God is not said to fill the world as water, as air, as light itself does, so that with a smaller part of Himself He fills a smaller part of the world and with a greater a greater. He knows how to be whole everywhere and to be contained by no place; He knows how to come without withdrawing from where He was; He knows how to depart without deserting whither He had come. The human mind marvels at this, and because it does not grasp it, perhaps does not even believe it. Let it first scrutinize its very self and marvel; let it, if it can, raise itself a little from the body and from those things which it is wont to perceive through the body, and let it see what that thing is which uses the body. But perhaps it cannot; for 'it is the mark of great genius,' as someone says, 'to call the mind away from the senses and to lead thought away from custom.'
Let it, then, scrutinize the very senses of the body somewhat more unusually and vigilantly. There are certainly the fivefold senses of the body, which can exist neither without a body nor without a soul, since to perceive belongs only to what is living—which the body has from the soul—nor do we see, hear, and use the other three senses without bodily instruments and, as it were, vessels and organs. Let this rational soul attend, and consider the senses of the body not with the senses of the body but with the mind and reason themselves. Certainly a man cannot perceive unless he is alive; but he lives in the flesh, before death separates the two. How, then, does the soul perceive things that are outside its own flesh, when it lives only in its own flesh?
Are not the stars in heaven very far distant from its flesh? Does it not see the sun in heaven? Is not to perceive the same as to see, since among the five senses sight is more excellent than the rest? Does it then also live in heaven, because it perceives in heaven too, and there can be no perception where there is no life? Or does it perceive even where it does not live, since—though it lives only in its own flesh—it perceives also in those places which, beyond its flesh, contain the things it touches with its gaze? Do you see how hidden this is in a sense so conspicuous, which is called sight? Attend also to hearing. For this too in a way pours itself outward from the flesh. For whence do we say 'It sounds outside,' unless we perceive there where it sounds? Therefore there too, outside our flesh, we live.
Or can we perceive even where we do not live, since perception cannot exist without life? The other three senses perceive within themselves—although concerning smell there can be some doubt. But concerning taste and touch there is no controversy, for the things we taste and touch we perceive nowhere else than in our own flesh. Accordingly, let these three senses be set aside from this consideration. Sight and hearing bring forward a marvellous question: either how the soul perceives where it does not live, or how it lives where it is not. For it is only in its own flesh; yet it perceives also beyond its own flesh. For there indeed it perceives where it sees, since to see also is to perceive; there it perceives where it hears, since to hear also is to perceive.
Either, then, it also lives there — and thereby is also present there — or it perceives even where it does not live, or it lives even where it is not. All these things are astonishing; none of them can be affirmed without a certain absurdity, so to speak, and we are speaking of a sense that is as good as dead. What, then, is the soul itself apart from the body's sense — that is, in the mind, by which it considers these matters? For it is not by the body's sense that it judges concerning the senses of the body themselves.
And do we suppose that something incredible is being said to us concerning God's omnipotence, when it is said that the Word of God, through whom all things were made, took a body from a virgin and appeared to mortal senses — in such a way that He did not corrupt His own immortality, did not change His eternity, did not lessen His power, did not forsake the governance of the world, and did not withdraw from the Father's bosom (that is, from the secret place in which He is with Him and in Him)! Understand thus the Word of God, through whom all things were made: not so as to imagine that anything of Him passes away and becomes past out of future. He abides as He is, and everywhere He is wholly present. He comes, however, when He is manifested, and when He is hidden, He withdraws.
Yet He is present, whether hidden or manifest, just as light is present to the eyes of one who sees and of one who is blind; but to the seeing it is present as near at hand, while to the blind it is indeed absent. So too the voice is present to ears that hear, and it is present even to the deaf; but to the former it lies open, from the latter it lies hidden. And what is more wonderful than what happens in our voices and sounding words, in a matter that is, of course, swiftly transitory?
For when we speak, there is no room even for the second syllable unless the first has ceased to sound; and yet, if a single hearer is present, he hears the whole of what we say; and if two are present, both hear just as much, which is also whole for each one; and if a silent multitude hears, they do not break the sounds up among themselves into little portions, like morsels of food, but all that sounds is both wholly present to all and wholly present to each. Is it not, then, rather this that is incredible: that a passing word of man, which offers itself to the ears, should be incredible — while the abiding Word of God does not offer itself to things, so that, just as this word is heard whole even by individuals at once, so that Word should be at once everywhere present as a whole?
For God is great not by mass but by power — He who gave to little ants and little bees a sense more like providence than He gave to asses and camels; who from the tiniest grain of seed creates so great a magnitude of the fig tree, though from far larger seeds many things far smaller are born; who enriched the pupil, so small, with a keenness by which, flashing forth through the eyes, in the twinkling of an eye nearly half the heaven is surveyed; who from the point and, as it were, centre of the brain diffuses all the senses in a fivefold distribution; who by the heart, so tiny a member, dispenses vital motion through all the parts of the body — by these and suchlike things imparting great things out of the least, He who is not small in small things.
For the very greatness of His power, which feels no straits in narrowness, made fruitful the virginal womb by a childbearing not adventitious but native; that same power fitted to itself a rational soul, and through that soul also a human body, and altogether a whole man to be changed for the better — while it was in no way changed for the worse — deigning to take from him the name of humanity, and lavishly bestowing on him the name of divinity; that same power brought forth the infant's limbs through the mother's inviolate virginal womb, which limbs it afterward brought in, as those of a young man, through closed doors. If here a reason is sought, it will not be wonderful; if an example is demanded, it will not be unique. Let us grant that God is able to do something which we confess ourselves unable to investigate.
In such matters, the whole reason of the deed is the power of the Doer. Now that which is dissolved into sleep, and is nourished by food, and feels all human affections, persuades men that He is man — a man whom He assuredly did not consume, but assumed. Behold, thus it was done; and yet certain heretics, by a perverse wondering at and praising of His power, were utterly unwilling to acknowledge in Him the human nature, wherein lies the whole commendation of that grace by which He makes safe those who believe in Him — He who contains the deep treasures of wisdom and knowledge, and imbues with faith the minds which He may carry over to the eternal contemplation of unchangeable truth. What if the Almighty were to create a man formed anywhere, not out of a mother's womb, but were suddenly to bring him before men's sight?
What if He were to change no ages from childhood into youth, and were to take no foods, no sleep? Would He not confirm the opinion of error, and would He in no way be believed to have taken on a true man; and while doing all things wondrously, would He not take away what He did mercifully? But as it is, He appeared as mediator between God and men in such a way that, joining both natures in the unity of person, He both exalted the customary with the uncustomary, and tempered the uncustomary with the customary. And what does God do that is not wonderful in all the motions of the creature — except that by daily custom they have become cheap? In short, how many familiar things are trodden underfoot which, when considered, are stupefying! Just as the very power of seeds — what numbers it possesses, how full of life, how effective —
how secretly powerful, how great the works it accomplishes in something small — who could reach it with the mind, who could set it forth in speech? He, therefore, wrought a man for Himself without seed, who in the nature of things works even seeds without seeds; He preserved in His own body the numbers of the seasons and the measures of the ages, who without any mutability of Himself, by changing, wove together the order of the ages. For this grew in time, because it began from time; but the Word in the beginning, through whom the times were made, chose a time in which to take on flesh — He did not yield to time so as to be turned into flesh; for the man drew near to God, God did not withdraw from Himself.
But in this way certain persons demand that a reason be rendered to them, how God was mingled with man so that the one person of Christ came to be — although this had to happen only once — as if they themselves could render a reason concerning a thing that happens daily, namely how the soul is mingled with the body so that one person of a man comes to be. For just as in the unity of person the soul makes use of the body, that there may be a man, so in the unity of person God makes use of a man, that there may be Christ. In that person, then, there is a mingling of soul and body; in this person there is a mingling of God and man — provided that the hearer withdraws from the custom of bodies, by which two liquids are wont to be so mingled that neither preserves its own integrity, although even in bodies themselves uncorrupted light is mingled with the air.
Therefore the person of a man is a mingling of soul and body, but the person of Christ is a mingling of God and man; for when the Word of God was mingled with a soul having a body, it took on at once both the soul and the body. That happens daily for the procreating of men; this was done once for the setting free of men. Yet the commingling of two incorporeal things ought to have been more easily believed than that of one incorporeal and another corporeal. For if the soul is not deceived in its own nature, it comprehends that it is incorporeal; much more is the Word of God incorporeal — and thereby the mingling of the Word of God and the soul ought to have been more credible than that of soul and body. But the latter we experience in our very selves; the former we are bidden to believe in Christ.
But if we were bidden to believe both alike, as things equally unexperienced by us, which of these should we more readily believe? How should we not confess that two incorporeal things could more easily have been mingled than one incorporeal and the other corporeal — if indeed the name of mixture or mingling is not unworthily admitted for these things, on account of the custom of corporeal things, which behave far otherwise and are of another born nature?
The Word of God, therefore, who is likewise the Son of God, coeternal with the Father, likewise the power and wisdom of God — reaching from the highest bound of the rational creation to the lowest bound of the corporeal creation, ordering all things mightily and disposing them sweetly, present and hidden, nowhere shut in, nowhere torn apart, nowhere swollen, but without mass everywhere wholly present — in a far different manner, indeed, than that by which He is present to the other creatures, took on a man, and made of Himself and that man one Jesus Christ, mediator of God and men: equal to the Father according to His divinity, but less than the Father according to the flesh (that is, according to His manhood); unchangeably immortal according to the divinity equal to the Father, and the same one changeable and mortal according to the infirmity akin to us. In this Christ, at that time which He Himself knew to be most opportune and had disposed before the ages, there came to men the teaching and the help for laying hold of everlasting salvation:
the teaching, indeed, so that those things which were profitably and truly said here before — not only by the holy prophets, who said all things truly, but even by philosophers and by the poets themselves and by authors of writings of every kind, who (as who could doubt?) have mingled many true things with false — should be confirmed also by His authority made present in the flesh, for the sake of those who could not discern and distinguish those truths in the innermost truth itself. This Truth, even before He took on a man, was Himself present to all who were able to be partakers of Him; but especially, indeed, by the example of His own incarnation He salutarily persuaded of this: that, since very many men, greedy of divinity, thought that through the heavenly powers (which they reckoned to be gods) and through various rites they must aspire — not of sacred things but
of sacrileges — and thought they must aspire to God more proudly than piously (in which matter, in place of the holy angels, demons offer themselves to them by the kinship of pride) — men might know that God is so near to the piety of men, unto whom (as though set far off) they were aspiring through interposed powers, that He deigned to take on a man and in a certain manner to be united with him, so that a whole man might thus be fitted to Him, just as a body is fitted to the soul, apart from that mutable commingling into which God is not converted, and which we see that both the body and the soul possess;
the help, moreover, is that without the grace of faith, which is from Him, no one can conquer vicious lusts, and, if he has not conquered any remnant of them, [can obtain that it] be purged by venial remission. As, therefore, concerns His teaching, what utterly untutored person now, or what abject little woman, does not believe in the immortality of the soul and a life to be after death? Yet when Pherecydes the Syrian first argued this of old among the Greeks, he so moved Pythagoras of Samos by the novelty of that argument that he turned him from an athlete into a philosopher. Now, therefore — as Maro says and we all see — the Assyrian spice-plant grows commonly everywhere.
But as for what pertains to the help of the grace which is in Christ, He it is altogether, under whose leadership, if any traces of our wickedness remain, 'made void, they shall release the lands from perpetual dread.' 'But,' they say, 'no marks of so great a majesty have shone forth with fitting signs, since that spectral purification, the healing of the weak, life restored to the dead — if the others too be considered — are small things for God.' We too, indeed, confess that the prophets did certain such things. For among these signs, what is more excellent than that the dead should have lived again? Elijah did this, Elisha did this;
for as to the miracles of the magi, whether they too raised the dead, let those look to it who try to convict Apuleius — as he most copiously defends himself against the charges of the magic arts — not by accusing but by praising him. We read that the magicians of the Egyptians, most skilled in those arts, were overcome by Moses, the servant of God, when they were performing certain wonders by unspeakable arts, while he, simply calling upon God, overthrew all their contrivances. But Moses himself and the other most truthful prophets prophesied the Lord Christ and gave Him great glory, foretelling that He would come — not as one equal to themselves, nor as one superior in the same power of miracles, but plainly as Lord and God of all, made man for the sake of men.
For this reason He too willed to do such things, lest it should be absurd that He who had done them through those men should not do them Himself. But nevertheless He also had to do something proper to Himself: to be born of a virgin, to rise from the dead, to ascend into heaven. He who thinks this too little for God — what more he expects, I do not know. For I judge that such things are demanded as He, bearing a man, ought to have done. For 'in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God, and all things were made through Him.' Should He, having taken on a man, have made another world, so that we might believe Him to be the one through whom the world was made? But no greater world, nor one equal to this, could come to be in this world. If, on the other hand, He were to make a lesser one, below this, that likewise would be reckoned too little.
Because, therefore, it was not fitting that He should make a new world, He did new things in the world. For a man begotten of a virgin, raised from the dead into eternal life, and exalted above the heavens is perhaps a more powerful work than the world. Here perhaps they answer that they do not believe this was done. What, then, is to be done with men who despise the lesser things and do not believe the greater? Life restored to the dead is believed, because others did it, and it is a small thing for God; a flesh proper to Himself, created of a virgin and lifted from death into eternal life above heaven, is not believed, because no one did it, and it befits God. And by this, whatever each person thinks easy — not to do, but to grasp — he accepts with an even mind; things beyond that he holds, as though feigned, for falsehoods.
Be not like them, I beseech you. These matters are discussed more at length, and all the recesses of the necessary questions are examined, sifted, and laid open. But faith opens the entrance to the understanding; unbelief closes it. Whom would it not move to believe — that from the beginning the very order of the deeds done, and the very connection of the times, giving faith concerning the present from the past, confirming the earlier things by the later and more recent, and the ancient by the newer? One man is chosen from the nation of the Chaldeans, endowed with a most faithful piety, to whom the divine promises are set forth to be fulfilled after so long a series of ages, in the last times; and in his seed all nations are foretold to be about to have blessing.
Thus, worshipping the one true God, creator of the universe, in his old age he begets a son of a wife whom barrenness and age had already rendered utterly bereft of hope of childbearing. From him is propagated a most numerous people, multiplied in Egypt, whither the divine dispensation, growing, had transferred that stock from the eastern regions by things promised and accomplished. This mighty nation is led out of the servitude of Egypt by dreadful signs and miracles, and, the impious nations having been driven out, is brought into the land of promise, established there, and even exalted with a kingdom.
Then, sin gaining the upper hand, most often offending by sacrilegious presumptions the true God who had conferred upon it such benefits, and scourged by various disasters and consoled by prosperities, it is led on down to the incarnation and manifestation of Christ. This Christ — the Word of God, the Son of God, God to come in the flesh, to die, to rise again, to ascend into heaven, and by His most prevailing name to have among all nations peoples consecrated to Him, and in Him the remission of sins and eternal salvation to be for those who believe — all the promises of that nation, all the prophecies, priesthoods, sacrifices, the temple, and altogether all the sacraments proclaimed.
Christ also came; in His birth, life, deeds, words, sufferings, death, resurrection, and ascension all the proclamations of the prophets are fulfilled. He sends the Holy Spirit, fills the faithful gathered together in one house and awaiting this very promise by prayer and desire. Filled, moreover, with the Holy Spirit, they suddenly speak in the tongues of all nations, confidently reprove errors, preach the most wholesome truth, exhort to repentance of the past guilty life, and promise pardon from the divine grace. Fitting signs and miracles follow upon the preaching of piety and true religion. Savage unbelief is stirred up against them; they endure the foretold things, they hope for the promised things, they teach the precepts.
Few in number, they are scattered throughout the world; with wonderful ease they convert peoples; among enemies they increase; by persecutions they grow; through the straits of afflictions they are spread abroad even to the ends of the earth. From the most unlearned, from the most abject, from the very fewest, they are enlightened, ennobled, multiplied. The most illustrious minds, the most cultivated eloquence, and the wondrous expertise of keen, fluent, and learned men they subject to Christ, and turn to preaching the way of piety and salvation.
Amid alternating adversities and prosperities of affairs, they watchfully exercise patience and temperance; while the world declines toward its end and, with things grown weary, gives token of the last age, they await with much greater confidence — because this too was foretold — the eternal felicity of the heavenly city. And amid all these things, against the Church of Christ the unbelief of impious nations rages; she overcomes it by suffering, and by professing an unshaken faith amid the savagery of those who withstand her. As the sacrifice of the revealed truth (which was long veiled under mystical promises) succeeds, those sacrifices by which this was prefigured are, with the very overthrow of the temple, taken away.
The very nation of the Jews, reprobate through unbelief, uprooted from its seats, is scattered everywhere throughout the world, so that everywhere it may carry the holy books, and thus the testimony of prophecy — by which Christ and the Church were foretold — lest it be reckoned to have been feigned by us for the occasion, may be produced by the very adversaries, wherein it was also foretold that they themselves would not believe. The temples and images of demons and sacrilegious rites are, little by little and by turns, according to the prophetic predictions, overthrown. Heresies against the name of Christ, yet under the veil of the name of Christ, sprout up — as they were foretold — for the exercising of the doctrine of holy religion.
All these things, as they are read as foretold, are so beheld as fulfilled; and from these things now, so many and so great, the things that remain are awaited as to be fulfilled. What mind, then, greedy of eternity and moved by the brevity of the present life, could contend against the light and summit of this divine authority? What discussions, what writings of any philosophers whatever, what laws of any states whatever, are in any way to be compared with the two precepts on which Christ says the whole Law and the Prophets hang? 'You shall love the Lord your God with your whole heart and with your whole soul and with your whole mind, and you shall love your neighbor as yourself.' Here is physics, since all the causes of all natures are in God the creator; here is ethics:
since a good and honorable life is formed from no other source than when the things that are to be loved are loved in the manner in which they are to be loved — that is, God and neighbor; here is logic, since the truth and light of the rational soul is nothing else than God; here too is the welfare of a praiseworthy commonwealth, for the best city is neither founded nor guarded save on the foundation and bond of faith and firm concord, when the common good is loved — which good, supreme and most true, is God — and in Him men love one another most sincerely in turn, when they love themselves for His sake, from whom they cannot conceal the mind with which they love. Moreover, the very manner of speaking by which holy Scripture is woven — how accessible to all, though penetrable by very few!
The things which it contains openly, it speaks to the heart of the unlearned and the learned, as a familiar friend without disguise; but the things which it hides in mysteries, it does not raise up with proud speech, such that a somewhat slow and untaught mind should not dare to approach it, as a poor man to a rich; rather, it invites all with humble discourse, whom it may not only feed with what is manifest, but also exercise with hidden truth — having in things plain what it has in things recondite. But lest the open things should be scorned, the same things are again desired when covered; being desired, they are in a certain way renewed; being renewed, they are sweetly made intimate. By these things wicked minds are salutarily corrected, small ones nourished, and great ones delighted.
That mind is an enemy to this doctrine which, whether by erring, does not know it to be most wholesome, or, by being sick, hates the medicine. You see how prolix a letter I have made. If, then, anything moves you and you count it of such worth that it be thoroughly treated between us, let not the limit of ordinary letters — as though it must be kept — make straits for you, since you know very well how large the ancients made theirs when they were doing something which they were unable to unfold briefly. And even if the custom of authors belonging to other kinds of literature were otherwise, the authority of our own writers would be set before us in this matter as more worthily to be imitated.
Consider, then, the manner of the apostolic letters, or even of those who treated of those divine oracles; and be not loath either to propose many things to be inquired into, if many things stir you, or to turn over somewhat longer what you inquire, so that, as far as it can be done through such as we are, no cloud of doubt may remain to obstruct the light of the truth. For I know that your excellency endures the most obstinate contradictions of certain persons, who for this reason think, or wish to be thought to think, that Christian doctrine does not suit the good of the commonwealth, because they do not wish the commonwealth to stand by the firmness of virtues, but by the impunity of vices.
But not as with a king who is a man, or with any ruler of a state, so also with God is whatever is sinned by many left unpunished. His mercy, however, and grace — proclaimed to men through the man Christ, but imparted through God and the Son of God, that same Christ Himself — does not forsake those who live by faith in Him and piously worship Him, whether they patiently and bravely undergo the evils of this life, or mercifully and temperately use its goods — being about to receive for both an eternal reward in the city above and divine, where now there is neither calamity to be grievously borne, nor desire to be laboriously reined in, but only, without any difficulty and with perfect liberty, the love of God and neighbor to be retained.
May the most merciful omnipotence of God guard you, safe and more blessed, illustrious lord and deservedly distinguished and most excellent son. I most dutifully greet your holy mother, most worthily to be honored in Christ, whose prayers on your behalf may God hear; for your merits' sake I salute her. My holy brother and fellow bishop Possidius greets your excellency warmly. CXXXVIII. TO THE EXCELLENT LORD AND DESERVEDLY DISTINGUISHED, MOST DEAR AND MOST LONGED-FOR SON MARCELLINUS, AUGUSTINE SENDS GREETING IN THE LORD. To the illustrious and most eloquent man, most beloved by us, Volusianus, no more had to be answered than to that which he thought ought to be inquired into.
But as for those things which you yourself sent to me in your letter to be treated and resolved — whether they be suggested or urged by him or even by others — they ought rather to have been treated and resolved and sent to you, according to our powers, not in the manner in which such matters must be dealt with in the business of books, but in the manner that is possible for the conversation of a letter, so that, if it seem good to you (you who by daily disputations test what motions of theirs there are), these letters may be read to them also. But if, to their little ears, less well cultivated with the piety of faith, this discourse does not suffice, let that which you think may suffice for them first be worked out between us; then at length let what has been worked out be conveyed to them.