, O my God, when I hear your Scripture saying, “In the beginning God made the heaven and the earth, but the earth was invisible and unformed, and darkness was over the abyss.” It does not say on what day you did create these things. Thus, for the time being I understand that “heaven of heavens” to mean the intelligible heaven, where to understand is to know all at once--not “in part,” not “darkly,” not “through a glass”--but as a simultaneous whole, in full sight, “face to face.”^[472] It is not this thing now and then another thing, but (as we said) knowledge all at once without any temporal change. And by the invisible and unformed earth, I understand that which suffers no temporal vicissitude. Temporal change customarily means having one thing now and another later; but where there is no form there can be no distinction between this or that. It is, then, by means of these two--one thing well formed in the beginning and another thing wholly unformed, the one heaven (that is, the heaven of heavens) and the other one earth (but the earth invisible and unformed)--it is by means of these two notions that I am able to understand why your Scripture said, without mention of days, “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” For it immediately indicated which earth it was speaking about. When, on the second day, the firmament is recorded as having been created and called heaven, this suggests to us which heaven it was that he was speaking about earlier, without specifying a day.

CHAPTER XIV

[12.] 17. Marvelous is the depth of your oracles. Their surface is before us, inviting the little ones; and yet wonderful is their depth, O my God, marvelous is their depth! It is a fearful thing to look into them: an awe of honor and a tremor of love. Their enemies I hate vehemently. Oh, if you wouldst slay them with your two-edged sword, so that they should not be enemies! For I would prefer that they should be slain to themselves, that they might live to you. But see, there are others who are not critics but praisers of the book of Genesis; they say: “The Spirit of God who wrote these things by his servant Moses did not wish these words to be understood like this. He did not wish to have it understood as you say, but as we say.” To them, O God of us all, yourself being the judge, I give answer.

CHAPTER XV

[12.] 18. “Will you say that these things are false which Truth tells me, with a loud voice in my inner ear, about the very eternity of the Creator: that his essence is changed in no respect by time and that his will is not distinct from his essence? Thus, he doth not will one thing now and another thing later, but he willeth once and for all everything that he willeth--not again and again; and not now this and now that. Nor does he will afterward what he did not will before, nor does he cease to will what he had willed before. Such a will would be mutable and no mutable thing is eternal. But our God is eternal.
“Again, he tells me in my inner ear that the expectation of future things is turned to sight when they have come to pass. And this same sight is turned into memory when they have passed. Moreover, all thought that varies thus is mutable, and nothing mutable is eternal. But our God is eternal.” These things I sum up and put together, and I conclude that my God, the eternal God, hath not made any creature by any new will, and his knowledge does not admit anything transitory.
[12.] 19. “What, then, will you say to this, you objectors? Are these things false?” “No,” they say. “What then? Is it false that every entity already formed and all matter capable of receiving form is from him alone who is supremely good, because he is supreme?” “We do not deny this, either,” they say. “What then? Do you deny this: that there is a certain sublime created order which cleaves with such a chaste love to the true and truly eternal God that, although it is not coeternal with him, yet it does not separate itself from him, and does not flow away into any mutation of change or process but abides in true contemplation of him alone?” If you,  O God, do show yourself to him who loves you as you have commanded--and are sufficient for him--then, such a one will neither turn himself away from you nor turn away toward himself. This is “the house of God.” It is not an earthly house and it is not made from any celestial matter; but it is a spiritual house, and it partakes in your eternity because it is without blemish forever. For you have made it steadfast forever and ever; you have given it a law which will not be removed. Still, it is not coeternal with you,  O God, since it is not without beginning--it was created.
[12.] 20. For, although we can find no time before it (for wisdom was created before all things),^[473] this is certainly not that Wisdom which is absolutely coeternal and equal with you,  our God, its Father, the Wisdom through whom all things were created and in whom, in the beginning, you did create the heaven and earth. This is truly the created Wisdom, namely, the intelligible nature which, in its contemplation of light, is light. For this is also called wisdom, even if it is a created wisdom. But the difference between the Light that lightens and that which is enlightened is as great as is the difference between the Wisdom that creates and that which is created. So also is the difference between the Righteousness that justifies and the righteousness that is made by justification. For we also are called your righteousness, for a certain servant of yours says, “That we might be made the righteousness of God in him.”^[474] Therefore, there is a certain created wisdom that was created before all things: the rational and intelligible mind of that chaste city of yours. It is our mother which is above and is free^[475] and “eternal in the heavens”^[476]--but in what heavens except those which praise you,  the “heaven of heavens”? This also is the “heaven of heavens” which is the Lord’s--although we find no time before it, since what has been created before all things also precedes the creation of time. Still, the eternity of the Creator himself is before it, from whom it took its beginning as created, though not in time (since time as yet was not), even though time belongs to its created nature.
[12.] 21. Thus it is that the intelligible heaven came to be from you,  our God, but in such a way that it is quite another being than you art; it is not the Selfsame. Yet we find that time is not only not before it, but not even in it, thus making it able to behold your face forever and not ever be turned aside. Thus, it is varied by no change at all. But there is still in it that mutability in virtue of which it could become dark and cold, if it did not, by cleaving to you with a supernal love, shine and glow from you like a perpetual noon. O house full of light and splendor! “I have loved your beauty and the place of the habitation of the glory of my Lord,”^[477] your builder and possessor. In my wandering let me sigh for you; this I ask of him who made you, that he should also possess me in you, seeing that he hath also made me. “I have gone astray like a lost sheep^[478]; yet upon the shoulders of my Shepherd, who is your builder, I have hoped that I may be brought back to you.”^[479]
[12.] 22. “What will you say to me now, you objectors to whom I spoke, who still believe that Moses was the holy servant of God, and that his books were the oracles of the Holy Spirit? Is it not in this ‘house of God’--not coeternal with God, yet in its own mode ‘eternal in the heavens’--that you vainly seek for temporal change? You will not find it there. It rises above all extension and every revolving temporal period, and it rises to what is forever good and cleaves fast to God.”
“It is so,” they reply. “What, then, about those things which my heart cried out to my God, when it heard, within, the voice of his praise? What, then, do you contend is false in them? Is it because matter was unformed, and since there was no form there was no order? But where there was no order there could have been no temporal change. Yet even this ‘almost nothing,’ since it was not altogether nothing, was truly from him from whom everything that exists is in whatever state it is.” “This also,” they say, “we do not deny.”

CHAPTER XVI

[12.] 23. Now, I would like to discuss a little further, in your presence, O my God, with those who admit that all these things are true that your Truth has indicated to my mind. Let those who deny these things bark and drown their own voices with as much clamor as they please. I will endeavor to persuade them to be quiet and to permit your word to reach them. But if they are unwilling, and if they repel me, I ask of you,  O my God, that you shouldst not be silent to me.^[480] Speak truly in my heart; if only you wouldst speak thus, I would send them away, blowing up the dust and raising it in their own eyes. As for myself I will enter into my closet^[481] and there sing to you the songs of love, groaning with groanings that are unutterable now in my pilgrimage,^[482] and remembering Jerusalem with my heart uplifted to Jerusalem my country, Jerusalem my mother^[483]; and to you yourself, the Ruler of the source of Light, its Father, Guardian, Husband; its chaste and strong delight, its solid joy and all its goods ineffable--and all of this at the same time, since you are the one supreme and true Good! And I will not be turned away until you have brought back together all that I am from this dispersion and deformity to the peace of that dearest mother, where the first fruits of my spirit are to be found and from which all these things are promised me which you do conform and confirm forever, O my God, my Mercy. But as for those who do not say that all these things which are true are false, who still honor your Scripture set before us by the holy Moses, who join us in placing it on the summit of authority for us to follow, and yet who oppose us in some particulars, I say this: “Be you,  O God, the judge between my confessions and their gainsaying.”

CHAPTER XVII

[12.] 24. For they say: “Even if these things are true, still Moses did not refer to these two things when he said, by divine revelation, ‘In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.’ By the term ‘heaven’ he did not mean that spiritual or intelligible created order which always beholds the face of God. And by the term ‘earth’ he was not referring to unformed matter.”
“What then do these terms mean?”
They reply, “That man [Moses] meant what we mean; this is what he was saying in those terms.” “What is that?”
“By the terms of heaven and earth,” they say, “he wished first to indicate universally and briefly this whole visible world; then after this, by an enumeration of the days, he could point out, one by one, all the things that it has pleased the Holy Spirit to reveal in this way. For the people to whom he spoke were rude and carnal, so that he judged it prudent that only those works of God which were visible should be mentioned to them.”
But they do agree that the phrases, “The earth was invisible and unformed,” and “The darkened abyss,” may not inappropriately be understood to refer to this unformed matter--and that out of this, as it is subsequently related, all the visible things which are known to all were made and set in order during those specified “days.”
[12.] 25. But now, what if another one should say, “This same formlessness and chaos of matter was first mentioned by the name of heaven and earth because, out of it, this visible world--with all its entities which clearly appear in it and which we are accustomed to be called by the name of heaven and earth--was created and perfected”? And what if still another should say: “The invisible and visible nature is quite fittingly called heaven and earth. Thus, the whole creation which God has made in his wisdom--that is, in the beginning--was included under these two terms. Yet, since all things have been made, not from the essence of God, but from nothing; and because they are not the same reality that God is; and because there is in them all a certain mutability, whether they abide as the eternal house of God abides or whether they are changed as the soul and body of man are changed--then the common matter of all things invisible and visible (still formless but capable of receiving form) from which heaven and earth were to be created (that is, the creature already fashioned, invisible as well as visible)--all this was spoken of in the same terms by which the invisible and unformed earth and the darkness over the abyss would be called. There was this difference, however: that the invisible and unformed earth is to be understood as having corporeal matter before it had any manner of form; but the darkness over the abyss was spiritual matter, before its unlimited fluidity was harnessed, and before it was enlightened by Wisdom.”
[12.] 26. And if anyone wished, he might also say, “The entities already perfected and formed, invisible and visible, are not signified by the terms ‘heaven and earth,’ when it reads, ‘In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth’; instead, the unformed beginning of things, the matter capable of receiving form and being made was called by these terms--because the chaos was contained in it and was not yet distinguished by qualities and forms, which have now been arranged in their own orders and are called heaven and earth: the former a spiritual creation, the latter a physical creation.”

CHAPTER XVIII

[12.] 27. When all these things have been said and considered, I am unwilling to contend about words, for such contention is profitable for nothing but the subverting of the hearer.^[484] But the law is profitable for edification if a man use it lawfully: for the end of the law “is love out of a pure heart, and a good conscience, and faith unfeigned.”^[485] And our Master knew it well, for it was on these two commandments that he hung all the Law and the Prophets. And how would it harm me, O my God, you Light of my eyes in secret, if while I am ardently confessing these things--since many different things may be understood from these words, all of which may be true--what harm would be done if I should interpret the meaning of the sacred writer differently from the way some other man interprets? Indeed, all of us who read are trying to trace out and understand what our author wished to convey; and since we believe that he speaks truly we dare not suppose that he has spoken anything that we either know or suppose to be false. Therefore, since every person tries to understand in the Holy Scripture what the writer understood, what harm is done if a man understands what you,  the Light of all truth-speaking minds, showest him to be true, although the author he reads did not understand this aspect of the truth even though he did understand the truth in a different meaning?^[486]

CHAPTER XIX ^[487]

[12.] 28. For it is certainly true, O Lord, that you did create the heaven and the earth. It is also true that “the beginning” is your wisdom in which you did create all things. It is likewise true that this visible world has its own great division (the heaven and the earth) and these two terms include all entities that have been made and created. It is further true that everything mutable confronts our minds with a certain lack of form, whereby it receives form, or whereby it is capable of taking form. It is true, yet again, that what cleaves to the changeless form so closely that even though it is mutable it is not changed is not subject to temporal process. It is true that the formlessness which is almost nothing cannot have temporal change in it. It is true that that from which something is made can, in a manner of speaking, be called by the same name as the thing that is made from it. Thus that formlessness of which heaven and earth were made might be called “heaven and earth.” It is true that of all things having form nothing is nearer to the unformed than the earth and the abyss. It is true that not only every created and formed thing but also everything capable of creation and of form were created by you,  from whom all things are.^[488] It is true, finally, that everything that is formed from what is formless was formless before it was formed.

CHAPTER XX

[12.] 29. From all these truths, which are not doubted by those to whom you have granted insight in such things in their inner eye and who believe unshakably that your servant Moses spoke in the spirit of truth--from all these truths, then, one man takes the sense of “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth” to mean, “In his Word, coeternal with himself, God made both the intelligible and the tangible, the spiritual and the corporeal creation.” Another takes it in a different sense, that “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth” means, “In his Word, coeternal with himself, God made the universal mass of this corporeal world, with all the observable and known entities that it contains.” Still another finds a different meaning, that “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth” means, “In his Word, coeternal with himself, God made the unformed matter of the spiritual and corporeal creation.” Another can take the sense that “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth” means, “In his Word, coeternal with himself, God made the unformed matter of the physical creation, in which heaven and earth were as yet indistinguished; but now that they have come to be separated and formed, we can now perceive them both in the mighty mass of this world.”^[489] Another takes still a further meaning, that “In the beginning God created heaven and earth” means, “In the very beginning of creating and working, God made that unformed matter which contained, undifferentiated, heaven and earth, from which both of them were formed, and both now stand out and are observable with all the things that are in them.”

CHAPTER XXI

[12.] 30. Again, regarding the interpretation of the following words, one man selects for himself, from all the various truths, the interpretation that “the earth was invisible and unformed and darkness was over the abyss” means, “That corporeal entity which God made was as yet the formless matter of physical things without order and without light.” Another takes it in a different sense, that “But the earth was invisible and unformed, and darkness was over the abyss” means, “This totality called heaven and earth was as yet unformed and lightless matter, out of which the corporeal heaven and the corporeal earth were to be made, with all the things in them that are known to our physical senses.” Another takes it still differently and says that “But the earth was invisible and unformed, and darkness was over the abyss” means, “This totality called heaven and earth was as yet an unformed and lightless matter, from which were to be made that intelligible heaven (which is also called ‘the heaven of heavens’) and the earth (which refers to the whole physical entity, under which term may be included this corporeal heaven)--that is, He made the intelligible heaven from which every invisible and visible creature would be created.” He takes it in yet another sense who says that “But the earth was invisible and unformed, and darkness was over the abyss” means, “The Scripture does not refer to that formlessness by the term ‘heaven and earth’; that formlessness itself already existed. This it called the invisible ‘earth’ and the unformed and lightless ‘abyss,’ from which--as it had said before--God made the heaven and the earth (namely, the spiritual and the corporeal creation).” Still another says that “But the earth was invisible and formless, and darkness was over the abyss” means, “There was already an unformed matter from which, as the Scripture had already said, God made heaven and earth, namely, the entire corporeal mass of the world, divided into two very great parts, one superior, the other inferior, with all those familiar and known creatures that are in them.”

CHAPTER XXII

[12.] 31. Now suppose that someone tried to argue against these last two opinions as follows: “If you will not admit that this formlessness of matter appears to be called by the term ‘heaven and earth,’ then there was something that God had not made out of which he did make heaven and earth. And Scripture has not told us that God made this matter, unless we understand that it is implied in the term ‘heaven and earth’ (or the term ‘earth’ alone) when it is said, ‘In the beginning God created the heaven and earth.’ Thus, in what follows--’the earth was invisible and unformed’--even though it pleased Moses thus to refer to unformed matter, yet we can only understand by it that which God himself hath made, as it stands written in the previous verse, ‘God made heaven and earth.’” Those who maintain either one or the other of these two opinions which we have set out above will answer to such objections: “We do not deny at all that this unformed matter was created by God, from whom all things are, and are very good--because we hold that what is created and endowed with form is a higher good; and we also hold that what is made capable of being created and endowed with form, though it is a lesser good, is still a good. But the Scripture has not said specifically that God made this formlessness--any more than it has said it specifically of many other things, such as the orders of ‘cherubim’ and ‘seraphim’ and those others of which the apostle distinctly speaks: ‘thrones,’ ‘dominions,’ ‘principalities,’ ‘powers’^[490]--yet it is clear that God made all of these. If in the phrase ‘He made heaven and earth’ all things are included, what are we to say about the waters upon which the Spirit of God moved? For if they are understood as included in the term ‘earth,’ then how can unformed matter be meant by the term ‘earth’ when we see the waters so beautifully formed? Or, if it be taken thus, why, then, is it written that out of the same formlessness the firmament was made and called heaven, and yet is it not specifically written that the waters were made? For these waters, which we perceive flowing in so beautiful a fashion, are not formless and invisible. But if they received that beauty at the time God said of them, ‘Let the waters which are under the firmament be gathered together,’^[491] thus indicating that their gathering together was the same thing as their reception of form, what, then, is to be said about the waters that are above the firmament? Because if they are unformed, they do not deserve to have a seat so honorable, and yet it is not written by what specific word they were formed. If, then, Genesis is silent about anything that God hath made, which neither sound faith nor unerring understanding doubts that God hath made, let not any sober teaching dare to say that these waters were coeternal with God because we find them mentioned in the book of Genesis and do not find it mentioned when they were created. If Truth instructs us, why may we not interpret that unformed matter which the Scripture calls the earth--invisible and unformed--and the lightless abyss as having been made by God from nothing; and thus understand that they are not coeternal with him, although the narrative fails to tell us precisely when they were made?”

CHAPTER XXIII

[12.] 32. I have heard and considered these theories as well as my weak apprehension allows, and I confess my weakness to you,  O Lord, though already you knowest it. Thus I see that two sorts of disagreements may arise when anything is related by signs, even by trustworthy reporters. There is one disagreement about the truth of the things involved; the other concerns the meaning of the one who reports them. It is one thing to inquire as to what is true about the formation of the Creation. It is another thing, however, to ask what that excellent servant of your faith, Moses, would have wished for the reader and hearer to understand from these words. As for the first question, let all those depart from me who imagine that Moses spoke things that are false. But let me be united with them in you,  O Lord, and delight myself in you with those who feed on your truth in the bond of love. Let us approach together the words of your book and make diligent inquiry in them for your meaning through the meaning of your servant by whose pen you have given them to us.

CHAPTER XXIV

[12.] 33. But in the midst of so many truths which occur to the interpreters of these words (understood as they can be in different ways), which one of us can discover that single interpretation which warrants our saying confidently that Moses thought thus and that in this narrative he wishes this to be understood, as confidently as he would say that this is true, whether Moses thought the one or the other. For see, O my God, I am your servant, and I have vowed in this book an offering of confession to you, ^[492] and I beseech you that by your mercy I may pay my vow to you. Now, see, could I assert that Moses meant nothing else than this [i.e., my interpretation] when he wrote, “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth,” as confidently as I can assert that you in your immutable Word have created all things, invisible and visible? No, I cannot do this because it is not as clear to me that this was in his mind when he wrote these things, as I see it to be certain in your truth. For his thoughts might be set upon the very beginning of the creation when he said, “In the beginning”; and he might have wished it understood that, in this passage, “heaven and earth” refers to no formed and perfect entity, whether spiritual or corporeal, but each of them only newly begun and still formless. Whichever of these possibilities has been mentioned I can see that it might have been said truly. But which of them he did actually intend to express in these words I do not clearly see. However, whether it was one of these or some other meaning which I have not mentioned that this great man saw in his mind when he used these words I have no doubt whatever that he saw it truly and expressed it suitably.

CHAPTER XXV

[12.] 34. Let no man fret me now by saying, “Moses did not mean what you say, but what I say.” Now if he asks me, “How do you know that Moses meant what you deduce from his words?”, I ought to respond calmly and reply as I have already done, or even more fully if he happens to be untrained. But when he says, “Moses did not mean what you say, but what I say,” and then does not deny what either of us says but allows that both are true--then, O my God, life of the poor, in whose breast there is no contradiction, pour your soothing balm into my heart that I may patiently bear with people who talk like this! It is not because they are godly men and have seen in the heart of your servant what they say, but rather they are proud men and have not considered Moses’ meaning, but only love their own--not because it is true but because it is their own. Otherwise they could equally love another true opinion, as I love what they say when what they speak is true--not because it is theirs but because it is true, and therefore not theirs but true. And if they love an opinion because it is true, it becomes both theirs and mine, since it is the common property of all lovers of the truth.^[493] But I neither accept nor approve of it when they contend that Moses did not mean what I say but what they say--and this because, even if it were so, such rashness is born not of knowledge, but of impudence. It comes not from vision but from vanity.
And therefore, O Lord, your judgments should be held in awe, because your truth is neither mine nor his nor anyone else’s; but it belongs to all of us whom you have openly called to have it in common; and you have warned us not to hold on to it as our own special property, for if we do we lose it. For if anyone arrogates to himself what you have bestowed on all to enjoy, and if he desires something for his own that belongs to all, he is forced away from what is common to all to what is, indeed, his very own--that is, from truth to falsehood. For he who tells a lie speaks of his own thought.^[494]
[12.] 35. Hear, O God, best judge of all! O Truth itself, hear what I say to this disputant. Hear it, because I say it in your presence and before my brethren who use the law rightly to the end of love. Hear and give heed to what I shall say to him, if it pleases you.
For I would return this brotherly and peaceful word to him: “If we both see that what you say is true, and if we both say that what I say is true, where is it, I ask you, that we see this? Certainly, I do not see it in you, and you do not see it in me, but both of us see it in the unchangeable truth itself, which is above our minds.”^[495] If, then, we do not disagree about the true light of the Lord our God, why do we disagree about the thoughts of our neighbor, which we cannot see as clearly as the immutable Truth is seen? If Moses himself had appeared to us and said, “This is what I meant,” it would not be in order that we should see it but that we should believe him. Let us not, then, “go beyond what is written and be puffed up for the one against the other.”^[496] Let us, instead, “love the Lord our God with all our heart, with all our soul, and with all our mind, and our neighbor as ourself.”^[497] Unless we believe that whatever Moses meant in these books he meant to be ordered by these two precepts of love, we shall make God a liar, if we judge of the soul of his servant in any other way than as he has taught us. See now, how foolish it is, in the face of so great an abundance of true opinions which can be elicited from these words, rashly to affirm that Moses especially intended only one of these interpretations; and then, with destructive contention, to violate love itself, on behalf of which he had said all the things we are endeavoring to explain!

CHAPTER XXVI

[12.] 36. And yet, O my God, you exaltation of my humility and rest of my toil, who hearest my confessions and forgivest my sins, since you commandest me to love my neighbor as myself, I cannot believe that you gavest your most faithful servant Moses a lesser gift than I should wish and desire for myself from you,  if I had been born in his time, and if you hadst placed me in the position where, by the use of my heart and my tongue, those books might be produced which so long after were to profit all nations throughout the whole world--from such a great pinnacle of authority--and were to surmount the words of all false and proud teachings. If I had been Moses--and we all come from the same mass,^[498] and what is man that you are mindful of him?^[499]--if I had been Moses at the time that he was, and if I had been ordered by you to write the book of Genesis, I would surely have wished for such a power of expression and such an are of arrangement to be given me, that those who cannot as yet understand how God createth would still not reject my words as surpassing their powers of understanding. And I would have wished that those who are already able to do this would find fully contained in the laconic speech of your servant whatever truths they had arrived at in their own thought; and if, in the light of the Truth, some other man saw some further meaning, that too would be found congruent to my words.

CHAPTER XXVII

[12.] 37. For just as a spring dammed up is more plentiful and affords a larger supply of water for more streams over wider fields than any single stream led off from the same spring over a long course--so also is the narration of your minister: it is intended to benefit many who are likely to discourse about it and, with an economy of language, it overflows into various streams of clear truth, from which each one may draw out for himself that particular truth which he can about these topics--this one that truth, that one another truth, by the broader survey of various interpretations. For some people, when they read or hear these words,^[500] think that God, like some sort of man or like some sort of huge body, by some new and sudden decision, produced outside himself and at a certain distance two great bodies: one above, the other below, within which all created things were to be contained. And when they hear, “God said, ‘Let such and such be done,’ and it was done,” they think of words begun and ended, sounding in time and then passing away, followed by the coming into being of what was commanded. They think of other things of the same sort which their familiarity with the world suggests to them.
In these people, who are still little children and whose weakness is borne up by this humble language as if on a mother’s breast, their faith is built up healthfully and they come to possess and to hold as certain the conviction that God made all entities that their senses perceive all around them in such marvelous variety. And if one despises these words as if they were trivial, and with proud weakness stretches himself beyond his fostering cradle, he will, alas, fall away wretchedly. Have pity, O Lord God, lest those who pass by trample on the unfledged bird,^[501] and send your angel who may restore it to its nest, that it may live until it can fly.

CHAPTER XXVIII

[12.] 38. But others, to whom these words are no longer a nest but, rather, a shady thicket, spy the fruits concealed in them and fly around rejoicing and search among them and pluck them with cheerful chirpings: For when they read or hear these words, O God, they see that all times past and times future are transcended by your eternal and stable permanence, and they see also that there is no temporal creature that is not of your making. By your will, since it is the same as your being, you have created all things, not by any mutation of will and not by any will that previously was nonexistent--and not out of yourself, but in your own likeness, you did make from nothing the form of all things. This was an unlikeness which was capable of being formed by your likeness through its relation to you,  the One, as each thing has been given form appropriate to its kind according to its preordained capacity. Thus, all things were made very good, whether they remain around you or whether, removed in time and place by various degrees, they cause or undergo the beautiful changes of natural process.
They see these things and they rejoice in the light of your truth to whatever degree they can.
[12.] 39. Again, one of these men^[502] directs his attention to the verse, “In the beginning God made the heaven and the earth,” and he beholds Wisdom as the true “beginning,” because it also speaks to us. Another man directs his attention to the same words, and by “beginning” he understands simply the commencement of creation, and interprets it thus: “In the beginning he made,” as if it were the same thing as to say, “At the first moment, God made . . .” And among those who interpret “In the beginning” to mean that in your wisdom you have created the heaven and earth, one believes that the matter out of which heaven and earth were to be created is what is referred to by the phrase “heaven and earth.” But another believes that these entities were already formed and distinct. Still another will understand it to refer to one formed entity--a spiritual one, designated by the term “heaven”--and to another unformed entity of corporeal matter, designated by the term “earth.” But those who understand the phrase “heaven and earth” to mean the yet unformed matter from which the heaven and the earth were to be formed do not take it in a simple sense: one man regards it as that from which the intelligible and tangible creations are both produced; and another only as that from which the tangible, corporeal world is produced, containing in its vast bosom these visible and observable entities. Nor are they in simple accord who believe that “heaven and earth” refers to the created things already set in order and arranged. One believes that it refers to the invisible and visible world; another, only to the visible world, in which we admire the luminous heavens and the darkened earth and all the things that they contain.

CHAPTER XXIX

[12.] 40. But he who understands “In the beginning he made” as if it meant, “At first he made,” can truly interpret the phrase “heaven and earth” as referring only to the “matter” of heaven and earth, namely, of the prior universal, which is the intelligible and corporeal creation. For if he would try to interpret the phrase as applying to the universe already formed, it then might rightly be asked of him, “If God first made this, what then did he do afterward?” And, after the universe, he will find nothing. But then he must, however unwillingly, face the question, How is this the first if there is nothing afterward? But when he said that God made matter first formless and then formed, he is not being absurd if he is able to discern what precedes by eternity, and what proceeds in time; what comes from choice, and what comes from origin. In eternity, God is before all things; in the temporal process, the flower is before the fruit; in the act of choice, the fruit is before the flower; in the case of origin, sound is before the tune. Of these four relations, the first and last that I have referred to are understood with much difficulty. The second and third are very easily understood. For it is an uncommon and lofty vision, O Lord, to behold your eternity immutably making mutable things, and thereby standing always before them. Whose mind is acute enough to be able, without great labor, to discover how the sound comes before the tune? For a tune is a formed sound; and an unformed thing may exist, but a thing that does not exist cannot be formed. In the same way, matter is prior to what is made from it. It is not prior because it makes its product, for it is itself made; and its priority is not that of a time interval. For in time we do not first utter formless sounds without singing and then adapt or fashion them into the form of a song, as wood or silver from which a chest or vessel is made. Such materials precede in time the forms of the things which are made from them. But in singing this is not so. For when a song is sung, its sound is heard at the same time. There is not first a formless sound, which afterward is formed into a song; but just as soon as it has sounded it passes away, and you cannot find anything of it which you could gather up and shape. Therefore, the song is absorbed in its own sound and the “sound” of the song is its “matter.” But the sound is formed in order that it may be a tune. This is why, as I was saying, the matter of the sound is prior to the form of the tune. It is not “before” in the sense that it has any power of making a sound or tune. Nor is the sound itself the composer of the tune; rather, the sound is sent forth from the body and is ordered by the soul of the singer, so that from it he may form a tune. Nor is the sound first in time, for it is given forth together with the tune. Nor is it first in choice, because a sound is no better than a tune, since a tune is not merely a sound but a beautiful sound. But it is first in origin, because the tune is not formed in order that it may become a sound, but the sound is formed in order that it may become a tune.
From this example, let him who is able to understand see that the matter of things was first made and was called “heaven and earth” because out of it the heaven and earth were made. This primal formlessness was not made first in time, because the form of things gives rise to time; but now, in time, it is intuited together with its form. And yet nothing can be related of this unformed matter unless it is regarded as if it were the first in the time series though the last in value--because things formed are certainly superior to things unformed--and it is preceded by the eternity of the Creator, so that from nothing there might be made that from which something might be made.

CHAPTER XXX

[12.] 41. In this discord of true opinions let Truth itself bring concord, and may our God have mercy on us all, that we may use the law rightly to the end of the commandment which is pure love. Thus, if anyone asks me which of these opinions was the meaning of your servant Moses, these would not be my confessions did I not confess to you that I do not know. Yet I do know that those opinions are true--with the exception of the carnal ones--about which I have said what I thought was proper. Yet those little ones of good hope are not frightened by these words of your Book, for they speak of high things in a lowly way and of a few basic things in many varied ways. But let all of us, whom I acknowledge to see and speak the truth in these words, love one another and also love you,  our God, O Fountain of Truth--as we will if we thirst not after vanity but for the Fountain of Truth. Indeed, let us so honor this servant of yours, the dispenser of this Scripture, full of your Spirit, so that we will believe that when you did reveal yourself to him, and he wrote these things down, he intended through them what will chiefly minister both for the light of truth and to the increase of our fruitfulness.

CHAPTER XXXI

[12.] 42. Thus, when one man says, “Moses meant what I mean,” and another says, “No, he meant what I do,” I think that I speak more faithfully when I say, “Why could he not have meant both if both opinions are true?” And if there should be still a third truth or a fourth one, and if anyone should seek a truth quite different in those words, why would it not be right to believe that Moses saw all these different truths, since through him the one God has tempered the Holy Scriptures to the understanding of many different people, who should see truths in it even if they are different? Certainly--and I say this fearlessly and from my heart--if I were to write anything on such a supreme authority, I would prefer to write it so that, whatever of truth anyone might apprehend from the matter under discussion, my words should re-echo in the several minds rather than that they should set down one true opinion so clearly on one point that I should exclude the rest, even though they contained no falsehood that offended me. Therefore, I am unwilling, O my God, to be so headstrong as not to believe that this man [Moses] has received at least this much from you. Surely when he was writing these words, he saw fully and understood all the truth we have been able to find in them, and also much besides that we have not been able to discern, or are not yet able to find out, though it is there in them still to be found.

CHAPTER XXXII

[12.] 43. Finally, O Lord--who are God and not flesh and blood--if any man sees anything less, can anything lie hid from “thy good Spirit” who shall “lead me into the land of uprightness,”^[503] which you yourself, through those words, were revealing to future readers, even though he through whom they were spoken fixed on only one among the many interpretations that might have been found? And if this is so, let it be agreed that the meaning he saw is more exalted than the others. But to us, O Lord, either point out the same meaning or any other true one, as it pleases you. Thus, whether you make known to us what you made known to that man of yours, or some other meaning by the agency of the same words, still do you feed us and let error not deceive us. Behold, O Lord, my God, how much we have written concerning these few words--how much, indeed! What strength of mind, what length of time, would suffice for all your books to be interpreted in this fashion?^[504] Allow me, therefore, in these concluding words to confess more briefly to you and select some one, true, certain, and good sense that you shalt inspire, although many meanings offer themselves and many indeed are possible.^[505] This is the faith of my confession, that if I could say what your servant meant, that is truest and best, and for that I must strive. Yet if I do not succeed, may it be that I shall say at least what your Truth wished to say to me through its words, just as it said what it wished to Moses.

 THIRTEEN

BOOK THIRTEEN

Liber XIII

The mysteries and allegories of the days of creation. Augustine undertakes to interpret Gen. 1:2-31 in a mystical and allegorical fashion so as to exhibit the profundities of God’s power and wisdom and love. He is also interested in developing his theories of hermeneutics on his favorite topic: creation. He finds the Trinity in the account of creation and he ponders the work of the Spirit moving over the waters. In the firmament he finds the allegory of Holy Scripture and in the dry land and bitter sea he finds the division between the people of God and the conspiracy of the unfaithful. He develops the theme of man’s being made in the image and likeness of God. He brings his survey to a climax and his confessions to an end with a meditation on the goodness of all creation and the promised rest and blessedness of the eternal Sabbath, on which God, who is eternal rest, “rested.”

CHAPTER I

[13.] 1. I call on you,  my God, my Mercy, who made me and did not forget me, though I was forgetful of you. I call you into my soul, which you did prepare for your reception by the desire which you inspires in it. Do not forsake me when I call on you,  who did anticipate me before I called and who did repeatedly urge with manifold calling that I should hear you afar off and be turned and call upon you,  who call me. For you,  O Lord, have blotted out all my evil deserts, not punishing me for what my hands have done; and you have anticipated all my good deserts so as to recompense me for what your hands have done--the hands which made me. Before I was, you were, and I was not anything at all that you should grant me being. Yet, see how I exist by reason of your goodness, which made provision for all that you made me to be and all that you made me from. For you did not stand in need of me, nor am I the kind of good entity which could be a help to you,  my Lord and my God. It is not that I may serve you as if you wert fatigued in working, or as if your power would be the less if it lacked my assistance. Nor is the service I pay you like the cultivation of a field, so that you wouldst go untended if I did not tend you.^[506] Instead, it is that I may serve and worship you to the end that I may have my well-being from you,  from whom comes my capacity for well-being.

CHAPTER II

[13.] 2. Indeed, it is from the fullness of your goodness that your creation exists at all: to the end that the created good might not fail to be, even though it can profit you nothing, and is nothing of you nor equal to you--since its created existence comes from you.
For what did the heaven and earth, which you did make in the beginning, ever deserve from you? Let them declare--these spiritual and corporeal entities, which you made in your wisdom--let them declare what they merited at your hands, so that the inchoate and the formless, whether spiritual or corporeal, would deserve to be held in being in spite of the fact that they tend toward disorder and extreme unlikeness to you? An unformed spiritual entity is more excellent than a formed corporeal entity; and the corporeal, even when unformed, is more excellent than if it were simply nothing at all. Still, these formless entities are held in their state of being by you,  until they are recalled to your unity and receive form and being from you,  the one sovereign Good. What have they deserved of you,  since they would not even be unformed entities except from you?
[13.] 3. What has corporeal matter deserved of you--even in its invisible and unformed state--since it would not exist even in this state if you hadst not made it? And, if it did not exist, it could not merit its existence from you.
Or, what has that formless spiritual creation deserved of you--that it should flow lightlessly like the abyss--since it is so unlike you and would not exist at all if it had not been turned by the Word which made it that same Word, and, illumined by that Word, had been “made light”^[507] although not as your equal but only as an image of that Form [of Light] which is equal to you? For, in the case of a body, its being is not the same thing as its being beautiful; else it could not then be a deformed body. Likewise, in the case of a created spirit, living is not the same state as living wisely; else it could then be immutably wise. But the true good of every created thing is always to cleave fast to you,  lest, in turning away from you,  it lose the light it had received in being turned by you,  and so relapse into a life like that of the dark abyss.
As for ourselves, who are a spiritual creation by virtue of our souls, when we turned away from you,  O Light, we were in that former life of darkness; and we toil amid the shadows of our darkness until--through your only Son--we become your righteousness,^[508] like the mountains of God. For we, like the great abyss,^[509] have been the objects of your judgments.

CHAPTER III

[13.] 4. Now what you said in the beginning of the creation--”Let there be light: and there was light”--I interpret, not unfitly, as referring to the spiritual creation, because it already had a kind of life which you couldst illuminate. But, since it had not merited from you that it should be a life capable of enlightenment, so neither, when it already began to exist, did it merit from you that it should be enlightened. For neither could its formlessness please you until it became light--and it became light, not from the bare fact of existing, but by the act of turning its face to the light which enlightened it, and by cleaving to it. Thus it owed the fact that it lived, and lived happily, to nothing whatsoever but your grace, since it had been turned, by a change for the better, toward that which cannot be changed for either better or worse. you alone art, because you alone are without complication. For you it is not one thing to live and another thing to live in blessedness; for you are yourself your own blessedness.

CHAPTER IV

[13.] 5. What, therefore, would there have been lacking in your good, which you yourself art, even if these things had never been made or had remained unformed? you did not create them out of any lack but out of the plenitude of your goodness, ordering them and turning them toward form,^[510] but not because your joy had to be perfected by them. For you are perfect, and their imperfection is displeasing. Therefore were they perfected by you and became pleasing to you--but not as if you wert before that imperfect and had to be perfected in their perfection. For your good Spirit which moved over the face of the waters^[511] was not borne up by them as if he rested on them. For those in whom your good Spirit is said to rest he actually causes to rest in himself. But your incorruptible and immutable will--in itself all-sufficient for itself--moved over that life which you hadst made: in which living is not at all the same thing as living happily, since that life still lives even as it flows in its own darkness. But it remains to be turned to him by whom it was made and to live more and more like “the fountain of life,” and in his light “to see light,”^[512] and to be perfected, and enlightened, and made blessed.

CHAPTER V

[13.] 6. See now,^[513] how the Trinity appears to me in an enigma. And you are the Trinity, O my God, since you,  O Father--in the beginning of our wisdom, that is, in your wisdom born of you,  equal and coeternal with you,  that is, your Son--created the heaven and the earth. Many things we have said about the heaven of heavens, and about the earth invisible and unformed, and about the shadowy abyss--speaking of the aimless flux of its being spiritually deformed unless it is turned to him from whom it has its life (such as it is) and by his Light comes to be a life suffused with beauty. Thus it would be a [lower] heaven of that [higher] heaven, which afterward was made between water and water.^[514]
And now I came to recognize, in the name of God, the Father who made all these things, and in the term “the Beginning” to recognize the Son, through whom he made all these things; and since I did believe that my God was the Trinity, I sought still further in his holy Word, and, behold, “Thy Spirit moved over the waters.” Thus, see the Trinity, O my God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the Creator of all creation!

CHAPTER VI

[13.] 7. But why, O truth-speaking Light? To you I lift up my heart--let it not teach me vain notions. Disperse its shadows and tell me, I beseech you,  by that Love which is our mother; tell me, I beseech you,  the reason why--after the reference to heaven and to the invisible and unformed earth, and darkness over the abyss--thy Scripture should then at long last refer to your Spirit? Was it because it was appropriate that he should first be shown to us as “moving over”; and this could not have been said unless something had already been mentioned over which your Spirit could be understood as “moving”? For he did not “move over” the Father and the Son, and he could not properly be said to be “moving over” if he were “moving over” nothing. Thus, what it was he was “moving over” had to be mentioned first and he whom it was not proper to mention otherwise than as “moving over” could then be mentioned. But why was it not fitting that he should have been introduced in some other way than in this context of “moving over’’?

CHAPTER VII

[13.] 8. Now let him who is able follow your apostle with his understanding when he says, “Thy love is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit, who is given to us”^[515] and who teaches us about spiritual gifts ^[516] and shows us a more excellent way of love; and who bows his knee unto you for us, that we may come to the surpassing knowledge of the love of Christ.^[517] Thus, from the beginning, he who is above all was “moving over” the waters.
To whom shall I tell this? How can I speak of the weight of concupiscence which drags us downward into the deep abyss, and of the love which lifts us up by your Spirit who moved over the waters? To whom shall I tell this? How shall I tell it? For concupiscence and love are not certain “places” into which we are plunged and out of which we are lifted again. What could be more like, and yet what more unlike? They are both feelings; they are both loves. The uncleanness of our own spirit flows downward with the love of worldly care; and the sanctity of your Spirit raises us upward by the love of release from anxiety--that we may lift our hearts to you where your Spirit is “moving over the waters.” Thus, we shall have come to that supreme rest where our souls shall have passed through the waters which give no standing ground.^[518]

CHAPTER VIII

[13.] 9. The angels fell, and the soul of man fell; thus they indicate to us the deep darkness of the abyss, which would have still contained the whole spiritual creation if you had not said, in the beginning, “Let there be light: and there was light”--and if every obedient mind in your heavenly city had not adhered to you and had not reposed in your Spirit, which moved immutable over all things mutable. Otherwise, even the heaven of heavens itself would have been a dark shadow, instead of being, as it is now, light in the Lord.^[519] For even in the restless misery of the fallen spirits, who exhibit their own darkness when they are stripped of the garments of your light, you show clearly how noble you did make the rational creation, for whose rest and beatitude nothing suffices save you yourself. And certainly it is not itself sufficient for its beatitude. For it is you,  O our God, who will enlighten our darkness; from you shall come our garments of light; and then our darkness shall be as the noonday. Give yourself to me, O my God, restore yourself to me! See, I love you; and if it be too little, let me love you still more strongly. I cannot measure my love so that I may come to know how much there is still lacking in me before my life can run to your embrace and not be turned away until it is hidden in “the covert of your presence.”^[520] Only this I know, that my existence is my woe except in you--not only in my outward life, but also within my inmost self--and all abundance I have which is not my God is poverty.

CHAPTER IX

[13.] 10. But was neither the Father nor the Son “moving over the waters”? If we understand this as a motion in space, as a body moves, then not even the Holy Spirit “moved.” But if we understand the changeless supereminence of the divine Being above every changeable thing, then Father, Son, and Holy Spirit “moved over the waters.”
Why, then, is this said of your Spirit alone? Why is it said of him only--as if he had been in a “place” that is not a place--about whom alone it is written, “He is your gift”? It is in your gift that we rest. It is there that we enjoy you. Our rest is our “place.” Love lifts us up toward that place, and your good Spirit lifts our lowliness from the gates of death.^[521] Our peace rests in the goodness of will. The body tends toward its own place by its own gravity. A weight does not tend downward only, but moves to its own place. Fire tends upward; a stone tends downward. They are propelled by their own mass; they seek their own places. Oil poured under the water rises above the water; water poured on oil sinks under the oil. They are moved by their own mass; they seek their own places. If they are out of order, they are restless; when their order is restored, they are at rest. My weight is my love. By it I am carried wherever I am carried. By your gift,^[522] we are enkindled and are carried upward. We burn inwardly and move forward. We ascend your ladder which is in our heart, and we sing a canticle of degrees^[523]; we glow inwardly with your fire--with your good fire^[524]--and we go forward because we go up to the peace of Jerusalem^[525]; for I was glad when they said to me, “Let us go into the house of the Lord.”^[526] There your good pleasure will settle us so that we will desire nothing more than to dwell there forever.^[527]

CHAPTER X

[13.] 11. Happy would be that creature who, though it was in itself other than you,  still had known no other state than this from the time it was made, so that it was never without your gift which moves over everything mutable--who had been borne up by the call in which you said, “Let there be light: and there was light.”^[528] For in us there is a distinction between the time when we were darkness and the time when we were made light. But we are not told what would have been the case with that creature if the light had not been made. It is spoken of as though there had been something of flux and darkness in it beforehand so that the cause by which it was made to be otherwise might be evident. This is to say, by being turned to the unfailing Light it might become light. Let him who is able understand this; and let him who is not ask of you. Why trouble me, as if I could “enlighten every man that comes into the world”^[529]?

13.12_Trinity_Analogy_being-knowledge-will

CHAPTER XI

to be,

to know, and

to will.

esse,

nosse,

velle.

For I am, and I know, and I will.

I am a knowing and a willing being;

I know that I am and that I will;

and I will to be and to know.

which

is immutably and

knows immutably and

wills immutably

quod

est inconmutabiliter

et scit inconmutabiliter

et vult inconmutabiliter:

But whether there is a Trinity there because these three functions exist in the one God, or whether all three are in each Person so that they are each threefold, or whether both these notions are true and, in some mysterious manner, the Infinite is in itself its own Selfsame object--at once one and many, so that by itself it is and knows itself and suffices to itself without change, so that the Selfsame is the abundant magnitude of its Unity--who can readily conceive? Who can in any fashion express it plainly? Who can in any way rashly make a pronouncement about it?

CHAPTER XII

[13.] 13. Go forward in your confession, O my faith; say to the Lord your God, “Holy, holy, holy, O Lord my God, in your name we have been baptized, in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.” In your name we baptize, in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. For among us also God in his Christ made “heaven and earth,” namely, the spiritual and carnal members of his Church. And true it is that before it received “the form of doctrine,” our “earth”^[531] was “invisible and unformed,” and we were covered with the darkness of our ignorance; for you do correct man for his iniquity,^[532] and “your judgments are a great abyss.”^[533] But because your Spirit was moving over these waters, your mercy did not forsake our wretchedness, and you said, “Let there be light; repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”^[534] Repent, and let there be light. Because our soul was troubled within us, we remembered you,  O Lord, from the land of Jordan, and from the mountain^[535]--and as we became displeased with our darkness we turned to you,  “and there was light.” And behold, we were heretofore in darkness, but now we are light in the Lord.^[536]

CHAPTER XIII

[13.] 14. But even so, we still live by faith and not by sight, for we are saved by hope; but hope that is seen is not hope. Thus far deep calls unto deep, but now in “the noise of your waterfalls.”^[537] And thus far he who said, “I could not speak to you as if you were spiritual ones, but only as if you were carnal”^[538]--thus far even he does not count himself to have apprehended, but forgetting the things that are behind and reaching forth to the things that are before, he presses on to those things that are ahead,^[539] and he groans under his burden and his soul thirsts after the living God as the stag pants for the water brooks,^[540] and says, “When shall I come?”^[541]--”desiring to be further clothed by his house which is from heaven.”^[542] And he called to this lower deep, saying, “Be not conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.”^[543] And “be not children in understanding, although in malice be children,” in order that “in understanding you may become perfect.”^[544] “O foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you?”^[545] But this is not now only in his own voice but in your voice, who sent your Spirit from above through Him who both “ascended up on high”^[546] and opened up the floodgates of his gifts, that the force of his streams might make glad the city of God.^[547]
For that city and for him sighs the Bridegroom’s friend,^[548] who has now the first fruits of the Spirit laid up with him, but who is still groaning within himself and waiting for adoption, that is, the redemption of his body.^[549] To Him he sighs, for he is a member of the Bride^[550]; for him he is jealous, not for himself, but because not in his own voice but in the voice of your waterfalls he calls on that other deep, of which he is jealous and in fear; for he fears lest, as the serpent seduced Eve by his subtlety, his mind should be corrupted from the purity which is in our Bridegroom, your only Son. What a light of beauty that will be when “we shall see him as he is”^[551]!--and when these tears shall pass away which “have been my meat day and night, while they continually say unto me, ‘Where is your God?’”^[552]

CHAPTER XIV

[13.] 15. And I myself say: “O my God, where are thou? See now, where are thou?” In you I take my breath for a little while, when I pour out my soul beyond myself in the voice of joy and praise, in the voice of him that keeps holyday.^[553] And still it is cast down because it relapses and becomes an abyss, or rather it feels that it still is an abyss. My faith speaks to my soul--the faith that you do kindle to light my path in the night: “Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you disquieted in me? Hope in God.”^[554] For his word is a lamp to your feet.^[555] Hope and persevere until the night passes--that mother of the wicked; until the Lord’s wrath subsides--that wrath whose children once we were, of whom we were beforehand in darkness, whose residue we still bear about us in our bodies, dead because of sin.^[556] Hope and endure until the day breaks and the shadows flee away.^[557] Hope in the Lord: in the morning I shall stand in his presence and keep watch^[558]; I shall forever give praise to him. In the morning I shall stand and shall see my God, who is the health of my countenance,^[559] who also will quicken our mortal bodies by the Spirit that dwells in us,^[560] because in mercy he was moving over our lightless and restless inner deep. From this we have received an earnest, even now in this pilgrimage, that we are now in the light, since already we are saved by hope and are children of the light and children of the day--not children of the night, nor of the darkness,^[561] which we have been hitherto. Between those children of the night and ourselves, in this still uncertain state of human knowledge, only you can rightly distinguish--you who do test the heart and who do call the light day, and the darkness night.^[562] For who can see us clearly but you? What do we have that we have not received from you,  who made from the same lump some vessels to noble, and others to ignoble, use^[563]?

CHAPTER XV

[13.] 16. Now who but you,  our God, did make for us that firmament of the authority of your divine Scripture to be over us? For “the heaven shall be folded up like a scroll”^[564]; but now it is stretched over us like a skin. your divine Scripture is of more sublime authority now that those mortal men through whom you did dispense it to us have departed this life. And you know, O Lord, you know how you did clothe men with skins when they became mortal because of sin.^[565] In something of the same way, you have stretched out the firmament of your Book as a skin--that is to say, you have spread your harmonious words over us through the ministry of mortal men. For by their very death that solid firmament of authority in your sayings, spoken forth by them, stretches high over all that now drift under it; whereas while they lived on earth their authority was not so widely extended. Then you had not yet spread out the heaven like a skin; you had not yet spread abroad everywhere the fame of their death.
[13.] 17. Let us see, O Lord, “the heavens, the work of your fingers,”^[566] and clear away from our eyes the fog with which you have covered them. In them^[567] is that testimony of yours which gives wisdom even to the little ones. O my God, out of the mouth of babes and sucklings, perfect your praise.^[568] For we know no other books that so destroy man’s pride, that so break down the adversary and the self-defender who resists your reconciliation by an effort to justify his own sins. I do not know, O Lord, I do not know any other such pure words that so persuade me to confession and make my neck submissive to your yoke, and invite me to serve you for nothing else than your own sake. Let me understand these things, O good Father. Grant this to me, since I am placed under them; for you have established these things for those placed under them.
[13.] 18. There are other waters that are above this firmament, and I believe that they are immortal and removed from earthly corruption. Let them praise your name--this super-celestial society, your angels, who have no need to look up at this firmament or to gain a knowledge of your Word by reading it--let them praise you. For they always behold your face and read therein, without any syllables in time, what your eternal will intends. They read, they choose, they love.^[569] They are always reading, and what they read never passes away. For by choosing and by loving they read the very immutability of your counsel. Their book is never closed, nor is the scroll folded up, because you yourself are this to them, and are this to them eternally; because you did range them above this firmament which you made firm over the infirmities of the people below the heavens, where they might look up and learn your mercy, which proclaims in time you who made all times. “For your mercy, O Lord, is in the heavens, and your faithfulness reaches to the clouds.”^[570] The clouds pass away, but the heavens remain. The preachers of your Word pass away from this life into another; but your Scripture is spread abroad over the people, even to the end of the world. Indeed, both heaven and earth shall pass away, but your words shall never pass away.^[571] The scroll shall be rolled together, and the “grass” over which it was spread shall, with all its goodliness, pass away; but your Word remains forever^[572]--your Word which now appears to us in the dark image of the clouds and through the glass of heaven, and not as it really is. And even if we are the well-beloved of your Son, it has not yet appeared what we shall be.^[573] He has seen us through the entanglement^[574] of our flesh, and he is fair-speaking, and he has enkindled us, and we run after his fragrance.^[575] But “when he shall appear, then we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.’’^[576] As he is, O Lord, we shall see him--although that time is not yet.

CHAPTER XVI

[13.] 19. For just as you are the utterly Real, you alone do fully know, since you are immutably, and you know immutably, and you will immutably. And your Essence knows and wills immutably. your Knowledge is and wills immutably. your Will is and knows immutably. And it does not seem right to you that the immutable Light should be known by the enlightened but mutable creature in the same way as it knows itself. Therefore, to you my soul is as a land where no water is^[577]; for, just as it cannot enlighten itself by itself, so it cannot satisfy itself by itself. Thus the fountain of life is with you,  and “in your light shall we see light.”^[578]

CHAPTER XVII

[13.] 20. Who has gathered the “embittered ones”^[579] into a single society? For they all have the same end, which is temporal and earthly happiness. This is their motive for doing everything, although they may fluctuate within an innumerable diversity of concerns. Who but you,  O Lord, gathered them together, you who said, “Let the waters be gathered together into one place and let the dry land appear”--athirst for you? For the sea also is yours, and you made it, and your hands formed the dry land.^[580] For it is not the bitterness of men’s wills but the gathering together of the waters which is called “the sea”; yet you curb the wicked lusts of men’s souls and fix their bounds: how far they are allowed to advance, and where their waves will be broken against each other--and thus you make it “a sea,” by the providence of your governance of all things.
[13.] 21. But as for the souls that thirst after you and who appear before you--separated from “the society of the [bitter] sea” by reason of their different ends--you water them by a secret and sweet spring, so that “the earth” may bring forth her fruit and--you, O Lord, commanding it--our souls may bud forth in works of mercy after their kind.^[581] Thus we shall love our neighbor in ministering to his bodily needs, for in this way the soul has seed in itself after its kind when in our own infirmity our compassion reaches out to the relief of the needy, helping them even as we would desire to be helped ourselves if we were in similar need. Thus we help, not only in easy problems (as is signified by “the herb yielding its seed”) but also in the offering of our best strength in affording them the aid of protection (such as “the tree bearing its fruit”). This is to say, we seek to rescue him who is suffering injury from the hands of the powerful--furnishing him with the sheltering protection which comes from the strong arm of a righteous judgment.^[582]

CHAPTER XVIII

[13.] 22. Thus, O Lord, thus I beseech you: let it happen as you have prepared it, as you give joy and the capacity for joy. Let truth spring up out of the earth, and let righteousness look down from heaven,^[583] and let there be lights in the firmament.^[584]
Let us break our bread with the hungry, let us bring the shelterless poor to our house; let us clothe the naked, and never despise those of our own flesh.^[585] See from the fruits which spring forth from the earth how good it is. Thus let our temporal light break forth, and let us from even this lower level of fruitful action come to the joy of contemplation and hold on high the Word of Life. And let us at length appear like “lights in the world,”^[586] cleaving to the firmament of your Scripture.
For in it you make it plain to us how we may distinguish between things intelligible and things tangible, as if between the day and the night--and to distinguish between souls who give themselves to things of the mind and others absorbed in things of sense. Thus it is that now you are not alone in the secret of your judgment as you were before the firmament was made, and before you did divide between the light and the darkness. But now also your spiritual children, placed and ranked in this same firmament--your grace being thus manifest throughout the world--may shed light upon the earth, and may divide between the day and night, and may be for the signs of the times^[587]; because old things have passed away, and, lo, all things are become new^[588]; and because our salvation is nearer than when we believed; and because “the night is far spent and the day is at hand”^[589]; and because “you crown the year with blessing,”^[590] sending the laborers into your harvest, in which others have labored in the sowing and sending laborers also to make new sowings whose harvest shall not be until the end of time. Thus you grant the prayers of him who seeks, and you bless the years of the righteous man. But you are always the Selfsame, and in your years which fail not you prepare a granary for our transient years. For by an eternal design you spread the heavenly blessings on the earth in their proper seasons.
[13.] 23. For “to one there is given by your Spirit the word of wisdom”^[591] (which resembles the greater light--which is for those whose delight is in the clear light of truth--as the light which is given for the ruling of the day^[592]). But to another the word of knowledge is given by the same Spirit (as it were, the “lesser light”); to another, faith; to another, the gift of healing; to another, the power of working miracles; to another, the gift of prophecy; to another, the discerning of spirits; to another, other kinds of tongues--and all these gifts may be compared to “the stars.” For in them all the one and selfsame Spirit is at work, dividing to every man his own portion, as He wills, and making stars to appear in their bright splendor for the profit of souls. But the word of knowledge, scientia, in which is contained all the mysteries^[593] which change in their seasons like the moon; and all the other promises of gifts, which when counted are like the stars--all of these fall short of that splendor of Wisdom in which the day rejoices and are only for the ruling of the night. Yet they are necessary for those to whom your most prudent servant could not speak as to the spiritually mature, but only as if to carnal men--even though he could speak wisdom among the perfect.^[594] Still the natural man--as a babe in Christ, and a drinker of milk, until he is strong enough for solid meat, and his eye is able to look into the sun--do not leave him in a lightless night. Instead, let him be satisfied with the light of the moon and the stars. In your book you discuss these things with us wisely, our God--in your book, which is your “firmament”--in order that we may be able to view all things in admiring contemplation, although thus far we must do so through signs and seasons and in days and years.

CHAPTER XIX

[13.] 24. But, first, “wash yourselves and make you clean; put away iniquity from your souls and from before my eyes”^[595]--so that “the dry land” may appear. “Learn to do well, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow,”^[596] that the earth may bring forth the green herb for food and fruit-bearing trees. “And come, let us reason together, says the Lord”^[597]--that there may be lights in the firmament of heaven and that they may shine upon the earth.
There was that rich man who asked of the good Teacher what he should do to attain eternal life. Let the good Teacher (whom the rich man thought a man and nothing more) give him an answer--he is good for he is God. Let him answer him that, if he would enter into life, he must keep the commandments: let him put away from himself the bitterness of malice and wickedness; let him not kill, nor commit adultery, nor steal, nor bear false witness^[598]--that “the dry land” may appear and bring forth the honoring of fathers and mothers and the love of neighbor. “All these,” he replied, “I have kept.” Where do so many thorns come from, if the earth is really fruitful? uproot the brier patch of avarice; “sell what you have, and be filled with fruit by giving to the poor, and you shall have treasure in heaven; and follow” the Lord if you would be perfect and joined with those in whose midst he speaks wisdom--who knows how to give rightly to the day and to the night--and you will also understand, so that for you also there may be lights in the firmament of heaven--which will not be there, however, unless your heart is there also. And your heart will not be there unless your treasure is there,^[599] as you have heard from the good Teacher. But “the barren earth”^[600] was grieved, and the briers choked the word.^[601]
[13.] 25. But you, O elect people, set in the firmament of the world,^[602] who have forsaken all that you may follow the Lord: follow him now, and confound the mighty! Follow him, O beautiful feet,^[603] and shine in the firmament, that the heavens may declare his glory, dividing the light of the perfect ones^[604]--though not yet so perfect as the angels--from the darkness of the little ones--who are nevertheless not utterly despised. Shine over all the earth, and let the day be lighted by the sun, utter the Word of wisdom to the day (“day unto day utters speech”^[605]) and let the night, lighted by the moon, display the Word of knowledge to the night. The moon and the stars give light for the night; the night does not put them out, and they illumine in its proper mode. For lo, it is as if God were saying, “Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven”: and suddenly there came a sound from heaven, as if it were a rushing mighty wind, and there appeared cloven tongues of fire, and they sat on each of them.^[606] And then they were made to be lights in the firmament of heaven, having the Word of life. Run to and fro everywhere, you holy fires, you lovely fires, for you are the light of the world and you are not to be hid under a peck measure.^[607] He to whom you cleave is raised on high, and he hath raised you on high. Run to and fro; make yourselves known among all the nations!

CHAPTER XX

[13.] 26. Also let the sea conceive and bring forth your works, and let the waters bear the moving creatures that have life.^[608] For by separating the precious from the vile you are made the mouth of God^[609] by whom he said, “Let the waters bring forth.” This does not refer to the living creatures which the earth brings forth, but to the creeping creatures that have life and the fowls that fly over the earth. For, by the ministry of your holy ones, your mysteries have made their way amid the buffeting billows of the world, to instruct the nations in your name, in your Baptism. And among these things many great and marvelous works have been wrought, which are analogous to the huge whales. The words of your messengers have gone flying over the earth, high in the firmament of your Book which is spread over them as the authority beneath which they are to fly wheresoever they go. For “there is no speech nor language where their voice is not heard,” because “their sound has gone out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world”^[610]--and this because you,  O Lord, have multiplied these things by your blessing.
[13.] 27. Am I speaking falsely? Am I mingling and confounding and not rightly distinguishing between the knowledge of these things in the firmament of heaven and those corporeal works in the swelling sea and beneath the firmament of heaven? For there are those things, the knowledge of which is solid and defined. It does not increase from generation to generation and thus they stand, as it were, as lights of wisdom and knowledge. But there are many and varied physical processes that manifest these selfsame principles. And thus one thing growing from another is multiplied by your blessing, O God, who so refresh our easily wearied mortal senses that in our mental cognition a single thing may be figured and signified in many different ways by different bodily motions.
“The waters” have brought forth these mysteries, but only at your word. The needs of the people who were alien to the eternity of your truth have called them forth, but only in your gospel, since it was these “waters” which cast them up--the waters whose stagnant bitterness was the reason why they came forth through your Word.
[13.] 28. Now all the things that you have made are fair, and yet, lo, you who did make all things are inexpressibly fairer. And if Adam had not fallen away from you,  that brackish sea--the human race--so deeply prying, so boisterously swelling, so restlessly moving, would never have flowed forth from his belly. Thus, there would have been no need for your ministers to use corporeal and tangible signs in the midst of many “waters” in order to show forth their mystical deeds and words. For this is the way I interpret the phrases “creeping creatures” and “flying fowl.” Still, men who have been instructed and initiated and made dependent on your corporeal mysteries would not be able to profit from them if it were not that their soul has a higher life and unless, after the word of its admission, it did not look beyond toward its perfection.

CHAPTER XXI

Thus, in this “living soul” there shall be good beasts, acting meekly. For you have commanded this, saying: “Do your work in meekness and you shall be loved by all men.”^[619] And the cattle will be good, for if they eat much they shall not suffer from satiety; and if they do not eat at all they will suffer no lack. And the serpents will be good, not poisonous to do harm, but only cunning in their watchfulness--exploring only as much of this temporal nature as is necessary in order that the eternal nature may “be clearly seen, understood through the things that have been made.”^[620] For all these animals will obey reason when, having been restrained from their death-dealing ways, they live and become good.

CHAPTER XXII

[13.] 32. Thus, O Lord, our God, our Creator, when our affections have been turned from the love of the world, in which we died by living ill; and when we began to be “a living soul” by living well; and when the word, “Be not conformed to this world,” which you did speak through your apostle, has been fulfilled in us, then will follow what you did immediately add when you said, “But be transformed by the renewing of your mind.”^[621] This will not now be “after their kind,” as if we were following the neighbor who went before us, or as if we were living after the example of a better man--for you did not say, “Let man be made after his kind,” but rather, “Let us make man in our own image and our own likeness,”^[622] so that then we may be able to prove what your will is.
This is why your minister--begetting children by the gospel so that he might not always have them babes whom he would have to feed with milk and nurse as children--this is why he said, “Be transformed by the renewing of your minds, that you may prove what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God.”^[623] Therefore you did not say, “Let man be made,” but rather, “Let us make man.” And you did not say, “After his kind,” but after “our image” and “likeness.” Indeed, it is only when man has been renewed in his mind, and comes to behold and apprehend your truth, that he does not need another man as his director, to show him how to imitate human examples. Instead, by your guidance, he proves what is your good and acceptable and perfect will. And you teach him, now that he is able to understand, to see the trinity of the Unity and the unity of the Trinity.
This is why the statement in the plural, “Let us make man,” is also connected with the statement in the singular, “And God made man.” Thus it is said in the plural, “After our likeness,” and then in the singular, “After the image of God.” Man is thus transformed in the knowledge of God, according to the image of Him who created him. And now, having been made spiritual, he judges all things--that is, all things that are appropriate to be judged--and he himself is judged of no man.^[624]

CHAPTER XXIII

[13.] 33. Now this phrase, “he judges all things,” means that man has dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over all cattle and wild beasts, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth. And he does this by the power of reason in his mind by which he perceives “the things of the Spirit of God.”^[625] But, when man was put in this high office, he did not understand what was involved and thus was reduced to the level of the brute beasts, and made like them.^[626]
Therefore in your Church, O our God, by the grace you have given us--since we are your workmanship, created in good works (not only those who are in spiritual authority but also those who are spiritually subject to them)--you made man male and female. Here all are equal in your spiritual grace where, as far as sex is concerned, there is neither male nor female, just as there is neither Jew nor Greek, nor bond nor free. Spiritual men, therefore, whether those who are in authority or those who are subject to authority, judge spiritually. They do not judge by the light of that spiritual knowledge which shines in the firmament, for it is inappropriate for them to judge by so sublime an authority. Nor does it behoove them to judge concerning your Book itself, although there are some things in it which are not clear. Instead, we submit our understanding to it and believe with certainty that what is hidden from our sight is still rightly and truly spoken. In this way, even though a man is now spiritual and renewed by the knowledge of God according to the image of him who created him, he must be a doer of the law rather than its judge.^[627] Neither does the spiritual man judge concerning that division between spiritual and carnal men which is known to your eyes, O God, and which may not, as yet, be made manifest to us by their external works, so that we may know them by their fruits; yet you,  O God, know them already and you have divided and called them secretly, before the firmament was made. Nor does a man, even though he is spiritual, judge the disordered state of society in this world. For what business of his is it to judge those who are without, since he cannot know which of them may later on come into the sweetness of your grace, and which of them may continue in the perpetual bitterness of their impiety?
[13.] 34. Man, then, even if he was made after your own image, did not receive the power of dominion over the lights of heaven, nor over the secret heaven, nor over the day and the night which you called forth before the creation of the heaven, nor over the gathering together of the waters which is the sea. Instead, he received dominion over the fish of the sea, and the fowls of the air; and over all cattle, and all the earth; and over all creeping things which creep on the earth.
Indeed, he judges and approves what he finds right and disapproves what he finds amiss, whether in the celebration of those mysteries by which are initiated those whom your mercy have sought out in the midst of many waters; or in that sacrament in which is exhibited the Fish itself^[628] which, being raised from the depths, the pious “earth”^[629] feeds upon; or, in the signs and symbols of words, which are subject to the authority of your Book--such signs as burst forth and sound from the mouth, as if it were “flying” under the firmament, interpreting, expounding, discoursing, disputing, blessing, invoking you,  so that the people may answer, “Amen.”^[630] The reason that all these words have to be pronounced vocally is because of the abyss of this world and the blindness of our flesh in which thoughts cannot be seen directly,^[631] but have to be spoken aloud in our ears. Thus, although the flying fowl are multiplied on the earth, they still take their origins from the waters.
The spiritual man also judges by approving what is right and reproving what he finds amiss in the works and morals of the faithful, such as in their almsgiving, which is signified by the phrase, “The earth bringing forth its fruit.” And he judges of the “living soul,” which is then made to live by the disciplining of her affections in chastity, in fasting, and in holy meditation. And he also judges concerning all those things which are perceived by the bodily senses. For it can be said that he should judge in all matters about which he also has the power of correction.

CHAPTER XXIV

[13.] 35. But what is this; what kind of mystery is this? Behold, O Lord, you bless men in order that they may be “fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth.” In this are you not making a sign to us that we may understand something [allegorically]? Why did you not also bless the light, which you called “the day,” nor the firmament of heaven, nor the lights, nor the stars, nor the earth, nor the sea? I might reply, O our God, that you in creating us after your own image--I might reply that you did will to bestow this gift of blessing upon man alone, if you had not similarly blessed the fishes and the whales, so that they too should be fruitful and multiply and replenish the waters of the sea; and also the fowls, so that they should be multiplied on the earth. In like fashion, I might say that this blessing properly belonged only to such creatures as are propagated from their own kind, if I could find it given also as a blessing to trees, and plants, and the beasts of the earth. But this “increase and multiply” was not said to plants or trees or beasts or serpents--although all of these, along with fishes and birds and men, do actually increase by propagation and so preserve their species.
[13.] 36. What, then, shall I say, O Truth, O my Life: that it was idly and vainly said? Surely not this, O Father of piety; far be it from a servant of your Word to say anything like this! But if I do not understand what you meanest by that phrase, let those who are better than I--that is, those more intelligent than I--interpret it better, in the degree that you have given each of us the ability to understand.
But let also my confession be pleasing in your eyes, for I confess to you that I believe, O Lord, that you have not spoken thus in vain. Nor will I be silent as to what my reading has suggested to me. For it is valid, and I do not see anything to prevent me from thus interpreting the figurative sayings in your books. For I know that a thing that is understood in only one way in the mind may be expressed in many different ways by the body; and I know that a thing that has only one manner of expression through the body may be understood in the mind in many different ways. For consider this single example--the love of God and of our neighbor--by how many different mysteries and countless languages, and, in each language, by how many different ways of speaking, this is signified corporeally! In similar fashion, the “young fish” in “the waters” increase and multiply. On the other hand, whoever you are who reads this, observe and behold what Scripture declares, and how the voice pronounces it in only one way, “In the beginning God created heaven and earth.”^[632] Is this not understood in many different ways by different kinds of true interpretations which do not involve the deceit of error? Thus the offspring of men are fruitful and do multiply.^[633]
[13.] 37. If, then, we consider the nature of things, in their strictly literal sense, and not allegorically, the phrase, “Be fruitful and multiply,” applies to all things that are begotten by seed. But if we treat these words figuratively, as I judge that the Scripture intended them to be--since it cannot be for nothing that this blessing is attributed only to the offspring of marine life and man--then we discover that the characteristic of fecundity belongs also to the spiritual and physical creations (which are signified by “heaven and earth”), and also in righteous and unrighteous souls (which are signified by “light and darkness”) and in the sacred writers through whom the law is uttered (who are signified by “the firmament established between the waters and the waters”); and in the earthly commonwealth still steeped in their bitterness (which is signified by “the sea”); and in the zeal of holy souls (signified by “the dry land”); and the works of mercy done in this present life (signified by “the seed-bearing herbs and fruit-bearing trees”); and in spiritual gifts which shine out for our edification (signified by “the lights of heaven”); and to human affections ruled by temperance (signified by “the living soul”). In all these instances we meet with multiplicity and fertility and increase; but the particular way in which “Be fruitful and multiply” can be exemplified differs widely. Thus a single category may include many things, and we cannot discover them except through their signs displayed corporeally and by the things being excogitated by the mind.
We thus interpret the phrase, “The generation of the waters,” as referring to the corporeally expressed signs [of fecundity], since they are made necessary by the degree of our involvement in the flesh. But the power of human generation refers to the process of mental conception; this we see in the fruitfulness of reason. Therefore, we believe that to both of these two kinds it has been said by you,  O Lord, “Be fruitful and multiply.” In this blessing, I recognize that you have granted us the faculty and power not only to express what we understand by a single idea in many different ways but also to understand in many ways what we find expressed obscurely in a single statement. Thus the waters of the sea are replenished, and their waves are symbols of diverse meanings. And thus also the earth is also replenished with human offspring. Its dryness is the symbol of its thirst for truth, and of the fact that reason rules over it.

CHAPTER XXV

[13.] 38. I also desire to say, O my Lord God, what the following Scripture suggests to me. Indeed, I will speak without fear, for I will speak the truth, as you inspirest me to know what you do will that I should say concerning these words. For I do not believe I can speak the truth by any other inspiration than yours, since you are the Truth, and every man a liar.^[634] Hence, he that speaks a lie, speaks out of himself. Therefore, if I am to speak the truth, I must speak of your truth.
Behold, you have given us for our food every seed-bearing herb on the face of the earth, and all trees that bear in themselves seed of their own kind; and not to us only, but to all the fowls of the air and the beasts of the field and all creeping things.^[635] Still, you have not given these things to the fishes and great whales. We have said that by these fruits of the earth the works of mercy were signified and figured forth in an allegory: thus, from the fruitful earth, things are provided for the necessities of life. Such an “earth” was the godly Onesiphorus, to whose house you gave mercy because he often refreshed Paul and was not ashamed of his bonds.^[636] This was also the way of the brethren from Macedonia, who bore such fruit and supplied to him what he lacked. But notice how he grieves for certain “trees,” which did not give him the fruit that was due, when he said, “At my first answer no man stood with me, but all men forsook me: I pray God, that it be not laid up to their charge.”^[637] For we owe “fruits” to those who minister spiritual doctrine to us through their understanding of the divine mysteries. We owe these to them as men. We owe these fruits, also, to “the living souls” since they offer themselves as examples for us in their own continence. And, finally, we owe them likewise to “the flying creatures” because of their blessings which are multiplied on the earth, for “their sound has gone forth into all the earth.”^[638]

CHAPTER XXVI

[13.] 39. Those who find their joy in it are fed by these “fruits”; but those whose god is their belly find no joy in them. For in those who offer these fruits, it is not the fruit itself that matters, but the spirit in which they give them. Therefore, he who serves God and not his own belly may rejoice in them, and I plainly see why. I see it, and I rejoice with him greatly. For he [Paul] had received from the Philippians the things they had sent by Epaphroditus; yet I see why he rejoiced. He was fed by what he found his joy in; for, speaking truly, he says, “I rejoice in the Lord greatly, that now at the last your care of me has flourished again, in which you were once so careful, but it had become a weariness to you.^[639] These Philippians, in their extended period of weariness in well-doing, had become weak and were, so to say, dried up; they were no longer bringing forth the fruits of good works. And now Paul rejoices in them--and not just for himself alone--because they were flourishing again in ministering to his needs. Therefore he adds: “I do not speak in respect of my want, for I have learned in whatsoever state I am therewith to be content. I know both how to be abased and how to abound; everywhere and in all things I am instructed both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need. I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.”^[640]
[13.] 40. Where do you find joy in all things, O great Paul? What is the cause of your joy? On what do you feed, O man, renewed now in the knowledge of God after the image of him who created you, O living soul of such great continence--O tongue like a winged bird, speaking mysteries? What food is owed such creatures; what is it that feeds you? It is joy! For hear what follows: “Nevertheless, you have done well in that you have shared with me in my affliction.”^[641] This is what he finds his joy in; this is what he feeds on. They have done well, not merely because his need had been relieved--for he says to them, “You have opened my heart when I was in distress”--but because he knew both how to abound and how to suffer need, in you who did strengthen him. And so he said, “You [Philippians] know also that in the beginning of the gospel, when I departed from Macedonia, no church shared with me in regard to giving and receiving, except you only. For even in Thessalonica you sent time and time again, according to my need.”^[642] He now finds his joy in the fact that they have returned once again to these good works, and he is made glad that they are flourishing again, as a fruitful field when it recovers its fertility.
[13.] 41. Was it on account of his own needs alone that he said, “You have sent me gifts according to my needs?” Does he find joy in that? Certainly not for that alone. But how do we know this? We know it because he himself adds, “Not because I desire a gift, but because I desire fruit.”^[643]
Now I have learned from you,  O my God, how to distinguish between the terms “gift” and “fruit.” A “gift” is the thing itself, given by one who bestows life’s necessities on another--such as money, food, drink, clothing, shelter, and aid. But “the fruit” is the good and right will of the giver. For the good Teacher not only said, “He that receives a prophet,” but he added, “In the name of a prophet.” And he did not say only, “He who receives a righteous man,” but added, “In the name of a righteous man.”^[644] Thus, surely, the former shall receive the reward of a prophet; the latter, that of a righteous man. Nor did he say only, “Whoever shall give a cup of cold water to one of these little ones to drink,” but added, “In the name of a disciple”; and concluded, “Truly I tell you he shall not lose his reward.” The “gift” involves receiving a prophet, receiving a righteous man, handing a cup of cold water to a disciple: but the “fruit” is to do all this in the name of a prophet, in the name of a righteous man, in the name of a disciple. Elijah was fed by the widow with “fruit,” for she knew that she was feeding a man of God and this is why she fed him. But he was fed by the raven with a “gift.” The inner man of Elijah was not fed by this “gift,” but only the outer man, which otherwise might have perished from the lack of such food.

CHAPTER XXVII

[13.] 42. Therefore I will speak before you,  O Lord, what is true, in order that the uninstructed^[645] and the infidels, who require the mysteries of initiation and great works of miracles--which we believe are signified by the phrase, “Fishes and great whales”--may be helped in being gained [for the Church] when they endeavor to provide that your servants are refreshed in body, or otherwise aided in this present life. For they do not really know why this should be done, and to what end. Thus the former do not feed the latter, and the latter do not feed the former; for neither do the former offer their “gifts” through a holy and right intent, nor do the others rejoice in the gifts of those who do not as yet see the “fruit.” For it is on the “fruit” that the mind is fed, and by which it is gladdened. And, therefore, fishes and whales are not fed on such food as the earth alone brings forth when they have been separated and divided from the bitterness of “the waters” of the sea.

CHAPTER XXVIII

[13.] 43. And you,  O God, did see everything that you had made and, behold, it was very good.^[646] We also see the whole creation and, behold, it is all very good. In each separate kind of your work, when you did say, “Let them be made,” and they were made, you did see that it was good. I have counted seven times where it is written that you did see what you had made was “good.” And there is the eighth time when you did see all things that you had made and, behold, they were not only good but also very good; for they were now seen as a totality. Individually they were only good; but taken as a totality they were both good and very good. Beautiful bodies express this truth; for a body which consists of several parts, each of which is beautiful, is itself far more beautiful than any of its individual parts separately, by whose well-ordered union the whole is completed even though these parts are separately beautiful.

CHAPTER XXIX

[13.] 44. And I looked attentively to find whether it was seven or eight times that you did see your works were good, when they were pleasing to you,  but I found that there was no “time” in your seeing which would help me to understand in what sense you had looked so many “times” at what you had made. And I said: “O Lord, is not this your Scripture true, since you are true, and your truth doth set it forth? Why, then, you say to me that in your seeing there are no times, while this Scripture tells me that what you made each day you did see to be good; and when I counted them I found how many ‘times’?” To these things, you did reply to me, for you are my God, and you speak to your servant with a strong voice in his inner ear, my deafness, and crying: “O man, what my Scripture says, I say. But it speaks in terms of time, whereas time does not affect my Word--my Word which exists coeternally with myself. Thus the things you see through my Spirit, I see; just as what you say through my Spirit, I say. But while you see those things in time, I do not see them in time; and when you speak those things in time, I do not speak them in time.”

CHAPTER XXX

[13.] 45. And I heard this, O Lord my God, and drank up a drop of sweetness from your truth, and understood that there are some men to whom your works are displeasing, who say that many of them you did make under the compulsion of necessity--such as the pattern of the heavens and the courses of the stars--and that you did not make them out of what was yours, but that they were already created elsewhere and from other sources. It was thus [they say] that you did collect and fashion and weave them together, as if from your conquered enemies you did raise up the walls of the universe; so that, built into the ramparts of the building, they might not be able a second time to rebel against you. And, even of other things, they say that you did neither make them nor arrange them--for example, all flesh and all the very small living creatures, and all things fastened to the earth by their roots. But [they say] a hostile mind and an alien nature--not created by you and in every way contrary to you--begot and framed all these things in the nether parts of the world.^[647] They who speak thus are mad [insani], since they do not see your works through your Spirit, nor recognize you in them.

CHAPTER XXXI

[13.] 46. But for those who see these things through your Spirit, it is you who seest them in them. When, therefore, they see that these things are good, it is you who seest that they are good; and whatsoever things are pleasing because of you,  it is you who give us pleasure in those things. Those things which please us through your Spirit are pleasing to you in us. “For what man knows the things of a man except the spirit of a man which is in him? Even so, no man knows the things of God, but the Spirit of God. Now we have not received the spirit of the world, but the Spirit of God, that we might know the things that are freely given to us from God.”^[648] And I am admonished to say: “Yes, truly. No man knows the things of God, but the Spirit of God: but how, then, do we also know what things are given us by God?” The answer is given me: “Because we know these things by his Spirit; for no one knows but the Spirit of God.” But just as it is truly said to those who were to speak through the Spirit of God, “It is not you who speak,” so it is also truly said to them who know through the Spirit of God, “It is not you yourselves who know,” and just as rightly it may be said to those who perceive through the Spirit of God that a thing is good; it is not they who see, but God who sees that it is good.
It is, therefore, one thing to think like the men who judge something to be bad when it is good, as do those whom we have already mentioned. It is quite another thing that a man should see as good what is good--as is the case with many whom your creation pleases because it is good, yet what pleases them in it is not you,  and so they would prefer to find their joy in your creatures rather than to find their joy in you. It is still another thing that when a man sees a thing to be good, God should see in him that it is good--that truly he may be loved in what he hath made, he who cannot be loved except through the Holy Spirit which he hath given us: “Because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who is given to us.”^[649] It is by him that we see whatever we see to be good in any degree, since it is from him, who doth not exist in any particular degree but who simply is what he is.^[650]

CHAPTER XXXII

[13.] 47. Thanks be to you,  O Lord! We see the heaven and the earth, either the corporeal part--higher and lower--or the spiritual and physical creation. And we see the light made and divided from the darkness for the adornment of these parts, from which the universal mass of the world or the universal creation is constituted. We see the firmament of heaven, either the original “body” of the world between the spiritual (higher) waters and the corporeal (lower) waters^[651] or the expanse of air--which is also called “heaven”--through which the fowls of heaven wander, between the waters which move in clouds above them and which drop down in dew on clear nights, and those waters which are heavy and flow along the earth. We see the waters gathered together in the vast plains of the sea; and the dry land, first bare and then formed, so as to be visible and well-ordered; and the soil of herbs and trees. We see the light shining from above--the sun to serve the day, the moon and the stars to give cheer in the night; and we see by all these that the intervals of time are marked and noted. We see on every side the watery elements, fruitful with fishes, beasts, and birds--and we notice that the density of the atmosphere which supports the flights of birds is increased by the evaporation of the waters. We see the face of the earth, replete with earthly creatures; and man, created in your image and likeness, in the very image and likeness of you--that is, having the power of reason and understanding--by virtue of which he has been set over all irrational creatures. And just as there is in his soul one element which controls by its power of reflection and another which has been made subject so that it should obey, so also, physically, the woman was made for the man; for, although she had a like nature of rational intelligence in the mind, still in the sex of her body she should be similarly subject to the sex of her husband, as the appetite of action is subjected to the deliberation of the mind in order to conceive the rules of right action. These things we see, and each of them is good; and the whole is very good!

CHAPTER XXXIII

[13.] 48. Let your works praise you,  that we may love you; and let us love you that your works may praise you--those works which have a beginning and an end in time--a rising and a setting, a growth and a decay, a form and a privation. Thus, they have their successions of morning and evening, partly hidden, partly plain. For they were made from nothing by you,  and not from yourself, and not from any matter that is not yours, or that was created beforehand. They were created from concreated matter--that is, matter that was created by you at the same time that you did form its formlessness, without any interval of time. Yet, since the matter of heaven and earth is one thing and the form of heaven and earth is another thing, you did create matter out of absolutely nothing (de omnino nihilo), but the form of the world you did form from formless matter (de informi materia). But both were done at the same time, so that form followed matter with no delaying interval.

CHAPTER XXXIV

[13.] 49. We have also explored the question of what you did desire to figure forth, both in the creation and in the description of things in this particular order. And we have seen that things taken separately are good, and all things taken together are very good, both in heaven and earth. And we have seen that this was wrought through your Word, your only Son, the head and the body of the Church, and it signifies your predestination before all times, without morning and evening. But when, in time, you did begin to unfold the things destined before time, so that you might make hidden things manifest and might reorder our disorders--since our sins were over us and we had sunk into profound darkness away from you,  and your good Spirit was moving over us to help us in due season--you did justify the ungodly and also did divide them from the wicked; and you made the authority of your Book a firmament between those above who would be amenable to you and those beneath who would be subject to them. And you did gather the society of unbelievers^[652] into a conspiracy, in order that the zeal of the faithful might become manifest and that they might bring forth works of mercy unto you,  giving their earthly riches to the poor to obtain heavenly riches. Then you did kindle the lights in the firmament, which are your holy ones, who have the Word of Life and who shine with an exalted authority, warranted to them by their spiritual gifts. And then, for the instruction of the unbelieving nations, you did out of physical matter produce the mysteries and the visible miracles and the sounds of words in harmony with the firmament of your Book, through which the faithful should be blessed. After this you did form “the living soul” of the faithful, through the ordering of their passions by the strength of continence. And then you did renew, after your image and likeness, the mind which is faithful to you alone, which needs to imitate no human authority. Thus, you did subordinate rational action to the higher excellence of intelligence, as the woman is subordinate to the man. Finally, in all your ministries which were needed to perfect the faithful in this life, you did will that these same faithful ones should themselves bring forth good things, profitable for their temporal use and fruitful for the life to come. We see all these things, and they are very good, because you seest them thus in us--you who have given us your Spirit, by which we may see them so and love you in them.

CHAPTER XXXV

[13.] 50. O Lord God, grant us your peace--for you have given us all things. Grant us the peace of quietness, the peace of the Sabbath, the peace without an evening. All this most beautiful array of things, all so very good, will pass away when all their courses are finished--for in them there is both morning and evening.

CHAPTER XXXVI

[13.] 51. But the seventh day is without an evening, and it has no setting, for you have sanctified it with an everlasting duration. After all your works of creation, which were very good, you did rest on the seventh day, although you had created them all in unbroken rest--and this so that the voice of your Book might speak to us with the prior assurance that after our works--and they also are very good because you have given them to us--we may find our rest in you in the Sabbath of life eternal.^[653]

CHAPTER XXXVII

[13.] 52. For then also you shall so rest in us as now you work in us; and, thus, that will be your rest through us, as these are your works through us. But you,  O Lord, work evermore and are always at rest. you sees not in time, you move not in time, you rest not in time. And yet you make all those things which are seen in time--indeed, the very times themselves--and everything that proceeds in and from time.

CHAPTER XXXVIII

[13.] 53. We can see all those things which you have made because they are--but they are because you see them.^[654] And we see with our eyes that they are, and we see with our minds that they are good. But you saw them as made when you saw that they would be made.
And now, in this present time, we have been moved to do well, now that our heart has been quickened by your Spirit; but in the former time, having forsaken you,  we were moved to do evil.^[655] But you,  O the one good God, have never ceased to do good! And we have accomplished certain good works by your good gifts, and even though they are not eternal, still we hope, after these things here, to find our rest in your great sanctification. But you are the Good, and need no rest, and are always at rest, because you yourself are your own rest.
What man will teach men to understand this? And what angel will teach the angels? Or what angels will teach men? We must ask it of you; we must seek it in you; we must knock for it at your door. Only thus shall we receive; only thus shall we find; only thus shall your door be opened.^[656]

THE LIFE of ANTONY

 TABLE of CONTENTS

INDICE

THE LIFE of ANTONY

THE LIFE of ANTONY

THE LIFE of ANTONY

THE LIFE of ANTONY
(Chapters 1-7: Antony the young ascetic)

Youth and

Family

 The Mystical Meaning of

Baptismal Vows