For these words, the more open and popularly true they are, so much the more do they strike a wholesome shame into those who, while they exhibit divine worship with fear to such images and, venerating and adoring them as though they were alive, gaze upon them, and offer prayers to them as though present, immolate victims, and pay their vows, are so affected altogether that they dare not think them lacking in sense. But lest these suppose that our books mean to sound only this — that such an affection is born in the human heart from idols — it is most openly written: For all the gods of the nations are demons. Whence too the apostolic teaching says not only what is read in John: Brethren, beware of images, but also what is in Paul:
What then do I say? That what is offered to idols is anything, or that an idol is anything? But the things which the nations sacrifice, they sacrifice to demons and not to God; and I would not have you become partakers with demons. Whence it can be sufficiently understood that not the sacrificing itself is reproved by the true religion in the superstitions of the nations — for the ancient saints sacrificed to the true God — but rather that it is offered to false gods and impious demons. For just as truth exhorts men to become companions of the holy angels, so impiety seduces them to the fellowship of demons, for whom eternal fire is prepared, just as an eternal kingdom is prepared for the fellowship of the saints. Nor do the impious excuse their sacrilegious rites and images from this, that they elegantly interpret what each thing signifies.
For all that interpretation is referred to the creature, not to the Creator, to whom alone is owed that service of religion which in Greek is called by the one name latreia. Nor do we say that the earth, seas, sky, sun, moon, stars, and certain powers not set forth in plain view are demons; but since every creature is partly corporeal and partly incorporeal — which we also call spiritual — it is manifest that what is done by us piously and religiously proceeds from the will of the mind, which is a spiritual creature and to be preferred to every corporeal one. Whence it is gathered that sacrifice must not be offered to a corporeal creature. There remains the spiritual, which is either pious or impious:
pious, namely, in men and angels who are just and rightly serving God; but impious in men and angels who are wicked, whom we also call demons. And on this account not even to a spiritual creature, however just, must sacrifice be offered, since the more pious it is and subject to God, so much the less does it deem itself worthy of such honor, which it knows is owed to none but God. How much more perniciously, then, is it to sacrifice to demons — that is, to a wicked spiritual creature, which, dwelling in this nearby and dark heaven as in its airy prison, is predestined to everlasting punishment!
Wherefore even when men say that they sacrifice to the higher celestial powers, which are not demons, and suppose that the difference is only in the name — that those call them gods, we call them angels — it is none but demons who set themselves to mocking these men with manifold deceit, since demons delight in error and in a manner feed upon human error; for the holy angels do not approve any sacrifice save that which is offered, out of the teaching of true wisdom and true religion, to the one true God, whom they serve in holy fellowship. Accordingly, just as impious pride, whether of men or of demons, commands or desires that these divine honors be exhibited to itself,
so pious humility, whether of men or of holy angels, has refused these things offered to itself and has shown to whom they were owed. Of which matter most manifest examples are shown in our sacred writings. But the sacrifices distributed by the divine utterances according to the suitability of the times — so that some were done before the manifestation of the New Testament, which is ministered from that very true victim of the one priest, that is, from the shed blood of Christ, and another now, which, being suited to this manifestation, we who are already called Christians by the declared name offer — this is demonstrated not only by the evangelical but also by the prophetic writings.
For a change not of God nor of religion itself, but only of sacrifices and sacraments, would now seem to be proclaimed shamelessly, had it not been foretold beforehand. For just as one and the same man, if he offers one thing to God in the morning and another in the evening, in accordance with the fitness of the time of day, does not thereby change God nor his religion — any more than he changes his own well-being who greets others one way in the morning and another in the evening — so throughout the whole course of the ages, when one thing was offered by the ancient saints and another is offered by those who now exist, the sacred mysteries are celebrated in ways fitting to the times not by human presumption but by divine authority, and neither God nor religion is changed. IV. ON THAT WHICH IS WRITTEN: WITH WHAT MEASURE YE METE, IT SHALL BE MEASURED TO YOU AGAIN.
Now then let us next consider the nature of that objection which he, cavilling at the Gospel, raised concerning the measure of sin and of punishment, thus: 'Christ,' he says, 'threatens eternal punishments to those who do not believe in him, and elsewhere he says: With what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again — quite ridiculously, he says, and self-contradictorily; for if he is to render punishment according to measure, and every measure is bounded by an end of time, what then do these threats of infinite punishment mean?' It is hard to believe that this question was put forward and posed by any philosopher worthy of the name, seeing that he says: All measure is bounded by time — as though measure were wont to belong only to periods of time, such as hours and days and years.
Or as when we say that a short syllable holds a single unit of time compared with a long syllable. For I suppose that pecks and firkins, urns and amphorae are not measures of time. How then is every measure bounded by time? Do not those very men say that yonder sun is everlasting? Yet they dare to investigate by geometrical measures how great it is in relation to the earth, and to report their findings. And whether this can or cannot be done, it is nonetheless established that the sun has its own proper measure of orbit; for if they grasp how great it is, they grasp its measure, and if they do not attain to this, they certainly do not grasp its measure — yet it is not therefore no measure at all, merely because men cannot know it. It is therefore possible for something to be both everlasting and to have a fixed measure of its own mode.
For I have spoken of the eternity of the sun according to their own view, so that they may be convicted by their own opinion and concede that something can be everlasting while yet having measure. And thus let them not suppose that the everlasting punishment which Christ threatened is not to be believed merely because he also said: With what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again. For if he had said, 'What you have measured out, that shall be measured to you,' even so it would not by all means be necessary to refer the saying to one and the same thing in every respect. For we can rightly say, 'What you plant, that you will pluck,' although no one plants a fruit but rather a tree, and plucks a fruit rather than a tree; but we say this with respect to the kind of tree, since one does not plant a fig-tree in order to pluck a nut from it. So it could be said:
'What you have done, you shall suffer' — not so that, if a man has committed rape, he should suffer rape, but that what he did to the law by that sin, the law should do to him; that is, because he removed the law that forbids such deeds out of his own life, the law itself should likewise remove him out of the life of men which it governs. Again, if he had said, 'As much as you have measured, so much shall be measured to you,' it would still not follow that we ought to understand the punishments to be in every respect equal to the sins; for wheat and barley, for example, are not equal, and it could surely be said, 'As much as you have measured, so much shall be measured to you' — that is, as much barley as wheat. But if the matter concerned pains, and it were said:
'As much pain as you have inflicted, so much shall be inflicted upon you' — it could happen that the pain be just as great even though longer in duration, that is, greater in delay yet equal in intensity. For if we say of two lamps, 'This fire burned just as hot as that one,' it will not therefore be false merely because one of them chanced to be extinguished sooner. And so, if a thing is 'so much' in one respect and not 'so much' in another, because it is not 'so much' in every respect, the respect in which it is 'so much' is not thereby false. But when he has said:
With what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you — and since it is manifest that the measure by which something is measured is one thing, and the very thing which is measured is another — it now becomes possible that with the measure by which men have measured out, for example, a peck of wheat, there should be measured to them thousands of pecks, so that there is a very great difference in the quantity of grain and none in the measure; not to mention the diversity of the things themselves, for it can happen not only that with the measure by which anyone has measured out barley, wheat should be measured to him, but that with the measure by which he has measured out grain, gold should be measured to him — and there be one peck of grain but very many of gold.
Thus, although both the kind and the quantity differ when the things themselves are not compared, it can nonetheless be most rightly said: 'With the measure with which he has measured, with that same it shall be measured to him.' But in what sense Christ said this appears clearly enough a little earlier: Judge not, he says, that ye be not judged; for with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged. Surely, if they judge with an unjust judgment, shall they be judged with an unjust one? God forbid! For there is no injustice with God. But it was said thus: With what judgment ye judge, with that ye shall be judged — as if it were said, 'With what will ye have done good, with that same shall ye be set free,' or:
'With what will ye have done evil, with that same shall ye be punished' — just as, if someone using his eyes for base lust were commanded to be blinded, he would surely rightly hear: 'With what eyes thou hast sinned, in those hast thou deserved punishment.' For each person uses the judgment of his own soul, whether good or evil, either for doing good or for sinning. Hence it is not unjust that with that by which one judges, in that same one should be judged — that is, that in the very judgment of his own soul he should pay the penalty, when he suffers those evils which follow upon a soul that judges wickedly. For there are also other manifest torments which are prepared to come afterward, these too drawn out from the same hinge of an evil will;
but in the soul itself, where the appetite of the will is the measure of all human deeds, punishment for the most part follows guilt immediately — a punishment greater in the one who does not feel it, through his more grievous blindness. Therefore, when he had said, With what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged, he went on to add: And with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you. For in his own will a good man measures out good deeds, and in that same will blessedness is measured to him; likewise in his own will an evil man measures out evil works, and in that same will misery is measured to him — since where each man is good, when he wills well, there also he is evil, when he wills ill. And thereby there also he becomes either blessed or miserable, that is, in the very disposition of his own will, which is the measure of all deeds and merits.
For it is by the qualities of wills, not by spans of time, that we measure things rightly done or sins committed. Otherwise it would be held a greater sin to fell a tree than to kill a man; for the former is done with long delay and many blows, the latter with a single blow in the briefest time. Yet if a man were punished with perpetual banishment for so great a sin committed in so brief a time, it would even be said that he was dealt with more mildly than he had deserved — although in temporal span the length of the punishment can in no way be compared with the brevity of the crime.
What contradiction is there, then, if the punishments shall be alike long, or even alike eternal, yet for some milder and for others harsher — so that, for those whose time is equal, the severity is not equal, because of the measure also of the sins that lies not in the prolongation of times but in the will of the sinners? For the will itself is punished, whether by torment of soul or of body, so that she who delights in sins should herself be smitten with penalties, and that he who judges without mercy should be judged without mercy. And in this sentence too the same measure holds only to this extent: that what one did not grant should not be granted to him; and thus what he himself is judged with shall be eternal, although what he judged could not be eternal.
In the same measure, therefore, eternal punishments are measured back for evil deeds that are not eternal, so that, because a man willed to have eternal enjoyment of his sin, he should find the eternal severity of vengeance. But the proposed brevity of my reply does not permit me to gather together all, or at least the very many, testimonies which the sacred books contain concerning sins and the penalties of sins, and from these to draw out a single sentence free of all ambiguity — if indeed I could accomplish this by the powers of my mind, even should I obtain fitting leisure. Yet for now I think it has been sufficiently shown that it is not contrary to the eternity of punishments that they are rendered in the same measure in which the sins were committed. V. ON THE SON OF GOD ACCORDING TO SOLOMON.
After this question, he who set forth these matters from Porphyry added this: 'You will surely deign,' he says, 'to instruct me also concerning that, whether Solomon truly said: God has no Son.' The answer is quickly given: Not only did he not say this, but he even said that God has a Son. For in his writings Wisdom, speaking, says: Before all the hills he begat me. And what is Christ but the Wisdom of God? Likewise in a certain passage of the Proverbs: God, he says, taught me wisdom, and I knew the knowledge of the saints. Who has ascended into heaven and descended? Who has gathered the winds in his bosom? Who has bound up the water in a garment? Who has held all the ends of the earth? What is his name, or what is the name of his Son?
Of these two which I mentioned at the end, one he referred to the Father, that is, 'What is his name,' because he had said, 'God taught me wisdom'; and the other evidently to the Son, when he says, 'or what is the name of his Son,' on account of the other things which are rather understood of the Son — namely, 'Who has ascended into heaven and descended,' which Paul thus recalls: He that descended is the same also that ascended up above all the heavens; 'Who has gathered the winds into his bosom?' — that is, the souls of believers into a hidden and secret place, to whom it is said: For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God; 'Who has bound up the water in a garment?' — so that it could be said: As many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ;
'Who has held the ends of the earth?' — he who said to his disciples: Ye shall be witnesses unto me in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea and Samaria, and unto the uttermost parts of the earth. VI. ON THE PROPHET JONAH. The last question was posed concerning Jonah, and it too not as though from Porphyry, but as if from the mockery of the pagans; for it was put thus: 'Then what,' he says, 'ought we to think concerning Jonah, who is said to have been in the belly of the whale for three days? For it is quite improbable and incredible that a man was swallowed with his clothing and was in the heart of the fish; or if it is a figure, you will deign to unfold it. Then what does that too mean, that a gourd sprang up above Jonah after he was vomited out? What was the cause that this should grow?
For I have observed that this kind of question is grievously ridiculed by the pagans with much guffawing.' To this the answer is that either all divine miracles are not to be believed, or there is no reason why this one should not be believed. But as for Christ himself, that he rose again on the third day, we should not believe it, if the faith of Christians feared the guffaw of the pagans. But since our friend has raised no question on this point — whether it is to be believed either that Lazarus was raised on the fourth day or that Christ himself rose on the third day — I greatly wonder that he has set down this deed concerning Jonah as incredible, unless perchance he thinks it easier for a dead man to be raised from the tomb than for a living man to have been preserved in the vast belly of a sea-beast.
For, to say nothing of the great size of sea-monsters which is reported by those who have experienced it, who would not conjecture how many men that belly — which those ribs enclosed, ribs that were fixed up in a public place at Carthage and are known to the people — could hold within its space? With what a gaping the mouth of that creature lay open, which was as it were the door of that cave! Unless perchance, as he supposed, the clothing would be a hindrance, that Jonah could not be swallowed unharmed, as though he had squeezed himself through some narrow passage — he who, hurled headlong down through a chasm of air, was so received that he was taken into the belly of the beast before he was mangled by its tooth.
Although the Scripture said neither that he was cast into that cavern naked nor that he was clothed, so that it can be understood that he rushed in there even naked, if perchance it were necessary that his garment be stripped from him as the shell is from an egg, that he might the more easily be swallowed. For so anxious are men about this prophet's clothing, as though he were said either to have crept through a small window or to have entered a bath, into which, even if it were necessary to enter clothed, it would scarcely be troublesome, yet not wonderful. But they truly have this, that they do not believe that in a divine miracle the vapour of the belly, by which foods are moistened, could have been so tempered as to preserve a man's life.
How much more incredible, then, would they hold those three men who were cast into the furnace by the impious king and walked about in the midst of the fire unharmed! Wherefore, if these men are unwilling to believe any divine miracles at all, they must be refuted by a different argument. For they ought not to set forth some single thing as incredible and call it into question, but all things that are narrated as such, or even more wonderful.
And yet if this which is written concerning Jonah were said to have been done by Apuleius of Madaura or by Apollonius of Tyana — of whom they boast many marvels on no trustworthy authority, although even demons do some things similar to those of the holy angels, not in truth but in appearance, not in wisdom but plainly in deceit — nevertheless, if some such thing were told, as I have said, of those whom they name magi or philosophers with praise, then not laughter but conceited pride would burst forth from their cheeks. So let them laugh at our Scriptures;
let them laugh as much as they can, while day by day they see themselves grow rarer and fewer, whether by dying or by believing; while all things are being fulfilled which those foretold, who so long ago laughed to scorn these men who would fight vainly against the truth, would bark emptily, would gradually fail away, and who not only left these things to be read by us their posterity, but even promised them to be experienced. Not indeed absurdly nor inopportunely is it inquired what these things signify, so that, when this has been expounded, they may be believed not only to have been done but also to have been recorded on account of some signification. First, therefore, let him who wishes to search out why this happened not doubt that the prophet Jonah was for three days in the vast belly of a sea-beast; for it was not done in vain, but nonetheless it was done.
For if things which are only said figuratively, but not done, move us to faith, how much more ought those things to move us which are not only said but also done figuratively! For as human custom speaks by words, so divine power speaks even by deeds; and as words new or less usual, sprinkled moderately and becomingly into human discourse, add splendour, so in wonderful deeds fittingly signifying something, divine eloquence is in a certain way more brilliant. Accordingly, why is it asked of us what that prefigured, that the beast swallowed the prophet and on the third day restored him alive, when Christ himself expounds it? An evil and adulterous generation, he says, seeketh a sign, and there shall no sign be given to it but the sign of the prophet Jonah;
for as Jonah was in the belly of the whale three days and three nights, so shall the Son of man be in the heart of the earth three days and three nights. But as to how an account is to be given of that same three-day period of the death of the Lord Christ — since by the part the whole is understood on the first day and the last, so that whole days, that is, with their nights, are reckoned as three — it is long to discuss, and it has already been said very often in other discourses.
As therefore Jonah passed from the ship into the belly of the whale, so Christ from the tree into the sepulchre, or into the depth of death; and as Jonah suffered for those who were imperilled by the tempest, so Christ for those who are tossed in this world; and as it was first commanded that it should be preached to the Ninevites by Jonah, but the prophecy of Jonah did not reach them except after the whale had vomited him out, so the prophecy was sent forth beforehand to the nations, but did not reach the nations except after the resurrection of Christ. Now indeed, in that he set up a booth for himself and sat down over against the city of Nineveh, awaiting what would befall it, the prophet bore the person of another signification; for he prefigured the carnal people of Israel.
For to this people belonged the sorrow over the salvation of the Ninevites, that is, over the redemption and liberation of the nations. Whence Christ came to call not the righteous but sinners to repentance. The shade, therefore, of the gourd over his head was the promises of the Old Testament, or those very gifts, in which there was assuredly, as the Apostle says, a shadow of things to come, affording as it were a shelter from the heat of temporal evils in the land of promise. But the morning worm, by whose gnawing the gourd withered, is again that same Christ, from whose mouth, when the Gospel was published abroad, all those things which flourished temporally among the Israelites under a shadowy prior signification, being emptied, wither away.
And now that people, having lost the kingdom of Jerusalem and its priesthood and sacrifice — the whole of which was a shadow of what was to come — is scorched in its captive dispersion by the great heat of tribulation, as Jonah, as it is written, was scorched by the burning of the sun, and grieves grievously; and yet to his grief and to the shade which he loved is preferred the salvation of the nations and of the penitent. Let the pagans still guffaw, and now with prouder garrulity deride Christ as a worm and this interpretation of the prophetic sacrament, while nonetheless that same worm gradually and little by little consumes them too. For concerning all such things Isaiah prophesies, through whom God says to us: Hearken unto me, ye that know judgment, my people, in whose heart is my law.
Fear ye not the reproach of men, neither be ye overcome by their revilings; nor count it a great matter that they despise you. For like a garment shall they be consumed by time, and like wool shall they be eaten by the moth; but my righteousness abideth for ever. Let us therefore recognize the morning worm, since in that psalm too, whose title is inscribed, For the morning upholding, he deigned to call himself by this name: I, he says, am a worm and no man, a reproach of men and the outcast of the people. This reproach is of those reproaches which we are commanded not to fear through Isaiah, who says: Fear ye not the reproach of men. By this worm, as by a moth, are they eaten who under his evangelical tooth, day by day,
marvel at their own dwindling as they fail away. Let us recognize him, and for the sake of divine salvation let us endure human reproaches. He is a worm on account of the lowliness of the flesh, perhaps also on account of the virgin birth; for this creature for the most part is born of flesh or of some earthly thing without any intercourse. He is of the morning, because he rose again at dawn. That gourd could certainly have withered even without any little worm. Finally, if God had need of a worm for this purpose, what need was there to add 'of the morning,' unless that that worm might be recognized who sings, For the morning upholding: But I am a worm and no man? What is more luminous than this prophecy, now by the very outcome and fulfilment of events?
For even if this worm was mocked while he hung on the cross, as is written in the same psalm: They spake with their lips and shook the head: 'He trusted in God, let him deliver him; let him save him, seeing he delighteth in him' — when those things were fulfilled which he there foretold: They pierced my hands and my feet, they numbered all my bones;
but they, they looked and stared upon me, they parted my garments among them and upon my vesture did they cast lots — which is prophesied in the ancient book as to be with as great a manifestation as the manifestation with which it is recited in the new Gospel as having been done — but if in this humiliation, as I had begun to say, this worm was mocked, is he still to be mocked, when we behold those things being fulfilled which the psalm itself has in what follows: All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn unto the Lord, and all the kindreds of the nations shall worship before him, for the kingdom is the Lord's, and he shall rule over the nations? So were the Ninevites remembered and turned unto the Lord.
This salvation of the penitent nations, prefigured so long before in Jonah, Israel bewailed, as now she bewails, stripped of the shade and wounded by the heat. Let it indeed be permitted to anyone to open in whatever other way — provided it be according to the rule of faith — all the other things concerning the prophet Jonah that are veiled in mysteries; but that plainly, which was in the belly of the whale for three days, it is not lawful to understand otherwise than as was revealed by the heavenly Master himself in the Gospel, as we have recalled. We have expounded the things proposed as best we could; but let him who proposed them now become a Christian, lest perchance, while he waits to finish his questions before the end of the sacred books, he first finish this life before he passes from death to life.
For it can happen that, before he is imbued with the Christian sacraments, he inquires about the resurrection of the dead; and it must perhaps be granted also, what he asked concerning Christ, why he came so long afterward, or if there be any other few and great questions on which the rest depend. But if such as that one, With what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you, or such as this concerning Jonah — if he thinks that all such questions too must be finished before he becomes a Christian, he considers all too little either the human condition or his own age already.
For there are innumerable questions which are not to be finished before faith, lest life be finished without faith; but plainly, faith once held, they are most zealously to be sought out for the exercise of the pious delight of faithful minds, and what shines forth in them is to be shared without the swelling of arrogance, while what lies hidden is to be borne without loss of salvation. CIII. TO AUGUSTINE, RIGHTLY AND DESERVEDLY TO BE RECEIVED AND IN ALL WAYS TO BE HONOURED AS LORD AND BROTHER: NECTARIUS SENDS GREETING IN THE LORD.