Works (City of God, On the Trinity, etc.) 15 part 2/4

Among the authors of secular letters too such an interchangeable use of these words is found. For Cicero, that most eminent orator, says: 'I desire (cupio), conscript fathers, to be merciful.' Since he set this word in a good sense, who would prove so perversely learned as to contend that he ought to have said not 'I desire' but rather 'I will'? Again, in Terence a debauched young man, blazing with insane lust, says: 'I will (volo) nothing else but Philumena.' That this willing was in fact lust is made plain enough by the reply given there by his more sober-minded servant, who says to his master: 'How much better it would be for you to give your effort to this — to remove that love from your heart — than to say what you say, whereby your lust is the more vainly inflamed?'

That they set joy also in an evil sense is witnessed by that very verse of Virgil, where he embraced these four perturbations with the utmost brevity: 'Hence they fear and desire, they grieve and rejoice.' The same author said also: 'The evil joys of the mind.' Accordingly both the good and the wicked will, are cautious, and rejoice; and, to state the same thing in other words, both the good and the wicked desire, fear, and are glad — but the former rightly, the latter wrongly, according as the will in men is upright or perverse. Sadness itself too, in place of which the Stoics thought that nothing could be found in the mind of the wise man, is found in a good sense, and especially among our own writers. For the Apostle praises the Corinthians because they had been made sorrowful according to God.

But perhaps someone will say that the Apostle congratulated them because they had been made sorrowful by repenting — a sorrow which can belong to none but those who have sinned. For thus he says: 'I see that that letter, though but for an hour, made you sorry; now I rejoice, not that you were made sorry, but that you were made sorry unto repentance. For you were made sorry according to God, that in nothing you might suffer loss from us. For the sorrow that is according to God works repentance unto salvation not to be repented of; but the sorrow of the world works death. For behold, this very thing, that you were made sorry according to God, what earnestness it wrought in you!'

And by this the Stoics can answer on behalf of their own position, that sorrow seems useful for this end — that one may repent of having sinned; but that it cannot exist in the mind of the wise man, because neither does sin, over whose repentance he might grieve, befall him, nor any other evil, by suffering and feeling which he might be made sad. For they relate that Alcibiades too (if my memory does not fail me about the man's name), when he seemed to himself to be happy, wept when Socrates argued with him and demonstrated to him how wretched he was because he was foolish. For this man, then, folly was the cause even of this useful and desirable sorrow, whereby a man grieves that he is what he ought not to be. The Stoics, however, say that not the fool but the wise man cannot be sorrowful.

But as far as concerns this question about the perturbations of the soul, we have already answered these philosophers in the ninth book of this work, showing that they are more eager for contention about words than about things, and for strife rather than for truth. But among us, according to the Holy Scriptures and sound doctrine, the citizens of the holy City of God, living according to God in the pilgrimage of this life, both fear and desire, both grieve and rejoice; and because their love is right, they have all these affections right. They fear eternal punishment, they desire eternal life; they grieve in present reality, because they themselves still groan within themselves, awaiting the adoption, the redemption of their body; they rejoice in hope, because that word shall be fulfilled which is written:

'Death is swallowed up in victory.' Likewise they fear to sin, they desire to persevere; they grieve over sins, they rejoice in good works. For that they may fear to sin, they hear: 'Because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall grow cold'; that they may desire to persevere, they hear what is written: 'He that shall persevere unto the end, the same shall be saved'; that they may grieve over sins, they hear: 'If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us'; that they may rejoice in good works, they hear: 'God loves a cheerful giver.' Likewise, according as their weakness or their strength stands, they fear to be tempted, they desire to be tempted; they grieve in temptations, they rejoice in temptations. For that they may fear to be tempted, they hear:

'If a man be overtaken in any fault, you who are spiritual instruct such a one in the spirit of meekness, considering yourself, lest you also be tempted.' But that they may desire to be tempted, they hear a certain brave man of the City of God saying: 'Prove me, O Lord, and try me; burn my reins and my heart.' That they may grieve in temptations, they see Peter weeping; that they may rejoice in temptations, they hear James saying: 'Count it all joy, my brethren, when you fall into various temptations.' And they are moved by these affections not only on their own account, but also on account of those whom they desire to see set free and fear lest they perish, and grieve if they perish and rejoice if they are set free.

For that best and bravest man, who glories in his infirmities — to make special mention of him, we who from among the Gentiles have come into the Church of Christ, the teacher of the Gentiles in faith and truth, who both labored more than all his fellow-apostles and instructed the peoples of God by many epistles, not only those who were seen to be present to him, but also those who were foreseen as yet to come;

that man, I say, that athlete of Christ, taught by Him, anointed by Him, crucified with Him, glorious in Him, in the theatre of this world, to which he was made a spectacle both to angels and to men, lawfully contending in the great contest and pressing on before him toward the palm of the heavenly calling — with the eyes of faith they most gladly behold him rejoicing with those who rejoice, weeping with those who weep, having without fightings, within fears, desiring to be dissolved and to be with Christ, longing to see the Romans that he might have some fruit among them also, as among the other Gentiles, being jealous over the Corinthians and in that very jealousy fearing lest their minds be seduced from the chastity that is in Christ, having great sorrow and continual pain of heart over the Israelites, because, being ignorant of God's righteousness and wishing to establish their own, they were not subject to the righteousness of God;

and not only declaring his sorrow, but even his mourning over certain ones who had sinned before and had not repented of their uncleanness and fornications. If these movements, these affections, which come from the love of the good and from holy charity, are to be called vices, then let us grant that those things which are truly vices be called virtues. But since these affections follow right reason when they are applied where and when they ought to be, who would then dare to call them diseases or vicious passions? Wherefore even the Lord Himself, deigning to lead a human life in the form of a servant, but having no sin whatsoever, employed them where He judged that they ought to be employed.

For in Him, in whom there was a true body of man and a true soul of man, human affection was not false. When therefore in the Gospel these things are related of Him — that He was grieved with anger over the hardness of the Jews' heart; that He said, 'I am glad for your sakes, that you may believe'; that when about to raise Lazarus He even shed tears; that He desired to eat the Passover with His disciples; that as the Passion drew near His soul was sorrowful — these are surely not related falsely. But He, by the grace of a certain sure dispensation, took up these movements in His human soul when He willed, just as He was made man when He willed.

Accordingly, as must be confessed, even when we have these affections rightly and according to God, they belong to this life, not to that which we hope will be to come; and often we yield to them even against our will. And so sometimes, though moved not by blameworthy desire but by praiseworthy charity, we weep even when we do not wish to. We have them, therefore, from the weakness of the human condition; but not so the Lord Jesus, whose weakness too was from power. But while we bear the weakness of this life, if we should have none of these affections at all, then we would rather not be living rightly. For the Apostle blamed and detested certain persons whom he even said to be without affection. The sacred psalm also censured those of whom it says:

'I looked for one that would grieve together with me, and there was none.' For to feel no grief at all, while we are in this place of misery, certainly — as someone even among the men of letters of this world perceived and said — 'does not come about without a great price of inhumanity in the mind and of stupor in the body.' Wherefore that which in Greek is called apatheia (which, if it could be rendered in Latin, would be called impassibility) — if it is to be so understood (for it is taken as belonging to the mind, not to the body) as that one should live without those affections which happen contrary to reason and disturb the mind, then it is plainly good and most greatly to be desired, but even it is not of this life. For it is not the voice of men of just any kind whatever, but especially of the pious and the very just and holy:

'If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.' That apatheia, then, will exist when there will be no sin at all in man. But now one lives well enough if without crime; yet he who thinks he lives without sin does not act so as to have no sin, but so as to receive no pardon. Furthermore, if that state must be called apatheia in which no affection whatever can touch the mind, who would not judge this stupor to be worse than all vices? It can therefore be said, not absurdly, that perfect blessedness will be without the sting of fear and without any sorrow; but who would say that there will not be love and joy there, unless he were altogether shut off from the truth?

But if that apatheia is where neither any fear terrifies nor pain torments, it is to be shunned in this life, if we wish to live rightly, that is, according to God; yet in that blessed life which is promised as everlasting, it is plainly to be hoped for. For that fear of which the Apostle John speaks: 'There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear, because fear has torment; and he that fears is not perfected in love' — that is not the kind of fear such as that with which the Apostle Paul feared lest the Corinthians be seduced by the serpent's cunning; for charity has this fear, nay rather nothing but charity has it; but of that kind is the fear which is not in love, of which the same Apostle Paul says:

'For you have not received again the spirit of bondage in fear.' But that chaste fear, enduring for ever and ever — if it will exist also in the age to come (for in what other way can it be understood to endure for ever and ever?) — is not a fear that terrifies away from an evil that can befall, but one that holds fast in the good that cannot be lost. For where the love of the good once attained is unchangeable, then surely, if it may be so said, the fear of avoiding evil is secure. For by the name of chaste fear is signified that will by which it will be necessary for us to be unwilling to sin, and to beware of sin not from the anxiety of weakness, lest perchance we sin, but from the tranquillity of charity.

Or if no kind of fear at all will be able to exist in that most certain security of perpetual and blessed joys, then 'The fear of the Lord, chaste, enduring for ever and ever' is said in the same manner as it is said: 'The patience of the poor shall not perish for ever.' For that patience itself will not be eternal, which is not necessary except where evils are to be endured; but that will be eternal to which one attains through patience. So perhaps chaste fear is said to endure for ever and ever because that will endure to which fear itself leads. Since these things are so, since a right life is to be led, by which one is to arrive at the blessed life, the right life has all these affections right, the perverse life has them perverse.

But the blessed and also eternal life will have love and joy not only right, but also secure; yet no fear nor sorrow. Whence it is now in some measure apparent what the citizens of the City of God ought to be in this pilgrimage, living according to the spirit, not according to the flesh — that is, according to God, not according to man — and what they will be in that immortality toward which they tend. But the city, that is, the society, of the impious, who live not according to God but according to man and who in the very worship of false divinity and in the contempt of the true follow the doctrines of men or of demons, is shaken by these depraved affections as by diseases and perturbations.

And if it has any citizens who seem to moderate such movements and, as it were, to temper them, they are so proud and puffed up in their impiety that by this very fact there are in them the greater swellings the fewer sorrows they have. And if some, with the more monstrous vanity the rarer it is, have come to love this in themselves — that they are utterly raised and stirred by no affection, bent and inclined by no affection — they rather lose their whole humanity than attain true tranquillity. For a thing is not therefore right because it is hard, nor healthy because it is unfeeling.

But whether the first man, or the first human beings (for there was a wedded pair of two), had these affections in the animal body before sin — such as we shall not have in the spiritual body when all sin has been purged and ended — is not inquired into without reason. For if they had them, how were they blessed in that memorable place of blessedness, that is, in paradise? For who at all can absolutely be called blessed who is affected by fear or sorrow? What indeed could those human beings fear or grieve at, amid so great an abundance of such great goods, where neither was death dreaded nor any ill health of body, nor was anything lacking which a good will might attain, nor was anything present which might offend the flesh or the mind of a man living happily?

There was undisturbed love toward God and among the wedded pair living in faithful and sincere fellowship, and from this love great joy, since that which was loved did not cease to be there for enjoyment. There was a tranquil avoidance of sin, and while this remained, no evil at all from any quarter rushed in to bring sorrow. Or perhaps they desired to touch the forbidden tree in order to eat, but feared to die, and through this both desire and fear even then disturbed those human beings even in that place? Far be it that we should think this existed where there was no sin at all. For it is not no sin to covet those things which the law of God forbids and to abstain from them through fear of punishment, not through love of righteousness.

Far be it, I say, that before all sin there should already have been there such a sin as that they should commit concerning the tree what the Lord said concerning a woman: 'If anyone shall look upon a woman to lust after her, he has already committed adultery with her in his heart.' How happy therefore they were, and disturbed by no perturbations of soul, injured by no discomforts of body! So happy would the whole human society have been, if neither they had committed the evil which they would also transmit to their descendants, nor anyone from their stock had committed by iniquity anything which he would receive by condemnation; and this happiness enduring until, through that blessing by which it was said:

'Increase and multiply' — the number of the predestined saints should be completed, and another greater blessing be given, which was given to the most blessed angels, where there would already be sure security that no one would sin and no one would die, and the life of the saints, after no experience of toil, of pain, of death, would be such as it will be, after all these things, in the incorruption of bodies restored by the resurrection of the dead. But since God foreknew all things and therefore could not be ignorant that man too would sin, we ought to assert the holy City according to that which He foreknew and disposed, not according to that which could not come into our knowledge, because it was not in God's disposition.

For man could not by his sin disturb the divine counsel, as though he had compelled God to change what He had ordained; since God by foreknowing had anticipated both — that is, both what man, whom He created good, would become as evil, and what good He Himself would even so bring about concerning him. For although God is said to change His ordinances — whence in the Scriptures He is even read, by a figurative expression, to have repented — this is said with reference to what man had hoped, or what the order of natural causes bore, not with reference to what the Almighty had foreknown He would do. God therefore made man, as it is written, upright, and thereby of good will. For he would not be upright not having a good will. A good will, therefore, is the work of God;

for man was made by Him with it. But the first evil will, since it preceded all evil works in man, was rather a certain defection from the work of God to its own works than any work; and therefore they were evil works, because according to itself, not according to God — so that the will itself was, as it were, an evil tree bearing those works as its evil fruits, or the man himself insofar as he was of evil will. Further, though an evil will is not according to nature but contrary to nature, since it is a vice, yet it belongs to that nature of which it is a vice, since it cannot exist except in a nature: but in that nature which the Creator created out of nothing, not in that which He begot of Himself, as He begot the Word, through whom all things were made;

for although God fashioned man out of the dust of the earth, that same earth and all earthly matter is altogether from nothing, and He gave to the body a soul made from nothing, when man was made. But so far indeed are evils overcome by goods that, although they are permitted to exist in order to demonstrate how the most provident justice of the Creator can use even them well, yet goods can exist without evils — as God Himself, the true and supreme, as does every heavenly creature, invisible and visible, above this murky air; but evils cannot exist without goods, since the natures in which they exist, insofar as they are natures, are assuredly good.

Moreover, evil is removed not by some nature which had been added being taken away, or any part of it, but by that which had been vitiated and depraved being healed and corrected. The free choice of the will, then, is truly free when it does not serve vices and sins. Such was it given by God; and being lost through its own fault, it cannot be restored except by Him who was able to give it. Whence the Truth says: 'If the Son shall make you free, then you shall be free indeed.' And this is the same as if He had said: 'If the Son shall save you, then you shall be saved indeed.' For thence is He the Liberator, whence He is the Savior. Man therefore lived according to God in a paradise both bodily and spiritual.

For paradise was not bodily on account of the goods of the body and not spiritual on account of those of the mind; or indeed spiritual so that man might enjoy it through the inner senses and not bodily so that he might enjoy it through the outer senses. It was plainly both for the sake of both.

But afterward, when that proud angel and thereby envious angel, through that same pride turned away from God to himself and, choosing by a certain tyrannical arrogance as it were to rejoice over subjects rather than to be subject, fell from the spiritual paradise (concerning whose fall, and that of his companions, who from being angels of God were made his angels, I have disputed sufficiently, as far as I could, in the eleventh and twelfth books of this work) — striving by ill-persuading craftiness to creep into the sense of man, whom, standing fast, he envied, since he himself had fallen — he chose the serpent in the bodily paradise, where, along with those two human beings, male and female, the other terrestrial animals also dwelt subject and harmless, a slippery animal, that is, moving in tortuous windings, suited to his work, through which he might speak;

and having through his angelic presence and more excellent nature subjected it to himself by spiritual wickedness and abusing it as an instrument, he spoke deceitfully to the woman, beginning, that is, from the inferior part of that human couple, so that he might by degrees reach the whole, not supposing the man to be easily credulous nor able to be deceived by erring himself, but while yielding to another's error. For just as Aaron did not consent to the erring people, being led on, to fashion the idol, but yielded being constrained; nor is it credible that Solomon thought by error that idols were to be served, but was compelled by feminine blandishments to those sacrileges:

so it is to be believed that that man, to his own woman, one to one, human being to human being, spouse to spouse, did not, being seduced, believe her as speaking truth, and so transgress the law of God, but yielded to the bond of social intimacy. For not without reason did the Apostle say: 'And Adam was not seduced, but the woman was seduced' — except because she accepted what the serpent had spoken to her as though it were true, whereas he was unwilling to be separated from his only companion even in fellowship of sin; nor is he therefore any the less guilty, if he sinned knowingly and deliberately. Whence also the Apostle does not say, 'He did not sin,' but 'He was not seduced'; for surely he shows him to have sinned when he says: 'By one man sin entered into the world,' and a little later more openly:

'In the likeness,' he says, 'of Adam's transgression.' But he wished those to be understood as seduced who do not think that what they do is sin; but Adam knew. Otherwise how will it be true, 'Adam was not seduced'? But being inexperienced in the divine severity, he could have been deceived in this — that he believed the offense to be venial. And through this, in that respect indeed in which the woman was seduced, he was not seduced; but he was deceived as to how what he was going to say would have to be judged: 'The woman whom Thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat.' What need of more words? Even though by believing they were not both deceived, yet by sinning both were captured and entangled in the snares of the devil.

But if anyone is moved as to why human nature is not so changed by other sins as it was changed by that transgression of the first two human beings, so that it should be subject to such great corruption as we see and feel, and through this to death, and be disturbed and tossed about by so many and so great and so mutually contrary affections, such as it certainly was not in paradise before sin, although it was in an animal body — if anyone, I say, is moved by this, he ought not therefore to think that that offense was slight and small, because it was committed in food not indeed evil or harmful, except that it was forbidden; for God would not create and plant anything evil in that place of such great felicity.

But obedience was commended in the precept — a virtue which in the rational creature is in a certain manner the mother and guardian of all virtues; since indeed it was so made that submission be useful to it, but that the doing of its own will, and not that of Him by whom it was created, be pernicious. And so this precept about not eating one kind of food, where so great an abundance of others lay at hand — a precept so easy to observe, so brief to retain in memory, especially where desire did not yet resist the will (which resistance followed afterward as the penalty of the transgression) — was violated with the greater injustice the more easily it could have been kept by observance. In secret, moreover, they began to be evil, so that they might slip into open disobedience.

For one would not arrive at an evil work unless an evil will had preceded. Further, what could be the beginning of an evil will but pride? 'For pride is the beginning of all sin.' And what is pride but the appetite for a perverse exaltation? For it is a perverse exaltation to forsake that to which the mind ought to cling as its beginning, and to become in a certain manner one's own beginning, and to be one's own beginning. This happens when one is too much pleased with oneself. And one is thus pleased with oneself when he falls away from that unchangeable good which ought to have pleased him more than he himself.

But that defection is voluntary; for if the will had remained stable in the love of the higher unchangeable good, by which it was illumined that it might see and enkindled that it might love, it would not have turned aside thence to please itself, and from this grown dark and cold, so that either she should believe the serpent had spoken truth, or he should prefer the will of his wife to the command of God and think himself a venial transgressor of the precept, if he did not forsake his life's companion even in the fellowship of sin. Not, therefore, was the evil work done — that is, that transgression, that they should eat the forbidden food — except by those who were already evil. Nor would that fruit have been evil except from an evil tree.

But that it should be an evil tree was done contrary to nature, because it would certainly not come to pass except by a vice of the will, which is contrary to nature. But a nature could not be depraved by a vice unless it had been made out of nothing. Consequently, that it is a nature, it has from this — that it was made by God; but that it falls away from that which it is, from this — that it was made out of nothing. Yet man did not so fall away as to become altogether nothing, but so that, inclined toward himself, he should be less than he was when he clung to Him who supremely is. Therefore, having forsaken God, to be in oneself — that is, to please oneself — is not now to be nothing, but to draw near to nothing. Whence the proud are called by the Holy Scriptures by another name, self-pleasers. For it is good to have the heart lifted up on high;

yet not toward oneself, which belongs to pride, but toward the Lord, which belongs to obedience, which can belong to none but the humble. There is therefore, in a wondrous way, something of humility which makes the heart high, and there is something of exaltation which makes the heart low. This indeed seems as it were contrary — that exaltation should be downward and humility upward. But pious humility makes one subject to a superior; and nothing is superior to God; and therefore humility, which makes one subject to God, exalts. But exaltation, which is in vice, by that very fact rejects subjection and falls away from Him than whom there is nothing superior, and from this it will be lower, and it comes to pass as it is written: 'Thou didst cast them down while they were being lifted up.' For he does not say: