Letters & Polemics (CSEL) 3 part 36/87

And we indeed recognize in ourselves an image of God—that is, of that supreme Trinity—though not an equal one, nay, very far distant, neither coeternal, and, to say the whole more briefly, not of the same substance as God; yet one than which, in the things made by Him, nothing in nature is nearer to God—an image still to be perfected by reformation, that it may be also nearest in likeness. For we both are, and know that we are, and love that being and that knowing. And in these three things which I have mentioned, no falsehood resembling the truth disturbs us.

For we do not touch these by any sense of the body, as we do those things which are outside—as we perceive colors by seeing, sounds by hearing, odors by smelling, flavors by tasting, hard and soft things by handling—of which sensible things we also revolve in thought the images most like them, no longer corporeal, hold them in memory, and through them are stirred into desires of those very things; but without any imagination, deceptive, of phantasies or phantasms, it is most certain to me that I am, and that I know and love this. In these truths I fear none of the arguments of the Academics, who say: 'What if you are deceived?' For if I am deceived, I am. For he who does not exist surely cannot be deceived; and by this very fact I am, if I am deceived.

Since, then, I am if I am deceived, how am I deceived that I exist, when it is certain that I exist, if I am deceived? Since therefore I would be the one deceived, even if I were deceived, without doubt I am not deceived in that which I know—that I exist. And it follows that neither am I deceived in that which I know—that I know. For just as I know that I exist, so I also know this very thing, that I know. And when I love these two, I add the same love also as a certain third thing, of no lesser estimation than those things which I know. Nor am I deceived that I love, since in those things which I love I am not deceived; though even if they were false, it would be true that I love false things. For how could I rightly be reproved and rightly forbidden from the love of false things, if it were false that I love them?

But since those things are both true and certain, who would doubt that, when they are loved, the love itself is also true and certain? Moreover, as there is no one who would not wish to be, so there is no one who would not wish to be blessed. For how can he be blessed, if he be nothing? CHAPTER XXVII. Concerning being and knowledge, and the love of both. So pleasant indeed, by a certain natural force, is being itself, that even those who are wretched do not, for any other reason, wish to perish; and when they feel themselves to be wretched, they wish not that they themselves, but rather their wretchedness, be taken away from things.

Even to those who appear most wretched both to themselves and plainly are so, and who are judged wretched not only by the wise, since they are foolish, but also by those who think themselves blessed, because they are poor and beggars—if anyone were to give them immortality, by which not even their very wretchedness would die, proposing to them that, if they should be unwilling to be ever in the same wretchedness, they would be nothing and nowhere in time to come, but would by all means perish—surely they would exult with joy and would thus ever choose to be rather than not to be at all. The witness of this is their most well-known feeling. For why do they fear to die, and prefer to live in that distress rather than to end it by death, except that it is sufficiently apparent how nature shrinks from not-being?

And therefore, when they know themselves to be about to die, they desire this mercy to be bestowed on them as a great benefit—that they might live somewhat longer in the same wretchedness and die more slowly. Without doubt, then, they indicate with how great thankfulness they would receive immortality, even such as would have no end of beggary. What of this? Do not all animals, even the irrational, to which it is not given to ponder these things, from immense dragons down to tiny little worms, indicate by all the motions they can that they wish to be and on this account flee destruction? What of this?

Do not the shrubs and all the bushes, which have no sense to avoid by manifest motion the destruction that threatens them, nevertheless, in order that they may send forth the safe shoot of their crown into the airs, fix another shoot of their root into the earth, by which to draw nourishment and thus in a certain manner to preserve their own being? Finally, the very bodies which have not only no sense, but not even any seminal life, nevertheless either leap up to the heights, or descend to the depths, or are balanced in the midst, in such a way as to guard their own essence where, according to nature, they are able to be. Now indeed how greatly knowing is loved, and how human nature is unwilling to be deceived, can be understood even from this—that anyone would rather lament in a sound mind than rejoice in madness.

This great and marvelous power belongs to no mortal living things except man, although in some of them the sense of the eyes is much keener than ours for beholding this light; but they cannot touch that incorporeal light by which our mind is in a certain manner irradiated, so that we can rightly judge concerning all these things. For in proportion as we grasp it, in that proportion we are able to do so. Nevertheless, there is in the senses of irrational animals, even if knowledge in no way, yet certainly a certain likeness of knowledge; but other corporeal things have been called sensible not because they perceive, but because they are perceived. Of these, what is similar to the senses in shrubs is that they are nourished and beget.

Nevertheless, both these and all corporeal things have their causes hidden in nature; but they offer their forms, by which the structure of this visible world is shapely, to be perceived by the senses, so that, in place of the fact that they cannot know, they seem as it were to wish to become known. But we so grasp them by the sense of the body that we do not judge of them by the sense of the body. For we have another sense of the inner man, far more excellent than that, by which we perceive things just and unjust—the just through an intelligible form, the unjust through the privation of it. To the office of this sense there comes neither the sharpness of the pupil, nor the opening of the ear, nor the passages of the nostrils, nor the taste of the throat, nor any bodily touch.

There I am certain that I both am and know this, and I love these things, and I am likewise certain that I love. CHAPTER XXVIII. Whether we ought also to love the very love by which we love both to be and to know, so that we may the more approach the image of the divine Trinity. But concerning those two—namely essence and knowledge—how much they are loved in us, and how in the other things also which are below there is found, even if differing, yet some likeness of them, we have said enough, as far as the plan of this work we have undertaken has seemed to demand; but concerning the love by which they are loved, whether the love itself is also loved, it has not been said. But it is loved; and we prove this from the fact that in men who are more rightly loved, the love itself is more loved.

For a man is not called good by merit because he knows what is good, but because he loves it. Why, then, in our very selves, do we not also perceive that we love the very love by which we love whatever good we love? For there is also a love by which that which ought not to be loved is loved, and this love is hated in himself by the one who loves that love by which is loved that which ought to be loved. For both can be in one man, and it is good for a man that, as that love advances by which we live well, this love by which we live ill should fail, until what we live is wholly healed and changed into good. For if we were beasts, we should love the carnal life and what is according to its sense, and this would be our sufficient good, and according to this, when it was well with us, we should seek nothing else.

Likewise, if we were trees, we could indeed love nothing by a perceiving motion, yet we should seem as it were to seek that by which we might be more fruitful and more abundantly productive. If we were stones or waves or wind or flame or anything of that sort, without any sense indeed or life, nevertheless there would not be lacking to us as it were a certain appetite of our own places and order. For the momentum of weights are as it were the loves of bodies, whether they strive downward by gravity or upward by lightness. For the body is borne by its weight, just as the soul by its love, wherever it is borne.

Since, therefore, we are men created after the image of our Creator, whose is true eternity, eternal truth, eternal and true charity, and who is Himself the eternal and true and dear Trinity, neither confused nor separated: in these things indeed which are below us—since they themselves would neither in any way exist, nor be contained in any form, nor either seek or hold any order, had they not been made by Him who supremely is, who is supremely wise, who is supremely good—as we run, as it were, through all the things which He made with marvelous stability, let us gather, as it were, certain traces of His, here more, there less deeply impressed.

But beholding His image within our very selves, like that younger son of the Gospel, let us return to ourselves and rise up and go back to Him from whom by sinning we had withdrawn. There our being shall have no death, there our knowing shall have no error, there our loving shall have no offense. Now, however, though we hold these three things of ours as certain, and do not believe them on the testimony of others but perceive them as present within us and discern them by an inward and most truthful gaze, yet, since by ourselves we cannot know how long they shall endure, or whether they shall never fail, and to what end they shall come if ill, or to what end if well used, of these matters we either seek or possess other witnesses.

Concerning whose trustworthiness, why there ought to be no doubt, is not the place here but later for treating more diligently. In this book, however, concerning the City of God which does not sojourn in the mortality of this life but is forever immortal in the heavens—that is, concerning the holy angels who cleave to God, who never were nor ever shall be deserters, and among whom and those who, forsaking the eternal light, became darkness, God first made division, as we have already said—let us, with His help, set forth what we have begun, as best we can. CHAPTER XXIX. On the knowledge of the holy angels, by which they know the Trinity in its very Godhead, and by which they behold the causes of works in the art of the Worker before beholding them in the works themselves.

For those holy angels learn of God not through sounding words, but through the very presence of immutable truth, that is, His only-begotten Word; and they know the Word itself, and the Father, and their Holy Spirit, and that this is an inseparable Trinity, and that the several Persons in it are each a substance, and yet that all are not three gods but one God—they know these things in such wise that these are more known to them than we ourselves are known to ourselves. The creation itself, too, they know better there—that is, in the wisdom of God, as in the art by which it was made—than in itself; and through this they know themselves better there than in themselves, yet also truly in themselves. For they were made, and are other than He who made them.

There, therefore, they know as in a daytime knowledge, but in themselves as in an evening knowledge, as we have already said above. For it makes a great difference whether a thing is known in that reason according to which it was made, or in itself; just as the straightness of lines or the truth of figures is known in one way when contemplated by the understanding, and in another way when traced in dust; and justice is known in one way in the immutable truth, in another in the soul of a just man. So likewise the rest: as the firmament between the upper and lower waters, which was called heaven; as below, the gathering of the waters and the laying bare of the land and the establishment of grasses and trees; as the making of the sun and moon and stars;

as from the waters the creatures, namely birds and fishes and swimming beasts; as whatever walks and creeps upon the earth, and man himself, who was to excel all things upon the earth. All these things are known by the angels in one way in the Word of God, where they have their causes and reasons—that is, those according to which they were made—remaining immutably, and in another way in themselves: the former by a clearer, the latter by an obscurer knowledge, as of art and of works. Yet these works, when they are referred to the praise and veneration of the Creator Himself, dawn as it were like morning in the minds of those who contemplate. CHAPTER XXX. On the perfection of the number six, which is the first to be completed by the sum of its parts.

Now these things are narrated as having been perfected in six days, the same day being repeated six times, on account of the perfection of the number six—not because any delay of time was necessary to God, as if He could not have created all things at once, which afterwards should pass through their seasons by fitting movements; but because by the number six the perfection of the works is signified. For the number six is the first to be completed by its parts, that is, by its sixth part and its third and its half, which are one and two and three, which brought to a sum make six. But the parts to be understood in this consideration of numbers are those of which it can be said what fraction they are, as a half, a third, a fourth, and so on, named from some number.

For example, although in the number nine four is some part of it, it cannot be said what fraction of it that is; but one can, for it is its ninth; and three can, for it is its third. But these two parts joined together, namely the ninth and the third, that is one and three, are far from its whole sum, which is nine. Likewise in ten, four is some part of it; but what fraction it is cannot be said; one, however, can, for it is its tenth part. It has also a fifth, which is two; and a half, which is five. But these three parts of it, the tenth and the fifth and the half, that is one and two and five, brought together do not make ten; for they are eight.

But the parts of the number twelve, brought to a sum, exceed it; for it has a twelfth, which is one; it has a sixth, which is two; it has a fourth, which is three; it has a third, which is four; it has also a half, which is six; but one and two and three and four and six make not twelve, but more, that is, sixteen. This I have thought worth briefly recalling for commending the perfection of the number six, which, as I said, is the first that is itself perfected by its parts reduced to a sum; in which God perfected His works. Hence the reckoning of number is not to be despised, which in many places of the Holy Scriptures shines forth, to those who diligently attend, as something to be greatly esteemed. Nor was it in vain said in the praises of God:

Thou hast ordered all things in measure and number and weight. CHAPTER XXXI. On the seventh day, in which fullness and rest are commended. But on the seventh day, that is, the same day repeated seven times—which number too is in another way perfect—the rest of God is commended, in which first sanctification is sounded. Thus God willed not to sanctify this day in any of His works, but in His own rest, which has no evening; for there is no creature, such that He should know it otherwise in the Word of God and otherwise in itself, and so make one knowledge as it were of the day, another as it were of the evening. Of the perfection of the number seven much more indeed could be said; but this book is already long,

and I fear lest, having found the occasion, we may seem to wish to flaunt our little learning more lightly than usefully. We must therefore observe a measure of moderation and gravity, lest perchance, while we say much about number, we be judged to neglect measure and weight. Let it therefore suffice to point this out: that the first wholly odd number is three, the first wholly even number is four; of which two the number seven is composed. Therefore it is often put for the universal whole, as in: The just man shall fall seven times, and shall rise again; that is: However often he fall, he shall not perish; which He willed to be understood not of iniquities, but of tribulations leading to humility; and: Seven times a day will I praise Thee; which is elsewhere said in another way: His praise shall be ever in my mouth;

and many things of this sort are found in the divine authorities, in which the number seven, as I said, is wont to be put for the universality of any matter. On this account also the Holy Spirit is often signified by the same number, of whom the Lord says: He shall teach you all truth. There is the rest of God, by which there is rest in God. For in the whole, that is, in full perfection, is rest; but in part is labor. Therefore we labor as long as we know in part, but when that which is perfect shall have come, that which is in part shall be done away. Hence it is that even these Scriptures we search out with labor.

But the holy angels, for whose fellowship and company we sigh in this most laborious pilgrimage, just as they possess the eternity of abiding, so they possess the ease of knowing and the felicity of resting. For they help us without difficulty, since by their pure and free spiritual motions they suffer no labor. CHAPTER XXXII. On the opinion of those who hold that the creation of the angels was prior to that of the world. But lest anyone contend and say that the holy angels were not signified in that which is written, 'Let there be light, and there was light,' but suppose or teach that some corporeal light was then first made;

and that the angels were made not only before the firmament, which between the waters and the waters was made and called heaven, but before that of which it is said: 'In the beginning God made heaven and earth'; and that this 'In the beginning' was not said as though this was made first, since He made the angels before, but because He made all things in wisdom, which is His Word and which Scripture itself named 'the beginning' (just as He Himself, when the Jews asked who He was, answered in the Gospel that He was the beginning): I shall not, on the contrary, raise a contention, especially because this delights me most greatly, that even in the very first opening of the holy book of Genesis the Trinity is commended. For when it is thus said:

'In the beginning God made heaven and earth,' so that the Father is understood to have made in the Son—as the Psalm attests, where it is read: 'How magnified are Thy works, O Lord! Thou hast made all things in wisdom'—most fittingly a little after the Holy Spirit also is commemorated. For when it had been said what kind of earth God first made, or what mass or matter of the future construction of the world He had designated by the name of heaven and earth, by subjoining and adding: 'And the earth was invisible and unformed, and darkness was upon the abyss,' then, that the commemoration of the Trinity might be completed, He says: 'And the Spirit of God moved over the water.'

Accordingly, let each take it as he will, since it is so profound that, for the exercise of readers, it can engender many opinions not at variance with the rule of faith; provided only that no one doubt that the holy angels in the sublime seats, though not indeed co-eternal with God, are yet secure and certain of their everlasting and true felicity. To whose fellowship the Lord, teaching that His little ones belong, said not only this: 'They shall be equal to the angels of God'; but also showed of what contemplation the angels themselves enjoy, where He said: 'See that ye despise not one of these little ones; for I say unto you, that their angels in heaven always behold the face of My Father, who is in heaven.' CHAPTER XXXIII.

On the two societies of angels, diverse and unequal, which are not unfittingly understood to be designated by the names of light and darkness. That certain angels sinned and were thrust down into the lower parts of this world, which is to them as it were a prison, until the final condemnation at the day of judgment to come, the apostle Peter most plainly shows, saying that God spared not the angels that sinned, but, thrusting them down into the prisons of the gloom of hell, delivered them to be reserved for punishment in judgment. Who then can doubt that God divided between these and those, whether by foreknowledge or by deed? And who can gainsay that those others are rightly called light?

since indeed we who still live in faith, still hoping for equality with them, but assuredly not yet possessing it, are already called light by the apostle: 'For ye were,' he says, 'sometime darkness, but now light in the Lord.' But that those deserters are most aptly named darkness, surely those discern who understand or believe them to be worse than unbelieving men. Wherefore, even if another light is to be understood in that place of this book where we read: 'God said, Let there be light, and there was light,' and other darknesses are signified in that which is written: 'God divided between the light and the darkness': we nevertheless understand these two angelic societies—one enjoying God, the other swollen with pride; one to which it is said:

'Worship Him, all ye His angels'; the other whose prince says: 'All these will I give Thee, if Thou wilt fall down and worship me': the one burning with holy love of God, the other smoking with the unclean love of its own loftiness; and since, as it is written, 'God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace to the humble,' the one dwelling in the heaven of heavens, the other, cast down thence, raging in this lowest airy heaven; the one tranquil in luminous piety, the other turbulent with shadowy desires; the one clemently succoring at God's nod, justly avenging, the other seething with its own pride in the lust of subjugating and harming; the one a minister to God's goodness, that it may aid as much as it wills, the other reined in by God's power, lest it harm as much as it wills;

the one mocking the other, that against its will it should profit by its persecutions, the other envying it when it gathers in its pilgrims—we therefore have understood these two angelic societies, unequal among themselves and contrary, the one both good in nature and right in will, the other indeed good in nature but perverse in will, to be declared by other plainer testimonies of the divine Scriptures, and we have judged that even in this book, whose name is Genesis, they are signified by the words of light and darkness, even if perchance he who wrote it had another meaning in this place; nor has the obscurity of this sentence been treated unprofitably, since, although we could not trace out the intention of the author of this book, we have nonetheless not departed from the rule of faith, which is sufficiently known to the faithful through other sacred writings of the same authority.

For even if the works of God here commemorated are corporeal, they have without doubt some likeness of spiritual things, according to which the apostle says: 'For ye are all sons of light and sons of the day; we are not of the night nor of darkness.' But if he who wrote it also meant this, our intention has reached a more perfect end of the discussion: that a man of God of such surpassing and divine wisdom—nay rather, through him the Spirit of God—in commemorating the works of God, which He said were all perfected on the sixth day, should by no means be believed to have passed over the angels, whether 'in the beginning' because He made them first, or—what is more fittingly understood—'in the beginning' because He made them in the only-begotten Word, when it was written: 'In the beginning God made heaven and earth';

by which names the universal creation is signified, either spiritual and corporeal—which is more credible—or the two great parts of the world, by which all things that have been created are contained, so that He might first set forth the whole, and then follow out its parts according to the mystical number of the days. CHAPTER XXXIV. On the fact that some think that in the constitution of the firmament the angels were signified under the name of the separated waters, and that some hold the waters not to have been created. Although some have thought that under the name of waters were signified in some manner the peoples of the angels, and that this is what was said:

'Let there be a firmament between the water and the water,' so that above the firmament the angels are to be understood, but below either these visible waters or the multitude of evil angels or the nations of all men. But if this is so, it does not there appear where the angels were made, but where they were separated; although some—which is of most perverse and impious vanity—deny that even the waters were made by God, since it is nowhere written: 'God said, Let the waters be.' Which they can with like vanity say also of the earth; for nowhere is it read: 'God said, Let the earth be.' But, they say, it is written: 'In the beginning God made heaven and earth.' There, then, the water also is to be understood; for under one name both are comprehended.

For His is the sea, as is read in the Psalm, and He made it, and His hands formed the dry land. But these, who under the name of the waters which are above the heavens wish the angels to be understood, are moved by the weights of the elements, and therefore think that the fluid and heavy nature of waters could not be established in the upper regions of the world; who, according to their own reasonings, if they themselves could make a man, would not place in his head the phlegm—which in Greek is called phlegma, and holds as it were the place of the waters among the elements of our body.

For there is the seat of the phlegm, according to the work of God most fittingly indeed, but according to the conjecture of these men so absurdly that, if we did not know this, and it were similarly written in this book that God placed a fluid and cold and therefore heavy humor in the part of the human body higher than all the rest, these weighers of the elements would by no means believe it; and if they were subject to the authority of the same Scripture, they would judge that something else must be understood from this.

But since, if we should diligently examine and treat each thing that is written in that divine book concerning the constitution of the world, both much must be said and we must digress far from the purpose of the work undertaken, and since we have now disputed, as far as has seemed sufficient, concerning these two societies of angels diverse and contrary among themselves—in which are certain beginnings of the two cities also in human affairs, of which I have undertaken to speak hereafter—let us at length close this book also. BOOK XII. CHAPTER I. On the one nature of the good and the evil angels. Before I speak of the institution of man, in whom the origin of the two cities, as far as pertains to the race of rational mortals, will appear,