Writings of Augustine. A Treatise on the Soul and its Origin.
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Augustin and the Pelagian Controversy.
Published in 1886 by Philip Schaff,
New York: Christian Literature Publishing Co.
.
A Treatise on the Soul and its Origin,
by Aurelius Augustin, Bishop of Hippo;
In Four Books,
written towards the end of 419.
Book II.
In the Shape of a Letter Addressed to the Presbyter Peter.
He advises Peter not to incur the imputation of having approved of the
books which had been addressed to him by Victor on the origin of the
soul, by any use he might make of them, nor to take as Catholic
doctrines that person's rash utterances contrary to the Christian
faith. Victor's various errors, and those, too, of a very serious
character, he points out and briefly confutes; and he concludes with
advising Peter himself to try to persuade Victor to amend his errors.
To his Lordship, my dearly beloved brother and fellow-presbyter Peter,
Augustin, bishop, sendeth greeting in the Lord.
Chapter 1 [I.]--Depraved Eloquence an Injurious Accomplishment.
There have reached me the two books of Vincentius Victor, which he
addressed in writing to your Holiness; they have been forwarded to me
by our brother Renatus, a layman indeed, but a person who has a
prudent and religious care about the faith both of himself and of all
he loves. On reading these books, I saw that their author was a man of
great resources in speech, of which he had enough, and more than
enough; but that on the subjects of which he wished to teach, he was
as yet insufficiently instructed. If, however, by the gracious gift of
the Lord this qualification were also conferred upon him, he would be
serviceable to many. For he possesses in no slight degree the faculty
of explaining and beautifying what he thinks; all that is wanted is,
that he should first take care to think rightly. Depraved eloquence is
a hurtful accomplishment; for to persons of inadequate information it
always carries the appearance of truth in its readiness of speech. I
know not, indeed, how you received his books; but if I am correctly
informed, you are said, after reading them, to have been so greatly
overjoyed, that you (though an elderly man and a presbyter) kissed the
face of this youthful layman, and thanked him for having taught you
what you had been previously ignorant of. Now, in this conduct of
yours I do not disapprove of your humility; indeed, I rather commend
it; for it was not the man whom you praised, but the truth itself
which deigned to speak to you through him: only I wish you were able
to point out to me what was the truth which you received through him.
I should, therefore, be glad if you would show me, in your answer to
this letter, what it was he taught you. Be it far from me to be
ashamed to learn from a presbyter, since you did not blush to be
instructed by a layman, in proclaiming and imitating your humble
conduct, if the lessons were only true in which you received
instruction.
Chapter 2 [II.]--He Asks What the Great Knowledge is that Victor
Imparts.
Therefore, brother greatly beloved, I desire to know what you learned
of him, in order that, if I have already possessed the knowledge, I
may participate in your joy; but if I happen to be ignorant, I may be
instructed by you. Did you not then understand that there are two
somethings, soul and spirit, according as it is said in Scripture,
"Thou wilt separate my soul from my spirit"? [2397] And that both of
them pertain to man's nature, so that the whole man consists of
spirit, and soul, and body? Sometimes, however, these two are combined
together under the designation of soul; for instance, in the passage,
"And man became a living soul." [2398] Now, in this place the spirit
is implied. Similarly in sundry passages the two are described under
the name of spirit, as when it is written, "And He bowed His head and
gave up the spirit;" [2399] in which passage it is the soul that must
also be understood. And that the two are of one and the same
substance? I suppose that you already knew all this. But if you did
not, then you may as well know that you have not acquired any great
knowledge, the ignorance of which would be attended with much danger.
And if there must be any more subtle discussion on such points it
would be better to carry on the controversy with himself, whose wordy
qualities we have already discovered. The questions we might consider
are: whether, when mention is made of the soul, the spirit is also
implied in the term in such a way that the two comprise the soul, the
spirit being, as it were, some part of it,--whether, in fact (as this
person seemed to think), under the designation soul, the whole is so
designated from only a part; or else, whether the two together make up
the spirit, that which is properly called soul being a part thereof;
whether again, in fact, the whole is not called from only a part, when
the term spirit is used in such a wide sense as to comprehend the soul
also, as this man supposes. These, however, are but subtle
distinctions, and ignorance about them certainly is not attended with
any great danger.
Footnotes
[2397] Job vii. 14. 'Apallaxeis apo pneumatos mou ten psuchen mou,
Sept.
[2398] Gen. ii. 7.
[2399] John xix. 30.
Chapter 3.--The Difference Between the Senses of the Body and Soul.
Again, I wonder whether this man taught you the difference between the
bodily senses and the sensibilities of the soul; and whether you, who
were a person of considerable age and position before you took lessons
of this man, used to consider to be one and the same that faculty by
which white and black are distinguished, which sparrows even see as
well as ourselves, and that by which justice and injustice are
discriminated, which Tobit also perceived even after he lost the sight
of his eyes. [2400] If you held the identity, then, of course, when
you heard or read the words, "Lighten my eyes, that I sleep not in
death," [2401] you merely thought of the eyes of the body. Or if this
were an obscure point, at all events when you recalled the words of
the apostle, "The eyes of your heart being enlightened," [2402] you
must have supposed that we possessed a heart somewhere between our
forehead and cheeks. Well, I am very far from thinking this of you, so
that this instructor of yours could not have given you such a lesson.
Footnotes
[2400] Tobit iv. 5, 6; compare ii. 10.
[2401] Ps. xiii. 3.
[2402] Eph. i. 18.
Chapter 4.--To Believe the Soul is a Part of God is Blasphemy.
And if you happened to suppose, before receiving the instruction from
this teacher, which you are rejoicing to have received, that the human
soul is a portion of God's nature, then you were ignorant how false
and terribly dangerous this opinion was. And if you only were taught
by this person that the soul is not a portion of God, then I bid you
thank God as earnestly as you can that you were not taken away out of
the body before learning so important a lesson. For you would have
quitted life a great heretic and a terrible blasphemer. However, I
never could have believed this of you, that a man who is both a
catholic and a presbyter of no contemptible position like yourself,
could by any means have thought that the soul's nature is a portion of
God. I therefore cannot help expressing to your beloved self my fears
that this man has by some means or other taught you that which is
decidedly opposed to the faith which you were holding.
Chapter 5 [III.]--In What Sense Created Beings are Out of God.
Now, just because I do not suppose that you, a member of the catholic
Church, ever believed the human soul to be a portion of God, or that
the soul's nature is in any degree identical with God's, I have some
apprehension lest you may have been induced to fall in with this man's
opinion, that "God did not make the soul from nothing, but that the
soul is so far out of Him as to have emanated from Him." For he has
put out such a statement as this, with his other opinions, which have
led him out of the usual track on this subject to a huge precipice.
Now, if he has taught you this, I do not want you to teach it to me;
nay, I should wish you to unlearn what you have been taught. For it is
not enough to avoid believing and saying that the soul is a part of
God. We do not even say that the Son or the Holy Ghost is a part of
God, although we affirm that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit
are all of one and the same nature. It is not, then, enough for us to
avoid saying that the soul is a part of God, but it is of
indispensable importance that we should say that the soul and God are
not of one and the self-same nature. This person is therefore right in
declaring that "souls are God's offspring, not by nature, but by
gift;" and then, of course, not the souls of all men, but of the
faithful. But afterwards he returned to the statement from which he
had shrunk, and affirmed that God and the soul are of the same
nature--not, indeed, in so many words, but plainly and manifestly to
such a purport. For when he says that the soul is out of God, in such
a manner that God created it not out of any other nature, nor out of
nothing, but out of His own self, what would he have us believe but
the very thing which he denies, in other words, even that the soul is
of the self-same nature as God Himself is? For every nature is either
God, who has no author; or out of God, as having Him for its Author.
But the nature which has for its author God, out of whom it comes, is
either not made, or made. Now, that nature which is not made and yet
is out of Him, is either begotten by Him or proceeds from Him. That
which is begotten is His only Son, that which proceedeth is the Holy
Ghost, and this Trinity is of one and the self-same nature. For these
three are one, and each one is God, and all three together are one
God, unchangeable, eternal, without any beginning or ending of time.
That nature, on the other hand, which is made is called "creature;"
God is its Creator, even the blessed Trinity. The creature, therefore,
is said to be out of God in such wise as not to be made out of His
nature. It is predicated as out of Him, inasmuch as it has in Him the
author of its being, not so as to have been born of Him, or to have
proceeded from Him, but as having been created, moulded, and formed by
Him, in some cases, out of no other substance,--that is, absolutely
out of nothing, as, for instance, the heaven and the earth, or rather
the whole material of the universe coeval in its creation with the
world--but, in some cases, out of another nature already created and
in existence, as, for instance, man out of the dust, woman out of the
man, and man out of his parents. Still, every creature is out of
God,--but out of God as its creator either out of nothing, or out of
something previously existing, not, however, as its begetter or its
producer from His own very self.
Chapter 6.--Shall God's Nature Be Mutable, Sinful, Impious, Even
Eternally Damned.
All this, however, I am saying to a catholic: advising with him rather
than teaching him. For I do not suppose that these things are new to
you; or that they have been long heard of by you, but not believed.
This epistle of mine, you will, I am sure, so read as to recognise in
its statement your own faith also, which is by the gracious gift of
the Lord the common property of us all in the catholic Church. Since,
then (as I was saying), I am now speaking to a catholic, whence I pray
you tell me, do you suppose that the soul, I will not say your soul or
my own soul, but the soul of the first man, was given to him? If you
admit that it came from nothing, made, however, and inbreathed into
him by God, then your belief tallies with my own. If, on the contrary,
you suppose that it came out of some other created thing, which served
as the material, as it were, for the divine Artificer to make the soul
out of, just as the dust was the material of which Adam was formed, or
the rib whence Eve was made, or the waters whence the fishes and the
fowls were created, or the ground out of which the terrestrial animals
were formed: then this opinion is not catholic, nor is it true. But
further, if you think, which may God forbid, that the divine Creator
made, or is still making, human souls neither out of nothing, nor out
of some other created thing, but out of His own self, that is, out of
His own nature, then you have learnt this of your new instructor; but
I cannot congratulate you, or flatter you, on the discovery. You have
wandered along with him very far from the catholic faith. Better would
it be, though it would be untrue, yet it would be better, I say, and
more tolerable, that you should believe the soul to have been made out
of some other created substance which God had already formed, than out
of God's own uncreated substance, so that what is mutable, and sinful,
and impious, and if persistent to the end in the impiety will have to
suffer eternal damnation, should not with horrible blasphemy be
referred to the nature of God! Away, brother, I beseech you, away with
this, I will not call it faith, but execrably impious error. May God
avert from you, a man of gravity and a presbyter, the misery of being
seduced by a youthful layman; and, while supposing that your opinion
is the catholic faith, of being lost from the number of the faithful.
For I must not deal with you as I might with him; nor does this
tremendous error, when yours, deserve the same indulgence as being
that of this young man, although you may have derived it from him. He
has but just now found his way to the catholic fold to get healing and
safety; [2403] you have a rank among the very shepherds of that fold.
But we would not that a sheep which comes to the Lord's flock for
shelter from error, should be healed of his sores in such a way, as
first to infect and destroy the shepherd by his contagious presence.
Footnotes
[2403] See below in ch. 14 [x.].
Chapter 7.--To Think the Soul Corporeal an Error.
But if you say to me, He has not taught me this; nor have I by any
means given my assent to this erroneous opinion of his, however much I
was enchanted by the sweetness of his eloquent and elegant discourse;
then I earnestly thank God. Still I cannot help asking, why, even with
kisses, as the report goes, you expressed your gratitude to him for
having taught you what you were ignorant of, previous to hearing his
discussion. Now if it be a false report which makes you to have done
and said so much, then I beg you to be kind enough to give me this
assurance, that the idle rumour may be stopped by your own written
authority. If, however, it is true that you bestowed your thanks with
such humility upon this man, I should rejoice, indeed, if he has not
taught you to believe the opinion which I have already pointed out as
a detestable one, and to be carefully avoided as such. Nor shall I
find fault [IV.] if your humble thanks to your instructor were further
earned by your having acquired from discussions with him some other
true and useful knowledge. But may I ask you what it is? Is it that
the soul is not spirit, but body? Well, I really do not think
ignorance on such a point is any great injury to Christian learning;
and if you indulge in more subtle disputes about the different kinds
of bodily substance, I think the information you obtain is more
difficult than serviceable. If, however, the Lord will that I should
write to this young man himself, as I desire to do, then perhaps your
loving self [2404] will know to what extent you are not indebted to
him for your instruction; although you rejoice in what you have learnt
from him. And now I request you not to feel annoyance in writing me an
answer; so that what is clearly useful and pertinent to our
indispensable faith may not by any chance turn out to be something
different.
Footnotes
[2404] Dilectio tua.
Chapter 8.--The Thirst of the Rich Man in Hell Does Not Prove the Soul
to Be Corporeal.
Now with regard to the point, which with perfect propriety and great
soundness of view he believes, that souls after quitting the body are
judged, before they come to that final judgment to which they must
submit when their bodies are restored to them, and are either
tormented or glorified in the very same flesh wherein they once lived
here on earth; is it, let me ask you, the case that you were really
ignorant of this? Who ever had his mind so obstinately set against the
gospel as not to hear these truths, and after hearing to believe them,
in the parable of the poor man who was carried away after death to
Abraham's bosom, and of the rich man who is set forth as suffering
torment in hell? [2405] But has this man taught you how it was that
the soul apart from the body could crave from the beggar's finger a
drop of water; [2406] when he himself confessed, that the soul did not
require bodily aliment except for the purpose of protecting the
perishing body which encloses it from dissolution? These are his
words: "Is it," asks he, "because the soul craves meat and drink, that
we suppose material food passes into it?" Then shortly afterwards he
says: "From this circumstance it is understood and proved, that the
sustenance of meat and drink is not wanted for the soul, but for the
body: for which clothing also, in addition to food, is provided in
like manner; so that the supplying of food seems to be necessary to
that nature, which is also fitted for wearing clothes." This opinion
of his he expounds clearly enough; but he adds some illustrative
similes, and says: "Now what do we suppose the occupier of a house
does on an inspection of his dwelling? If he observe the tenement has
a shaky roof, or a nodding wall, or a weak foundation, does he not
fetch girders and build up buttresses, in order that he may succeed in
propping up by his care and diligence the fabric which threatened to
fall, so that in the dangerous plight of the residence the peril which
evidently overhung the occupier might be warded off? From this
simile," says he, "see how the soul craves for its flesh, from which
it undoubtedly conceives the craving itself." Such are the very lucid
and adequate words in which this young person has explained his ideas:
he asserts that it is not the soul, but the body, which requires food;
out of a careful regard, no doubt, of the former for the latter, as
one that occupies a dwelling-house, and by a prudent repair prevents
the downfall with which the fleshly tenement was threatened. Well,
now, let him go on to explain to you what probable ruin this
particular soul of the rich man was so eager to prevent by propping
up, seeing that it no longer possessed a mortal body, and yet suffered
thirst, and begged for the drop of water from the poor man's finger.
Here is a good knotty question for this astute instructor of elderly
men to exercise himself on; let him inquire, and find a solution if he
can: for what purpose did that soul in hell beg the aliment of ever so
small a drop of water, when it had no ruinous tenement to support?
Footnotes
[2405] See Luke xvi. 22, 23.
[2406] Luke xvi. 24.
Chapter 9 [V.]--How Could the Incorporeal God Breathe Out of Himself a
Corporeal Substance?
In that he believes God to be truly incorporeal, I congratulate him
that herein, at all events, he has kept himself uninfluenced by the
ravings of Tertullian. For he insisted, that as the soul is corporeal,
so likewise is God. [2407] It is therefore specially surprising that
our author, who differs from Tertullian in this point, yet labours to
persuade us that the incorporeal God does not make the soul out of
nothing, but exhales it as a corporeal breath out of Himself. What a
wonderful learning that must be to which every age erects its
attentive ears, and which contrives to gain for its disciples men of
advanced years, and even presbyters! Let this eminent man read what he
has written, read it in public; let him invite to hear the reading
well-known persons and unknown ones, learned and unlearned. Old men,
assemble with your younger instructors; learn what you used to know
nothing about; hear now what you had never heard before. Behold,
according to the teaching of this scribe, God creates a breath, not
out of something else which exists in some way or other, and not out
of that which absolutely has no existence; but out of that which He is
Himself, perfectly incorporeal, He breathes a body so that He actually
changes His own incorporeal nature into a body, before it undergoes
the change into the body of sin. Does he say, that He does not change
something out of His own nature, when He creates breath? Then, of
course, He does not make that breath out of Himself: for He is not
Himself one thing, and His nature another thing. What is this insane
man thinking of? But if he says that God creates breath out of His own
nature in such a way as to remain absolutely entire Himself, this is
not the question. The question is, whether that which comes not of
some previously created substance, nor from nothing, but from Him, is
not what He is, that is, of the same nature and essence? Now He
remains absolutely entire after the generation of His Son; but because
He begat Him of His own nature, He did not beget a something which was
different from that which He is Himself. For, putting to one side the
circumstance that the Word took on Himself a human nature and became
flesh, the Word who is the Son of God is another but not another
thing: that is, He is another person but not a different nature. And
whence does this come to pass, except from the fact that He is not
created out of something else, or out of nothing, but was begotten out
of Himself; not that He might be better than He was, but that He might
be altogether even what He is of whom He is begotten; that is, of one
and the same nature, equal, co-eternal, in every way like, equally
unchangeable, equally invisible, equally incorporeal, equally God; in
a word, that He might be altogether what the Father is, except that He
actually is Himself the Son, and not the Father? But if He remains
Himself the same God entire and unimpaired, but yet creates something
different from Himself, and worse than Himself, not out of nothing,
nor out of some other creature, but out of His very self; and that
something emanates as a body out ofthe incorporeal God; then God
forbid that a catholic should imbibe such an opinion, for it does not
flow from the divine fountain, but it is a mere fiction of the human
mind.
Footnotes
[2407] See Tertullian's treatise On the Soul in The Ante-Nicene
Christian Fathers, vol. iii. p. 181 sq. See also Augustin, On
Heresies, 86, and Epistles, No. 190.
Chapter 10 [VI.]--Children May Be Found of Like or of Unlike
Dispositions with Their Parents.
Then, again, how ineptly he labours to free the soul, which he
supposes to be corporeal, from the passions of the body, raising
questions about the soul's infancy; about the soul's emotions, when
paralysed and oppressed; about the amputation of bodily limbs, without
cutting or dividing the soul. But in dealing with such points as
these, my duty is to treat rather with him than with you; it is for
him to labour to assign a reason for all he says. In this way we shall
not seem to wish to be too importunate with an elderly man's gravity
on the subject of a young man's work. As to the similarity of
disposition to the parents which is discovered in their children, he
does not dispute its coming from the soul's seed. Accordingly, this is
the opinion also of those persons who do away with the soul's
propagation; but the opposite party who entertain this theory do not
place on this the weight of their assertion. For they observe also
that children are unlike their parents in disposition; and the reason
of this, as they suppose, is, that one and the same person very often
has various dispositions himself, unlike each other,--not, of course,
that he has received another soul, but that his life has undergone a
change for the better or for the worse. So they say that there is no
impossibility in a soul's not possessing the same disposition which he
had by whom it was propagated, seeing that the selfsame soul may have
different dispositions at different times. If, therefore, you think
that you have learnt this of him, that the soul does not come to us by
natural transmission at birth,--I only wish that you had discovered
from him the truth of the case,--I would with the greatest pleasure
resign myself to your hands to learn the whole truth. But really to
learn is one thing, and to seem to yourself to have learned is another
thing. If, then, you suppose that you have learned what you still are
ignorant of, you have evidently not learnt, but given a random
credence to a pleasant hearsay. Falsity has stolen over you in the
suavity. [2408] Now I do not say this from feeling as yet any
certainty as to the proposition being false, which asserts that souls
are created afresh by God's inbreathing rather than derived from the
parents at birth; for I think that this is a point which still
requires proof from those who find themselves able to teach it. No; my
reason for saying it is, that this person has discussed the whole
subject in such a way as not only not to solve the point still in
dispute, but even to indulge in statements which leave no doubt as to
their falsity. In his desire to prove things of doubtful import, he
has boldly stated things which undoubtedly merit reprobation.
Footnotes
[2408] This play of words too inadequately represents Augustin's
Subrepsit tibi falsiloquium per suaviloquium.
Chapter 11 [VII.]--Victor Implies that the Soul Had a "State" And
"Merit" Before Incarnation.
Would you hesitate yourself to reprobate what he has said concerning
the soul? "You will not have it," he says, "that the soul contracts
from the sinful flesh the health, to which holy state you can see it
in due course pass by means of the flesh, so as to amend its state
through that by which it had lost its merit? Or is it because baptism
washes the body that what is believed to be conferred by baptism does
not pass on to the soul or spirit? It is only right, therefore, that
the soul should, by means of the flesh, repair that old condition
which it had seemed to have gradually lost through the flesh, in order
that it may begin a regenerate state by means of that whereby it had
deserved to be polluted." [2409] Now, do observe how grave an error
this teacher has fallen into! He says that "the soul repairs its
condition by means of the flesh through which it had lost its merit."
The soul, then, must have possessed some state and some good merit
previous to the flesh, which he would have that it recovers through
the flesh, when the flesh is cleansed in the laver of regeneration.
Therefore, previous to the flesh, the soul had lived somewhere in a
good state and merit, which state and merit it lost when it came into
the flesh. His words are, "that the soul repairs by means of the flesh
that primitive condition which it had seemed to have gradually lost
through the flesh." The soul, then, possessed before the flesh, an
ancient condition (for his term "primitive" describes the antiquity of
the state); and what could that ancient condition have possibly been,
but a blessed and laudable state? Now, he avers that this happiness is
recovered through the sacrament of baptism, although he will not admit
that the soul derives its origin through propagation from that soul
which was once manifestly happy in paradise. How is it, then, that in
another passage he says that "he constantly affirms of the soul that
it exists not by propagation, nor comes out of nothing, nor exists by
its own self, nor previous to the body"? You see how in this place he
insists that souls do exist prior to the body somewhere or other, and
that in so happy a state that the same happiness is restored to them
by means of baptism. But, as if forgetful of his own views, he goes on
to speak of its "beginning a regenerate state by means of that,"
meaning the flesh, "whereby it had deserved to be polluted." In a
previous statement he had indicated some good desert which had been
lost by means of the flesh; now, however, he speaks of some evil
desert, by means of which it had happened that the soul had to come,
or be sent, into the flesh; for his words are, "By which it had
deserved to be polluted;" and if it deserved to be polluted, its
merits could not, of course, have been good. Pray let him tell us what
sin it had committed previous to its pollution by the flesh, in
consequence of which it merited such pollution by the flesh. Let him,
if he can, explain to us a matter which is utterly beyond his power,
because it is certainly far above his reach to discover what to tell
us on this subject which shall be true.
Footnotes
[2409] See below, Book iii. 9.
Chapter 12 [VIII.]--How Did the Soul Deserve to Be Incarnated?
He also says some time afterwards: "The soul therefore, if it deserved
to be sinful, although it could not have been sinful, yet did not
remain in sin; because, as it was prefigured in Christ, it was bound
not to be in a sinful state, even as it was unable to be." [2410] Now,
my brother, do you, I ask, really think thus? At any rate, have you
formed such an opinion, after having read and duly considered his
words, and after having reflected upon what extorted from you praise
during his reading, and the expression of your gratitude after he had
ended? I pray you, tell me what this means: "Although the soul
deserved to be sinful, which could not have been sinful." What mean
his phrases, deserved and could not? For it could not possibly have
deserved its alleged fate, unless it had been sinful; nor would it
have been, unless it could have been, sinful,--so as, by committing
sin previous to any evil desert, it might make for itself a position
whence it might, under God's desertion, advance to the commission of
other sins. When he said, "which could not have been sinful," did he
mean, which would not have been able to be sinful, unless it came in
the flesh? But how did it deserve a mission at all into a state where
it could be sinful, when it could not possibly have become capable of
sinning anywhere else, unless it entered that particular state? Let
him, then, tell us how it so deserved. For if it deserved to become
capable of sinning, it must certainly have already committed some sin,
in consequence of which it deserved to be sinful again. These points,
however, may perhaps appear to be obscure, or may be tauntingly said
to be of such a character, but they are really most plain and clear.
The truth is, he ought not to have said that "the soul deserved to
become sinful through the flesh," when he will never be able to
discover any desert of the soul, either good or bad, previous to its
being in the flesh.
Footnotes
[2410] See above, Book i. 8, and below, Book iii. 11.
Chapter 13 [IX.]--Victor Teaches that God Thwarts His Own
Predestination.
Let us now go on to plainer matters. For while he was confined within
these great straits, as to how souls can be held bound by the chain of
original sin, when they derive not their origin from the soul which
first sinned, but the Creator breathes them afresh at every birth into
sinful flesh,--pure from all contagion and propagation of sin:--in
order that he might avoid the objection being brought against his
argument, that thus God makes them guilty by such insufflation, he
first of all had recourse to the theory drawn from God's prescience,
that "He had provided redemption for them." Infants are by the
sacrament of this redemption baptized, so that the original sin which
they contracted from the flesh is washed away, as if God were
remedying His own acts for having made these souls polluted. But
afterwards, when he comes to speak of those who receive no such
assistance, but expire before they are baptized, he says: "In this
place I do not offer myself as an authority, but I present you with an
example by way of conjecture. We say, then, that some such method as
this must be had recourse to in the case of infants, who, being
predestinated for baptism, are yet, by the failing of this life,
hurried away before they are born again in Christ. We read," adds he,
"it written of such, Speedily was he taken away, lest that wickedness
should alter his understanding, or deceit beguile his soul. Therefore
He hasted to take him away from among the wicked, for his soul pleased
the Lord; and, being made perfect in a short time, he fulfilled a long
time." [2411] Now who would disdain having such a teacher as this? Is
it the case, then, with infants, whom people usually wish to have
baptized, even hurriedly, before they die, that, if they should be
detained ever so short a time in this life, that they might be
baptized, and then at once die, wickedness would alter their
understanding, and deceit beguile their soul; and to prevent this
happening to them, a hasty death came to their rescue, so that they
were suddenly taken away before they were baptized? By their very
baptism, then, they were changed for the worse, and beguiled by
deceit, if it was after baptism that they were snatched away. O
excellent teaching, worthy to be admired and closely followed! But he
presumed greatly on the prudence of all you who were present at his
reading, and especially on yours, to whom he addressed this treatise
and handed it after the reading, in supposing that you would believe
that the scripture he quoted was intended for the case of unbaptized
infants, although it was written of the immature ages of all those
saints whom foolish men deem to be hardly dealt with, whenever they
are suddenly removed from the present life and are not permitted to
attain to the years which people covet for themselves as a great gift
of God. What, however, is the meaning of these words of his: "Infants
predestinated for baptism, who are yet, by the failing of this life,
hurried away before they are born again in Christ," as if some power
of fortune, or fate, or anything else you please, did not permit God
to fulfil what He had fore-ordained? And how is it that He hurries
them Himself away, when they have pleased Him? Then, does He really
predestinate them to be baptized, and then Himself hinder the
accomplishment of the very thing which He has predestinated?
Footnotes
[2411] Wisd. iv. 11, 14, 13.
Chapter 14 [X.]--Victor Sends Those Infants Who Die Unbaptized to
Paradise and the Heavenly Mansions, But Not to the Kingdom of Heaven.
But I beg you mark how bold he is, who is displeased with hesitancy,
which prefers to be cautious rather than overknowing in a question so
profound as this: "I would be bold to say"--such are his words--"that
they can attain to the forgiveness of their original sins, yet not so
as to be admitted into the kingdom of heaven. Just as in the case of
the thief on the cross, who confessed but was not baptized, the Lord
did not give him the kingdom of heaven, but paradise; [2412] the words
remaining accordingly in full force, `Except a man be born again of
water and of the Holy Ghost, he shall not enter into the kingdom of
heaven.' [2413] This is especially true, inasmuch as the Lord
acknowledges that in His Father's house are many mansions, [2414] by
which are indicated the many different merits of those who dwell in
them; so that in these abodes the unbaptized is brought to
forgiveness, and the baptized to the reward which by grace has been
prepared for him." You observe how the man keeps paradise and the
mansions of the Father's house distinct from the kingdom of heaven, so
that even unbaptized persons may have an abundant provision in places
of eternal happiness. Nor does he see, when he says all this, that he
is so unwilling to distinguish the future abode of a baptized infant
from the kingdom of heaven as to have no fear in keeping distinct
therefrom the very house of God the Father, or the several parts
thereof. For the Lord Jesus did not say: In all the created universe,
or in any portion of that universe, but, "In my Father's house, are
many mansions." But in what way shall an unbaptized person live in the
house of God the Father, when he cannot possibly have God for his
Father, except he be born again? He should not be so ungrateful to
God, who has vouchsafed to deliver him from the sect of the Donatists
or Rogatists, as to aim at dividing the house of God the Father, and
to put one portion of it outside the kingdom of heaven, where the
unbaptized may be able to dwell. And on what terms does he himself
presume that he is to enter into the kingdom of heaven, when from that
kingdom he excludes the house of the King Himself, in what part soever
He pleases? From the case, however, of the thief who, when crucified
at the Lord's side, put his hope in the Lord who was crucified with
him, and from the case of Dinocrates, the brother of St. Perpetua, he
argues that even to the unbaptized may be given the remission of sins
and an abode with the blessed; as if any one unbelief in whom would be
a sin, had shown him that the thief and Dinocrates had not been
baptized. Concerning these cases, however, I have more fully explained
my views in the book which I wrote to our brother Renatus. [2415] This
your loving self will be able to ascertain if you will condescend to
read the book; for I am sure our brother will not find it in his heart
to refuse you, if you ask him the loan of it.
Footnotes
[2412] Luke xxiii. 43.
[2413] John iii. 5.
[2414] John xiv. 2.
[2415] See Book i. of the present treatise, chs. 11 [ix.] and 12 [x.].
Chapter 15 [XI.]--Victor "Decides" That Oblations Should Be Offered Up
for Those Who Die Unbaptized.
Still he chafes with indecision, and is well-nigh suffocated in the
terrible straits of his theory; for very likely he descries with a
more sensitive eye than you, the amount of evil which he enunciates,
to the effect that original sin in infants is effaced without Christ's
sacrament of baptism. It is, indeed, for the purpose of finding an
escape to some extent, and tardily, in the Church's sacraments that he
says: "In their behalf I most certainly decide that constant oblations
and incessant sacrifices must be offered up on the part of the holy
priests." Well, then, you may take him if you like for your arbiter,
if it were not enough to have him as your instructor. Let him decide
that you must offer up the sacrifice of Christ's body even for those
who have not been incorporated into Christ. Now this is quite a novel
idea, and foreign to the Church's discipline and the rule of truth:
and yet, when daring to propound it in his books, he does not modestly
say, I rather think; he does not say, I suppose; he does not say, I am
of opinion; nor does he say, I at least would suggest, or
mention;--but he says, I give it as my decision; so that, should we be
(as might be likely) offended by the novelty or the perverseness of
his opinion, we might be overawed by the authority of his judicial
determination. It is your own concern, my brother, how to be able to
bear him as your instructor in these views. Catholic priests, however,
of right feeling (and among them you ought to take your place) could
never keep quiet--God forbid it--and hear this man pronounce his
decisions, when they would wish him rather to recover his senses, and
be sorry both for having entertained such opinions, and for having
gone so far as to commit them to writing, and chastise himself with
the most wholesome discipline of repentance. "Now it is," says he; "on
this example of the Maccabees who fell in battle that I ground the
necessity of doing this. When they offered stealthily some interdicted
sacrifices, and after they had fallen in the battle, we find," says
he, "that this remedial measure was at once resorted to by the
priests,--sacrifices were offered up to liberate their souls, which
had been bound by the guilt of their forbidden conduct." [2416] But he
says all this, as if (according to his reading of the story) those
atoning sacrifices were offered up for uncircumcised persons, as he
has decided that these sacrifices of ours must be offered up for
unbaptized persons. For circumcision was the sacrament of that period,
which prefigured the baptism of our day.
Footnotes
[2416] This is a loose reference to the narrative in 2 Macc. xii.
39-45.
Chapter 16 [XII.]--Victor Promises to the Unbaptized Paradise After
Their Death, and the Kingdom of Heaven After Their Resurrection,
Although He Admits that This Opposes Christ's Statement.
But your friend, in comparison with what he has shown himself to be
further on, thus far makes mistakes which one may somewhat tolerate.
He apparently felt some disposition to relent; not, to be sure, at
what he ought to have misgivings about, namely, for having ventured to
assert that original sin is relaxed even in the case of the
unbaptized, and that remission is given to them of all their sins, so
that they are admitted into paradise, that is, to a place of great
happiness, and possess a claim to the happy mansions in our Father's
house; but he seems to have entertained some regret at having conceded
to them abodes of lesser blessedness outside the kingdom of heaven.
Accordingly he goes on to say, "Or if any one is perhaps reluctant to
believe that paradise is bestowed as a temporary and provisional gift
on the soul of the thief or of Dinocrates (for there remains for them
still, in the resurrection, the reward of the kingdom of heaven),
although that principal passage stands in the way, [2417] --`Except a
man be born again of water and of the Spirit, he shall not enter into
the kingdom of God.' [2418] --he may yet hold my assent as
ungrudgingly given to this point; only let him magnify [2419] both the
aim and the effect of the divine compassion and fore-knowledge." These
words have I copied, as I read them in his second book. Well, now,
could any one have shown on this erroneous point greater boldness,
recklessness, or presumption? He actually quotes and calls attention
to the Lord's weighty sentence, encloses it in a statement of his own,
and then says, "Although the opinion is opposed to the `principal
passage,' `Except a man be born again of water and of the Spirit, he
shall not enter into the kingdom of God;'" he dares then to lift his
haughty head in censure against the Prince's judgment: "He may yet
hold my assent as ungrudgingly given to this point;" and he explains
his point to be, that the souls of unbaptized persons have a claim to
paradise as a temporary gift; and in this class he mentions the dying
thief and Dinocrates, as if he were prescribing, or rather prejudging,
their destination; moreover, in the resurrection, he will have them
transferred to a better provision, even making them receive the reward
of the kingdom of heaven. "Although," says he, "this is opposed to the
sentence of the Prince." Now, do you, my brother, I pray you,
seriously consider this question: What sentence of the Prince shall
that man deserve to have passed upon him, who imposes on any person an
assent of his own which runs counter to the authority of the Prince
Himself?
Footnotes
[2417] Sententia illa principalis, in which principalis may mean
either "principal," "chief," or "belonging to the Prince."
[2418] John iii. 5.
[2419] Or perhaps, "as simply amplifying both the effect and the
purpose of," etc., etc.
Chapter 17.--Disobedient Compassion and Compassionate Disobedience
Reprobated. Martyrdom in Lieu of Baptism.
The new-fangled Pelagian heretics have been most justly condemned by
the authority of catholic councils and of the Apostolic See, on the
ground of their having dared to give to unbaptized infants a place of
rest and salvation, even apart from the kingdom of heaven. This they
would not have dared to do, if they did not deny their having original
sin, and the need of its remission by the sacrament of baptism. This
man, however, professes the catholic belief on this point, admitting
that infants are tied in the bonds of original sin, and yet he
releases them from these bonds without the laver of regeneration, and
after death, in his compassion, he admits them into paradise; while,
with a still ampler compassion, he introduces them after the
resurrection even to the kingdom of heaven. Such compassion did Saul
see fit to assume when he spared the king whom God commanded to be
slain; [2420] deservedly, however, was his disobedient compassion, or
(if you prefer it) his compassionate disobedience, reprobated and
condemned, that man may be on his guard against extending mercy to his
fellow-man, in opposition to the sentence of Him by whom man was made.
Truth, by the mouth of Itself incarnate, proclaims as if in a voice of
thunder: "Except a man be born again of water and of the Spirit, he
cannot enter into the kingdom of God." [2421] And in order to except
martyrs from this sentence, to whose lot it has fallen to be slain for
the name of Christ before being washed in the baptism of Christ, He
says in another passage, "He that loseth his life for my sake shall
find it." [2422] And so far from promising the abolition of original
sin to any one who has not been regenerated in the laver of Christian
faith, the apostle exclaims, "By the offence of one, judgment came
upon all men to condemnation." [2423] And as a counterbalance against
this condemnation, the Lord exhibits the help of His salvation alone,
saying, "He that believeth, and is baptized, shall be saved; but he
that believeth not shall be damned." [2424] Now the mystery of this
believing in the case of infants is completely effected by the
response of the sureties by whom they are taken to baptism; and unless
this be effected, they all pass by the offence of one into
condemnation. And yet, in opposition to such clear declarations
uttered by the Truth, forth marches before all men a vanity which is
more foolish than pitiful, and says: Not only do infants not pass into
condemnation, though no laver of Christian faith absolves them from
the chain of original sin, but they even after death have an
intermediate enjoyment of the felicities of paradise, and after the
resurrection they shall possess even the happiness of the kingdom of
heaven. Now, would this man dare to say all this in opposition to the
firmly-established catholic faith, if he had not presumptuously
undertaken to solve a question which transcends his powers touching
the origin of the soul?
Footnotes
[2420] 1 Sam. xv. 9.
[2421] John iii. 5.
[2422] Matt. x. 39.
[2423] Rom. v. 18.
[2424] Mark xvi. 16.
Chapter 18 [XIII.]--Victor's Dilemma and Fall.
For he is hemmed in within terrible straits by those who make the
natural inquiry: "Why has God visited on the soul so unjust a
punishment as to have willed to relegate it into a body of sin, since
by its consorting with the flesh that began to be sinful, which else
could not have been sinful?" For, of course, they say: "The soul could
not have been sinful, if God had not commingled it in the
participation of sinful flesh." Well, this opponent of mine was unable
to discover the justice of God's doing this, especially in consequence
of the eternal damnation of infants who die without the remission of
original sin by baptism; and his inability was equally great in
finding out why the good and righteous God both bound the souls of
infants, who He foresaw would derive no advantage from the sacrament
of Christian grace, with the chain of original sin, by sending them
into the body which they derive from Adam,--the souls themselves being
free from all taint of propagation,--and by this means also made them
amenable to eternal damnation. No less was he unwilling to admit that
these very souls likewise derived their sinful origin from that one
primeval soul. And so he preferred escaping by a miserable shipwreck
of faith, rather than to furl his sails and steady his oars, in the
voyage of his controversy, and by such prudent counsel check the fatal
rashness of his course. Worthless in his youthful eye was our aged
caution; just as if this most troublesome and perilous question of his
was more in need of a torrent of eloquence than the counsel of
prudence. And this was foreseen even by himself, but to no purpose;
for, as if to set forth the points which were objected to him by his
opponents, he says: "After them other reproachful censures are added
to the querulous murmurings of those who rail against us; and, as if
tossed about in a whirlwind, we are dashed repeatedly among huge
rocks." After saying this, he propounded for himself the very
dangerous question, which we have already treated, wherein he has
wrecked the catholic faith, unless by a real repentance he shall have
repaired the faith which he had shattered. That whirlwind and those
rocks I have myself avoided,unwilling to entrust my frail barque to
their dangers; and when writing on this subject I have expressed
myself in such a way as rather to explain the grounds of my hesitancy,
than to exhibit the rashness of presumption. [2425] This little work
of mine excited his derision, when he met with it at your house, and
in utter recklessness he flung himself upon the reef: he showed more
spirit than wisdom in his conduct. To what lengths, however, that
over-confidence of his led him, I suppose that you can now yourself
perceive. But I give heartier thanks to God, since you even before
this descried it. For all the while he was refusing to check his
headlong career, when the issue of his course was still in doubt, he
alighted on his miserable enterprise, and maintained that God, in the
case of infants who died without Christian regeneration, conferred
upon them paradise at once, and ultimately the kingdom of heaven.
Footnotes
[2425] See Augustin's treatises, On Free Will, iii. 21; On the Merits
of Sins, ii. (last chapter); Letter (166) to Jerome, and (190) to
Optatus.
Chapter 19 [XIV.]--Victor Relies on Ambiguous Scriptures.
The passages of Scripture, indeed, which he has adduced in the attempt
to prove from them that God did not derive human souls by propagation
from the primitive soul, but as in that first instance that He formed
them by breathing them into each individual, are so uncertain and
ambiguous, that they can with the utmost facility be taken in a
different sense from that which he would assign to them. This point I
have already demonstrated [2426] with sufficient clearness, I think in
the book which I addressed to that friend o ours, of whom I have made
mention above. The passages which he has used for his proofs inform us
that God gives, or makes, or fashion men's souls; but whence He gives
them, or of what He makes or fashions them, they tell us nothing: they
leave untouched the question whether it be by propagation from the
first soul or by insufflation, like the first soul. This writer
however, simply because he reads that God "giveth" souls, [2427] "hath
made" souls, "formeth" souls, supposes that these phrases amount to a
denial of the propagation of souls; whereas, by the testimony of the
same scripture, God gives men their bodies, or makes them, or fashions
and forms them; although no one doubts that the said bodies are given,
made, and formed by Him by seminal propagation.
Footnotes
[2426] See above in Book i. 17 [xiv.] and following chapters.
[2427] Isa. xlii. 5.
Chapter 20.--Victor Quotes Scriptures for Their Silence, and Neglects
the Biblical Usage.
As for the passage which affirms that "God hath made of one blood all
nations of men," [2428] and that in which Adam says, "This is now bone
of my bones, and flesh of my flesh," [2429] inasmuch as it is not said
in the one, "of one soul," and in the other, "soul of my soul," he
supposes that it is denied that children's souls come from their
parents, or the first woman's from her husband just as if, forsooth,
had the sentence run in the way suggested, "of one soul," instead of
"of one blood," anything else than the whole human being could be
understood, without any denial of the propagation of the body. So
likewise, if it had been said, "soul of my soul," the flesh would not
be denied, of course, which evidently had been taken out of the man.
Constantly does Holy Scripture indicate the whole by a part, and a
part by the whole. For certainly, if in the passage which this man has
quoted as his proof it had been said that the human race had been
made, not "of one blood," but "of one man," it could not have
prejudiced the opinion of those who deny the propagation of souls,
although man is not soul alone, nor only flesh, but both. For they
would have their answer ready to this effect, that the Scripture here
might have meant to indicate a part by the whole, that is to say, the
flesh only by the entire human being. In like manner, they who
maintain the propagation of souls contend that in the passage where it
is said, "of one blood," the human being is implied by the term
"blood," on the principle of the whole being expressed by a part. For
just as the one party seems to be assisted by the expression, "of one
blood," instead of the phrase, "of one man," so the other side
evidently gets countenance from the statement being so plainly
written, "By one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and
so death passed upon all men, for in him all sinned," [2430] instead
of its being said, "in whom the flesh of all sinned." Similarly, as
one party seems to receive assistance from the fact that Scripture
says, "This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh," on the
ground that a part covers the whole; so, again, the other side derives
some advantage from what is written in the immediate sequel of the
passage, "She shall be called woman, because she was taken out of her
husband." For, according to their contention, the latter clause should
have run, "Because her flesh was taken out of her husband," if it was
not true that the entire woman, soul and all, but only her flesh, was
taken out of man. The fact, however, of the whole matter is simply
this, that after hearing both sides, anybody whose judgment is free
from party prejudice sees at once that loose quotation is unavailing
in this controversy; for against one party, which maintains the
opinion of the propagation of souls, those passages must not be
adduced which mention only a part, inasmuch as the Scripture might
mean by the part to imply the whole in all such passages; as, for
instance, when we read, "The Word was made flesh," [2431] we of course
understand not the flesh only, but the entire human being; nor against
the other party, who deny this doctrine of the soul's propagation, is
it of any avail to quote those passages which do not mention a part of
the human being, but the whole; because in these the Scripture might
possibly mean to imply a part by the whole; as we confess that Christ
was buried, whereas it was only His flesh that was laid in the
sepulchre. We therefore say, that on such grounds there is no ground
on the one hand for rashly constructing, nor on the other hand for,
with equal rashness, demolishing the theory of propagation; but we add
this advice, that other passages be duly looked out, such as admit of
no ambiguity. [2432]
Footnotes
[2428] Acts xvii. 26.
[2429] Gen. ii. 23.
[2430] Rom. v. 12.
[2431] John i. 14.
[2432] Compare on this chapter Book i. 29.
Chapter 21 [XV.]--Victor's Perplexity and Failure.
For these reasons I fail thus far to discover what this instructor has
taught you, and what grounds you have for the gratitude you have
lavished upon him. For the question remains just as it was, which
inquires about the origin of souls, whether God gives, forms, and
makes them for men by propagating them from that one soul which He
breathed into the first man, or whether it is by His own inbreathing
that He does this in every case, as He did for the first man. For that
God does form, and make, and bestow souls on men, the Christian faith
does not hesitate to aver. Now, when this person endeavoured to solve
the question without gauging his own resources, by denying the
propagation of souls, and asserting that the Creator inbreathed them
into men pure from all contagion of sin,--not out of nothing, but out
of Himself,--He dishonoured the very nature of God by opprobriously
attributing mutability to it, an imputation which was necessarily
untenable. Then, desirous of avoiding all implication which might lead
to God's being deemed unrighteous, if He ties with the bond of
original sin souls which are pure of all actual sin, although not
redeemed by Christian regeneration, he has given utterance to words
and sentiments which I only wish he had not taught you. For he has
accorded to unbaptized infants such happiness and salvation as even
the Pelagian heresy could not have ventured on doing. And yet for all
this, when the question touches the many thousands of infants who are
born of the ungodly, and die among the ungodly,--I do not mean those
whom charitable persons are unable to assist by baptism, however
desirous of doing so, but those of whose baptism nobody either has
been able or shall be able to think, and for whom no one has offered
or is likely to offer the sacrifice which, as this instructor of yours
thought, ought to be offered even for those who have not been
baptized, [2433] --he has discovered no means of solving it. If he
were questioned concerning them, what their souls deserved that God
should involve them in sinful flesh to incur eternal damnation, never
to be washed in the laver of baptism, nor atoned for by the sacrifice
of Christ's body and blood, he will then either feel himself at an
utter loss, and so will regard our hesitation with a real, though
tardy favour; or else will determine that Christ's body must be
offered for all those infants which all the world over die without
Christian baptism (their names having been never heard of, since they
are unknown in the Church of Christ), although not incorporated into
the body of Christ.
Footnotes
[2433] [The editions give the manifestly false reading nobis for non,
yielding the sense: "even for ourselves who have been baptized."--W.]
Chapter 22 [XVI.]--Peter's Responsibility in the Case of Victor.
Far be it from you, my brother, that such views should be pleasant to
you, or that you should either feel pleasure in having acquired them,
or presume ever to teach them. Otherwise, even he would be a far
better man than yourself. Because at the commencement of his first
book he has prefixed the following modest and humble preface: "Though
I desire to comply with your request, I am only affording a clear
proof of my presumption." And a little further on he says, [2434]
"Inasmuch as I am, indeed, by no means confident of being able to
prove what I may have advanced; and moreover I should always be
anxious not to insist on any opinion of my own, if it is found to be
an improbable one; and it would be my hearty desire, in case my own
judgment is condemned, earnestly to follow better and truer views. For
as it shows evidence of the best intention, and a laudable purpose, to
permit yourself to be easily led to truer views of a subject; so it
betokens an obstinate and depraved mind to refuse to turn quickly
aside into the pathway of reason." Now, as he said all this sincerely,
and still feels as he spoke, he no doubt entertains a very hopeful
feeling about a right issue. In similar strain he concludes his second
book: "You must not think," says he, "that there is any chance of its
ever recoiling invidiously against you, that I constitute you the
judge of my words. And lest by chance the sharp eye of some
inquisitive reader may have opportunity of turning up and encountering
any possible vestiges of elemental error which may be left behind on
my illegal sheets, I beg you to tear up page after page with unsparing
hand, if need be; and after expending on me your critical censure,
punish me further, by smearing out the very ink which has given form
to my worthless words; so that, having your full opportunity, you may
prevent all ridicule, on the score either of the favourable opinion
you so strongly entertain of me, or of the inaccuracies which lurk in
my writings."
Footnotes
[2434] See below in Book iii. 20 (xiv.).
Chapter 23 [XVII.]--Who They are that are Not Injured by Reading
Injurious Books.
Forasmuch, then, as he has both commenced and terminated his books
with such safeguards, and has placed on your shoulders the religious
burden of their correction and emendation, I only trust that he may
find in you all that he has asked you for, that you may "correct him
righteously in mercy, and reprove him; whilst the oil of the sinner
which anoints his head" [2435] is absent from your hands and
eyes,--even the indecent compliance of the flatterer, and the
deceitful leniency of the sycophant. If, however, you decline to apply
correction when you see anything to amend, you offend against love;
but if he does not appear to you to require correction, because you
think him to be right in his opinions, then you are wise against
truth. He, therefore, is a better man (since he is only too ready to
be corrected, if a true censurer be at hand) than yourself, if either
knowing him to be in error you despise him with derision, or ignorant
of his wandering course you at the same time closely follow his error.
Everything, therefore, which you find in the books that he has
addressed and forwarded to you, I beg you to consider with sobriety
and vigilance; and you will perhaps make fuller discoveries than I
have myself of statements which deserve to be censured. And as for
such of their contents as are worthy of praise and
approbation,--whatever good you have learnt therein, and by his
instruction, which perhaps you were really ignorant of before, tell us
plainly what it is, that all may know that it was for this particular
benefit that you expressed your obligations to him, and not for the
manifold statements in his books which call for their
disapproval,--all, I mean, who, like yourself, heard him read his
writings, or who afterwards read the same for themselves: lest in his
ornate style they may drink poison, as out of a choice goblet, at your
instance, though not after your own example, because they know not
precisely what it is you have drunk yourself, and what you have left
untasted, and because, from your high character, they suppose that
whatever is drunk out of this fountain would be for their health. For
what else are hearing, and reading, and copiously depositing things in
the memory, than several processes of drinking? The Lord, however,
foretold concerning His faithful followers, that even "if they should
drink any deadly thing, it should not hurt them." [2436] And thus it
happens that they who read with judgment, and bestow their approbation
on whatever is commendable according to the rule of faith, and
disapprove of things which ought to be reprobated, even if they commit
to their memory statements which are declared to be worthy of
disapproval, they receive no harm from the poisonous and depraved
nature of the sentences. To myself, through the Lord's mercy, it can
never become a matter of the least regret, that, actuated by our
previous love, I have given your reverend and religious self advice
and warning on these points, in whatever way you may receive the
admonition for which I have regarded you as possessing the first claim
upon me. Abundant thanks, indeed, shall I give unto Him in whose mercy
it is most salutary to put one's trust, if this letter of mine shall
either find or else make your faith both free from the depraved and
erroneous opinions which I have been able herein to point out from
this man's books, and sound in catholic integrity.
Footnotes
[2435] Ps. cxli. 5.
[2436] Mark xvi. 18.
.
Book III.
Addressed to Vincentius Victor.
Augustin points out to Vincentius Victor the corrections which he
ought to make in his books concerning the origin of the soul, if he
wishes to be a Catholic. Those opinions also which had been already
refuted in the preceding books addressed to Renatus and Peter,
Augustin briefly censures in this third book, which is written to
Victor himself: moreover, he classifies them under eleven heads of
error.
Chapter 1 [I.]--Augustin's Purpose in Writing.
As to that which I have thought it my duty to write to you, my
much-loved son Victor, I would have you to entertain this above all
other thoughts in your mind, if I seemed to despise you, that it was
certainly not my intention to do so. At the same time I must beg of
you not to abuse our condescension in such a way as to suppose that
you possess my approval merely because you have not my contempt. For
it is not to follow, but to correct you, that I give you my love; and
since I by no means despair of the possibility of your amendment, I do
not want you to be surprised at my inability to despise the man who
has my love. Now, since it was my bounden duty to love you before you
had united with us, in order that you might become a catholic; how
much more ought I now to love you since your union with us, to prevent
your becoming a new heretic, and that you may become so firm a
catholic that no heretic may be able to withstand you! So far as
appears from the mental endowments which God has largely bestowed upon
you, you would be undoubtedly a wise man if you only did not believe
that you were one already, and begged of Him who maketh men wise, with
a pious, humble, and earnest prayer, that you might become one, and
preferred not to be led astray with error rather than to be honoured
with the flattery of those who go astray.
Chapter 2 [II.]--Why Victor Assumed the Name of Vincentius. The Names
of Evil Men Ought Never to Be Assumed by Other Persons.
The first thing which caused me some anxiety about you was the title
which appeared in your books with your name; for on inquiring of those
who knew you, and were probably your associates in opinion, who
Vincentius Victor was, I found that you had been a Donatist, or rather
a Rogatist, but had lately come into communion with the catholic
Church. Now, while I was rejoicing, as one naturally does at the
recovery of those whom he sees rescued from that system of error,--and
in your case my joy was all the greater because I saw that your
ability, which so much delighted me in your writings, had not remained
behind with the enemies of truth,--additional information was given me
by your friends which caused me sorrow amid my joy, to the effect that
you wished to have the name Vincentius prefixed to your own name,
inasmuch as you still held in affectionate regard the successor of
Rogatus, who bore this name, as a great and holy man, and that for
this reason you wished his name to become your surname. Some persons
also told me that you had, moreover, boasted about his having appeared
in some sort of a vision to you, and assisted you in composing those
books the subject of which I have discussed with you in this small
work of mine, and to such an extent as to dictate to you himself the
precise topics and arguments which you were to write about. Now, if
all this be true, I no longer wonder at your having been able to make
those statements which, if you will only lend a patient ear to my
admonition, and with the attention of a catholic duly consider and
weigh those books, you will undoubtedly come to regret having ever
advanced. For he who, according to the apostle's portrait, "transforms
himself into an angel of light," [2437] has transformed himself before
you into a shape which you believe to have been, or still to be, an
angel of light. In this way, indeed, he is less able to deceive
catholics when his transformations are not into angels of light, but
into heretics; now, however, that you are a catholic, I should be
sorry for you to be beguiled by him. He will certainly feel torture at
your having learnt the truth, and so much the more in proportion to
the pleasure he formerly experienced in having persuaded you to
believe error. With a view, however, to your refraining from loving a
dead person, when the love can neither be serviceable to yourself nor
profitable to him, I advise you to consider for a moment this one
point--that he is not, of course, a just and holy man, since you
withdrew yourself from the snares of the Donatists or Rogatists on the
score of their heresy; but if you do think him to be just and holy,
you ruin yourself by holding communion with catholics. You are,
indeed, only feigning yourself a catholic if you are in mind the same
as he was on whom you bestow your love; and you are aware how terribly
the Scripture has spoken on this subject: "The Holy Spirit of
discipline will flee from the man who feigns." [2438] If, however, you
are sincere in communicating with us, and do not merely pretend to be
a catholic, how is it that you still love a dead man to such a degree
as to be willing even now to boast of the name of one in whose errors
you no longer permit yourself to be held? We really do not like your
having such a surname, as if you were the monument of a dead heretic.
Nor do we like your book to have such a title as we should say was a
false one if we read it on his tomb. For we are sure Vincentius is not
Victor, the conqueror, but Victus, the conquered;--may it be, however,
with fruitful effect, even as we wish you to be conquered by the
truth! And yet your thought was an astute and skilful one, when you
designated the books, which you wish us to suppose were dictated to
you by his inspiration, by the name of Vincentius Victor; as much as
to intimate that it was rather he than you who wished to be designated
by the victorious appellation, as having been himself the conqueror of
error, by revealing to you what were to be the contents of your
written treatise. But of what avail is all this to you, my son? Be, I
pray you, a true catholic, not a feigned one, lest the Holy Spirit
should flee from you, and that Vincentius be unable to profit you at
all, into whom the most malignant spirit of error has transformed
himself for the purpose of deceiving you; for it is from that one that
all these evil opinions have proceeded, notwithstanding the artful
fraud which has persuaded you to the contrary. If this admonition
shall only induce you to correct these errors with the humility of a
God-fearing man and the peaceful submission of a catholic, they will
be regarded as the mistakes of an over-zealous young man, who is eager
rather to amend them than to persevere in them. But if he shall have
by his influence prevailed on you to contend for these opinions with
obstinate perseverance, which God forbid, it will in such a case be
necessary to condemn them and their author as heretical, as is
required by the pastoral and remedial nature of the Church's charge,
to check the dire contagion before it quietly spreads through the
heedless masses, while wholesome correction is neglected, under the
name but without the reality of love.
Footnotes
[2437] 2 Cor. xi. 14.
[2438] Wisd. i. 5.
Chapter 3 [III.]--He Enumerates the Errors Which He Desires to Have
Amended in the Books of Vincentius Victor. The First Error.
If you ask me what the particular errors are, you may read what I have
written to our brethren, that servant of God Renatus, and the
presbyter Peter, to the latter of whom you yourself thought it
necessary to write the very works of which we are now treating, "in
obedience," as you allege, "to his own wish and request." Now, they
will, I doubt not, lend you my treatises for your perusal if you
should like it, and even press them upon your attention without being
asked. But be that as it may, I will not miss this present opportunity
of informing you what amendments I desire to have made in these
writings of yours, as well as in your belief. The first is, that you
will have it that "The soul was not so made by God that He made it out
of nothing, but out of His own very self." [2439] Here you do not
reflect what the necessary conclusion is, that the soul must be of the
nature of God; and you know very well, of course, how impious such an
opinion is. Now, to avoid such impiety as this, you ought so to say
that God is the Author of the soul as that it was made by Him, but not
of Him. For whatever is of Him (as, for instance, His only-begotten
Son) is of the self-same nature as Himself. But, that the soul might
not be of the same nature as its Creator, it was made by Him, but not
of Him. Or, then, tell me whence it is, or else confess that it is of
nothing. What do you mean by that expression of yours, "That it is a
certain particle of an exhalation from the nature of God"? Do you mean
to say, then, that the exhalation [2440] itself from the nature of
God, to which the particle in question belongs, is not of the same
nature as God is Himself? If this be your meaning, then God made out
of nothing that exhalation of which you will have the soul to be a
particle. Or, if not out of nothing, pray tell me of what God made it?
If He made it out of Himself, it follows that He is Himself (what
should never be affirmed) the material of which His own work is
formed. But you go on to say: "When however, He made the exhalation or
breath out of Himself, He remained at the same time whole and entire;"
just as if the light of a candle did not also remain entire when
another candle is lighted from it, and yet be of the same nature, and
not another.
Footnotes
[2439] See above, Book i. 4 and Book ii. 5.
[2440] Halitus (breath).
Chapter 4 [IV.]--Victor's Simile to Show that God Can Create by
Breathing Without Impartation of His Substance.
"But," you say, "when we inflate a bag, no portion of our nature or
quality is poured into the bag, while the very breath, by the current
of which the filled bag is extended, is emitted from us without the
least diminution of ourselves." Now, you enlarge and dwell upon these
words of yours, and inculcate the simile as necessary for our
understanding how it is that God, without any injury to His own
nature, makes the soul out of His own self, and how, when it is thus
made out of Himself, it is not what Himself is. For you ask: "Is this
inflation of the bag a portion of our own soul? Or do we create human
beings when we inflate bags? Or do we suffer any injury in anything at
all when we impart our breath by inflation on diverse things? But we
suffer no injury when we transfer breath from ourselves to anything,
nor do we ever remember experiencing any damage to ourselves from
inflating a bag, the full quality and entire quantity of our breath
remaining in us notwithstanding the process." Now, however elegant and
applicable this simile seems to you, I beg you to consider how greatly
it misleads you. For you affirm that the incorporeal God breathes out
a corporeal soul,--not made out of nothing, but out of
Himself,--whereas the breath which we ourselves emit is corporeal,
although of a more subtle nature than our bodies; nor do we exhale it
out of our soul, but out of the air through internal functions in our
bodily structure. Our lungs, like a pair of bellows, are moved by the
soul (at the command of which also the other members of the body are
moved), for the purpose of inhaling and exhaling the atmospheric air.
For, besides the aliments, solid or fluid, which constitute our meat
and drink, God has surrounded us with this third aliment of the
atmosphere which we breathe; and that with so good effect, that we can
live for some time without meat and drink, but we could not possibly
subsist for a moment without this third aliment, which the air,
surrounding us on all sides, supplies us with as we breathe and
respire. And as our meat and drink have to be not only introduced into
the body, but also to be expelled by passages formed for the purpose,
to prevent injury accruing either way (from either not entering or not
quitting the body); so this third airy aliment (not being permitted to
remain within us, and thus not becoming corrupt by delay, but being
expelled as soon as it is introduced) has been furnished, not with
different, but with the self-same channels both for its entrance and
for its exit, even the mouth, or the nostrils, or both together.
Chapter 5.--Examination of Victor's Simile: Does Man Give Out Nothing
by Breathing?
Prove now yourself what I say, for your own satisfaction in your own
case; emit breath by exhalation, and see whether you can continue long
without catching back your breath; then again catch it back by
inhalation, and see what discomfort you experience unless you again
emit it. Now, when we inflate a bag, as you prescribe, we do, in fact,
the same thing which we do to maintain life, except that in the case
of the artificial experiment our inhalation is somewhat stronger, in
order that we may emit a stronger breath, so as to fill and distend
the bag by compressing the air we blow into it, rather in the manner
of a hard puff than of the gentle process of ordinary breathing and
respiration. On what ground, then, do you say, "We suffer no injury
whenever we transfer breath from ourselves to any object, nor do we
ever remember experiencing any damage to ourselves from inflating a
bag, the full quality and entire quantity of our own breath remaining
in us notwithstanding the process"? It is very plain, my son, if ever
you have inflated a bag, that you did not carefully observe your own
performance. For you do not perceive what you lose by the act of
inflation by reason of the immediate recovery of your breath. But you
can learn all this with the greatest ease if you would simply prefer
doing so to stiffly maintaining your own statements for no other
reason than because you have made them--not inflating the bag, but
inflated yourself to the full, and inflating your hearers (whom you
should rather edify and instruct by veritable facts) with the empty
prattle of your turgid discourse. In the present case I do not send
you to any other teacher than your own self. Breathe, then, a good
breath into the bag; shut your mouth instantly, hold tight your
nostrils, and in this way discover the truth of what I say to you. For
when you begin to suffer the intolerable inconvenience which
accompanies the experiment, what is it you wish to recover by opening
your mouth and releasing your nostrils? Surely there would be nothing
to recover if your supposition be a correct one, that you have lost
nothing whenever you breathe. Observe what a plight you would be in,
if by inhalation you did not regain what you had parted with by your
breathing outwards. See, too, what loss and injury the insufflation
would produce, were it not for the repair and reaction caused by
respiration. For unless the breath which you expend in filling the bag
should all return by the re-opened channel to discharge its function
of nourishing yourself, what, I wonder, would be left remaining to
you,--I will not say to inflate another bag, but to supply your very
means of living?
Chapter 6.--The Simile Reformed in Accordance with Truth.
Well, now, you ought to have thought of all this when you were
writing, and not to have brought God before our eyes in that favourite
simile of yours, of inflated and inflateable bags, breathing forth
souls out of some other nature which was already in existence, just as
we ourselves make our breath from the air which surrounds us; or
certainly you should not, in a manner which is really as diverse from
your similitude as it is abundant in impiety, have represented God as
either producing some changeable thing without injury, indeed, to
Himself, but yet out of His own substance; or what is worse, creating
it in such wise as to be Himself the material of His own work. If,
however, we are to employ a similitude drawn from our breathing which
shall suitably illustrate this subject, the following one is more
credible: Just as we, whenever we breathe, make a breath, not out of
our own nature, but, because we are not omnipotent, out of that air
that surrounds us, which we inhale and discharge whenever we breathe
and respire; and the said breath is neither living nor sentient,
although we are ourselves living and sentient; so God can--not,
indeed, out of His own nature, but (as being so omnipotent as to be
able to create whatever He wills) even out of that which has no
existence at all, that is to say, out of nothing--make a breath that
is living and sentient, but evidently mutable, though He be Himself
immutable.
Chapter 7 [V.]--Victor Apparently Gives the Creative Breath to Man
Also.
But what is the meaning of that, which you have thought proper to add
to this simile, with regard to the example of the blessed Elisha
because he raised the dead by breathing into his face? [2441] Now, do
you really suppose that Elisha's breath was made the soul of the
child? I could not believe that even you could stray so far away from
the truth. If, now, that soul which was taken from the living child so
as to cause his death, was itself afterwards restored to him so as to
cause his restoration to life: where, I ask, is the pertinence of your
remark when you say "that no diminution accrued to Elisha," as if it
could be imagined that anything had been transferred from the prophet
to the child to cause his revival? But if you meant no more than that
the prophet breathed and remained entire, where was the necessity for
your saying that of Elisha, when raising the dead child, which you
might with no less propriety say of any one whatever when emitting a
breath, and reviving no one? Then, again, you spoke unadvisedly
(though God forbid that you should believe the breath of Elisha to
have become the soul of the resuscitated child!) when you intimated
your meaning to be a desire to keep separate what was first done by
God from this that was done by the prophet, in that the One breathed
but once, and the other thrice. These are your words: "Elisha breathed
into the face of the deceased child of the Shunammite, after the
manner of the original creation. And when by the prophet's breathing a
divine force inspired the dead limbs, reanimated to their original
vigour, no diminution accrued to Elisha, through whose breathing the
dead body recovered its revived soul and spirit. Only there is this
difference, the Lord breathed but once into man's face and he lived,
while Elisha breathed three times into the face of the dead and he
lived again." Thus your words sound as if the number of the breathings
alone made all the difference, why we should not believe that the
prophet actually did what God did. This statement, then, requires to
be entirely revised. There was so complete a difference between that
work of God and this of Elisha, that the former breathed the breath of
life whereby man became a living soul, and the latter breathed a
breath which was not itself sentient nor endued with life, but was
figurative for the sake of some signification. The prophet did not
really cause the child to live again by giving him life, but he
procured God's doing that by giving him love. [2442] As to what you
allege, that he breathed three times, either your memory, as often
happens, or a faulty reading of the text, must have misled you. Why
need I enlarge? You ought not to be seeking for examples and arguments
to establish your point, but rather to amend and change your opinion.
I beg of you neither to believe, nor to say, nor to teach "that God
made the human soul not out of nothing, but out of His own substance,"
if you wish to be a catholic.
Footnotes
[2441] 2 Kings iv. 34.
[2442] In the original we have here another instance of Augustin's
frequent play on words, Non animando, sed amando: "not by ensouling
but by loving him," or "not by enlivening but by loving him."
Chapter 8 [VI.]--Victor's Second Error. (See Above in Book I. 26
[XVI.].)
Do not, I pray you, believe, say, or teach that "Thus is God ever
giving souls through infinite time, just as He who gives is Himself
ever existent," if you wish to be a catholic. For a time will come
when God will not give souls, although He will not therefore Himself
cease to exist. Your phrase, "is ever giving," might be understood "to
give without cessation," so long as men are born and get offspring,
even as it is said of certain men that they are "ever learning, and
never coming to the knowledge of the truth." [2443] For this term
"ever" is not in this passage taken to mean "never ceasing to learn,"
inasmuch as they do cease to learn when they have ceased to exist in
this body, or have begun to suffer the fiery pains of hell. You,
however, did not allow your word to be understood in this sense when
you said "is ever giving," since you thought that it must be applied
to infinite time. And even this was a small matter; for, as if you had
been asked to explain your phrase, "ever giving," more explicitly, you
went on to say, "just as He is Himself ever existent who gives." This
assertion the sound and catholic faith utterly condemns. For be it far
from us to believe that God is ever giving souls, just as He is
Himself, who gives them, ever existent. He is Himself ever existent in
such a sense as never to cease to exist; souls, however, He will not
be ever giving; but He will beyond doubt cease to give them when the
age of generation ceases, and children are no longer born to whom they
are to be given.
Footnotes
[2443] 2 Tim. iii. 7.
Chapter 9 [VII.]--His Third Error. (See Above in Book II. 11 [VII.].)
Again, do not, I pray you, believe, say, or teach that "the soul
deservedly lost something by the flesh, although it was of good merit
previous to the flesh," if you wish to be a catholic. For the apostle
declares that "children who are not yet born, have done neither good
nor evil." [2444] How, therefore, could their soul, previous to its
participation of flesh, have had anything like good desert, if it had
not done any good thing? Will you by any chance venture to assert that
it had, previous to the flesh, lived a good life, when you cannot
actually prove to us that it even existed at all? How, then, can you
say: "You will not allow that the soul contracts health from the
sinful flesh; and to this holy state, then, you can see it in due
course pass, with the view of amending its condition, through that
very flesh by which it had lost merit"? Perhaps you are not aware that
these opinions, which attribute to the human soul a good state and a
good merit previous to the flesh, have been already condemned by the
catholic Church, not only in the case of some ancient heretics, whom I
do not here mention, but also more recently in the instance of the
Priscillianists.
Footnotes
[2444] Rom. ix. 11.
Chapter 10.--His Fourth Error. (See Above in Book I. 6 [VI.] and Book
II. 11 [VII.].)
Neither believe, nor say, nor teach that "the soul, by means of the
flesh, repairs its ancient condition, and is born again by the very
means through which it had deserved to be polluted," if you wish to be
a catholic. I might, indeed, dwell upon the strange discrepancy with
your own self which you have exhibited in the next sentence, wherein
you said that the soul through the flesh deservedly recovers its
primitive condition, which it had seemed to have gradually lost
through the flesh, in order that it may begin to be regenerated by the
very flesh through which it had deserved to be polluted." Here
you--the very man who had just before said that the soul repairs its
condition through the flesh, by reason of which it had lost its desert
(where nothing but good desert can be meant, which you will have to be
recovered in the flesh, by baptism, of course)--said in another turn
of your thought, that through the flesh the soul had deserved to be
polluted (in which statement it is no longer the good desert, but an
evil one, which must be meant). What flagrant inconsistency! but I
will pass it over, and content myself with observing, that it is
absolutely uncatholic to believe that the soul, previous to its
incarnate state, deserved either good or evil.
Chapter 11 [VIII.]--His Fifth Error. (See Above in Book I. 8 [VIII.]
and Book II. 12 [VIII.].)
Neither believe, nor say, nor teach, if you wish to be a catholic,
that "the soul deserved to be sinful before any sin." It is, to be
sure, an extremely bad desert to have deserved to be sinful. And, of
course, it could not possibly have incurred so bad a desert previous
to any sin, especially prior to its coming into the flesh, when it
could have possessed no merit either way, either evil or good. How,
then, can you say: "If, therefore, the soul, which could not be
sinful, deserved to be sinful, it yet did not remain in sin, because
as it was prefigured in Christ it was bound not to be in a sinful
state, even as it was unable to be"? Now, just for a little consider
what it is you say, and desist from repeating such a statement. How
did the soul deserve, and how was it unable, to be sinful? How, I pray
you tell me, did that deserve to be sinful which never lived sinfully?
How, I ask again, was that made sinful which was not able to be
sinful? Or else, if you mean your phrase, "was unable," to imply
inability apart from the flesh, how in that case did the soul deserve
to be sinful, and by reason of what desert was it sent into the flesh,
when previous to its union with the flesh it was not able to be
sinful, so as to deserve any evil at all?
Chapter 12 [IX.]--His Sixth Error. (See Above in Book I. 10-12 [IX.,
X.], and in Book II. 13, 14 [IX., X.].)
If you wish to be a catholic, refrain from believing, or saying, or
teaching that "infants which are forestalled by death before they are
baptized may yet attain to forgiveness of their original sins." For
the examples by which you are misled--that of the thief who confessed
the Lord upon the cross, or that of Dinocrates the brother of St.
Perpetua--contribute no help to you in defence of this erroneous
opinion. As for the thief, although in God's judgment he might be
reckoned among those who are purified by the confession of martyrdom,
yet you cannot tell whether he was not baptized. For, to say nothing
of the opinion that he might have been sprinkled with the water which
gushed at the same time with the blood out of the Lord's side, [2445]
as he hung on the cross next to Him, and thus have been washed with a
baptism of the most sacred kind, what if he had been baptized in
prison, as in after times some under persecution were enabled
privately to obtain? or what if he had been baptized previous to his
imprisonment? If, indeed, he had been, the remission of his sins which
he would have received in that case from God would not have protected
him from the sentence of public law, so far as appertained to the
death of the body. What if, being already baptized, he had committed
the crime and incurred the punishment of robbery and lawlessness, but
yet received, by virtue of repentance added to his baptism,
forgiveness of the sins which, though baptized, he had committed? For
beyond doubt his faith and piety appeared to the Lord clearly in his
heart, as they do to us in his words. If, indeed, we were to conclude
that all those who have quitted life without a record of their baptism
died unbaptized, we should calumniate the very apostles themselves;
for we are ignorant when they were, any of them, baptized, except the
Apostle Paul. [2446] If, however, we could regard as an evidence that
they were really baptized the circumstance of the Lord's saying to St.
Peter, "He that is washed needeth not save to wash his feet," [2447]
what are we to think of the others, of whom we do not read even so
much as this,--Barnabas, Timothy, Titus, Silas, Philemon, the very
evangelists Mark and Luke, and innumerable others, about whose baptism
God forbid that we should entertain any doubt, although we read no
record of it? As for Dinocrates, he was a child of seven years of age;
and as children who are baptized so old as that can now recite the
creed and answer for themselves in the usual examination, I know not
why he may not be supposed after his baptism to have been recalled by
his unbelieving father to the sacrilege and profanity of heathen
worship, and for this reason to have been condemned to the pains from
which he was liberated at his sister's intercession. For in the
account of him you have never read, either that he was never a
Christian, or died a catechumen. But for the matter of that, the
account itself that we have of him does not occur in that canon of
Holy Scripture whence in all questions of this kind our proofs ought
always to be drawn.
Footnotes
[2445] John xix. 34.
[2446] Acts ix. 18.
[2447] John xiii. 10.
Chapter 13 [X]--His Seventh Error. (See Above in Book II. 13 [IX.].)
If you wish to be a catholic, do not venture to believe, to say, or to
teach that "they whom the Lord has predestinated for baptism can be
snatched away from his predestination, or die before that has been
accomplished in them which the Almighty has predestined." There is in
such a dogma more power than I can tell assigned to chances in
opposition to the power of God, by the occurrence of which casualties
that which He has predestinated is not permitted to come to pass. It
is hardly necessary to spend time or earnest words in cautioning the
man who takes up with this error against the absolute vortex of
confusion into which it will absorb him, when I shall sufficiently
meet the case if I briefly warn the prudent man who is ready to
receive correction against the threatening mischief. Now these are
your words: "We say that some such method as this must be had recourse
to in the case of infants who, being predestinated for baptism, are
yet, by the failing of this life, hurried away before they are born
again in Christ." Is it then really true that any who have been
predestinated to baptism are forestalled before they come to it by the
failing of this life? And could God predestinate anything which He
either in His foreknowledge saw would not come to pass, or in
ignorance knew not that it could not come to pass, either to the
frustration of His purpose or the discredit of His foreknowledge? You
see how many weighty remarks might be made on this subject; but I am
restrained by the fact of having treated on it a little while ago, so
that I content myself with this brief and passing admonition.
Chapter 14.--His Eighth Error. (See Above in Book II. 13 [IX.].)
Refuse, if you wish to be a catholic, to believe, or to say, or to
teach that "it is of infants, who are forestalled by death before they
are born again in Christ, that the Scripture says, `Speedily was he
taken away, lest that wickedness should alter his understanding, or
deceit beguile his soul. Therefore God hastened to take him away from
among the wicked; for his soul pleased the Lord; and being made
perfect in a short time he fulfilled long seasons.'" [2448] For this
passage has nothing to do with those to whom you apply it, but rather
belongs to those who, after they have been baptized and have
progressed in pious living, are not permitted to tarry long on
earth,--having been made perfect, not with years, but with the grace
of heavenly wisdom. This error however, of yours, by which you think
that this scripture was spoken of infants who die unbaptized, does an
intolerable wrong to the holy laver itself, if an infant, who could
have been "hurried away" after baptism, has been "hurried away" before
this, for this reason:--"lest wickedness should alter his
understanding, or deceit beguile his soul." As if this "wickedness,"
and this "deceit which beguiles the soul," and changes it for the
worse, if it be not before taken away, is to be believed to be in
baptism itself! In a word, since his soul had pleased God, He hastened
to remove him out of the midst of iniquity; and he tarried not for
ever so little while, in order to fulfil in him what He had
predestinated; but preferred to act in opposition to His predestined
purpose, and actually hastened lest what had pleased Him so well in
the unbaptized child should be exterminated by his baptism! As if the
dying infant would perish in that, whither we ought to run with him in
our arms in order to save him from perdition. Who, therefore, in
respect of these words of the Book of Wisdom, could believe, or say,
or write, or quote them as having been written concerning infants who
die without baptism, if he only reflected upon them with proper
consideration?
Footnotes
[2448] Wisd. iv. 11.
Chapter 15 [XI.]--His Ninth Error. (See Above in Book II. 14 [X.].)
If you wish to be a catholic, I pray you, neither believe, nor say,
nor teach that "there are some mansions outside the kingdom of God
which the Lord said were in His Father's house." For He does not
affirm, as you have adduced his testimony, "There are with my Father
(apud Patrem meum) many mansions;" although, if He had even expressed
Himself so, the mansions could hardly be supposed to have any other
situation than in the house of His Father; but He plainly says, "In my
Father's house are many mansions." [2449] Now, who would be so
reckless as to separate some parts of God's house from the kingdom of
God; so that, whilst the kings of the earth are found reigning, not in
their house only, nor only in their own country, but far and wide,
even in regions across the sea, the King who made the heaven and the
earth is not described as reigning even over all His own house?
Footnotes
[2449] John xiv. 2.
Chapter 16.--God Rules Everywhere: and Yet the "Kingdom of Heaven" May
Not Be Everywhere.
You may, however, not improbably contend that all things, it is true,
belong to the kingdom of God, because He reigns in heaven, reigns on
earth, in the depths beneath, in paradise, in hell (for where does He
not reign, since His power is everywhere supreme?); but that the
kingdom of heaven is one thing, into which none are permitted to
enter, according to the Lord's own true and settled sentence, unless
they are washed in the laver of regeneration, while quite another
thing is the kingdom over the earth, or over any other parts of
creation, in which there may be some mansions of God's house; but
these, although appertaining to the kingdom of God, belong not to that
kingdom of heaven where God's kingdom exists with an especial
excellence and blessedness; and that it hence happens that, while no
parts and mansions of God's house can be rudely separated from the
kingdom of God, yet not all the mansions are prepared in the kingdom
of heaven; and still, even in the abodes which are not situated in the
kingdom of heaven, those may live happily, to whom, if they are even
unbaptized, God has willed to assign such habitations. They are no
doubt in the kingdom of God, although (as not having been baptized)
they cannot possibly be in the kingdom of heaven.
Chapter 17.--Where the Kingdom of God May Be Understood to Be.
Now, they who say this, do no doubt seem to themselves to say a good
deal, because theirs is only a slight and careless view of Scripture;
nor do they understand in what sense we use the phrase, "kingdom of
God," when we say of it in our prayers, "Thy kingdom come;" [2450] for
that is called the kingdom of God, in which His whole family shall
reign with Him in happiness and for ever. Now, in respect of the power
which He possesses over all things, he is of course even now reigning.
What, therefore, do we intend when we pray that His kingdom may come
unless that we may deserve to reign with Him? But even they will be
under His power who shall have to suffer the pains of eternal fire.
Well, then, do we mean to predicate of these unhappy beings that they
too will be in the kingdom of God? Surely it is one thing to be
honoured with the gifts and privileges of the kingdom of God, and
another thing to be restrained and punished by the laws of the same.
However, that you may have a very manifest proof that on the one hand
the kingdom of heaven must not be parcelled out to the baptized, and
other portions of the kingdom of God be given to the unbaptized, as
you seem to have determined, I beg of you to hear the Lord's own
words; He does not say, "Except a man be born again of water and of
the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom or heaven;" but His words
are, "he cannot enter into the kingdom of God." His discourse with
Nicodemus on the subject before us runs thus: "Verily, verily, I say
unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of
God." Observe, He does not here say, the kingdom of heaven, but the
kingdom of God. And then, on Nicodemus asking Him in reply, "How can a
man be born when he is old? can he enter the second time into his
mother's womb and be born?" the Lord, in explanation, repeats His
former statement more plainly and openly: "Verily, verily, I say unto
you, Except a man be born again of water and of the Spirit, he cannot
enter into the kingdom of God." Observe again, He uses the same
phrase, the kingdom of God, notthe kingdom of heaven. [2451] It is
worthy of remark, that while He varies two expressions in explaining
them the second time (for after saying, "Except a man be born again,"
He interprets that by the fuller expression, "Except a man be born of
water and the Spirit;" and in like manner He explains, "he cannot
see," by the completer phrase, "he cannot enter into"), He yet makes
no variation here; He said "the kingdom of God" the first time, and He
afterwards repeated the same phrase exactly. It is not now necessary
to raise and discuss the question, whether the kingdom of God and the
kingdom of heaven must be understood as involving different senses, or
whether only one thing is described under two designations. It is
enough to find that no one can enter into the kingdom of God, except
he be washed in the laver of regeneration. I suppose you perceive by
this time how wide of the truth it is to separate from the kingdom of
God any mansions that are placed in the house of God. And as to the
idea which you have entertained that there will be found dwelling
among the various mansions, which the Lord has told us abound in His
Father's house, some who have not been born again of water and the
Spirit, I advise you, if you will permit me, not to defer amending it,
in order that you may hold the catholic faith.
Footnotes
[2450] Matt. vi. 10.
[2451] John iii. 3-6.
Chapter 18 [XII.]--His Tenth Error. (See Above in Book I. 13 [XI.] and
Book II. 15 [XI.]).
Again, if you wish to be a catholic, I pray you, neither believe, nor
say, nor teach that "the sacrifice of Christians ought to be offered
in behalf of those who have departed out of the body without having
been baptized." Because you fail to show that the sacrifice of the
Jews, which you have quoted out of the books of the Maccabees, [2452]
was offered in behalf of any who had departed this life without
circumcision. In this novel opinion of yours, which you have advanced
against the authority and teaching of the whole Church, you have used
a very arrogant mode of expression. You say, "In behalf of these, I
most certainly decide that constant oblations and incessant sacrifices
must be offered up on the part of the holy priests." Here you show, as
a layman, no submission to God's priests for instruction; nor do you
associate yourself with them (the least you could do) for inquiry; but
you put yourself before them by your proud assumption of judgment.
Away, my son, with all this pretension; men walk not so arrogantly in
the Way, which the Humble Christ taught that He Himself is. [2453] No
man enters through His narrow gate with so proud a disposition as
this.
Footnotes
[2452] 2 Macc. xii. 43.
[2453] John xiv. 6.
Chapter 19 [XIII.]--His Eleventh Error. (See Above in Book I. 15
[XII.] and Book II. 16.)
Once more, if you desire to be a catholic, do not believe, or say, or
teach that "some of those persons who have departed this life without
Christ's baptism, do not in the meantime go into the kingdom of
heaven, but into paradise; yet afterwards in the resurrection of the
dead they attain also to the blessedness of the kingdom of heaven."
Even the Pelagian heresy was not daring enough to grant them this,
although it holds that infants do not contract original sin. You,
however, as a catholic, confess that they are born in sin; and yet by
some unaccountable perverseness in the novel opinion you put forth,
you assert that they are absolved from that sin with which they were
born, and admitted into the kingdom of heaven without the baptism
which saves. Nor do you seem to be aware how much below Pelagius
himself you are in your views on this point. For he, being alarmed by
that sentence of the Lord which does not permit unbaptized persons to
enter into the kingdom of heaven, does not venture to send infants
thither, although he believes them to be free from all sin; whereas
you have so little regard for what is written, "Except a man be born
again of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of
God," [2454] that (to say nothing of the error which induces you
recklessly to sever paradise from the kingdom of God) you do not
hesitate to promise to certain persons, whom you, as a catholic,
believe to be born under guilt, both absolution from this guilt and
the kingdom of heaven, even when they die without baptism. As if you
could possibly be a true catholic because you build up the doctrine of
original sin against Pelagius, if you show yourself a new heretic
against the Lord, by pulling down His statement respecting baptism.
For our own part, beloved brother, we do not desire thus to gain
victories over heretics: vanquishing one error by another, and, what
is still worse, a less one by a greater. You say, "Should any one
perhaps be reluctant to allow that paradise was temporarily bestowed
in the meantime on the souls of the dying thief and of Dinocrates,
while there still remains to them the reversion of the kingdom of
heaven at the resurrection, seeing that the principal passage stands
in the way of the opinion, `Except a man be born again of water and
the Holy Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven,' he may
still hold my ungrudging assent on this point; only let him do full
honour to both the effect and the aim [2455] of the divine mercy and
foreknowledge." These are your own words, and in them you express your
agreement with the man who says that paradise is conferred on certain
unbaptized for a time, in such a sense that at the resurrection there
is in store for them the reward of the kingdom of heaven, in
opposition to "that principal passage" which has determined that none
shall enter into that kingdom who has not been born again of water and
the Holy Ghost. Pelagius was afraid to oppose himself to this
"principal passage" of the Gospel, and he did not believe that any
(whom he still did not suppose to be sinners) would enter into the
kingdom of heaven unbaptized. You, on the contrary, acknowledge that
infants have original sin, and yet you absolve them from it without
the laver of regeneration, and send them for a temporary residence in
paradise, and subsequently permit them to enter even into the kingdom
of heaven.
Footnotes
[2454] John iii. 5.
[2455] Et effectum et affectum.
Chapter 20 [XIV.]--Augustin Calls on Victor to Correct His Errors.
(See Above in Book II. 22 [XVI.].)
Now these errors, and such as these, with whatever others you may
perhaps be able to discover in your books on a more attentive and
leisurely perusal, I beg of you to correct, if you possess a catholic
mind; in other words, if you spoke in perfect sincerity when you said,
that you were not over-confident in yourself that what statements you
had made were all capable of proof; and that your constant aim was not
to maintain even your own opinion, if it were shown to be improbable;
and that it gave you much pleasure, if your own judgment were
condemned, to adopt and pursue better and truer sentiments. Well now,
my dear brother, show that you said this in no fallacious sense; so
that the catholic Church may rejoice in your capacity and character,
as possessing not only genius, but prudence withal, and piety, and
moderation, rather than that the madness of heresy should be kindled
by your contentious persistence in these errors. Now you have an
opportunity of showing also how sincerely you expressed your feelings
in the passage which immediately follows the satisfactory statement
which I have just now mentioned of yours. "For," you say, "as it is
the mark of every highest aim and laudable purpose to transfer one's
self readily to truer views; so it shows a depraved and obstinate
judgment to refuse to return promptly to the pathway of reason." Well,
then, show yourself to be influenced by this high aim and laudable
purpose, and transfer your mind readily to truer views; and do not
display a depraved and obstinate judgment by refusing to return
promptly to the pathway of reason. For if your words were uttered in
frank sincerity, if they were not mere sound of the lips, if you
really felt them in your heart, then you cannot but abhor all delay in
accomplishing the great good of correcting yourself. It was not,
indeed, much for you to allow, that it showed a depraved and obstinate
judgment to refuse to return to the pathway of reason, unless you had
added "promptly." By adding this, you showed us how execrable is his
conduct who never accomplishes the reform; inasmuch as even he who
effects it but tardily appears to you to deserve so severe a censure,
as to be fairly described as displaying a depraved and obstinate mind.
Listen, therefore, to your own admonition, and turn to good account
mainly and largely the fruitful resources of your eloquence; that so
you may promptly return to the pathway of reason, more promptly,
indeed, than when you declined therefrom, at an unstable period of
your age, when you were fortified with too little prudence and less
learning.
Chapter 21.--Augustin Compliments Victor's Talents and Diligence.
It would take me too long a time to handle and discuss fully all the
points which I wish to be amended in your books, or rather in your own
self, and to give you even a brief reason for the correction of each
particular. And yet you must not because of them despise yourself, so
as to suppose that your ability and powers of speech are to be thought
lightly of. I have discovered in you no small recollection of the
sacred Scriptures; but your erudition is less than was proportioned to
your talent, and the labour you bestowed on them. My desire,
therefore, is that you should not, on the one hand, grow vain by
attributing too much to yourself; nor, on the other hand, become cold
and indifferent by prostration or despair. I only wish that I could
read your writings in company with yourself, and point out the
necessary emendations in conversation rather than by writing. This is
a matter which could be more easily accomplished by oral communication
between ourselves than in letters. If the entire subject were to be
treated in writing, it would require many volumes. Those chief errors,
however, which I have wished to sum up comprehensively in a definite
number, I at once call your attention to, in order that you may not
postpone the correction of them, but banish them entirely from your
preaching and belief; so that the great faculty which you possess of
disputation, may, by God's grace, be employed by you usefully for
edification, not for injuring and destroying sound and wholesome
doctrine.
Chapter 22 [XV.]--A Summary Recapitulation of the Errors of Victor.
What these particular errors are, I have, to the best of my ability,
already explained. But I will run over them again with a brief
recapitulation. One is, "That God did not make the soul out of
nothing, but out of His own self." A second is, that "just as God who
gives is Himself ever existent, so is He ever giving souls through
infinite time." The third is, that "the soul lost some merit by the
flesh, which it had had previous to the flesh." The fourth is, that
"the soul by means of the flesh recovers its ancient condition, and is
born again through the very same flesh by which it had deserved to be
polluted." The fifth is, that "the soul deserved to be sinful,
previous to any sin." The sixth is, that "infants which are
forestalled by death before they are baptized, may yet attain to
forgiveness of their original sins." The seventh is, that "they whom
the Lord has predestinated to be baptized may be taken away from his
predestination, or die before that has been accomplished in them which
the Almighty has predestined." The eighth is, that "it is of infants
who are fore-stalled by death, before they are born again in Christ,
that the Scripture says, `Speedily was he taken away, lest wickedness
should alter his understanding,'" with the remainder of the passage to
the same effect in the Book of Wisdom. The ninth is, that "there are
outside the kingdom of God some of those mansions which the Lord said
were in His Father's house." The tenth is, that "the sacrifice of
Christians ought to be offered in behalf of those who have departed
out of the body without being baptized." The eleventh is, that "some
of those persons who have departed this life without the baptism of
Christ do not in the meanwhile go into the kingdom, but into paradise;
afterwards, however, in the resurrection of the dead, they attain even
to the blessedness of the kingdom of heaven."
Chapter 23.--Obstinacy Makes the Heretic.
Well, now, as for these eleven propositions, they are extremely and
manifestly perverse and opposed to the catholic faith; so that you
should no longer hesitate to root them out and cast them away from
your mind, from your words, and from your pen, if you are desirous
that we should rejoice not only at your having come over to our
catholic altars, but at your being really and truly a catholic. For if
these dogmas of yours are severally maintained with pertinacity, they
may possibly engender as many heresies as they number opinions.
Wherefore consider, I pray you, how dreadful it is that they should be
all concentrated in one person, when they would, if held severally by
various persons, be every one of them damnable in each holder. If,
however, you would in your own person cease to fight contentiously in
their defence, nay, would turn your arms against them by faithful
words and writings, you would acquire more praise as the censurer of
your own self than if you directed any amount of right criticism
against any other person; and your amendment of your own errors would
bring you more admiration than if you had never entertained them. May
the Lord be present to your heart and mind, and by His Spirit pour
into your soul such readiness in humility, such light of truth, such
sweetness of love, and such peaceful piety, that you may prefer being
a conqueror of your own spirit in the truth, than of any one else who
gainsays it with his errors. But I do not by any means wish you to
think, that by holding these opinions you have departed from the
catholic faith, although they are unquestionably opposed to the
catholic faith; if so be you are able, in the presence of that God
whose eye infallibly searches every man's heart, to look back on your
own words as being truly and sincerely expressed, when you said that
you were not over-confident in yourself as to the opinions you had
broached, that they were all capable of proof; and that your constant
aim was not to persist in your own sentiments, if they were shown to
be improbable; inasmuch as it was a real pleasure to you, when any
judgment of yours was condemned, to adopt and pursue better and truer
thoughts. Now such a temper as this, even in relation to what may have
been said in an uncatholic form through ignorance, is itself catholic
by the very purpose and readiness of amendment which it premeditates.
With this remark, however, I must now end this volume, where the
reader may rest a while, ready to renew his attention to what is to
follow, when I begin my next book.
.
Book IV.
Addressed to Vincentius Victor.
He first shows, that his hesitation on the subject of the origin of
souls was undeservedly blamed, and that he was wrongly compared with
cattle, because he had refrained from any rash conclusions on the
subject. Then, again, with regard to his own unhesitating statement,
that the soul was spirit, not body, he points out how rashly Victor
disapproved of this assertion, especially when he was vainly expending
his efforts to prove that the soul was corporeal in its own nature,
and that the spirit in man was distinct from the soul itself.
Chapter 1 [I.]--The Personal Character of This Book.
I Must now, in the sequel of my treatise, request you to hear what I
desire to say to you concerning myself--as I best can; or rather as He
shall enable me in whose hand are both ourselves and our words. For
you blamed me on two several occasions, even going so far as to
mention my name. In the beginning of your book you spoke of yourself
as being perfectly conscious of your own want of skill, and as being
destitute of the support of learning; and, when you mentioned me,
bestowed on me the complimentary phrases of "most learned" and "most
skilful." But yet, all the while, on those subjects in which you
seemed to yourself to be perfectly acquainted with what I either
confess my ignorance of, or presume with no unbecoming liberty to have
some knowledge of, you--young as you are, and a layman too--did not
hesitate to censure me, an old man and a bishop, and a person withal
whom in your own judgment you had pronounced most learned and most
skilful. Well, for my own part, I know nothing about my great learning
and skill; nay, I am very certain that I possess no such eminent
qualities; moreover, I have no doubt that it is quite within the scope
of possibility, that it may fall to the lot of even an unskilful and
unlearned man occasionally to know what a learned and skilful person
is ignorant of; and in this I plainly commend you, that you have
preferred to merely personal regard a love of truth,--for if you have
not understood the truth, yet at any rate you have thought it such.
This you have done no doubt with temerity, because you thought you
knew what you were really ignorant of; and without restraint, because,
having no respect of persons, you chose to publish abroad whatever was
in your mind. You ought therefore to understand how much greater our
care should be to recall the Lord's sheep from their errors; since it
is evidently wrong for even the sheep to conceal from the shepherds
whatever faults they have discovered in them. O that you censured me
in such things as are indeed worthy of just blame! For I must not deny
that both in my conduct and in my writings there are many points which
may be censured by a sound judge without temerity. Now, if you would
select any of these for your censure, I might be able by them to show
you how I should like you to behave in those particulars which you
judiciously and fairly condemned; moreover, I should have (as an elder
to a younger, and as one in authority to him who has to obey) an
opportunity of setting you an example under correction which should
not be more humble on my part than wholesome to both of us. With
respect, however, to the points on which you have actually censured
me, they are not such as humility obliges me to correct, but such as
truth compels me partly to acknowledge and partly to defend.
Chapter 2 [II.]--The Points Which Victor Thought Blameworthy in
Augustin.
And they are these: The first, that I did not venture to make a
definite statement touching the origin of those souls which have been
given, or are being given, to human beings, since the first
man--because I confess my ignorance of the subject; the second,
because I said I was sure the soul was spirit, not body. Under this
second point, however, you have included two grounds of censure: one,
because I refused to believe the soul to be corporeal; the other,
because I affirmed it to be spirit. For to you the soul appears both
to be body and not to be spirit. I must therefore request your
attention to my own defence against your censure, and ask you to
embrace the opportunity which my self-defence affords you of learning
what points there are in yourself also which require your amendment.
Recall, then, the words of your book in which you first mentioned my
name. "I know," you say, "many men of very great reputation who when
consulted have kept silence, or admitted nothing clearly, but have
withdrawn from their discussions everything definite when they
commence their exposition. Of such character are the contents of
sundry writings which I have read at your house by a very learned man
and renowned bishop, called Augustin. The truth is, I suppose, they
have with an overweening modesty and diffidence investigated the
mysteries of this subject, and have consumed within themselves the
judgment of their own treatises, and have professed themselves
incapable of determining anything on this point. But, I assure you, it
appears to me excessively absurd and unreasonable that a man should be
a stranger to himself; or that a person who is supposed to have
acquired the knowledge of all things, should regard himself as unknown
to his very self. For what difference is there between a man and a
brute beast, if he knows not how to discuss and determine his own
quality and nature? so that there may justly be applied to him the
statement of Scripture: `Man, although he was in honour, understood
not; he is like the cattle, and is compared with them.' [2456] For
when the good and gracious God created everything with reason and
wisdom, and produced man as a rational animal, capable of
understanding, endowed with reason, and lively with
sensation,--because by His prudent arrangement He assigns their place
to all creatures which do not participate in the faculty of
reason,--what more incongruous idea could be suggested, than that God
had withheld from him the simple knowledge of himself? The wisdom of
this world, indeed, is ever aiming with much effort to attain to the
knowledge of truth; its researches, no doubt, fall short of the aim,
from its inability to know through what agency it is permitted that
truth should be ascertained; but yet there are some things on the
nature of the soul, near (I might even say, akin) to the truth which
it has attempted to discern. Under these circumstances, how unbecoming
and even shameful a thing it is, that any man of religious principle
should either have no intelligent views on this very subject, or
prohibit himself from acquiring any!"
Footnotes
[2456] Ps. xlix. 12.
Chapter 3.--How Much Do We Know of the Nature of the Body?
Well, now, this extremely lucid and eloquent castigation which you
have inflicted on our ignorance lays you so strictly under the
necessity of knowing every possible thing which appertains to the
nature of man, that, should you unhappily be ignorant of any
particular, you must (and remember it is not I, but you, that have
made the necessity) be compared with "the cattle." For although you
appear to aim your censure at us more especially, when you quote the
passage, "Man, although he was in honour, understood not," inasmuch as
we (unlike yourself) hold an honourable place in the Church; yet even
you occupy too honourable a rank in nature, not to be preferred above
the cattle, with which according to your own judgment you will have to
be compared, if you should happen to be ignorant on any of the points
which manifestly appertain to your nature. For you have not merely
aspersed with your censure those who are affected with the same
ignorance as I am myself labouring under, that is to say, concerning
the origin of the human soul (although I am not indeed absolutely
ignorant even on this point, for I know that God breathed into the
face of the first man, and that "man then became a living soul,"
[2457] --a truth, however, which I could never have known by myself,
unless I had read of it in the Scripture); but you asked in so many
words, "What difference is there between a man and a brute beast, if
he knows not how to discuss and determine his own quality and nature?"
And you seem to have entertained your opinion so distinctly, as to
have thought that a man ought to be able to discuss and determine the
facts of his own entire quality and nature so clearly, that nothing
concerning himself should escape his observation. Now, if this is
really the truth of the matter, I must now compare you to "the
cattle," if you cannot tell me the precise number of the hairs of your
head. But if, however far we may advance in this life, you allow us to
be ignorant of sundry facts appertaining to our nature, I then want to
know how far your concession extends, lest, perchance, it may include
the very point we are now raising, that we do not by any means know
the origin of our soul; although we know,--a thing which belongs to
faith,--beyond all doubt, that the soul is a gift to man from God, and
that it still is not of the same nature as God Himself. Do you,
moreover, think that each person's ignorance of his own nature must be
exactly on the same level as your ignorance of it? Must everybody's
knowledge, too, of the subject be equal to what you have been able to
attain to? So that if he is so unfortunate as to possess a slightly
larger amount of ignorance than yourself, you must compare him with
cattle; and on the same principle, if any one shall be ever so little
wiser than yourself on this subject, he will have the pleasure of
comparing you with equal justice to the aforesaid cattle. I must
therefore request you to tell me, to what extent you permit us to be
ignorant of our nature so as to save our distance from the formidable
cattle; and I beg you besides duly to reflect, whether he is not
further removed from cattle who knows his ignorance of any part of the
subject, than he is who thinks he knows what in fact he knows not. The
entire nature of man is certainly spirit, soul, and body; therefore,
whoever would alienate the body from man's nature, is unwise. Those
medical men, however, who are called anatomists have investigated with
careful scrutiny, by dissecting processes, even living men, so far as
men have been able to retain any life in the hands of the examiners;
their researches have penetrated limbs, veins, nerves, bones, marrow,
the internal vitals; and all to discover the nature of the body. But
none of these men have ever thought of comparing us with the cattle,
because of our ignorance of their subject. But perhaps you will say
that it is those who are ignorant of the nature of the soul, not of
the body, who are to be compared with the brute beasts. Then you ought
not to have expressed yourself at starting in the way you have done.
Your words are not, "For what difference is there between a man and
cattle, if he is ignorant of the nature and quality of the soul;" but
you say, "if he knows not how to discuss and determine his own nature
and quality." Of course our quality and our nature must be taken
account of together with the body, but at the same time the
investigation of the several elements of which we are composed is
conducted in each case separately. For my own part, indeed, if I
wished to display how far it was in my power to treat scientifically
and intelligently the entire field of man's nature, I should have to
fill many volumes; not to mention how many topics there are which I
must confess my ignorance of.
Footnotes
[2457] Gen. ii. 7.
Chapter 4 [III.]--Is the Question of Breath One that Concerns the
Soul, or Body, or What?
But to what, in your judgment, does that which we discussed in our
former book concerning the breath of man belong?--to the nature of the
soul, seeing that it is the soul which effects it in man; or to that
of the body, since the body is moved by the soul to effect it; or to
that of this air, by whose alternation of action it is discovered to
effect it; or rather to all three, that is to say, to the soul as that
which moves the body, and to the body which by its motion receives and
emits the breath, and also to the circumambient air which raises by
its entrance, and by its departure depresses? And yet you were
evidently ignorant of all this, learned and eloquent though you are,
when you supposed, and said, and wrote, and read in the presence of
the crowd assembled to hear your opinion, that it was out of our own
nature that we inflated a bag, and yet had no diminution of our nature
at all by the operation; although you might most easily ascertain how
we accomplish the process, not by any tedious examination of the pages
either of human or of inspired writings, but by a simple investigation
of your own physical action, whenever you liked. This, then, being the
case, how can I trust you to teach me concerning the origin of
souls,--a subject which I confess myself to be ignorant of,--you who
are actually ignorant of what you are doing unintermittingly with your
nose and mouth, and of why you are doing it? May the Lord bring it to
pass that you may be advised by me, and accept rather than resist so
manifest a truth, and one so ready to your hand. May you also not
interrogate your lungs about the bag inflation in such a temper as to
prefer inflating them in opposition to me, rather than acquiesce in
their tuition, when they answer your inquiry with entire truth,--not
by speech and altercation, but by breath and respiration. Then I could
bear with you patiently while you correct and reproach me for my
ignorance of the origin of souls; nay, I could even warmly thank you,
if, besides inflicting on me rebuke, you would convince me with truth.
For if you could teach me the truth I am ignorant of, it would be my
duty to bear with all patience any blows you might deal against me,
not in word only, but even with hand.
Chapter 5 [IV.]--God Alone Can Teach Whence Souls Come.
Now with respect to the question between us, I confess to your loving
self [2458] I greatly desire to know one of two things if I
can,--either concerning the origin of souls, of which I am ignorant,
or whether this knowledge is within our reach so long as we are in the
present life. For what if our controversy touches the very points of
which it is enjoined to us, "Seek not out the things that are too high
for thee, neither search the things that are above thy strength; but
whatever things the Lord hath commanded and taught thee, think
thereupon for evermore." [2459] This, then, is what I desire to know,
either from God Himself, who knows what He creates, or even from some
competently learned man who knows what he is saying, not from a person
who is ignorant of the breath he heaves. It is not everybody who
recollects his own infancy; and do you suppose that a man is able,
without divine instruction, to know whence he began to exist in his
mother's womb,--especially if the knowledge of human nature has so
completely eluded him as to leave him ignorant, not only of what is
within him, but of that also which is added to his nature from
without? Will you, my dearest brother, be able to teach me, or any one
else, whence human beings at their birth are ensouled, [2460] when you
still know not how it is that their life is so sustained by food, that
they are certain to die if the aliment is withdrawn for a while? Or
will you be able to teach me, or any one else, whence men obtain their
souls, when you are still actually ignorant whence bags, when
inflated, get the filling? My only wish, as you are ignorant whence
souls have their origin, is, that I may on my side know whether such
knowledge is attainable by me in this present life. If this be one of
the things which are too high for us, and which we are forbidden to
seek out or search into, then we have good grounds for fearing lest we
should sin, not by our ignorance of it, but our quest after it. For we
ought not to suppose that a subject, to fall under the category of the
things which are too high for us, must appertain to the nature of God,
and not to our own.
Footnotes
[2458] Dilectioni tuæ.
[2459] Ecclus. iii. 21, 22.
[2460] Animentur = "are furnished with their animæ."
Chapter 6 [V.]--Questions About the Nature of the Body are
Sufficiently Mysterious, and Yet Not Higher Than Those of the Soul.
What do you say to the statement, that amongst the works of God there
are some which it is more difficult to know than even God Himself,--so
far, indeed, as He can be an object of knowledge to us at all? For we
have learnt that God is a Trinity; but to this very day we do not know
how many kinds of animals, not even of land animals which were able to
enter Noah's ark, [2461] He has created--unless by some happy chance
you have ascertained this fact. Again, in the Book of Wisdom it is
written, "For if they were able to prevail so much, that they could
know and estimate the world; how is it that they did not more easily
find out the Lord thereof?" [2462] Is it because the subject before us
is within us that it is therefore not too high for us? For it must be
granted that the nature of our soul is a more internal thing than our
body. As if the soul has been no better able to explore the body
itself externally by the eyes of that body than internally by its own
means. For what is there in the inward parts of the body where the
soul does not exist? But yet, even with regard to these several inner
and vital portions of our frame, the soul has examined and searched
them out by the bodily eyes; and all that it has succeeded in learning
of them it has acquired by means of the eyes of the body; and, without
doubt, all the material substance was there, even when the soul knew
not of it. Since also our inward parts are incapable of living without
the soul, it follows that the soul has been more able to give them
life than to know them. Well, then, is the soul's body a higher object
for its knowledge than the soul's own self? And therefore if it wishes
to inquire and consider when human seed is converted into blood, when
into solid flesh; when the bones begin to harden, and when to fill
with marrow; how many kinds of veins and nerves there are; by what
channels and circuits the former serve for irrigation and the latter
for ligature to the entire body; whether the skin is to be reckoned
among the nerves, and the teeth among the bones,--for they show some
difference, inasmuch as they have no marrow; and in what respect the
nails differ from both, being similar to them in hardness, while they
possess a quality in common with the hair, in being capable of growing
and being cut; what, again, is the use of those veins wherein air,
instead of blood, circulates, which they call the arteries [2463]
--if, I repeat, the soul desired to come to know these and similar
points respecting the nature of its body, ought it then to be said to
a man, "Seek not out the things that are too high for thee, neither
search the things that are above thy strength?" But, if the inquiry be
made into the soul's own origin, of which subject it knows nothing,
the matter then, forsooth, is not too high or beyond one's strength to
be capable of apprehension? And you deem it an absurd thing, and
incompatible with reason, for the soul not to know whether it is
inbreathed by God, or whether it is derived from the parents, although
it does not remember this event as soon as it is past, and reckons it
among the things which it has forgotten beyond recall,--like infancy,
and all other stages of life which followed close upon birth, though
doubtless, when they happened, they were not unaccompanied with
sensation. But yet you do not deem it absurd or unreasonable that it
should be ignorant of the body which is subject to it, and should know
nothing whatever about incidents pertaining to it which are not in the
category of things that are past, but of present facts, --as to
whether it sets the veins in motion in order to produce life in the
body, but the nerves in order to operate by the limbs of the body; and
if so, why it does not move the nerves except at its especial will,
whereas it affects the pulsations of the veins without intermission,
even without willing; from what part of the body that which they call
the hegemonikon (the authoritative part of the soul, the reason)
exercises its universal rule, whether from the heart or from the
brain, or by a distribution, the motions from the heart and the
sensations from the brain,--or from the brain, both the sensations and
voluntary motions, but from the heart, the involuntary pulsations of
the veins; and once more, if it does both of these from the brain, how
is it that it has the sensations, even without willing, while it does
not move the limbs except it wills? Inasmuch, then, as only the soul
itself does all this in the body, how is it that it knows not what it
does? or whence its power to do it? And it is no disgrace to it to be
so ignorant. Then do you suppose it to be a discredit if it knows not
whence or how it was itself made, since it certainly did not make
itself? Well, then, none know how or whence the soul effects all its
action in the body; do you not therefore think that it, too,
appertains to those things which are said to be "too high for us, and
above our strength"?
Footnotes
[2461] Gen. vii. 8, 9.
[2462] Wisd. xiii. 9.
[2463] These vessels which carry the blood from the heart were
formerly supposed, from being found empty after death, to contain only
air; and hence, indeed, their name,--for "the artery" was originally
the windpipe. Comp. Cicero (De Nat. Deor. ii. 55, 138): "Sanguis per
venas in omne corpus diffunditur, et spiritus per arterias": i.e.
Blood is diffused throughout the body by the veins, and air by the
arteries.
Chapter 7 [VI.]--We Often Need More Teaching as to What is Most
Intimately Ours Than as to What is Further from Us.
But I have to put to you a far wider question arising out of our
subject. Why should only a very few know why all men do what they do?
Perhaps you will tell me, Because they have learnt the art of anatomy
or experiment, which are both comprised in the physician's education,
which few obtain, while others have refused to acquire the
information, although they might, of course, if they had liked. Here,
then, I say nothing of the point why many try to acquire this
information, but cannot, because they are hindered by a slow intellect
(which, however, is a very strange fact) from learning of others what
is done by their own selves and in their own selves. But this is a
very important question which I now ask, Why I should have no need of
art to know that there is a sun in the heavens, and a moon, and other
stars; but must have the aid of art to know, on moving my finger,
whence the act begins,--from the heart, or the brain, or from both, or
from neither: why I do not require a teacher to know what is so much
higher than me; but must yet wait for some one else to learn whence
that is done by me which is done within me? For although we are said
to think in our heart, and although we know what our thoughts are,
without the knowledge of any other person, yet we know not in what
part of the body we have the heart itself, where we do our thinking,
unless we are taught it by some other person, who yet is ignorant of
what we think. I am not unaware that when we hear that we should love
God with our whole heart, this is not said of that portion of our
flesh which lies under our ribs, but of that power that originates our
thoughts. And this is properly designated by this name, because, as
motion does not cease in the heart whence the pulsation of the veins
radiates in every direction, so in the process of thought we do not
rest in the act itself and abstain from further pondering. But
although every sensation is imparted even to the body by the soul, how
is it that we can count our external limbs, even in the dark and with
closed eyes, by the bodily sense which is called "touch," but we know
nothing of our internal functions in the very central region of the
soul itself, where that power is present which imparts life and
animation to all else,--a mystery this which, I apprehend, no medical
men of any kind, whether empirics, or anatomists, or dogmatists, or
methodists, [2464] or any man living, have any knowledge of?
Footnotes
[2464] [The names of these various medical schools may be found
explained in the article "Medicine" in the ninth edition of the
Encyclopædia Britannica, vol. xv. See especially p. 802.--W.]
Chapter 8.--We Have No Memory of Our Creation.
And whosoever shall have attempted to fathom such knowledge may not
improperly have addressed to him the words we have before quoted,
"Seek not out the things that are too high for thee, neither search
the things that are above thy strength." Now it is not a question of
mere altitude, such as is beyond our stature, but it is an elevation
which our intelligence cannot reach, and a strength which our mental
power cannot cope with. And yet it is neither the heaven of heavens,
nor the measure of the stars, nor the scope of sea and land, nor the
nethermost hell; it is our own selves that we are incapable of
comprehending; it is our own selves, who, in our too great height and
strength, transcend the humble limits of our own knowledge; it is our
own selves, whom we are incapable of embracing, although we are
certainly not beside ourselves. But we are not to be compared with
cattle simply because we do not perfectly discover what we ourselves
are: and yet you think that we deserve the humiliating comparison, if
we have forgotten what we were, even though we knew it once. My soul
is not now being derived from my parents, is not now receiving
insufflation from God. Whichever of these two processes He used, He
used when He created me; He is not at this moment using it of me, or
within me. It is past and gone,--not a present thing, nor a recent one
to me. I do not even know whether I was aware of it and then forgot
it; or whether I was unable, even at the time when it was done, to
feel and to know it.
Chapter 9 [VII.]--Our Ignorance of Ourselves Illustrated by the
Remarkable Memory of One Simplicius.
Observe now, while we are, while we live, while we know that we live,
while we are certain that we possess memory, understanding, and will;
who boast of ourselves as having a great knowledge of our own
nature;--observe, I say, how entirely ignorant we are of what avail to
us is our memory, or our understanding, or our will. A certain man who
from his youth has been a friend of mine, named Simplicius, is a
person of accurate and astonishing memory. I once asked him to tell me
what were the last lines but one of all the books of Virgil; he
immediately answered my question without the least hesitation, and
with perfect accuracy. I then asked him to repeat the preceding lines;
he did so. And I really believe that he could have repeated Virgil
line after line backward. For wherever I wished, I made trial whether
he could do it, and he did it. Similarly in prose, from any of
Cicero's orations, which he had learnt by heart, he would perform a
similar feat at our request, by reciting backwards as far as we
wished. Upon our expressing astonishment, he called God to witness
that he had no idea of this ability of his previous to that trial. So
far, therefore, as memory is concerned, his mind only then learnt its
own power; and such discovery would at no time be possible except by
trial and experiment. Moreover, he was of course the very same man
before he tried his powers; how was it, then, that he was ignorant of
himself?
Chapter 10.--The Fidelity of Memory; The Unsearchable Treasure of
Memory; The Powers of a Man's Understanding Sufficiently Understood by
None.
We often assume that we shall retain a thing in our memory; and so
thinking, we do not write it down. But afterwards, when we wish to
recall it, it refuses to come to mind; and we are then sorry that we
thought it would return to memory, or that we did not secure it in
writing so as to prevent its escape; and lo, on a sudden, without our
seeking it, it occurs to us. Then does it follow that we were not
ourselves when we thought this? And that we cease to be the same thing
that we were, when we are no longer able to think it? Now how does it
happen that I know not how we are abstracted from, and denied to,
ourselves; and similarly am ignorant how we are restored and returned
to ourselves? As if we are other persons, and elsewhere, when we seek,
but fail to find, what we deposited in our memory; and are ourselves
incapable of returning to ourselves, as if we were situated somewhere
else; but afterwards return again, on finding ourselves out. For where
do we make our quest, except in our own selves? And what is it we
search for, except our own selves? As if we were not actually at home
in our persons, but had gone somewhither. Do you not observe, even
with alarm, so deep a mystery? And what is all this but our own
nature--not what it has been, but such as it now is? And observe how
much more we seek than we comprehend. I have often believed that I
could understand a question which had been submitted to me, if I were
to bestow thought upon it. Well, I have bestowed the thought, but have
not been able to solve the question; and many a time I have not so
believed, and yet have been able to determine the point. The powers,
then, of my own understanding have not been really known to me; nor, I
apprehend, have they been to you either.
Chapter 11.--The Apostle Peter Told No Lie, When He Said He Was Ready
to Lay Down His Life for the Lord, But Only Was Ignorant of His Will.
But perhaps you despise me for confessing all this, and will in
consequence compare me with "cattle." For myself, however, I will not
cease to advise you, or (if you refuse to listen to me) at all events
to warn you, to acknowledge rather this common infirmity, in which
virtue is perfected; lest, by assuming unknown things to be known, you
fail to attain to the truth. For I suppose that there is something
which even you wish to understand, but are unable; which you would
never seek to understand, unless you hoped some day to succeed in your
research. Thus you also are ignorant of the powers of your own
understanding, who profess to know all about your own nature, and
decline to follow me in my confession of ignorance. Well, there is
also the will; what am I to say about that, where certainly free
choice is ostentatiously claimed by us? The blessed Apostle Peter,
indeed, was willing to lay down his life for the Lord. He was no doubt
sincere in his willingness; nor was he treacherous to the Lord when he
made the promise. But his will was entirely ignorant of its own
powers. Therefore the great apostle, who had discovered his Master to
be the Son of God, was unknown to himself. Thus we are quite aware
respecting ourselves that we will a thing, or "nill" it; but although
our will is a good one, we are ignorant, my dear son, unless we
deceive ourselves, of its strength, of its resources, of what
temptations it may yield to, or of what it may resist.
Chapter 12 [VIII.]--The Apostle Paul Could Know the Third Heaven and
Paradise, But Not Whether He Was in the Body or Not.
See therefore how many facts of our nature, not of the past but of the
present time, and not pertaining to the body only, but also to our
inner man, we know nothing about, without deserving to be compared
with the brute beasts. And yet this is the opprobrious comparison
which you have thought me worthy of, because I have not complete
knowledge of the past origin of my soul--although I am not wholly
ignorant of it, inasmuch as I know that it was given me by God, and
yet that it is not out of God. But when can I enumerate all the
particulars relating to the nature of our spirit and our soul of which
we are ignorant? Whereas we ought rather to utter that exclamation
before God, which the Psalmist uttered: "The knowledge of Thee is too
wonderful for me; it is very difficult, I cannot attain to it." [2465]
Now why did he add the words for me, except because he conjectured how
incomprehensible was the knowledge of God for himself, inasmuch as he
was unable to comprehend even his own self? The apostle was caught up
into the third heaven, and heard unspeakable words, which it is not
lawful for a man to utter; and whether this had happened to him in the
body or out of the body, he declares himself unable to say; [2466] but
yet he has no fear of encountering from you comparison with the
cattle. His spirit knew that it was in the third heaven, in paradise;
but knew not whether it was in the body. The third heaven, of course,
and paradise were not the Apostle Paul himself; but his body and soul
and spirit were himself. Behold, then, the curious fact: he knew the
great things--lofty and divine--which were not himself; but that which
appertained to his own nature he was ignorant of. Who in the vast
knowledge of such occult things can help being astonished at his great
ignorance of his own existence? Who, in short, would believe it
possible, if one who errs not had not told us, that "we know not what
we should pray for as we ought"? [2467] Where, then, ought our bent
and purpose mainly to be--to "reach forth to those things which are
before"? And yet you compare me to cattle, if among the things which
are behind I have forgotten anything concerning my own
origin--although you hear the same apostle say: "Forgetting those
things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which
are before, I press toward the mark, for the prize of the high calling
of God in Christ Jesus." [2468]
Footnotes
[2465] Ps. cxxxix. 6.
[2466] 2 Cor. xii. 4.
[2467] Rom. viii. 26.
[2468] Phil. iii. 13, 14.
Chapter 13 [IX.]--In What Sense the Holy Ghost is Said to Make
Intercession for Us.
Do you perhaps also think me ridiculous and like the irrational
beasts, because I said, "We know not what we should pray for as we
ought"? Perhaps this is not quite so intolerable. For since, in the
dictates of a sound and righteous judgment, we prefer our future to
our past; and since our prayer must have reference not to what we have
been, but what we shall be, it is of course much more injurious not to
know what we should pray for, than to be ignorant of the manner of our
origin. But recollect whose words I repeated, or read them again for
yourself, and reflect whence they come; and do not pelt me with your
reproaches, lest the stone you throw should alight on a head you would
not wish. For it is the great teacher of the Gentiles, the Apostle
Paul himself, who said, "For we know not what we should pray for as we
ought." [2469] And he not only taught this lesson by word, but also
illustrated it by his example. For, contrary to his own advantage and
the promotion of his own salvation, he once in his ignorance prayed
that "the thorn in the flesh might depart from him," which he said had
been given to him "lest he should be exalted above measure by the
abundance of the revelations which were given him." [2470] But the
Lord loved him, and so did not do what he had requested Him to do.
Nevertheless, when the apostle said, "We know not what we should pray
for as we ought," he immediately added, "But the Spirit Himself maketh
intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered. And He
that searcheth the hearts knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit,
because He maketh intercession for the saints according to the will of
God" [2471] --that is to say, He makes the saints offer intercessions.
He, of course, is that Spirit "whom God hath sent into our hearts,
crying, Abba, Father;" [2472] and "by whom we cry, Abba, Father;"
[2473] for both expressions are used by the apostle--both that we have
received the Spirit who cries, Abba, Father; and also that it is
through Him that we cry, Abba, Father. His object is to explain by
these varied statements in what sense he used the word "crying:" he
meant causing to cry; so that it is we who cry at His instance and
impulse. Let Him therefore teach me this too, whenever He pleases, if
He knows it to be expedient for me, that I should know whence I derive
my origin as regards my soul. But let me be taught by that Spirit who
searches the deep things of God; not by a man who knows nothing of the
breath which inflates a bag. However, be it far from me to compare you
with brutes because of this piece of ignorance; because it arose not
from incurable inability, but from sheer inadvertence.
Footnotes
[2469] Rom. viii. 26.
[2470] 2 Cor. xii. 7, 8.
[2471] Rom. viii. 26, 27.
[2472] Gal. iv. 6.
[2473] Rom. viii. 15.
Chapter 14 [X.]--It is More Excellent to Know That the Flesh Will Rise
Again and Live for Evermore, Than to Learn Whatever Scientific Men
Have Been Able to Teach Us Concerning Its Nature.
But although the questions which arise touching the origin of souls
are "higher," no doubt, than that which treats of the source whence
the breath comes which we inhale and exhale, you yet believe that
those things are "higher" which you have learnt out of the Holy
Scriptures, from which we derive what we learn by faith; and such as
are not traceable by any human minds. Of course it is far more
excellent to know that the flesh will rise again and will live for
evermore, than any thing that scientific men have been able to
discover in it by careful examination, which the soul perceives by no
outward sense, although its presence quickens all the things of which
it is ignorant. It is also far better to know that the soul, which has
been born again and renewed in Christ, will be blessed for ever, than
to discover all that we are ignorant of touching its memory,
understanding, and will. Now these subjects, which I have designated
as more excellent and as better, we could by no means find out, unless
we believed them on the testimony of the inspired Scriptures. These
Scriptures you perhaps think you so thoroughly believe, that you do
not hesitate to draw out of them a definite theory about the origin of
souls. Well, then, first of all, if it be as you suppose, you ought
never to have attributed to human nature itself what man knows by
discussion and inquiry about his own nature and quality, but to God's
gift. Now you asked: "Wherein does a man differ from the cattle, if he
is ignorant of this?" But why need we read any thing, in order to know
this, if we ought already to know it by the very fact that we are
different from cattle? For just as you do not read anything to me for
the purpose of teaching me that I am alive (my own nature making it
impossible that I should be ignorant of this fact), so if it is an
attribute of nature to know this other matter, why do you produce
passages of Scripture for me to believe concerning this subject? Is it
then only those persons who read them that differ from the cattle? Are
we not so created as to be different from brute animals, even before
we can acquire the art of reading? Pray, tell me how it is that you
put in so high a claim for our nature, that by the very circumstance
of its differing from cattle it already knows how to discuss and
inquire into the origin of souls; while at the same time you make it
so inexpert in this knowledge, as to be unable by human endowment to
know this without it believe the divine testimonies.
Chapter 15 [XI.]--We Must Not Be Wise Above What is Written.
But then, again, you are mistaken in this matter; for the passages of
Scripture which you chose to produce for the solution of this question
of yours, do not prove the point. For it is another thing which they
prove, without which we cannot really lead a pious life, namely, that
we have in God the giver, creator, and fashioner of our souls. But how
He does this for them, whether by inbreathing them as new, or by
deriving them from the parents, they do not tell us--except in the
instance of that one soul which He gave to the first man. Read
attentively what I have written to that servant of God, our brother
Renatus; [2474] for inasmuch as I have pointed it all out to him
there, it is not necessary for me to repeat my proofs here. But you
would like me to follow your example in definiteness of theory, and so
thrust myself into such difficulties as you have surrounded yourself
with. Involved in these, you have spoken many stout words against the
catholic faith; if, however, you would faithfully and humbly bethink
yourself and consider, you would assuredly see how greatly it would
have profited you, if you had only known how to be natural and
consistent in your ignorance; and how this advantage is still open to
you, if you were even now able to maintain such propriety. Now, since
understanding so pleases you in man's nature (for, truly enough, if
our nature were without it, we should not be different from brute
beasts, so far as our souls are concerned), understand, I beg of you,
what it is that you do not understand, lest you should understand
nothing: and do not despise any man who, in order that he may truly
understand, understands that he does not understand that which he does
not understand. [2475] With regard, however, to the passage in the
inspired psalm, "Man, being in honour, understandeth not; he is
compared to the senseless cattle, and is like unto them;" [2476] read
and understand these words, that you may rather with a humble spirit
guard against the opprobrium yourself, than arrogantly throw it out
against another person. The passage applies to those who regard only
that as a life worth living which they live in the flesh--having no
hope after death--just like "cattle;" it has no reference to those who
never deny their knowledge of what they actually know, and always
acknowledge their ignorance of what they really do not know; who, in
point of fact, are aware of their weakness, rather than confident of
their strength.
Footnotes
[2474] See above, Book i. 17 [xiv.], and following.
[2475] This repetition of one word for rhetorical effect is
characteristic of our author (as, before him, it was of the Apostle
Paul): "Intellige quid non intelligas, ne totum non intelligas...qui
ut veraciter intelligat, quod non intelligit hoc se non intelligere
intelligit."
[2476] Ps. xlix. 12, 13.
Chapter 16.--Ignorance is Better Than Error. Predestination to Eternal
Life, and Predestination to Eternal Death.
Do not, my son, let senile timidity displease your youthful
confidence. For my own part, indeed, if I proved unequal, either under
the teaching of God or of some spiritual instructor, to the task of
understanding the subject of our present inquiry on the origin of
souls, I am more prepared to vindicate God's righteous will, that we
should remain in ignorance on this point, as on many others, than to
say in my rashness what either is so obscure that I can neither bring
it home to the intelligence of other people, nor understand it myself;
or certainly even to help the cause of the heretics who endeavour to
persuade us that the souls of infants are entirely free from guilt, on
the ground, forsooth, that such guilt would only recoil on God as its
Author, for having compelled innocent souls (for the help of which He
knew beforehand no laver of regeneration was prepared) to become
sinful, by assigning them to sinful flesh without any provision for
that grace of baptism which should prevent their incurring eternal
damnation. For the fact undoubtedly is, that numberless souls of
infants pass out of the body before they are baptized. God forbid that
I should cast about for any futile effort to dilute this stern fact,
and say what you have yourself said: "That the soul deserved to be
polluted by the flesh, and to become sinful, though it previously had
no sin, by reason of which it could be rightly said to have incurred
this desert." And again: "That even without baptism original sins may
be remitted." And once more: "That even the kingdom of heaven is at
last bestowed on those who have not been baptized." Now, if I were not
afraid to utter these and similar poisonous allegations against the
faith, I should probably not be afraid to propound some definite
theory on this subject. How much better, then, is it, that I should
not separately dispute and affirm about the soul, what I am ignorant
of; but simply hold what I see the apostle has most plainly taught us:
That owing to one man all pass into condemnation who are born of Adam
[2477] unless they are born again in Christ, even as He has appointed
them to be regenerated, before they die in the body, whom He
predestinated to everlasting life, as the most merciful bestower of
grace; whilst to those whom He has predestinated to eternal death, He
is also the most righteous awarder of punishment not only on account
of the sins which they add in the indulgence of their own will, but
also because of their original sin, even if, as in the case of
infants, they add nothing thereto. Now this is my definite view on
that question, so that the hidden things of God may keep their secret,
without impairing my own faith.
Footnotes
[2477] See Rom. v. 18.
Chapter 17 [XII.]--A Twofold Question to Be Treated Concerning the
Soul; Is It "Body"? and is It "Spirit"? What Body is.
And now, as far as the Lord vouchsafes to enable me, I must reply also
to that allegation of yours, in which, speaking of the soul, you again
mention my name, and say, "We do not, as the very able and learned
bishop Augustin professes, allow it to be incorporeal and also a
spirit." We have therefore, first, to discuss the question, whether
the soul is to be deemed incorporeal, as I have said; or corporeal, as
you hold. Then, secondly, whether in our Scriptures it is called a
spirit--although not the whole but its own separate part is also
properly called spirit. [2478] Well, I should, to begin with, like to
know how you define body. For if that is not "body" which does not
consist of limbs of flesh, then the earth cannot be a body, nor the
sky, nor a stone, nor water, nor the stars, nor anything of the kind.
If, however, a "body" is whatever consists of parts, whether greater
or less, which occupy greater or smaller local spaces, then all the
things which I have just mentioned are bodies; the air is a body; the
visible light is a body; and so are all the things which the apostle
has in view, when he says, "There are celestial bodies, and bodies
terrestrial." [2479]
Footnotes
[2478] [The author seems here to have such texts as 1 Thess. v. 23 in
mind (see below, chs. 19 and 36), and to mean that sometimes the whole
inner man is called "spirit," and sometimes "spirit" is distinguished
from "soul."--W.]
[2479] 1 Cor. xv. 40.
Chapter 18.--The First Question, Whether the Soul is Corporeal; Breath
and Wind, Nothing Else Than Air in Motion.
Now whether the soul is such a substance, is an extremely nice and
subtle question. You, indeed, with a promptitude for which I very
greatly congratulate you, affirm that God is not a body. But then,
again, you give me some anxiety when you say, "If the soul lacks body,
so as to be (as some persons are pleased to suppose) of hollow
emptiness, of airy and futile substance." Now, from these words you
seem to believe, that everything which lacks body is of an empty
substance. Well, if this is the case, how do you dare to say that God
lacks body, without fearing the consequence that He is of an empty
substance? If, however, God has not a body, as you have just allowed;
and if it be profane to say that He is of an empty substance; then not
everything which lacks body is an empty substance. And therefore a
person who contends that the soul is incorporeal does not necessarily
mean, that it is of an empty and futile substance; for he allows that
God, who is not an empty being, is at the same time incorporeal. But
observe what great difference there is between my actual assertion,
and what you suppose me to say. I do not say that the soul is an airy
substance; if I did, I should admit that it is a body. For air is a
body; as all who understand what they say declare, whenever they speak
concerning bodily substances. But you, because I called the soul
incorporeal, supposed me not only to predicate mere emptiness of it,
but, as the result of such predication, to say that it is "an airy
substance;" whereas I must have said both that it has not corporeity,
which air has, and that what is filled with air could not be empty.
And your own bag similes failed to remind you of this. For when the
bags are inflated, what is it but air that is pressed into them? And
they are so far from being empty, that by reason of their distension
they become even ponderous. But perhaps the breath seems to you to be
a different thing from air; although your very breath is nothing else
than air in motion; and what this is, can be seen from the shaking of
a fan. With respect to any hollow vessels, which you may suppose to be
empty, you may ascertain with certainty that they are really full, by
lowering them straight into the water, with the mouth downwards. You
see no water can get in, by reason of the air with which they are
filled. If, however, they are lowered either in the opposite way, with
mouth upward, or aslant, they then fill, as the water enters at the
same opening where the air passes out and escapes. This could be, of
course, more easily proved by performing the experiment, than by a
description in writing. This, however, is not the time or place for
longer delay on the subject; for whatever may be your perception of
the nature of the air, as to whether it has corporeity or not, you
certainly ought not to suppose me to have said that the soul is an
aerial thing, but absolutely incorporeal. And this even you
acknowledge God to be, whom you do not dare to describe as an empty
substance, while you cannot but admit that He has an essence which is
unchangeable and almighty. Now, why should we fear that the soul is an
empty void, if it be incorporeal, when we confess that God is
incorporeal, and at the same time deny Him to be an empty void? Thus
it was within the competency of an Incorporeal Being to create an
incorporeal soul, even as the living God made living man; although, as
the unchangeable and the almighty, He communicated not these
attributes to the changeable and far inferior creature.
Chapter 19 [XIII.]--Whether the Soul is a Spirit.
But again, why you would have the soul to be a body, and refuse to
deem it a spirit, I cannot see. For if it is not a spirit, on the
ground that the apostle named it with distinction from the spirit,
when he said, "I pray God your whole spirit, and soul, and body be
preserved," [2480] the same is a good reason why it is not a body,
inasmuch as he named the body, too, as distinct from it. If you affirm
that the soul is a body, although they are both distinctly named; you
should allow it to be a spirit, although these are also distinctly
named. Indeed, the soul has a much greater claim to be regarded by you
as a spirit than a body; because you acknowledge the spirit and the
soul to be of one substance, but deny the soul and the body to be of
one substance. On what principle, then, is the soul a body, when its
nature is different from that of a body; and not a spirit, although
its nature and a spirit's is one and the same? Why, according to your
argument, must you not confess that even the spirit is a body? For
otherwise, if the spirit is not a body, and the soul is a body, the
soul and the spirit are not of one and the same substance. You,
however, allow them both (although believing them to be two separate
things) to have one substance. Therefore, if the soul is a body, the
spirit is a body also; for under no other condition can they be
regarded as being of one and the same nature. On your own principles,
therefore, the statement of the apostle, who mentions, "Your spirit,
and soul, and body," must imply three bodies; yet the body, which has
likewise the name of flesh, is of a different nature. And of these
three bodies, as you would call them, of which one is of a different,
and the other two of one and the same substance, the entire human
being is composed--one thing and one existence. Now, although you
assert this, yet you will not allow that the two which are of one and
the same substance, that is, the soul and the spirit, should have the
one designation of spirit; whilst the two things which are not of one
and the same substance ought, as you suppose, to have the one name of
body.
Footnotes
[2480] 1 Thess. v. 23.
Chapter 20 [XIV.]--The Body Does Not Receive God's Image.
But I pass by all this, lest the discussion between us should
degenerate into one of names rather than things. Let us, then, see
whether the inner man be the soul, or the spirit, or both. I observe,
however, that you have expressed your opinion on the point in writing,
calling the inner man the soul; for of this you spoke when you said:
"And as the substance congealed, which was incapable of comprehension,
it would produce another body within the body rounded and amassed by
the force and twirl of its own nature, and thus an inner man would
begin to appear, who, being moulded in a corporeal sheath would in its
lineaments be shaped after the likeness of its outer man." And from
this you draw the following inference: "God's breath, therefore, made
the soul; yea, that breath from God was made the soul, an image,
substantial, corporeal according to its own nature, like its own body,
and conformed to its image." After this you proceed to speak of the
spirit, and say: "This soul which had its origin from the breath of
God could not exist without an innermost sense and intellect of its
own; and such is the spirit." As I, then, understand your statement,
you mean the inner man to be the soul, and the inmost one to be the
spirit; as if the latter were inferior to the soul, as this is to the
body. Whence it comes to pass, that just as the body receives another
body pervading its own inner cavity, which (as you suppose) is the
soul; so in its turn must the soul be regarded as having its interior
emptiness also, where it could receive the third body, even the
spirit; and thus the whole man consists of three, the outer, the
inner, and the inmost. Now, do you not yet perceive what great
absurdities follow in your wake, when you attempt the asseveration
that the soul is corporeal? Tell me, I pray you, which of the two is
it that is to be renewed in the knowledge of God, after the image of
Him that created him? [2481] The inner, or the inmost? For my own
part, indeed, I do not see that the apostle, besides the inner and the
outer man, knows anything of another man inside the inner one, that
is, of an inmost man. But you must decide which it is you would have
to be renewed after the image of God. How is he to receive this, who
has already got the image of the outer man? For if the inner man has
run throughout the limbs of the outward one, and congealed (for this
is the term you have used; as if a molten shape were formed out of
soft clay, which was thickened out of the dust), how, if this same
figure which has been impressed upon it, or rather expressed out of a
body, is to retain its place, could it be refashioned after the image
of God? Is it to have two images--God's from above, that of the body
from below--as is said in the case of money, "Heads and Tails"? [2482]
Will you perhaps say, that the soul received the bodily image, and
that the spirit takes God's image, as if the former were contiguous to
the body, and the latter to God; and that, therefore, it is really the
inmost man which is refashioned after the image of God, and not the
inner man? Well, but this pretence is useless. For if the inmost man
is as entirely diffused through all the members of the soul, as the
inner man of the soul is through the limbs of the body; even it has
now, through the soul, received the image of the body, as the soul
moulded the same; and thus it results that it has no means whereby to
receive God's image, while the afore-mentioned image of the body
remains impressed upon it; except as in the case of the money which I
have just quoted, where there is one form on the upper surface, and
another on the lower one. These are the absurd lengths to which you
are driven, whether you will or no, when you apply to the
consideration of the soul the material ideas of bodily substances.
But, as even you yourself with perfect propriety confess, God is not a
body. How, then, could a body receive His image? "I beseech you,
brother, that you be not conformed to this world, but be transformed
by the renewing of your mind;" [2483] and cherish not "the carnal
mind, which is death." [2484]
Footnotes
[2481] Col. iii. 10.
[2482] Caput et Navia, literally "head and ship," the piece of money
having a head of Janus on one side, and a ship on the other. See the
matter illustrated in Macrobius, Saturnalia, i. 7, Aur. Vict. Orig. 3.
[2483] Rom. xii. 1, 2.
[2484] Rom. viii. 6.
Chapter 21 [XV.]--Recognition and Form Belong to Souls as Well as
Bodies.
But you say: "If the soul is incorporeal, what was it that the rich
man saw in hell? He certainly recognised Lazarus; he did [not [2485] ]
know Abraham. Whence arose to him the knowledge of Abraham, who had
died so long before?" By using these words, I suppose that you do not
think a man can be recognised and known without his bodily form. To
know yourself, therefore, I imagine that you often stand before your
looking-glass, lest by forgetting your features you should be unable
to recognise yourself. But let me ask you, what man does anybody know
more than himself; and whose face can he see less than his own? But
who could possibly know God, whom even you do not doubt to be
incorporeal, if knowledge could not (as you suppose) accrue without
bodily shape; that is, if bodies alone can be recognised? What
Christian, however, when discussing subjects of such magnitude and
difficulty, can give such little heed to the inspired word as to say,
"If the soul be incorporeal, it must of necessity lack form"? Have you
forgotten that in that word you have read of "a form of doctrine"?
[2486] Have you forgotten, too, that it is written concerning Christ
Jesus, previous to His clothing Himself with humanity, that He was "in
the form of God"? [2487] How, then, can you say, "If the soul is
incorporeal, it must of necessity lack form;" when you hear of "the
form of God," whom you acknowledge to be incorporeal; and so express
yourself, as if form could not possibly exist except in bodies?
Footnotes
[2485] Luke xvi. 19-31. Non noverat Abraham. But some mss. omit non;
rightly, one would think. The meaning then is: "He recognised
Abraham."
[2486] Rom. vi. 17.
[2487] Phil. ii. 6.
Chapter 22.--Names Do Not Imply Corporeity.
You also say, that "names cease to be given, when form is not
distinguished; and that, where there is no designation of persons,
there is no giving of names." Your aim is to prove that Abraham's soul
was corporeal, inasmuch as he could be addressed as "Father Abraham."
Now, we have already said, that there is form even where there is no
body. If, however, you think that where there are not bodies there is
no assigning of names, I must beg of you to count the names which
occur in this passage of Scripture, "But the fruit of the Spirit is
love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith,
meekness, temperance," [2488] and tell me whether you do not recognise
the very things of which these are the names; or whether you recognise
them so as to descry some outlines of bodies. Come, tell me, to
mention only love, for instance, what are its members, its figure, its
colour? For if you are not yourself empty-headed, these appurtenances
cannot possibly be regarded by you as an empty thing. Then you go on
to say: "The look and form must, of course, be corporeal of him whose
help is implored." Well, let men hear what you say; and let no one
implore God's help, because no one can possibly see anything corporeal
in Him.
Footnotes
[2488] Gal. v. 22, 23.
Chapter 23 [XVI.]--Figurative Speech Must Not Be Taken Literally.
"In short," you say, "members are in this parable ascribed to the
soul, as if it were really a body." You will have it, that "by the eye
the whole head is understood," because it is said, that "he lifted up
his eyes." Again you say, that "by tongues are meant jaws, and by
finger the hand," because it is said, "Send Lazarus, that he may dip
the tip of his finger in water, and cool my tongue." [2489] And yet to
save yourself from the inconsistency of ascribing corporeal qualities
to God, you say that "by these terms must be understood incorporeal
functions and powers;" because with the greatest propriety you insist
on it, that God is not corporeal. What is the reason, therefore, that
the names of these limbs do not argue corporeity in God, although they
do in the case of the soul? Is it that these terms must be understood
literally when spoken of the creature, and only metaphorically and
figuratively when predicated of the Creator? Then you will have to
give us wings of literal bodily substance, since it is not the
Creator, but only a human creature, who said, "If I should take my
wings like a dove." [2490] Moreover, if the rich man of the parable
had a bodily tongue, on the ground of his exclaiming, "Let him cool my
tongue," it would look very much as if our tongue, even while we are
in the flesh, itself possessed material hands, because it is written,
"Death and life are in the hands of the tongue." [2491] I suppose it
is even to yourself self-evident, that sin is neither a creature nor a
bodily substance; why, then, has it a face? For do you not hear the
psalmist say, "There is no peace in my bones, in the face of my sins"?
[2492]
Footnotes
[2489] Luke xvi. 24.
[2490] Augustin's reading of Ps. cxxxix. 9.
[2491] In manibus linguæ= the Hebrew phrase B+u°J+aD+ L+oSh¹W+N%,
Prov. xviii. 21.
[2492] Ps. xxxviii. 3, M+iP+u°N+µJ+ X+aTjuo#T+iJ+.
Chapter 24.--Abraham's Bosom--What It Means.
As to your supposing that "the Abraham's bosom referred to is
corporeal," and your further assertion, that "by it is meant his whole
body," I fear that you must be regarded (even in such a subject) as
trying to joke and raise a laugh, instead of acting gravely and
seriously. For you could not else be so foolish as to think that the
material bosom of one person could receive so many souls; nay, to use
your own words, "bear the bodies of as many meritorious men as the
angels carry thither, as they did Lazarus." Unless it happen to be
your opinion, that his soul alone deserved to find its way to the said
bosom. If you are not, then, in fun, and do not wish to make childish
mistakes, you must understand by "Abraham's bosom" that remote and
separate abode of rest and peace in which Abraham now is; and that
what was said to Abraham [2493] did not merely refer to him
personally, but had reference to his appointment as the father of many
nations, [2494] to whom he was presented for imitation as the first
and principal example of faith; even as God willed Himself to be
called "the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob,"
although He is the God of an innumerable company.
Footnotes
[2493] In Luke xvi. 24.
[2494] Gen. xvii. 5.
Chapter 25 [XVII.]--The Disembodied Soul May Think of Itself Under a
Bodily Form.
You must not, however, suppose that I say all this as if denying it to
be possible that the soul of a dead man, like a person asleep, may
think either good or evil thoughts in the similitude of his body. For,
in dreams, when we suffer anything harsh and troublesome, we are, of
course, still ourselves; and if the distress do not pass away when we
awake, we experience very great suffering. But to suppose that they
are veritable bodies in which we are hurried, or flit, about hither
and thither in dreams, is the idea of a person who has thought only
carelessly on such subjects; for it is in fact mainly by these
imaginary sights that the soul is proved to be non-corporeal; unless
you choose to call even the objects which we see so often in our
dreams, besides ourselves, bodies, such as the sky, the earth, the
sea, the sun, the moon, the stars, and rivers, mountains, trees, or
animals. Whoever takes these phantoms to be bodies, is incredibly
foolish; although they are certainly very like bodies. Of this
character also are those phenomena which are demonstrably of divine
significance, whether seen in dreams or in a trance. Who can possibly
trace out or describe their origin, or the material of which they
consist? It is, beyond question, spiritual, not corporeal. Now things
of this kind, which look like bodies, but are not really corporeal,
are formed in the thoughts of persons when they are awake, and are
held in the depths of their memories, and then out of these secret
recesses, by some wonderful and ineffable process, they come out to
view in the operation of our memory, and present themselves as if
palpably before our eyes. If, therefore, the soul were a material
body, it could not possibly contain so many things and such large
forms of bodily substances in its scope of thought, and in the spaces
of its memory; for, according to your own definition, "it does not
exceed this external body in its own corporeal substance." Possessing,
therefore, no magnitude of its own, what capacity has it to hold the
images of vast bodies, spaces, and regions? What wonder is it, then,
if it actually itself appears to itself in the likeness of its own
body, even when it appears without a body? For it never appears to
itself in dreams with its own body; and yet in the very similitude of
its own body it runs hither and thither through known and unknown
places, and beholds many sad and joyous sights. I suppose, however,
that you really would not, yourself, be so bold as to maintain that
there is true corporeity in that form of limb and body which the soul
seems to itself to possess in dreams. For at that rate that will be a
real mountain which it appears to ascend; and that a material house
which it seems to enter; and that a veritable tree, with real wood and
bulk, beneath which it apparently reclines; and that actual water
which it imagines itself to drink. All the things with which it is
conversant, as if they were corporeal, would be undoubted bodies, if
the soul were itself corporeal, as it ranges about amongst them all in
the likeness of a body.
Chapter 26 [XVIII.]--St. Perpetua Seemed to Herself, in Some Dreams,
to Have Been Turned into a Man, and Then Have Wrestled with a Certain
Egyptian.
Some notice must be taken of sundry accounts of martyrs' visions,
because you have thought proper to derive some of your evidence
therefrom. St. Perpetua, for instance, seemed to herself in dreams to
be wrestling with an Egyptian, after being changed into a man. Now,
who can doubt that it was her soul in that apparent bodily form, not
her body, which, of course, remained in her own sex as a woman, and
lay on the bed with her senses steeped in sleep, whilst her soul was
struggling in the similitude of a man's body? What have you to say to
this? Was that male likeness a veritable body, or was it no body at
all, although possessing the appearance of a body? Choose your
alternative. If it was a body, why did it not maintain its sexual
integrity? For in that woman's flesh were found no virile functions of
generation, whence by any such process as that which you call
congelation could be moulded this similitude of a man's body. We will
conclude then, if you please, that, as her body was still alive while
she slept, notwithstanding the wrestling of her soul, she remained in
her own natural sex, enclosed, of course, in all her proper limbs
which belong to her in her living state, and was still in possession
of that bodily shape and the lineaments of which she had been
originally formed. She had not resigned, as she would by death, her
joints and limbs; nor had she withdrawn from the transposing power,
which arises from the operation of the power of death, any of her
members which had already received their fixed form. Whence, then, did
her soul get that virile body in which she seemed to wrestle with her
adversary? If, however, this [male likeness] was not a body, although
such a semblance of one as admitted the sensation in it of a real
struggle or a real joy, do you not by this time see, as far as may be,
that there can be in the soul a certain resemblance of a bodily
substance, while the soul is not itself a body?
Chapter 27.--Is the Soul Wounded When the Body is Wounded?
What, then, if some such thing is exhibited among the departed; and
souls recognise themselves among them, not, indeed, by bodies, but by
the semblances of bodies? Now, when we suffer pain, if only in our
dreams, although it is only the similitude of bodily limbs which is in
action, and not the bodily limbs themselves, still the pain is not
merely in semblance, but in reality; as is also the case in the
instance of joyous sensations. Inasmuch, however, as St. Perpetua was
not yet dead, you probably are unwilling to lay down a precise rule
for yourself from that circumstance (although it bears strongly on the
question), as to what nature you will suppose those semblances of
bodies to partake of, which we have in our dreams. If you allow them
to be like bodies, but not bodies actually, then the entire question
would be settled. But her brother Dinocrates was dead; she saw him
with the wound which he received while alive, and which caused his
death. Where is the ground for the earnest contention to which you
devoted your efforts, when you laboured to show, that when a limb is
cut off, the soul must not be supposed as suffering a like amount of
loss by amputation? Observe, the wound was inflicted on the soul of
Dinocrates, expelling it by its force from his body, when it was
inhabiting that body. How, then, can your opinion be correct, that
"when the limbs of the body are cut off, the soul withdraws itself
from the stroke, and after condensation retires to other parts, so
that no portion of it is amputated with the wound inflicted on the
body," even if the person be asleep and unconscious when the loss of
limb is suffered? So great is the vigilance which you have ascribed to
the soul, that even should the stroke fall on any part of the flesh
without its knowledge, when it is absorbed in the visions of dreams,
it would instantly, and by a providential instinct, withdraw itself,
and so render it impossible for any blow, or injury, or mutilation to
be inflicted upon it. However, you may, as much as you will, ransack
your ingenuity for an answer to the natural question, how the soul
withdraws the portions of its own existence, and retreats within
itself, so that, whenever a limb of the body is cut off or broken, it
does not suffer any amputation or fracture in itself; but I cannot
help asking you to look at the case of Dinocrates, and to explain to
me why his soul did not withdraw from that part of his body which
received the mortal wound, and so escape from suffering in itself what
was plainly enough seen in his face, even after his body was dead? Is
it, perchance, your good pleasure that we should suppose the phenomena
in question to be rather the semblances of bodies than the reality; so
that as that which is really no wound seems to be a wound, so that
which is no body at all wears the appearance of corporeity? If,
indeed, the soul can be wounded by those who wound the body, should we
not have good reason to fear that it can be killed also by those who
kill the body? This, however, is a fate which the Lord Himself most
plainly declares it to be impossible to happen. [2495] And the soul of
Dinocrates could not at any rate have died of the blow which killed
his body: its wound, too, was only an apparent one; for not being
corporeal, it was not really wounded, as the body had been; possessing
the likeness of the body, it shared also the resemblance of its wound.
Still it may be further said, that in its unreal body the soul felt a
real misery, which was signified by the shadow of the body's wound. It
was from this real misery that he earned deliverance by the prayers of
his holy sister.
Footnotes
[2495] Matt. x. 28.
Chapter 28.--Is the Soul Deformed by the Body's Imperfections?
Now, again, what means it that you say, "The soul acquires form from
the body, and grows and extends with the increase of the body,"
without keeping in view what a monstrosity the soul of either a young
man or an old man would become if his arm had been amputated when he
was an infant? "The hand of the soul," you say, "contracts itself, so
that it is not amputated with the hand of the body, and by
condensation it shrinks into other parts of the body." At this rate
the aforesaid arm of the soul will be kept, wherever it holds its
ground, as short as it was at first when it received the form of the
body, because it has lost the form by the growth of which it might
itself have increased at an equal degree of expansion. Thus the soul
of the young man or the old man who lost his hand in his infancy
advances with two hands, indeed (because the one which shrank back
escaped the amputation of the bodily limb), but one of these was the
hand of an adult, young or old, according to the hypothesis, while the
other was only an infant's hand, just as it was when the amputation
happened. Such souls, believe me, are not made in the mould and form
of the body, but they are fictitiously framed under the deformed stamp
of error. It seems to me impossible for you to be rescued from this
error, unless with God's help you fully and calmly examine the visions
of those who dream, and from these convince yourself that some forms
are not real bodies, but only the semblances of bodies. Now, although
even those objects which we suppose to be like bodies are of the same
class, [2496] yet so far as the dead are concerned, we can form an
after guess about them from persons who are asleep. For it is not in
vain that Holy Scripture describes as "asleep" those who are dead
[2497] were it only because in a certain sense "sleep is akin to
death." [2498]
Footnotes
[2496] That is (in opposition to the really "dead," afterwards
mentioned), such as are seen by living persons in visions.
[2497] 1 Thess. iv. 13.
[2498] Virgil, Æneid, vi. 279, "Consanguineus Lethi sopor" (Death's
own brother, Sleep).
Chapter 29 [XIX.]--Does the Soul Take the Body's Clothes Also Away
with It?
If, indeed, the soul were body, and the form were also a corporeal
figure in which it sees itself in dreams, on the ground that it
received its expression from the body in which it is enclosed: not a
human being, if he lost a limb, would in dreams see himself bereft of
the amputated member, although actually deprived of it. On the
contrary, he would always appear to himself entire and unmutilated,
from the circumstance that no part has been cut away from the soul
itself. But since persons sometimes see themselves whole and sometimes
mutilated in limb, when this happens to be their actual plight, what
else does this fact show than that the soul, both in respect of other
things seen by it in dreams and in reference to the body, bears about,
hither and thither, not their reality, but only their resemblance? The
soul's joy, however, or sadness, its pleasure or pain, are severally
real emotions, whether experienced in actual or in apparent bodies.
Have you not yourself said (and with perfect truth): "Aliments and
vestments are not wanted by the soul, but only by the body"? Why,
then, did the rich man in hell crave for the drop of water? [2499] Why
did holy Samuel appear after his death (as you have yourself noticed)
clothed in his usual garments? [2500] Did the one wish to repair the
ruins of the soul, as of the flesh, by the aliment of water? Did the
other quit life with his clothes on him? Now in the former case there
was a real suffering, which tormented the soul; but not a real body,
such as required food. While the latter might have seemed to be
clothed, not as being a veritable body, but a soul only, having the
semblance of a body with a dress. For although the soul extends and
contracts itself to suit the members of the body, it does not
similarly adapt itself to the clothes, so as to fit its form to them.
Footnotes
[2499] Luke xvi. 24.
[2500] 1 Sam. xxviii. 14.
Chapter 30.--Is Corporeity Necessary for Recognition?
But who is able to trace out what capacity of recognition even souls
which are not good possess after death when relieved of the
corruptible bodies, so as to be able by an inner sense to observe and
recognise either souls that are evil like themselves, or even good
ones, either in states which are actually not corporeal, but the
semblances of bodies; or else in good or evil affections of the mind,
in which there occur no lineaments whatever of bodily members? Whence
arises the fact that the rich man in the parable, though in torments,
recognised "Father Abraham," whose face and figure he had never seen,
but the semblance of whose body his soul, though incorporeal, was able
to comprehend? [2501] But who could rightly say that he had known any
man, except in so far as he has had means of knowing his life and
disposition, which have, of course, neither material substance nor
colours? It is in this way that we know ourselves more certainly than
any others, because our own consciousness and disposition are all
before us. This we plainly perceive, and yet we see therein no
similitude of a bodily substance. But we do not perceive this inner
quality of our nature in another man, even if he be present before our
eyes; though in his absence we recollect his features, and recognise
them, and think of them. Our own features, however, we cannot in the
same manner recollect, and recognise, and think of; and yet with most
perfect truth we say that we are ourselves better known to ourselves
than he is, so manifest is it where lies the stronger and truer
knowledge of man.
Footnotes
[2501] Luke xvi. 23.
Chapter 31 [XX.]--Modes of Knowledge in the Soul Distinguished.
Forasmuch, then, as there is one function in the soul, by which we
perceive real bodies, which we do by the five bodily senses; another,
which enables us to discern apart from these non-corporeal likenesses
of bodies (and by this we can have a view of ourselves also, as not
otherwise than like to bodies); and a third, by which we gain a still
surer and stronger insight into objects fitted for its faculty, which
are neither corporeal nor are like bodily substances,--such as faith,
hope, charity,--things which have neither complexion, nor passion, nor
any such thing: on which of these functions ought we to dwell more
intently, and to some degree more familiarly, and where be renewed in
the knowledge of God after the image of Him who created us? Is it not
on and in that which I have now put in the third place? And here we
shall certainly experience neither sexual difference nor the semblance
thereof.
Chapter 32.--Inconsistency of Giving the Soul All the Parts of Sex and
Yet No Sex.
For that form of the soul, whether masculine or feminine, which has
the distinction of members characteristic of man and woman, being no
semblance merely of body, but actual body, is either a male or a
female, whether you will or no, precisely as it appears to be a man or
a woman. But if your opinion be correct, and the soul is a body, even
a living body, then it both possesses swelling and pendent breasts,
and lacks a beard, it has a womb, and all the generative organs of a
woman, yet is not a woman after all. Will not mine, then, be a
statement more consistent with truth: the soul, indeed, has an eye and
has a tongue, has a finger, and all other members which resemble those
of the body, and yet the whole is the semblance of a body, not a body
really? My statement is open to a general test; everybody can prove it
in himself, when he brings home to his mind the image of absent
friends; he can prove it with certainty when he recalls the figures
both of himself and other persons, which have occurred to him in his
dreams. On your part, however, no example can throughout nature be
produced of such a monstrosity as you have imagined, where there is a
woman's real and living body, but not a woman's sex.
Chapter 33.--The Phenix After Death Coming to Life Again.
Now, what you say about the phenix has nothing whatever to do with the
subject before us. For the phenix symbolizes the resurrection of the
body; it does not do away with the sex of souls; if indeed, as is
thought, he is born afresh after his death. I suppose, however, that
you thought your discourse would not be sufficiently plausible unless
you declaimed a good deal about the phenix, after the fashion of young
people. Now do you find in the body of your bird male organs of
generation and not a male bird; or female ones, and not a female? But,
I beg of you, reflect on what it is you say,--what theory you are
trying to construct, and to recommend for our acceptance. You say that
the soul, spread through all the limbs of the body, grew stiff by
congelation, and received the entire shape of the whole body from the
crown of the head to the soles of the feet, and from the inmost marrow
to the skin's outward surface. At this rate it must have received, in
the case of a female body, all the inner appurtenances of a woman's
body, and yet not be a woman! Why, pray, are all the members feminine
in a true living body, and yet the whole no woman? And why all be
male, and the result not a man? Who can be so presumptuous as to
believe, and profess, and teach all this? Is it that souls never
generate? Then, of course, mules and she-mules are not male and
female. Is it that souls without bodies of flesh would be unable to
cohabit? Well, but this deprivation is shared by castrated men; and
yet, although both the process and the motion be taken from them,
their sex is not removed--some slender remnant of their male members
being still left to them. Nobody ever said that a eunuch is not a
male. What now becomes of your opinion, that the souls even of eunuchs
have the generative organs unimpaired, and that these organs will
remain entire, on your principle, in their souls, even when they are
clean removed from their bodily structure? For you say, the soul knows
how to withdraw itself when that part of the flesh begins to be cut
off, so that the form which has been removed when amputated is not
lost; but although spread over it by condensation, it retires by an
extremely rapid movement, and so buries itself within as to be kept
quite safe; yet that cannot, forsooth, be a male in the other world
which carries with it thither the whole appendage of male organs of
generation, and which, if it had not even other signs in the body, was
a male by reason of those organs alone. These opinions, my son, have
no truth in them; if you will not allow that there is sex in the soul,
there cannot be a body either.
Chapter 34 [XXI.]--Prophetic Visions.
Not every semblance of a body is itself a body. Fall asleep and you
will see this; but when you awake again, carefully discern what it is
you have seen. For in your dreams you will appear to yourself as if
endued with a body; but it really is not your body, but your soul; nor
is it a real body, but the semblance of a body. Your body will be
lying on the bed, but the soul walking; the tongue of your body will
be silent, but that of your soul in the dream will talk; your eyes
will be shut, but your soul will be awake; and, of course, the limbs
of your body stretched out in your bed will be alive, not dead.
Consequently that congealed form, as you regard it, of your soul is
not yet extracted, as it were, out of its sheath; and yet in it is
seen the whole and perfect semblance of your fleshly frame. Belonging
to this class of similitudes of corporeity, which are not real bodies,
though they seem to be such, are all those appearances which you read
of in the Holy Scriptures in the visions even of the prophets,
without, however, understanding them; by which are also signified the
things which come to pass in all time--present, past, and future. You
make mistakes about these, not because they are in themselves
deceptive, but because you do not accept them as they ought to be
taken. For in the same apocalyptic vision where "the souls of the
martyrs" are seen, [2502] there is also beheld "a lamb as it were
slain, having seven horns:" [2503] there are also horses and other
animals figuratively described with all consistency; [2504] and
lastly, there were the stars falling, and the earth rolled up like a
book; [2505] nor does the world, in spite of all, then actually
collapse. If therefore we understand all these things wisely, although
we say they are true apparitions, yet we do not call them real bodies.
Footnotes
[2502] Rev. vi. 9.
[2503] Rev. v. 6.
[2504] Rev. vi. and ix.
[2505] Rev. vi. 13, 14.
Chapter 35.--Do Angels Appear to Men in Real Bodies?
It would, however, require too lengthy a discourse to enter very
carefully on a discussion concerning this kind of corporeal
semblances; whether angels even, either good ones or evil ones, appear
in this manner, [2506] whenever they appear in the likeness of human
beings or of any bodies whatever; or whether they possess real bodies,
and show themselves in this veritable state of corporeity; or, again,
whether by persons when dreaming, indeed, or in a trance they are
perceived in these forms--not in bodies, but in the likeness of
bodies--while to persons when awake they present real bodies which can
be seen, and, if necessary, actually touched. Such questions as these,
however, I do not deem it at all requisite to investigate and fully
treat in this book. By this time enough has been advanced respecting
the soul's incorporeity. If you would rather persist in your opinion
that it is corporeal, you must first of all define what "body" means;
lest, peradventure, it may turn out that we are agreed about the thing
itself, but labouring to no purpose about its name. The absurd
conclusions, however, to which you would be reduced if you thought of
such a body in the soul, as are those substances which are called
"bodies" by all learned men,--I mean such as occupy portions of space,
smaller ones for their smaller parts, and larger ones for their
larger,--by means of the different relations of length and breadth and
thickness, I venture to think you are by this time able intelligently
to observe.
Footnotes
[2506] That is, as true apparitions indeed, but not as real bodies.
Chapter 36 [XXII.]--He Passes on to the Second Question About the
Soul, Whether It is Called Spirit.
It now remains for me to show how it is that while the designation
spirit is rightly predicated of a part of the soul, not the whole of
it,--even as the apostle says, "Your whole spirit, and soul, and
body;" [2507] or, according to the much more expressive statement in
the Book of Job, "Thou wilt separate my soul from my spirit," [2508]
--yet the whole soul is also called by this name; although this
question seems to be much more a question of names than of things. For
since it is certainly a fact that there is a something in the soul
which is properly called "spirit," while (this being left out of
question) it is also designated with equal propriety "soul," our
present contention is not about the things themselves; [2509] mainly
because I on my side certainly admit, and you on your part say the
same, that that is properly called spirit by which we reason and
understand, and yet that these things are distinguishingly designated,
as the apostle says "your whole spirit, and soul, and body." This
spirit, however, the same apostle appears also to describe as mind; as
when he says, "So then with the mind I serve the law of God, but with
the flesh the law of sin." [2510] Now the meaning of this is precisely
what he expresses in another passage thus: "For the flesh lusteth
against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh." [2511] What he
designates mind in the former place, he must be understood to call
spirit in the latter passage. Not as you interpret the statement, "The
whole mind is meant, which consists of soul and spirit,"--a view which
I know not where you obtained. By our "mind," indeed, we usually
understand nothing but our rational and intellectual faculty; and
thus, when the apostle says, "Be ye renewed in the spirit of your
mind," [2512] what else does he mean than, Be ye renewed in your mind?
"The spirit of the mind" is, accordingly, nothing else than the mind,
just as "the body of the flesh" is nothing but the flesh; thus it is
written, "In putting off the body of the flesh," [2513] where the
apostle calls the flesh "the body of the flesh." He designates it,
indeed, in another point of view as the spirit of man, which he quite
distinguishes from the mind: "If," says he, "I pray with the tongue,
my spirit prayeth, but my mind is unfruitful." [2514] We are not now,
however, speaking of that spirit which is distinct from the mind; and
this involves a question relating to itself which is really a
difficult one. For in many ways and in divers senses the Holy
Scriptures make mention of the spirit; but with respect to that we are
now speaking of, by which we exercise reason, intelligence, and
wisdom, we are both agreed that it is called (and indeed rightly
called) "spirit," in such a sense as not to include the entire soul,
but a part of it. If, however, you contend that the soul is not the
spirit, on the ground that the understanding is distinctly called
"spirit," you may as well deny that the whole seed of Jacob is called
Israel, since, apart from Judah, the same appellation was distinctly
and separately borne by the ten tribes which were then organized in
Samaria. But why need we linger any longer here on this subject?
Footnotes
[2507] 1 Thess. v. 23.
[2508] Job vii. 15.
[2509] [Compare On the City of God, xiv. 2, 6, and On the Trinity, x.
11, 18. Augustin denied the trichotomy of the Greek Fathers before
Appollinaris, and held that the soul and spirit constituted a single
substantial unity, and this one spiritual essence was "soul" (anima)
so far as it was the informing and vivifying principle of the body,
and "spirit" (spiritus) so far as it was the power of rational
thought.--W.]
[2510] Rom. vii. 25.
[2511] Gal. v. 17.
[2512] Eph. iv. 23.
[2513] Col. ii. 11.
[2514] 1 Cor. xiv. 14.
Chapter 37 [XXIII.]--Wide and Narrow Sense of the Word "Spirit."
But now, with a view to our easier elucidation, I beg you to observe
that what is the soul is also designated spirit in the scripture which
narrates an incident in our Lord's death, thus, "He bowed His head and
gave up the spirit." [2515] Now, when you hear or read these words,
you wish to understand them as if the whole were signified by a part,
and not because that which is the soul may also be called spirit. But
I shall, for the purpose of being able the more readily to prove what
I say, actually summon yourself with all promptitude and convenience
as my witness. For you have defined spirit in such terms that cattle
appear not to have a spirit, but a soul. Irrational animals are so
called, because they have not the power of intelligence and reason.
Accordingly, when you admonished man himself to know his own nature,
you spoke as follows: "Now, inasmuch as the good God has made nothing
without a purpose, He has produced man himself as a rational animal,
capable of intelligence, endowed with reason, and enlivened by
sensibility, so as to be able to distribute in a wise arrangement all
things that are void of reason." In these words of yours you have
plainly asserted what is certainly most true, that man is endowed with
reason and capable of intelligence, which, of course, animals void of
reason are not. And you have, in accordance with this view, quoted a
passage of Scripture, and, adopting its language, have compared men of
no understanding to the cattle, which, of course, have not intellect.
[2516] A statement the like to which occurs in another passage of
Scripture: "Be ye not as the horse or as the mule, which have no
understanding." [2517] This being the case, I want you also to observe
in what terms you have defined and described the spirit when trying to
distinguish it from the soul: "This soul," you say, "which has its
origin from the breath of God, could not have possibly been without an
inner sense and intellect of its own; and this is the spirit." A
little afterwards you add: "And although the soul animates the body,
yet inasmuch as it possesses sense, and wisdom, and vigour, there must
needs be a spirit." And then somewhat further on you say: "The soul is
one thing, and the spirit--which is the soul's wisdom and sense--is
another." In these words you plainly enough indicate what you take the
spirit of man to mean; that it is even our rational faculty, whereby
the soul exercises sense and intelligence,--not, indeed, the sensation
which is felt by the bodily senses, but the operation of that
innermost sense from which arises the term sentiment. Owing to this it
is, no doubt, that we are placed above brute animals, since these are
unendowed with reason. These animals therefore have not spirit,--that
is to say, intellect and a sense of reason and wisdom,--but only soul.
For it is of these that it was spoken, "Let the waters bring forth the
creeping creatures that have a living soul;" [2518] and again, "Let
the earth bring forth the living soul." [2519] In order, indeed, that
you may have the fullest and clearest assurance that what is the soul
is in the usage of the Holy Scriptures also called spirit, the soul of
a brute animal has the designation of spirit. And of course cattle
have not that spirit which you, my beloved brother, have defined as
being distinct from the soul. It is therefore quite evident that the
soul of a brute animal could be rightly called "spirit" in a general
sense of the term; as we read in the Book of Ecclesiastes, "Who
knoweth the spirit of the sons of men, whether it goeth upward; and
the spirit of the beast, whether it goeth downward into the earth?"
[2520] In like manner, touching the devastation of the deluge, the
Scripture testifies, "All flesh died that moved upon the earth, both
of fowl, and of cattle, and of beast, and of every creeping thing that
creepeth upon the earth, and every man: and all things which have the
spirit of life." [2521] Here, if we remove all the windings of
doubtful disputation, we understand the term spirit to be synonymous
with soul in its general sense. Of so wide a signification is this
term, that even God is called "a spirit;" [2522] and a stormy blast of
the air, although it has material substance, is called by the psalmist
the "spirit" of a tempest. [2523] For all these reasons, therefore,
you will no longer deny that what is the soul is called also spirit; I
have, I think, adduced enough from the pages of Holy Scripture to
secure your assent in passages where the soul of the very brute beast,
which has no understanding, is designated spirit. If, then, you take
and wisely consider what has been advanced in our discussion about the
incorporeity of the soul, there is no further reason why you should
take offence at my having said that I was sure the soul was not body,
but spirit,--both because it is proved to be not corporeal, and
because in its general sense it is denominated spirit.
Footnotes
[2515] John xix. 30.
[2516] Ps. xlix. 12.
[2517] Ps. xxxii. 9.
[2518] Gen. i. 20.
[2519] Gen. i. 24.
[2520] Eccles. iii. 21.
[2521] Gen. vii. 21, 22.
[2522] John iv. 24.
[2523] He seems to refer to Ps. lv. 8.
Chapter 38 [XXIV.]--Victor's Chief Errors Again Pointed Out.
Wherefore if you take these books, which I have with a sincere and
affectionate interest written in answer to your opinions, and read
them with a reciprocal love for me; if you attend to what you have
yourself declared in the beginning of your first book, and "are
anxious not to insist on any opinion of your own, if it be found an
improbable one," [2524] then I beseech you to beware especially of
those eleven errors which I warned you of in the preceding book of
this treatise. [2525] Do not say, that "the soul is of God in such a
sense that He created it not out of no, nor out of another, but out of
His own nature;" or that, "as God who gives is Himself ever existent,
so is He ever giving souls through infinite time;" or that "the soul
lost some merit through the flesh, which it had previous to the
flesh;" or that "the soul by means of the flesh repairs its ancient
condition, and is born again through the very same flesh, by which it
had deserved to be polluted;" or that "the soul deserved to be sinful
even prior to sin;" or that "infants who die without the regeneration
of baptism, may yet attain to forgiveness of their original sins;" or
that "they whom the Lord has predestinated to be baptized can be taken
away from His predestination, or die before that has been accomplished
in them which the Almighty had predetermined;" or that "it is of those
who expire before they are baptized that the Scripture says, `Speedily
was he taken away, lest wickedness should alter his
understanding,'"--with the remainder of the passage to the same
effect; or that "there are some mansions outside the kingdom of God,
belonging to the `many,' which the Lord said were in His Father's
house;" or that "the sacrifice of the body and blood of Christ ought
to be offered in behalf of those who have departed out of the body
without being baptized;" or that "any of those persons who die without
Christ's baptism, are received for a while into paradise, and
afterwards attain even to the blessedness of the kingdom of heaven."
Above all things, beware of these opinions, my son, and, as you wish
to be the vanquisher of error, do not rejoice in the surname of
"Vincentius." And when you are ignorant on any subject, do not think
that you know it; but in order to get real knowledge, learn how to be
ignorant. For we commit a sin by affecting to be ignorant of nothing
among "the secret things of God;" by constructing random theories
about unknown things, and taking them for known; and by producing and
defending errors as if they were truth. As for my own ignorance on the
question whether the souls of men are created afresh at every birth,
or are transmitted by the parents (an ignorance which is, however,
modified by my belief, which it would be impious to falter in, that
they are certainly made by the Divine Creator, though not of His own
substance), I think that your loving self will by this time be
persuaded that it either ought not to be censured at all, or, if it
ought, that it should be done by a man who is capable by his learning
of removing it altogether; and so also with respect to my other
opinions, that while souls have in them the incorporeal semblances of
bodies, they are not themselves bodies; and that, without impairing
the natural distinction between soul and spirit, the soul is in a
general sense actually designated spirit. If, indeed, I have
unfortunately failed to persuade you, I must leave it rather to my
readers to determine whether what I have advanced ought not to have
convinced you.
Footnotes
[2524] See above in Book ii. 22 [xvi.].
[2525] See Book iii., next to last chapter.
Chapter 39.--Concluding Admonition.
If, as may possibly be the case, you desire to know whether there are
many other points which appear to me to require emendation in your
books, it cannot be troublesome for you to come to me,--not, indeed,
as a scholar to his master, but as a person in his prime to one full
of years, and as a strong man to a weak one. And although you ought
not to have published your books, still there is a greater and a truer
glory in a man's being censured, when he confesses with his own lips
the justice of his correction, than in being lauded out of the mouth
of any defender of error. Now, while I should be unwilling to believe
that all those who listened to your reading of the afore-mentioned
books, and lavished their praises on you, had either previously held
for themselves the opinions which sound doctrine disapproves of, or
were induced by you to entertain them, I still cannot help thinking
that they had the keenness of their mind blunted by the impetuous and
constant flow of your elocution, and so were unable to bestow adequate
attention on the contents of your discourse; or else, that when they
were in any case capable of understanding what you said, it was less
for any very clear statement of the truth that they praised you than
for the affluence of your language, and the facility and resources of
your mental powers. For praise, and fame, and kindly regard are very
commonly bestowed on a young man's eloquence in anticipation of the
future, though as yet it lacks the mellowed perfection and fidelity of
a fully-informed instructor. In order, then, that you may attain to
true wisdom yourself, and that what you say may be able not only to
delight, but even edify other people, it behoves you, after removing
from your mind the dangerous applause of others, to keep conscientious
watch over your own words.
Also, see links to 600+ other Augustine Manuscripts:
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http://mb-soft.com/believe/txv/earlychh.htm
http://mb-soft.com/believe/txv/earlychi.htm
http://mb-soft.com/believe/txv/earlychj.htm
http://mb-soft.com/believe/txv/earlychk.htm
http://mb-soft.com/believe/txv/earlychl.htm
http://mb-soft.com/believe/txv/earlychm.htm
http://mb-soft.com/believe/txv/earlychn.htm
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