文集（天主之城·論三位一體等） 第 12 章

[I] We speak of the City of God, whose witness is that Scripture which—not by fortuitous movements of minds, but plainly by the disposition of the supreme Providence—has, by its divine and surpassing authority, subjected to itself above all the writings of all the nations all the kinds of human intellects. For there it is written: Glorious things are spoken of thee, O City of God; and in another psalm it is read: Great is the Lord and greatly to be praised in the city of our God, in His holy mountain, spreading abroad the exultations of the whole earth; and a little after in the same psalm: As we have heard, so also we have seen, in the city of the Lord of hosts, in the city of our God; God hath founded it forever; likewise in another:

There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God; the Most High hath sanctified His tabernacle. God is in the midst of her; she shall not be moved. By these and testimonies of this kind, all of which it would be too long to recount, we have learned that there is a certain City of God, whose citizens we have longed to be, moved by that love which its Founder has inspired in us. To this Founder of the holy City the citizens of the earthly city prefer their own gods, being ignorant that He is the God of gods—not of false gods, that is, of the impious and proud, who, deprived of His unchangeable and universally common light and thereby reduced to a certain needy power, in a certain manner pursue their own private powers and seek divine honors from their deceived subjects;

but of the gods who are pious and holy, who take more delight in subjecting themselves to the One than in subjecting many to themselves, and in worshipping God rather than in being worshipped in the place of God. But to the enemies of this holy city we have replied in the ten preceding books, as far as we were able, with the help of our Lord and King.

But now, recognizing what is expected of me and not forgetful of my debt, I shall—as far as I am able, relying on the aid of that same Lord and King everywhere—undertake to discuss the origin, the course, and the appointed ends of the two cities, the earthly, namely, and the heavenly, which, as I have said, are in this present age in a certain manner intertwined and mutually mingled. And first I shall tell how the beginnings of these two cities were foreshadowed in the diversity among the angels.

[II] It is a great and altogether rare thing, when the whole creation, both corporeal and incorporeal, has been considered and found to be mutable, to transcend it by the effort of the mind and to arrive at the immutable substance of God, and there to learn from Himself that all nature which is not what He Himself is was made by none other than Himself. For thus God speaks with man not through any bodily creature, resounding in bodily ears, so that the spaces of air are struck between the one who sounds and the one who hears, nor through the like spiritual medium which is shaped by likenesses of bodies, as in dreams or in some other such manner (for even so He speaks as it were to the ears of the body, because He speaks as it were through a body and as though with the interval of bodily places interposed;

for such visions are very like bodies); but He speaks by the truth itself, if anyone is fit to hear with the mind and not with the body. For He speaks to that in man which is better than the other parts of which man consists, and than which God alone is better. For since man is most rightly understood, or, if this cannot be, at least believed to have been made in the image of God, surely it is by that part of himself that he is nearer to the God above him, by which he surpasses the lower parts of himself which he has in common even with the beasts.

But because the mind itself, in which reason and understanding naturally reside, is weakened by certain dark and ancient vices, not only for cleaving to and enjoying, but even for enduring the immutable light, until, being renewed and healed from day to day, it becomes capable of so great a felicity, it had first to be imbued and purified by faith. And that it might walk more confidently toward the truth in that faith, the Truth itself, God the Son of God, having assumed manhood without consuming the Godhead, established and founded this same faith, that there might be for man a way to man's God through the God-man. For this is the mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus. For He is mediator in that He is man, and in that same respect He is also the way.

For if between him who journeys and the goal to which he journeys there is a way in between, there is hope of arriving; but if the way be lacking, or it be unknown which way one must go, what does it profit to know whither one must go? Now the only way most thoroughly fortified against all errors is that one and the same should be both God and man: as God the goal to which one goes, as man the way by which one goes. [III] He spoke first through the prophets, then through Himself, afterward through the apostles, as much as He judged to be sufficient; and He also established the Scripture which is called canonical, of most eminent authority, to which we give faith concerning those matters which it is not expedient to be ignorant of, and yet which we are not fit to know by ourselves.

For if those things can be known by our own testimony which are not remote from our senses, whether inner or even outer (whence they are also called things present, because we say they are thus before the senses, just as things before the eyes are those which are at hand to the eyes): surely those things which are remote from our senses, since we cannot know them by our own testimony, we seek other witnesses concerning them and believe those from whose senses we do not believe them to be, or to have been, remote. As, then, concerning visible things which we have not seen we believe those who have seen them, and so likewise concerning other things that pertain to each one's own bodily sense:

so concerning those things which are perceived by soul and mind (for the mind too is most rightly called a sense, whence also the word 'sentence' has taken its name), that is, concerning invisible things which are remote from our inner sense, we ought to believe those who have learned these things as set in order in that incorporeal light, or who contemplate them as abiding there. [IV] Of all visible things the greatest is the world; of all invisible things the greatest is God. But that the world is, we behold; that God is, we believe. But that God made the world, we more safely believe from none than from God Himself. Where have we heard Him? Nowhere for the present better than in the holy Scriptures, where His prophet said: In the beginning God made heaven and earth.

Was that prophet perhaps present there, when God made heaven and earth? No; but there was present the Wisdom of God, through whom all things were made, which also transfers itself into holy souls, makes them friends of God and prophets, and inwardly, without any noise, relates to them His works. The angels of God also speak to them, who always behold the face of the Father and announce His will to those to whom they ought. Of these was that prophet one, who said and wrote: In the beginning God made heaven and earth. Being so fit a witness through whom God is to be believed, he foretold even our own faith that was to come, so long beforehand, by that same Spirit of God by which he came to know these things revealed to him.

But why did it please the eternal God then to make heaven and earth, which He had not made before? Those who say this, if they would have the world seem eternal, without any beginning, and therefore not made by God, are exceedingly turned away from the truth and rave with the deadly disease of impiety. For, apart from the prophetic voices, the world itself, by its most orderly changeableness and mobility and by the most beautiful appearance of all visible things, proclaims after a certain manner, though silently, both that it was made and that it could not have been made except by a God ineffably and invisibly great and ineffably and invisibly beautiful.

But those who indeed confess that it was made by God, yet do not wish it to have a beginning of time, but only of its creation, so that in some scarcely intelligible manner it was always being made—these do say something whereby they seem to defend God from a chance rashness, lest it be believed that it suddenly came into His mind to make the world, a thing that had never come before, and that a new will befell Him who is in no way at all mutable; but I do not see how that reasoning of theirs can hold in other matters, and especially in the case of the soul, which if they contend to be coeternal with God, they will be by no means able to explain whence there befell it a new misery, which never before through all eternity had been.

For if they say that its misery and blessedness have always alternated, they must needs say that they will also always alternate; whence this absurdity will follow them, that even when the soul is said to be blessed, in this respect at least it is not blessed, if it foresees its coming misery and disgrace; but if it does not foresee, nor that it will be disgraced and miserable, but always deems itself blessed, then it is blessed by a false opinion, than which nothing more foolish can be said. But if they think that indeed through the infinite ages of the past the soul's misery has alternated with blessedness, yet that now henceforth, once it has been set free, it will not return to misery, they are nonetheless convinced that it was never truly blessed, but henceforth begins to be so by a certain new and non-deceptive blessedness.

And by this they will confess that something new befalls it, and that a great and glorious thing, which never before throughout eternity had befallen. If they deny that God, in His eternal counsel, had the cause of this newness, they will at the same time deny that He is the author of its blessedness, which is a thing of unspeakable impiety; but if they say that He too by a new counsel devised that the soul should henceforth be blessed for eternity, how will they show Him to be free from that mutability which even they find displeasing? Further, if they confess the soul to have been created in time, but destined to perish in no subsequent time—like a number, to have a beginning but no end—and therefore, having once experienced miseries, if it be freed from them, never afterward to be miserable:

they will surely not doubt that this comes to pass while the immutability of God's counsel abides. So then let them believe that the world too could be made in time, and yet that God, in making it, did not thereby change His eternal counsel and will. [V] Next it must be seen: those who agree that God is the founder of the world, yet ask us what we answer concerning the world's time, let them consider what they themselves answer concerning the world's place. For it is asked why it was made then rather and not before, in the same way as it may be asked why it is here rather where it is and not elsewhere.

For if they imagine infinite spaces of time before the world, in which it does not seem to them that God could have ceased from work, let them likewise imagine outside the world infinite spaces of places, in which, if anyone should say that the Omnipotent could not have been idle, will it not follow that they be forced to dream, with Epicurus, of innumerable worlds (with only this difference, that he asserts them to be begotten and dissolved by the fortuitous motions of atoms, while these men will say they were made by the work of God)—if they will not have Him idle throughout the boundless immensity of places extending on every side outside the world, and if they hold that those same worlds, as they think even of this one, can be dissolved by no cause?

For we are dealing here with those who, together with us, hold that God is incorporeal and the creator of all natures which are not what He Himself is; but as for others, it is far too unworthy to admit them to this discussion of religion, especially because among those who think that sacred worship is to be rendered to many gods, these men have surpassed the other philosophers in nobility and authority, for no other reason than that, though by a long interval, they are nevertheless nearer to the truth than the rest.

Or will they perhaps say that the substance of God, which they neither enclose nor bound nor extend by place, but which, as it is worthy to think concerning God, they confess to be wholly everywhere by an incorporeal presence—will they say that it is absent from those so great spaces of places outside the world, and confined to one place only, and, in comparison with that infinity, so exceedingly small a place, in which the world is? I do not think they will proceed to such vain talk. Since, then, they say that the world is one, of enormous corporeal mass indeed, yet finite and determined to its own place, and made by the working of God: let them answer to themselves concerning the infinite times before the world—why in them God ceased from work—the very thing they answer concerning the infinite places outside the world, why in them God should cease from work.

And just as it does not follow that God established the world by chance rather than by divine reason in no other place but this one in which it is—since infinite places lay equally open everywhere, and this one could be chosen by no more excellent merit—although that same divine reason by which this was done, no human being can comprehend: so it does not follow that we should suppose anything fortuitous to have befallen God, in that He founded the world at that time rather than at an earlier one, since the earlier times had equally passed away through infinite space backward, nor had there been any difference whereby one time should be preferred to another in the choosing. But if they say that the thoughts of men are empty, by which they imagine infinite places, since there is no place besides the world:

it is answered to them, in the same manner, that men vainly imagine the past times of God's idleness, since there is no time before the world. [VI] For if eternity and time are rightly distinguished—that time is not without some movable changeableness, while in eternity there is no change—who does not see that times would not have been, unless a creature were made which by some motion should change something, in the movement and changing of which, when one thing and another, which cannot exist at the same time, gives way and succeeds, time would follow in shorter or longer intervals of delay? Since, therefore, God, in whose eternity there is no change at all, is the creator and orderer of times:

how it may be said that after intervals of times He created the world, I do not see, unless it be said that before the world there was already some creature by whose motions the times might run. Further, if the sacred and most truthful writings say that in the beginning God made heaven and earth, in such a way that He is understood to have made nothing before—because this would rather have been said to have been made 'in the beginning,' if He had made anything before all the rest that He made—then beyond doubt the world was not made in time, but with time. For that which is made in time is made both after some time and before some time; after that which is past, before that which is future; but there could have been nothing past, because there was no creature by whose changeable motions it might be carried on.

But the world was made with time, if in its constitution a changeable motion was made—as even that order of the first six or seven days seems to have it, in which both morning and evening are named, until all the things which God made in those days are completed on the sixth day, and on the seventh, in a great mystery, God's rest is commended. Of what sort those days are, it is either very difficult or even impossible for us to conceive, how much more to say. [VII] For we see that these days known to us have no evening except from the setting of the sun, nor morning except from the rising of the sun; but the former three of those days were passed without the sun, which is reported to have been made on the fourth day.

And first indeed, light is narrated to have been made by the word of God, and God to have separated between it and the darkness, and to have called that same light Day, but the darkness Night; yet of what sort that light is, and by what alternating motion, and what kind of evening and morning it made, is remote from our senses, nor can it be understood by us as it is—which nevertheless is to be believed without any hesitation. For either it is some corporeal light, whether in the higher parts of the world far from our sight, or whence the sun was afterward kindled; or by the name of light was signified the holy city in the holy angels and blessed spirits, of which the apostle says: The Jerusalem which is above, our eternal mother in heaven; for indeed he says also in another place:

For you are all sons of light and sons of the day; we are not of the night nor of darkness—if, that is, we are able somewhat fittingly to understand also the evening and the morning of this day. Since the knowledge of the creature, in comparison with the knowledge of the Creator, in a certain manner grows toward evening, and likewise dawns and becomes morning, when it too is referred to the praise and love of the Creator; nor does it verge into night, where the Creator is not forsaken by the love of the creature. Finally, when the Scripture reckoned up those days in order, it nowhere interposed the word 'night.' For it nowhere says: Night was made; but: There was made evening and there was made morning, one day. So the second day, and the rest.

For the knowledge of the creature in itself is, so to speak, more faded than when it is known in the Wisdom of God, as in the art by which it was made. Therefore it can more fittingly be called evening than night; which nevertheless, as I have said, when it is referred to the praising and loving of the Creator, recurs into morning. And this, when it does so in the knowledge of itself, is one day; when in the knowledge of the firmament, which between the lower and upper waters was called heaven, the second day; when in the knowledge of earth and sea and of all things that spring forth, which are joined by roots to the earth, the third day; when in the knowledge of the greater and lesser luminaries and of all the stars, the fourth day;

when in the knowledge of all the swimming and flying animals out of the waters, the fifth day; when in the knowledge of all the earthly animals and of man himself, the sixth day. [VIII] But when on the seventh day God rests from all His works and sanctifies it, it must by no means be taken childishly, as if God had labored in working—He who spoke, and they were made, by an intelligible and everlasting word, not a word audible and temporal. But the rest of God signifies the rest of those who rest in God, just as the gladness of a house signifies the gladness of those who are glad in the house, even though it is not the house itself, but some other thing, that makes them glad.

How much more, if that same house by its own beauty should make its inhabitants glad, so that it is called glad not only in that mode of speaking by which we signify, through that which contains, that which is contained (as when we say 'the theaters applaud, the meadows low,' when in the theaters men applaud, in the meadows oxen low); but also in that mode by which is signified, through the maker, that which is made; as a letter is called glad, signifying the gladness of those whom it makes glad by reading it. Most fittingly therefore, when the prophetic authority narrates that God rested, is signified the rest of those who rest in Him, and whom He Himself makes to rest;

this also, by the prophecy, promising to men, to whom He speaks and for whose sake indeed it was written, that they too, after the good works which God works in them and through them, if they have first in this life in some manner drawn near to Him through faith, shall have in Him everlasting rest. For this too was figured in the old people of God by the sabbath rest according to the precept of the law, whereof I think it more diligently to be discoursed in its own place.

[IX] Now, since I have undertaken to speak of the origin of the holy city, and have thought that first what pertains to the holy angels should be spoken of—who are both a great part of this city and the more blessed, in that they have never wandered abroad in exile—I shall take care, by God's bounty, to unfold, as far as shall seem sufficient, what divine testimonies are here at hand concerning it. Where the sacred writings speak of the constitution of the world, it is not evidently said whether, or in what order, the angels were created; but if they were not passed over, they were signified either by the name of heaven, where it is said, In the beginning God made heaven and earth, or rather of this light of which I am speaking.

But that they were not passed over I judge from this, that it is written that God rested on the seventh day from all His works which He made, since the book itself thus began: In the beginning God made heaven and earth; so that before heaven and earth He seems to have made nothing else. Since, then, He began from heaven and earth, and the earth itself, which He first made—as the Scripture consequently declares—was invisible and without form, and light not yet being made there were of course darkness over the abyss, that is, over a certain undistinguished confusion of earth and water (for where there is no light, there must needs be darkness), and then all things were arranged in the creating, which are narrated to have been consummated through six days:

how could the angels be passed over, as though they were not among the works of God from which He rested on the seventh day? Now that the angels are a work of God, here indeed, even if not passed over, is nevertheless not evidently expressed; but elsewhere the holy Scripture testifies this with a most clear voice. For in the hymn of the three men in the furnace, when it had been said beforehand: Bless the Lord, all you works of the Lord, in the enumeration of those same works the angels too are named; and in the psalm it is sung: Praise the Lord from the heavens, praise Him in the heights; praise Him, all His angels; praise Him, all His hosts; praise Him, sun and moon; praise Him, all stars and light;

praise Him, you heavens of heavens, and let the waters that are above the heavens praise the name of the Lord; for He spoke, and they were made; He commanded, and they were created. Here too it is said most openly and by divine authority that the angels were made by God, since, they being commemorated among the other heavenly things, is brought in concerning all: He spoke, and they were made. Who, moreover, will dare to opine that the angels were made after all these things which were enumerated in the six days? But even if anyone is so foolish, that Scripture of equal authority refutes this vanity, where God says: When the stars were made, all my angels praised me with a great voice. The angels therefore already were, when the stars were made. But they were made on the fourth day.

Shall we then say that they were made on the third day? Far be it. For it is plain what was made on that day. The earth was of course separated from the waters, and these two elements took on the distinct kinds of their own sort, and the earth produced whatever clings to it by roots. Was it perhaps the second day? Not even this. For then was made the firmament between the upper and lower waters and was called heaven; in which firmament, on the fourth day, the stars were made. Assuredly, then, if the angels pertain to the works of God of these days, they are that light which received the name of Day, whose unity, that it might be commended, it was not called the first day, but one day. Nor is there another second day or third or the rest;

but that same one day was repeated to fill up the number six or seven, on account of the sevenfold knowledge—the sixfold, namely, of the works which God made, and the seventh of God's rest. For when God said: Let there be light, and there was light, if in this light the creation of the angels is rightly understood, then surely they were made partakers of the eternal light, which is the very immutable Wisdom of God, through whom all things were made, whom we call the only-begotten Son of God; so that, being illumined by that light by which they were created, they might become light and be called day by participation in the immutable light and day, which is the Word of God, through whom both they themselves and all things were made.

For the true Light, which illumines every man coming into this world, this also illumines every pure angel, so that it is light not in itself, but in God; from whom if an angel turns away, it becomes impure; as are all those who are called unclean spirits, and are no longer light in the Lord, but darkness in themselves, deprived of the participation of the eternal light. For of evil there is no nature; but the loss of good has received the name of evil. [X] There is therefore one only simple good, and for this reason one only immutable, which is God. By this good were created all goods, but not simple, and for this reason mutable. Created, I say, that is, made, not begotten.

For that which is begotten of the simple good is equally simple, and is that which He is of whom it is begotten; these two we call Father and Son; and both these, together with their Spirit, are one God; which Spirit of the Father and of the Son is called the Holy Spirit by a certain proper connotation of this name in the sacred writings. But He is other than the Father and the Son, because He is neither the Father nor the Son; but I said 'other' (alius), not 'another thing' (aliud), because this too is equally a simple and equally immutable and coeternal good. And this Trinity is one God; nor is it therefore not simple, because it is a Trinity.

For we do not on this account call that nature of the good simple, because the Father alone is in it, or the Son alone, or the Holy Spirit alone, or truly because it is that mere trinity of name without the subsistence of persons, as the Sabellian heretics supposed; but it is called simple for this reason, that what it has, it is—except for that which each person is said to be relatively to another. For the Father certainly has a Son, yet is not Himself the Son, and the Son has a Father, yet is not Himself the Father. In that, therefore, in which each is said with reference to Himself, not to another, He is that which He has; as He is said to be living with reference to Himself, by having life indeed, and He Himself is that same life.

For this reason, then, that nature is called simple, to which it is not the case that it has something which it could either lose; or that one thing is the possessor and another that which it possesses; as a vessel possesses some liquid, or a body a color, or the air light or heat, or the soul wisdom. For none of these is that which it has; for neither is the vessel the liquid, nor the body the color, nor the air the light or heat, nor the soul the wisdom. Hence it is that they can also be deprived of the things which they have, and be turned and changed into other states or qualities: so that both the vessel is emptied of the moisture with which it is full, and the body is discolored, and the air grows dark or grows cold, and the soul loses its wisdom.

But even if there be an incorruptible body, such as is promised to the saints in the resurrection, it has indeed the inamissible quality of that very incorruption, yet, its corporeal substance remaining, it is not that which incorruption itself is. For that incorruption is even through the several parts of the body whole, nor greater in one place, less in another; for no part is more incorruptible than another; but the body itself is greater in the whole than in a part; and when one part in it is larger, another smaller, the one that is larger is not more incorruptible than the one that is smaller. The body, therefore, which is not everywhere its own whole, is one thing; the incorruption, which is everywhere whole in it, another—because every part of an incorruptible body, though unequal to the rest, is equally incorrupt.

For not, by way of example, because the finger is smaller than the whole hand, is the hand therefore more incorruptible than the finger. Thus, though the hand and the finger are unequal, the incorruptibility of the hand and of the finger is nevertheless equal. And hence, although incorruptibility is inseparable from an incorruptible body, yet the substance by which it is called a body is one thing, and its quality by which it is called incorruptible is another. And therefore, even so, it is not that which it has. The soul too, even if it be always wise, as it will be when it is set free for eternity, will nevertheless be wise by participation in the immutable wisdom, which is not what the soul itself is. For neither, if the air poured over with light is never forsaken by it, is it therefore not one thing that the air itself is, and another the light by which it is illumined.

Nor would I have said this as though the air were the soul, which some supposed who could not conceive an incorporeal nature. But these things have to those a certain similitude, even in great dissimilarity, so that it is not unfitting to say that the incorporeal soul is thus illumined by the incorporeal light of the simple wisdom of God, just as the body of air is illumined by corporeal light; and just as the air grows dark when deserted by that light (for the darkness of any bodily places whatsoever which are so called are nothing else than air lacking light), so the soul grows dark when deprived of the light of wisdom.

According to this, then, those things are called simple which are principally and truly divine, because in them quality is not one thing and substance another, nor are they either divine, or wise, or blessed by participation in anything else. Yet in the sacred Scriptures the Spirit of wisdom is called manifold, because it holds many things within itself; but the things it holds, these it also is, and all of them are one. For there are not many wisdoms, but one, in which lie certain treasures of intelligible things, infinite yet to it finite, wherein are all the invisible and unchangeable reasons of things, even of visible and mutable things, which were made through it. For God made nothing in ignorance, which cannot rightly be said even of any human craftsman;

and further, if He made all things knowingly, He assuredly made those things which He knew. From this there arises in the mind something marvellous yet true: that this world could not be known to us unless it existed, whereas unless it were known to God it could not exist. Since these things are so, in no manner indeed, according to any interval of time, were those spirits whom we call angels first darkness; but the moment they were made, they were made light. Yet they were not so created merely that they should in some fashion exist and in some fashion live, but also illumined, that they should live wisely and blessedly. Turned away from this illumination, certain angels did not attain the excellence of a wise and blessed life, which beyond doubt is nothing if not eternal, and certain and secure of its own eternity;

but they possess a rational life, though an unwise one, in such a way that they cannot lose it, not even if they wished. But to what extent, before they sinned, they were partakers of that wisdom, who can define? And in what manner shall we say that in the participation of it these were equal to those who are truly and fully blessed, precisely because they are in no way deceived concerning the eternity of their blessedness? Since indeed, had they been equal in it, these too would have remained equally blessed in its eternity, because equally certain. For a life cannot truly be called eternal, however long it may last, in the same way as eternal life, if it is to have an end; for a life is named from living only, but eternal life from having no end.

Wherefore, although not everything that is eternal is on that account blessed—for the penal fire also is called eternal—yet if a truly and perfectly blessed life is nothing if not eternal, then such was not the life of these, since it was one day to cease and therefore not eternal, whether they knew this or, not knowing it, thought otherwise; because in those who knew, fear, and in those who knew not, error, in no way permitted them to be blessed. But if they were ignorant of this in such a way that they did not trust false or uncertain things, but neither toward the one side nor the other were carried by a firm assent as to whether their good was to be everlasting or one day to have an end: then that very hesitation concerning so great a felicity did not possess that fullness of the blessed life which we believe to be in the holy angels.

For we do not so contract the term 'blessed life' to certain narrow limits of meaning as to call God alone blessed; who nevertheless is so truly blessed that no greater blessedness can exist, in comparison with whom, what and how great is it that the angels are blessed with a certain supreme blessedness of their own, as great as can exist in angels? Nor do we think that these alone, so far as pertains to the rational or intellectual creature, are to be called blessed.

For who would dare to deny that those first human beings in paradise were blessed before their sin, although they were uncertain how long their blessedness would last, or whether it would be eternal (yet it would have been eternal, had they not sinned)—since even today we not shamelessly call those blessed whom we see leading this life justly and piously, with the hope of future immortality, without any crime laying waste the conscience, and readily obtaining divine mercy for the sins of this infirmity? Who, though they be certain of the reward of their perseverance, are yet found uncertain of the perseverance itself.

For what man knows that he will persevere to the end in the practice and progress of righteousness, unless he be made certain by some revelation from Him who by a just and hidden judgment instructs not all concerning this matter, yet deceives no one? Accordingly, so far as pertains to the enjoyment of a present good, the first man was more blessed in paradise than any righteous man in this mortal infirmity; but so far as pertains to the hope of the future, any man is more blessed amid whatsoever torments of the body, to whom it is manifest, not by opinion but by certain truth, that without end he shall have the fellowship of the angels, free from all trouble, in the participation of the most high God, than was that man, uncertain of his own fall, in that great felicity of paradise.

Wherefore it now readily occurs to anyone that blessedness, which the intellectual nature desires by a right purpose, is brought about by the joining of both: namely, that it should both enjoy without any trouble the unchangeable good which is God, and should neither by any doubt hesitate, nor by any error be deceived, that it will remain in Him forever. This we believe by pious faith that the angels of light possess; this the sinning angels, who by their own perversity were deprived of that light, did not possess even before they fell—this we gather by consequent reasoning; yet that they had some blessedness, though not prescient, they are certainly to be believed to have had, if they led a life before their sin.

Or if it seems hard to believe that, when the angels were made, some were so made that they did not receive foreknowledge either of their perseverance or of their fall, while others were so made that with most certain truth they knew the eternity of their blessedness—but that all were created from the beginning of equal felicity, and so remained until those who are now evil fell of their own will from that light of goodness: without doubt it is far harder now to suppose that the holy angels are uncertain of their eternal blessedness, and that they themselves are ignorant concerning themselves of what we have been able to know concerning them through the holy Scriptures.

For what catholic Christian is ignorant that no new devil will ever hereafter arise out of the good angels, just as neither will that one ever return into the fellowship of the good angels? For the Truth in the Gospel promises to the holy and faithful that they shall be equal to the angels of God; to whom it is also promised that they shall go into life eternal. Moreover, if we are certain that we shall never fall from that immortal felicity, but they are not certain, then we shall be superior to them, not equal. But since the Truth in no wise deceives, and we shall be equal to them, then assuredly they too are certain of their eternal felicity.

Since those others were not certain of their felicity (for their felicity, of which they might be certain, was not eternal, seeing it was to have an end), it remains that either they were unequal, or, if they were equal, then after the ruin of the latter there accrued to the former a certain knowledge of their everlasting felicity. Unless perhaps someone should say that what the Lord says of the devil in the Gospel:

'He was a murderer from the beginning, and stood not in the truth,' is to be taken in such a way that he was not only a murderer from the beginning—that is, from the beginning of the human race, from which point indeed man was made whom by deceiving he might slay—but also that from the beginning of his own creation he stood not in the truth, and therefore was never blessed together with the holy angels, refusing to be subject to his Creator, and rejoicing in his own power as though it were, by his pride, a private power; and thereby was false and deceitful, since no one escapes the power of the Almighty, and he who by pious subjection was unwilling to hold fast that which truly is, affects by proud exaltation to counterfeit that which is not: so that thus may be understood also what the blessed apostle John says:

'From the beginning the devil sins'—that is, from the time he was created he refused righteousness, which none but a will pious and subject to God could possess. Whoever assents to this opinion does not think as those heretics do, namely the Manichaeans, and if there be any other pestilent sects that hold this: that the devil has a certain nature of evil proper to himself, as it were from some opposing principle; who dote with such great vanity that, although they hold these evangelical words in authority together with us, they do not attend that the Lord did not say, 'He was a stranger to the truth,' but, 'He stood not in the truth,' where He willed it to be understood that he had lapsed from the truth, in which assuredly, had he stood, being made a partaker of it, he would have remained blessed with the holy angels.

He added moreover an indication, as though we had asked whence it is shown that he stood not in the truth, and says: 'Because there is no truth in him.' But there would be truth in him, if he had stood in it. Yet it is expressed by a less usual manner of speech. For it seems to sound thus: 'He stood not in the truth, because truth is not in him,' as though this were the cause, that he stood not in the truth—namely, that truth is not in him; whereas rather this is the cause, that truth is not in him—namely, that he stood not in the truth. This same manner of speech is also in the Psalm: 'I cried, because Thou hast heard me, O God'; whereas it might seem it ought to have been said: 'Thou hast heard me, O God, because I cried.' But when he had said,

'I cried,' as though it were asked of him whence he might show that he had cried, he shows the affection of his crying from the effect of God's hearing; as though he said: 'Hence I show that I cried, because Thou hast heard me.' That also which John says of the devil, 'From the beginning the devil sins,' they do not understand: that if his nature is such, there is in no way any sin. But what is answered to the prophetic testimonies, whether to what Isaiah says, noting the devil under the figured person of the prince of Babylon: 'How is Lucifer fallen, who rose in the morning?'; or to what Ezekiel says: 'Thou wast in the delights of the paradise of God, adorned with every precious stone'? Where it is understood that he was at some time without sin. For a little after it is said to him more expressly:

'Thou didst walk in thy days without fault.' If these words cannot be more suitably understood otherwise, we must also take that which was said, 'He stood not in the truth,' in this way: that he was in the truth, but did not remain in it; and that 'from the beginning the devil sins' is not to be thought to mean that he sinned from the beginning at which he was created, but from the beginning of sin, that is, from the point at which sin began to be from his own pride. Nor is that which is written in the book of Job, when the discourse was concerning the devil: 'This is the beginning of the Lord's fashioning, which He made to be mocked by His angels' (with which the Psalm also seems to accord, where it is read:

'This dragon, whom Thou hast formed to mock him'), is to be understood in such a way that we suppose him to have been created such from the beginning that he might be mocked by the angels—but ordained to this in the punishment after his sin. His beginning, therefore, is the Lord's fashioning; for there is no nature, even among the lowest and meanest little creatures, which He did not establish, from whom is every measure, every form, every order, without which nothing of things can be found or even conceived—how much more the angelic creature, which in dignity of nature precedes all the other things that God has created!

For among those things which in some manner exist and yet are not what God is, from whom they were made, the living are set before the non-living, as those which have the power of generating, or even of desiring, before those which lack this motion; and among things that live, the sentient are set before the non-sentient, as animals before trees; and among things that have sense, the intelligent are set before the non-intelligent, as men before beasts; and among things that understand, the immortal are set before the mortal, as angels before men. But these are set before by the order of nature;

there is however another and yet another measure of valuation according to each one's use, whereby it comes about that we set certain things lacking sense before certain sentient things—to such a degree that, if it were in our power, we would wish to remove them altogether from the nature of things, whether ignorant of the place they hold in it, or, even if we know it, subordinating them to our own conveniences. For who would not rather have bread in his house than mice, or coins than fleas? But what wonder is it, when even in the valuation of men themselves, whose nature is assuredly of such great dignity, a horse is for the most part bought at a higher price than a slave, or a jewel than a serving-maid?

Thus by the liberty of judging, the reasoning of the one who considers differs greatly from the necessity of the one who is in need, or the pleasure of the one who desires; since the former weighs what a thing is worth in itself in the ranks of things, whereas necessity considers what it seeks for the sake of what, and the former looks at what appears true to the light of the mind, whereas pleasure looks at what pleasantly flatters the senses of the body. But so great is the force in rational natures of a certain weight, as it were, of will and love, that although in the order of nature the angels are set before men, yet by the law of righteousness good men are preferred to evil angels. Therefore we rightly understand that it was said on account of the nature, not on account of the malice, of the devil: 'This is the beginning of the Lord's fashioning.'

Because without doubt, where there is the vice of malice, an unvitiated nature preceded. But vice is so contrary to nature that it cannot but harm nature. It would therefore be no vice to depart from God, unless it were more fitting to the nature whose vice it is to be with God. Wherefore even an evil will is great testimony to a good nature. But God, just as He is the best creator of good natures, so is He the most just ordainer of evil wills; so that, when they make evil use of good natures, He Himself makes good use even of evil wills.

And so He brought it about that the devil, good by His institution but evil by his own will, being ordained among the lower things, should be mocked by His angels—that is, that his temptations should profit the saints, whom he desires them to harm. And since God, when He created him, was assuredly not ignorant of his future malignity, and foresaw what goods He Himself would make out of his evil, therefore the Psalm says: 'This dragon, whom Thou hast formed to mock him,' so that in that very act by which He formed him—good indeed by His goodness—He may be understood already by His foreknowledge to have prepared how He would make use of him even in his evil.

For God would not create any—I say not of the angels, but even of men—whom He foreknew would be evil, unless He equally knew for what uses of the good He would accommodate them, and would thus adorn the order of the ages, like a most beautiful poem, even by certain, as it were, antitheses. For antitheses, as they are called, are among the most becoming ornaments of eloquence; which in Latin might be called opposita, or, as it is more expressly said, contraposita—though this term is not in customary use among us, even though the Latin tongue also uses these same ornaments of speech, indeed the tongues of all nations. With these antitheses even the apostle Paul, in the second Epistle to the Corinthians, pleasantly unfolds that passage where he says:

'By the arms of righteousness on the right hand and on the left: by glory and dishonour, by evil report and good report; as deceivers, and yet true; as unknown, and yet known; as dying, and behold we live; as chastened, and not killed; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing all things.' As therefore these contraries set against contraries render the beauty of the discourse, so by a certain eloquence not of words but of things, the beauty of the world is composed by the opposition of contraries. This is most openly set forth in the book of Ecclesiasticus in this manner: 'Against evil is good, and against death is life; so against the godly is the sinner.'

'And so behold all the works of the Most High, two by two, one against one.' Although, therefore, the obscurity of the divine discourse is even for this useful, that it brings forth many opinions of truth and produces them into the light of knowledge, while one understands it thus and another thus (yet in such a way that what is understood in an obscure place should be confirmed either by the attestation of manifest things or by other passages in no wise doubtful; and either, when many things are discussed, one should arrive also at that which he who wrote it perceived, or, though this remain hidden, on occasion of treating the profound obscurity certain other true things should be spoken):

it does not seem to me an absurd opinion, drawn from the works of God, if, when that first light was made and the angels are understood to have been created, there was a distinction made between the holy angels and the unclean, where it was said: 'And God divided between the light and the darkness; and God called the light day, and the darkness He called night.' For He alone could discern these things, who could also, even before they fell, foreknow that they would fall, and that, deprived of the light of truth, they would remain in dark pride. For between this day and night most familiar to us—that is, between this light and these darknesses—He commanded the luminaries of heaven, most commonly known to our senses, to divide, saying:

'Let there be luminaries in the firmament of heaven, that they may shine upon the earth and divide between the day and the night'; and a little after: 'And God made two great luminaries, the greater luminary to rule the day, and the lesser luminary to rule the night, and the stars; and God set them in the firmament of heaven to give light upon the earth, and to preside over the day and the night, and to divide between the light and the darkness.' But between that light, which is the holy society of angels shining intelligibly by the illumination of truth, and its contrary darkness—that is, the most foul minds of the evil angels turned away from the light of righteousness—He alone could divide, to whom also the future evil, not of nature but of will, could not be hidden or uncertain.

Finally, neither is that to be passed over in silence, that where God said, 'Let there be light, and there was light,' immediately there was subjoined: 'And God saw the light, that it was good'—not after He had separated between the light and the darkness and called the light day and the darkness night, lest He should seem to have borne witness of His approval to such darkness together with the light. For where the darkness is blameless, between which and this light visible to these eyes the luminaries of heaven divide, it is added not before but after: 'And God saw that it was good.' 'He set them,' it says, 'in the firmament of heaven to shine upon the earth, and to preside over the day and the night, and to separate between the light and the darkness. And God saw that it was good.'

Both pleased Him, because both are without sin. But where God said, 'Let there be light, and there was light; and God saw the light, that it was good'; and it is afterward subjoined: 'And God separated between the light and the darkness; and God called the light day, and the darkness He called night'—there is not added in this place, 'And God saw that it was good,' lest both should be called good, since of these one was evil, by its own vice, not by nature. And therefore there the light alone pleased the Creator: but the angelic darkness, though it had to be ordained, was nevertheless not to be approved. For what else is to be understood in that which is said throughout, 'God saw that it was good,' but the approval of a work made according to the art which is the wisdom of God?

But God so far did not, when it was made, then learn that it was good, that none of these things would have been made, had it been unknown to Him. When therefore He sees that it is good—that which, unless He had seen it before it was made, would assuredly not have been made—He teaches that it is good, He does not learn it. And Plato indeed dared to say more, namely that God was elevated with joy at the completion of the universe of the world. Wherein even he was not so far foolish as to think that God was made more blessed by the novelty of His work; but he wished thus to show that the work already made pleased its artificer, as it had pleased Him to be made in His art—not that the knowledge of God is in any way varied, so that things which are not yet make one thing in it, things which now are another, things which have been yet another;

for not in our manner does He either look forward to what is future, or look upon what is present, or look back upon what is past; but in a certain other manner, far and deeply diverse from the custom of our thoughts. For He indeed sees, not with a thought changed from this to that, but altogether unchangeably; so that those things which come to pass temporally—the future being not yet, and the present now being, and the past being now no longer—He comprehends all these by a stable and everlasting presence; nor in one way with the eyes, in another with the mind, for He does not consist of soul and body; nor in one way now, in another before, and in another afterward;

since His knowledge, too, is not, like ours, varied by the variety of the three times, namely the present, the past, and the future—with whom is no change, nor shadow of a moment's turning. For His intention does not pass from thought to thought, in whose incorporeal gaze all the things He knows are present together; since He knows times by no temporal notions of His own, even as He moves temporal things by no temporal motions of His own. There, therefore, He saw that what He made was good, where He saw that it was good to make it;

nor because He saw it made did He double His knowledge or increase it in any part, as though He had been of lesser knowledge before He made what He saw—He who would not have wrought so perfectly, save by so perfect a knowledge, to which nothing could be added from His works. Wherefore, if it were only to be intimated to us who made the light, it would suffice to say, 'God made the light'; but if not only who made it, but also by what He made it, it would be enough to be thus declared: 'And God said, Let there be light, and there was light'—so that we might know not only that God, but also that by the Word, He made the light. But since three things especially it behoved to be intimated to us concerning the creature—who made it, by what He made it, why He made it—'God said,' it says:

'Let there be light, and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good.' If therefore we ask who made it: it is God; if by what He made it: He said, 'Let it be,' and it was made; if why He made it: 'Because it is good.' Neither is there an author more excellent than God, nor an art more efficacious than the Word of God, nor a cause better than that a good thing should be created by the good God. This also Plato says is the most just cause of founding the world, that good works should be made by the good God; whether he read this, or perhaps learned it from those who had read it; or whether by his most keen intellect he beheld the invisible things of God, understood through the things that are made, or whether he himself also learned it from those who had beheld these things.

Yet this cause—that is, the goodness of God for creating good things—this cause, I say, so just and fitting, which, diligently considered and piously pondered, terminates all controversies of those who inquire into the origin of the world, certain heretics did not see; because this needy and frail mortality of our flesh, itself already coming from just punishment, when things do not suit it, offends against very many things, such as fire, or cold, or a wild beast, or anything of that sort;

and they do not attend how these things flourish in their own places and natures, and are disposed in a beautiful order, and how much they contribute, according to their portions of beauty, to the universe of things as into a common commonwealth, or bestow of their convenience upon us ourselves, if we use them fittingly and knowingly—so that even the very poisons, which through unsuitableness are pernicious, when fittingly applied are turned into wholesome medicines; and how, on the contrary, even these things in which they delight, such as food and drink and this very light, by immoderate and unseasonable use are felt to be noxious.

Whence divine providence admonishes us not to blame things unwisely, but diligently to inquire into the usefulness of things, and where our talent or infirmity fails, so to believe it hidden, as were certain things which we could scarcely find; because even that very concealment of usefulness is either an exercise of humility or an attrition of pride, since there is no nature at all that is evil, and this name is nothing but that of the privation of good. But from earthly things up to heavenly, and from visible up to invisible, there are some goods better than others, unequal for this very purpose, that they all might exist; and God is so great an artificer in great things that He is not less in small things—which small things are to be measured not by their own greatness (for there is none), but by the wisdom of the artificer;

just as in the appearance of a visible man, if one eyebrow be shaved off, how almost nothing is taken from the body, and yet how much is taken from its beauty—since beauty consists not in bulk, but in the equality and proportion of the members! Nor indeed is it much to be wondered at that those who suppose some nature to be evil, arisen and propagated from a certain contrary principle of its own, are unwilling to accept this cause of the creation of things, namely that the good God should found good things; believing rather that He was brought by extreme necessity to these mundane labours, of repelling an evil rebelling against Himself, and mingled His own good nature with evil in order to coerce and overcome it—which nature, most foully polluted and most cruelly captivated and oppressed, He scarcely with great labour cleanses and frees;

yet not all of it, but that part which could not be purged from that defilement is to be the covering and chain of the vanquished and enclosed enemy. But the Manichaeans would not thus dote, or rather rave, if they believed the nature of God to be, as it is, unchangeable and altogether incorruptible, to whom nothing can do harm; but with Christian soundness of mind judged the soul—which by its will could be changed for the worse and corrupted by sin, and thus deprived of the light of unchangeable truth—not to be a part of God, nor of that nature which is God's, but created by Him, far unequal to its Creator.

But it is much more to be wondered at, that even certain persons who believe together with us that there is one principle of all things, and that no nature which is not what God is can exist except from that Creator, were nevertheless unwilling to believe well and simply this so good and simple cause of fabricating the world—namely, that the good God should found good things, and that there should be after God things which are not what God is, yet good, which none but the good God would make.

But they say that souls—not indeed parts of God, yet made by God—sinned by withdrawing from their Creator, and that, by various degrees corresponding to the diversity of their sins, they merited diverse bodies as fetters, from the heavens down to the earth; and that this is the world, and that this was the reason for the making of the world—not that good things might be created, but that evil things might be restrained. On this account Origen is rightly blamed. For in the books he calls Peri Archon, that is, On First Principles, he held this view and wrote it. And here I marvel, beyond what can be said, that a man so learned and practised in ecclesiastical letters did not attend, first, to how contrary this was to the intention of Scripture, of so great an authority, which, appending to all the works of God the words: