The first, then, are already in the very possession; the second are on the way, by which nevertheless one arrives most surely. There are three other kinds of men, assuredly to be reproved and detested. One is that of the opining, that is, of those who think themselves to know what they do not know; another, that of those who indeed perceive that they do not know, but do not seek in such a way that they can find; a third, that of those who neither think they know nor wish to seek. There are likewise, as it were, three neighbouring things in the minds of men, most worthy of distinction: to understand, to believe, to opine. If these be considered in themselves, the first is always without fault, the second sometimes with fault, the third never without fault. For to understand great and honourable, or even divine, things is most blessed;
but to understand superfluous things does no harm, though perhaps to learn them has done harm, when they occupied the time of necessary things. Even harmful things themselves, it is wretched not to understand, but to do or to suffer. For if someone understands how an enemy can be killed without his own peril, the understanding itself is not guilty of the desire; which if it be absent, what more innocent thing can be said? But to believe is then to be blamed, when either something unworthy is believed concerning God, or something is too easily believed concerning man. In other matters, however, if anyone believes something, provided he understands that he does not know it, there is no fault. For I believe that the most wicked conspirators were once slain by the valour of Cicero: yet this I not only do not know, but also know for certain that I can in no way know.
But to opine is, for two reasons, most base: because he who has persuaded himself that he already knows cannot learn — if indeed that thing can be learned — and because rashness in itself is the sign of a mind not well disposed. For even if someone thinks that he knows this very thing which I said about Cicero — although nothing hinders him from learning, since the matter itself can be held by no knowledge — nevertheless, in that he does not understand that it makes a great difference whether something is seen by the sure reason of the mind, which we call understanding, or is usefully committed to posterity by report or by writings to be believed, he assuredly errs. Nor is any error free from baseness. What we understand, therefore, we owe to reason; what we believe, to authority; what we opine, to error.
But every one who understands also believes; every one who opines also believes; not every one who believes understands; no one who opines understands. If, therefore, these three be referred to those five kinds of men which we mentioned a little before — that is, the two to be approved, which we placed first, and the three remaining, faulty ones — we find that the first kind, of the blessed, believes truth itself; the second, of the studious and lovers of truth, believes authority. In both of which kinds it is believed praiseworthily. But in the first of the faulty ones — that is, of those who opine that they know what they do not know — there is assuredly a faulty credulity. The other two kinds, to be reproved, believe nothing:
both those who seek the truth with despair of finding it, and those who do not seek at all. And this only in matters pertaining to some discipline. For in the other conduct of life I altogether know not in what way a man could believe nothing. Although even in those who say that in acting they follow probable things, they wish to seem rather able to know nothing than to believe nothing. For who does not believe what he approves? Or how is that which they follow probable, if it is not approved? Wherefore there can be two kinds of those who oppose the truth: one of those who attack knowledge only, not faith; another of those who condemn both — who, however, whether they can be found among human affairs, I again do not know.
These things have been said that we might understand that, by retaining faith even in those things which we have not yet comprehended, we are vindicated from the rashness of those who opine. For those who say that nothing is to be believed save what we know, guard against one thing only — the name of opinion, which must be confessed base and most wretched; but if they would diligently consider that it makes a very great difference whether a man think that he knows, or, understanding that he does not know, believes something moved by some authority, they would assuredly avoid the charge of errors and of inhumanity and pride. For I ask: if what is not known is not to be believed, how do children serve their parents and love them with mutual piety, whom they do not believe to be their parents?
For it can in no way be known by reason, but concerning the father it is believed on the interposed authority of the mother; while concerning the mother herself, for the most part, not even the mother is believed, but the midwives, nurses, and servants. For she from whom a son can be stolen and another substituted — can she not, being herself deceived, deceive? Yet we believe, and without any doubting we believe, what we confess cannot be known. For who does not see that piety, unless it be so, the most sacred bond of the human race, is violated by a most arrogant crime? For who, even a madman, would impute blame to him who has rendered due offices to those whom he believed to be his parents, even if they were not? Who, on the contrary, would not judge that he must be banished, who perhaps loved his true parents least, while he feared to love false ones?
Many things can be brought forward by which it may be shown that nothing at all of human society remains unharmed, if we determine to believe nothing which we cannot hold as perceived. But now receive what I now am confident I shall persuade you of more easily. When there is question of religion — that is, when there is question of worshipping and understanding God — those are the less to be followed who forbid us to believe, most readily promising reason. For it is doubtful to no one that all men are either fools or wise. Now, however, I call wise not men merely sensible and ingenious, but those in whom there is — as much as there can be in a man — the most firmly perceived knowledge of man himself and of God, and a life and morals congruous with this knowledge:
but the rest, however endowed with arts and idlenesses of whatever kind, of whatever mode of life, whether approvable or reprovable, I would reckon in the number of fools. Since this is so, who, being even moderately intelligent, would not plainly see that it is more useful and more wholesome for fools to obey the precepts of the wise than to pass their life by their own judgement? For every deed, if it be not rightly done, is a sin; nor can anything in any way be rightly done which does not proceed from right reason. Now right reason is virtue itself. But to which of men is virtue at hand, save to the mind of the wise man? Therefore only the wise man does not sin. Every fool, then, sins, except in those deeds in which he has obeyed a wise man;
for from right reason such deeds proceed, nor, so to speak, is the fool to be esteemed the master of his own deed, when he is as it were the instrument and ministry of the wise man. Wherefore, if for all men it is better not to sin than to sin, assuredly all fools would live better if they could be the servants of the wise. And if no one doubts that this is expedient in lesser matters — as in trading, or tilling a field, in taking a wife, in begetting and rearing children, in short in administering the household estate itself — much more is it so in religion.
For human affairs are readier for discernment than divine, and in whatever things are more sacred and more excellent — the greater the obedience and worship we owe them — the more wickedly and more perilously is it sinned. You see therefore that nothing at all remains for us, so long as we are fools, if the best and most religious life is dear to our heart, but that we seek out the wise, by obeying whom we may both not so greatly feel the dominion of folly while it is in us, and may sometime be able to escape it. Here again arises a most difficult question. For in what manner shall we fools be able to find the wise man, since almost no one dares openly, yet most men obliquely, claim this name for themselves.
Since concerning the very matters, in the knowledge of which wisdom consists, they so dissent among themselves that either none of them, or certainly one only, must of necessity be wise? But who this may be — when he is sought by the fool — in what manner he can be plainly discerned and perceived, I do not at all see. For no one can recognize anything by any signs whatever unless he has known that very thing whose signs they are. But the fool is ignorant of wisdom. For it is not, as with gold and silver and other things of that kind, permitted both to recognize it when you see it and not to have it; so that wisdom may be seen by the eye of a mind that lacks it.
For whatever we touch by the sense of the body is offered to us from without, and therefore it is permitted also to discern others' things with the eyes, even when we have nothing of them or of that kind. But what is grasped by the understanding is within, with the mind, and to have it is nothing other than to see it. But the fool lacks wisdom; therefore he does not know wisdom — for he could not see it with his eyes; but he cannot see it and not have it, nor have it and be a fool. Therefore he does not know it, and, so long as he does not know it, he cannot recognize it in another place. Therefore no one, so long as he is a fool, can by most certain knowledge find the wise man, by obeying whom he may be freed from so great an evil of folly.
To this so monstrous a difficulty, therefore, since we are inquiring about religion, God alone can bring a remedy: whom, unless we believe both that he is and that he succours human minds, we ought not even to seek the true religion itself. For what, after all, do we desire to investigate with so great an effort? What do we long to attain? Whither do we desire to arrive? Is it that which we do not believe either to exist or to pertain to us? Nothing is more perverse than such a mind. You, when you would not dare to ask a benefit of me — or would dare only shamelessly — unless you believed I would give it, now come to demand the discovery of religion, while you think that God either does not exist or, if he exists, does not care for us? What if the matter is so great that, unless diligently and with all one's strength sought, it cannot be found? What if
the very difficulty of the discovery exercises the mind of the seeker for grasping and setting forth what shall have been found? For what is more pleasant and more familiar to our eyes than this light? And yet men cannot endure and bear it after long darkness. What is more suited to a body exhausted by sickness than food and drink? Yet we see convalescents restrained and held back, lest they dare commit themselves to the fullness of the healthy, and by those very foods bring it about that they relapse into that disease which they were rejecting. I speak of convalescents. What? Do we not urge the sick themselves to take something? In which surely they would not obey us, with such great trouble, if they did not believe they would escape that disease.
When, therefore, will you give yourself to this most laborious and most toilsome inquiry? When will you dare to lay upon yourself so great a care and business, as great as the matter itself is worthy of, while you do not believe that what you seek exists? Rightly, therefore, has it been established by the majesty of catholic discipline that to those who approach religion faith should be urged before all things. And so let that heretic — if indeed our discourse is about those who wish to be called Christians — bring me, I beg you, what reason? What is there whereby he might recall me from believing, as though from rashness? If he bids me believe nothing, I do not believe that this very true religion exists at all among human affairs: which, since I do not believe it exists, I do not seek. But he, as I suppose, is about to point it out to the seeker;
for so it is written: 'He who seeks shall find.' To him, therefore, who forbids me to believe, I would not come, unless I believed something. Is there any greater madness than that I should displease him by that faith alone which rests on no knowledge — the faith which alone has led me to him himself? What of this, that all heretics exhort us to believe in Christ? Can they be more at variance with themselves? In which they are to be pressed doubly. First it must be asked of them where is the reason they promised, where the reproach of rashness, where the presumption of knowledge. For if it is base to believe anyone without reason, what do you await, what do you strive for, that I should believe someone without reason, so that I may more easily be led by your reason? Or will your reason build anything firm upon a foundation of rashness?
I speak according to those to whom we are displeasing by believing. For I judge that to believe before reason — when you are not fit for perceiving reason — and by that very faith to cultivate the mind for receiving the seeds of truth, is not only most wholesome, but altogether such that without it health cannot return to sick souls. Since this seems to them worthy of derision and full of rashness, they surely act shamelessly in urging that we believe in Christ. Next I confess that I have already believed in Christ, and have brought my mind to hold that it is true which he has said, even if it be propped up by no reason. Is it with this beginning, O heretic, that you are about to lead me?
Let me consider a little while with myself — for as to Christ himself, in the manner in which he willed to appear to men, who is proclaimed to have been seen even with those common eyes of the flesh, I did not see him — on whose testimony I have come to believe about him, so that, already furnished with such a faith, I may approach you. I see that I have believed none but the confirmed opinion of peoples and nations and a report exceedingly widespread; and that these peoples the mysteries of the catholic Church have everywhere taken possession of. Why then should I not most diligently inquire, above all among those, what Christ commanded — those by whose authority I was moved, so that I already believed Christ to have commanded something useful?
Will you then better expound to me what he said — one whom I would not suppose to have been or to be, if this were commended to me by you as something to be believed? This, then, as I said, I believed on the strength of a report made celebrated by widespread fame, by consent, by an antiquity long established. But you — so few, so turbulent, and so new — no one doubts that you put forward nothing worthy of authority. What, then, is this so great madness? 'Believe those men that Christ is to be believed, and learn from us what he said.' Why? I entreat you. For if those men failed and could teach me nothing, I would far more easily persuade myself that Christ is not to be believed, than that anything about him is to be learned save from those through whom I had come to believe in him. O huge presumption, or rather ineptitude!
'I teach you what Christ commanded.' Him in whom you believe? What? If I did not believe in him, could you teach me anything about him? 'But you must believe,' he says. On your commendation of him? 'No,' he says; 'for we lead by reason those who believe in him.' Why then should I believe in him? Because the report is well founded. Whether through you, or through others? 'Through others,' he says. Shall I then believe those men, that you may teach me? Perhaps I ought to, were it not that those very men chiefly warn me not to come to you at all; for they say that you hold pernicious doctrines. You will answer: 'They lie.' How then shall I believe them about Christ, whom they did not see, and not believe them about you, whom they are unwilling to see? 'Believe the writings,' he says.
But every writing, if it be brought forward as new and unheard-of, or commended by few with no confirming reason, is believed not on its own account but on that of those who bring it forward. Wherefore, if you bring forward these writings — you, so few and unknown — I have no wish to believe. At the same time you also act against your promise, imposing faith rather than rendering a reason. Again you will recall me to the multitude and the report. Restrain at last your obstinacy and some untamed lust, I know not what, of propagating your name, and rather advise me to seek out the leading men of this multitude — and to seek them most diligently and laboriously — that from these rather I may learn something about these writings, without whom I should not know at all that anything was to be learned.
But you — return to your hiding places, and lay no snare under the name of the truth, which you are attempting to snatch away from those very men to whom you yourself concede authority. But if they deny that even Christ is to be believed unless an indubitable reason has been rendered, they are not Christians. For certain pagans say this against us — foolishly indeed, yet not at variance with themselves nor self-contradictory. But who could bear these men to profess that they belong to Christ, who contend that nothing is to be believed unless they set forth to fools the plainest reason concerning God? Yet we see, so far as that very history teaches — to which they too yield — that he willed nothing sooner nor more strongly than to be believed, at a time when those with whom he had to do were not yet fit to receive the divine secrets.
For what else do so many and so great miracles accomplish, since he himself also says that they are done for no other purpose than that he might be believed? By faith he led the foolish; you lead by reason. He cried out that he might be believed; you cry out against it. He praised those who believed; you rebuke them. Unless indeed either he turned water into wine — to pass over other things — while men could have followed one who taught but did no such thing; or that voice is to count for nothing: 'Believe God, and believe me'; or he is to be blamed for rashness who would not have him come to his house, believing that by his mere command his servant's disease would depart. Therefore he, bringing the medicine that would heal the most corrupt of manners —
by miracles he won authority; by authority he merited faith; by faith he drew together the multitude; by the multitude he obtained antiquity; by antiquity he strengthened religion — so that neither the most inept novelty of heretics working by frauds, nor even the sluggish error of the pagans violently opposing, could tear it away in any part. Wherefore, although I am not able to teach, yet I do not cease to admonish: since many wish to seem wise and it is not easy for fools to discern whether they are so, entreat God with all earnestness and with all your prayers, with groanings, and finally, if it can be done, even with tears, that he may free you from the evil of error, if the blessed life is dear to your heart.
This will more easily come about if you willingly obey his precepts, which he willed to be confirmed by so great an authority of the catholic Church. For since the wise man is so joined in mind to God that nothing is interposed to separate them — for God is truth, and in no way is anyone wise unless he touch truth with the mind — we cannot deny that between the folly of man and the most sincere truth of God there is interposed, as something intermediate, the wisdom of man. For the wise man, so far as it is granted, imitates God; but to the foolish man there is nothing more nearly at hand for salutary imitation than the wise man; and since,
as has been said, it is not easy to understand him by reason, it was fitting that certain miracles should be brought before their very eyes, which fools use much more conveniently than the mind, so that first, by the authority of men who had been moved, their life and manners might be purged, and thus they might become apt to receive reason. Since, therefore, man was both to be imitated and yet hope was not to be placed in man, what could have been done more indulgently and generously by the divine, than that the very sincere, eternal, and unchangeable Wisdom of God, to which we ought to cleave, should deign to take up a man — who not only should do those things by which we are invited to follow God, but also should suffer those things by which we were deterred from following God?
For since no one can attain the most certain and supreme good unless he has loved it fully and perfectly — which will in no way come to pass so long as the evils of the body and of fortune are dreaded — he, by being born and working wondrously, won love, but by dying and rising again he shut out fear. Moreover, in all the rest of his acts — to pursue which would be long — he showed himself such that we might perceive both the divine clemency, to what height it reaches down, and human infirmity, to what height it can be raised up. This, believe me, is the most salutary authority; this is the first suspension of our mind from its earthly dwelling; this is the conversion, from love of this world, to the true God. Authority alone it is that moves fools, that they may hasten to wisdom.
So long as we cannot understand things pure and sincere, it is wretched indeed to be deceived by authority; but surely it is more wretched not to be moved at all. For if the providence of God does not preside over human affairs, there is no need to trouble oneself about religion. But if both the appearance of all things — which surely must be believed to flow from some fountain of truest beauty — and some inner conscience, I know not what, exhorts as it were publicly and privately all the better minds that God is to be sought and God to be served: then we must not despair that some authority has been established by that same God, leaning on which as on a sure step we may be lifted up toward God. But this, apart from reason — which, as we have often said, it is most difficult for fools to understand purely — moves us in a twofold way:
partly by miracles, partly by the multitude of those who follow. None of these is necessary for the wise man — who denies it? But the point now at issue is that we may be able to become wise, that is, to cleave to the truth: which assuredly a sordid soul cannot do. Now the sordidnesses of the soul, to explain briefly, are the love of any things whatever besides the soul and God; and the more thoroughly anyone is purged of these sordidnesses, the more easily he beholds the truth. To wish, therefore, to see the truth in order to purge the soul, when it is purged precisely in order that you may see, is surely perverse and preposterous. To the man, then, who is unable to behold the truth, that he may become fit for it and may allow himself to be purged, authority is at hand: which, as I said a little before, no one doubts prevails partly by miracles, partly by the multitude.
I call a miracle whatever appears arduous or unusual, beyond the hope or capacity of the one who marvels. In this kind, nothing is more suited to peoples and to foolish men in general than that which is brought before the senses. But again these are divided into two: for some produce only wonder, while others win great favor and goodwill besides. For if anyone should behold a man flying, since that affair brings the spectator no advantage beyond the spectacle itself, he only marvels. But if anyone afflicted with a grave and despaired-of disease should presently, as soon as he was bidden, recover, he will surpass the wonder at his own healing by love also for the one who heals.
Such things were done at that time when God appeared to men in a true man, as far as sufficed: the sick were healed, lepers cleansed; walking was restored to the lame, sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf. The men of that time saw water turned into wine, five thousand filled with five loaves, seas crossed on foot, the dead rising. Thus some things provided for the body by a more manifest benefit, others for the mind by a more hidden sign, and all provided for men by the testimony of majesty: so did the divine authority then move to itself the wandering souls of mortals. Why, you say, are these things not done now? Because they would not move, unless they were marvelous; but if they were customary, they would not be marvelous.
For the alternations of day and night, the most constant order of heavenly things, the fourfold turning of the years, the leaves falling from and returning to the trees, the boundless power of seeds, the beauty of light, the varieties of colors, of sounds, of odors, and of tastes — give these to one who sees and perceives them for the first time, with whom nevertheless we can converse: he is dazed and overwhelmed by the miracles. But we despise all these things, not by ease of understanding — for what is more obscure than their causes? — but surely by the constancy of perceiving them. Those miracles, then, were done most opportunely, so that, the multitude of believers being gathered and propagated by them, authority might be turned to useful effect upon manners themselves. And manners of whatever kind have such power to lay hold of the minds of men,
that even those things in them which are perverse — as generally happens where lusts prevail — we can more readily disapprove and detest than forsake or change. Do you think too little provision has been made for human affairs, in that nothing earthly, nothing fiery, nothing, in short, that the bodily sense touches, is to be worshipped as God — to whom we must aspire by understanding alone — a truth which not only a few most learned men dispute, but which even the unskilled crowd of males and females, among so many and diverse kinds of people, both believe and proclaim?
Consider that continence is carried even to the slenderest fare of bread and water, and fasts prolonged not only daily but even through many consecutive days; that chastity is carried even to the contempt of marriage and offspring; that patience is carried even to the disregard of crosses and flames; that liberality is carried even to patrimonies distributed to the poor; that, in short, the scorn of this whole world is stretched even to the desire of death. Few do these things; fewer do them well and prudently; but the peoples approve, the peoples praise, the peoples favor, the peoples, in a word, love them; the peoples accuse their own weakness, that they themselves cannot do such things — not without some advance of the mind toward God, nor without certain sparks of virtue.
This has come to pass by divine providence: through the prophecies of the prophets, through the humanity and the teaching of Christ, through the journeys of the apostles, through the insults, crosses, blood, and deaths of the martyrs, through the praiseworthy life of the saints, and, in all these, through miracles worthy of things and virtues so great, according to the opportuneness of the times. Since, therefore, we behold so great a help of God, so great an advance and fruit, shall we hesitate to hide ourselves in the bosom of that Church which, even up to the confession of the human race, from the apostolic see through the successions of bishops — while heretics barked in vain around it, and were condemned partly by the judgment of the people itself, partly by the gravity of councils, partly also by the majesty of miracles — has obtained the summit of authority?
To be unwilling to give her the first place is assuredly a mark either of the utmost impiety or of headlong arrogance. For if there is no sure way for souls to wisdom and salvation except when faith prepares them beforehand for reason, what else is it to be ungrateful for the divine help and aid, than to wish to resist an authority endowed with such strength? And if every branch of learning, however cheap and easy it may be to grasp, requires a teacher or master, what is fuller of rash pride than both to be unwilling to learn the books of the divine sacraments from their interpreters, and to dare to condemn them while yet unknown?