文集（天主之城·論三位一體等） 第 13 章

[I] Before I speak of the creation of man, in which the origin of the two cities will appear so far as pertains to the race of rational mortals—just as in the previous book it has already been seen to appear in the angels—I see that certain things must first be said by me concerning those very angels, by which it may be demonstrated, as far as we are able, how it is not unfitting nor incongruous to say that there is a fellowship between men and angels; so that not four cities (namely two of angels and as many of men), but rather two cities—that is, societies—are with reason said to exist: one constituted among the good, the other among the evil, not only of angels, but also of men.

That the mutually contrary appetites of the good and evil angels arose not from diverse natures and principles—since God, the good author and founder of all substances, created both—but from wills and desires, it is not lawful to doubt: while some steadfastly persist in that good common to all, which is God Himself to them, and in His eternity, truth, and love; the others, delighting rather in their own power, as though they were their own good to themselves, fell away from the higher good common and beatific to all, to their own private goods; and having the pomp of elation instead of the most exalted eternity, the cunning of vanity instead of the most certain truth, the zeal of partisanship instead of undivided love, they became proud, deceitful, and envious.

The cause, therefore, of the blessedness of the former is to adhere to God; wherefore the cause of the misery of the latter is to be understood from the contrary, namely, not to adhere to God. Wherefore, if when it is asked why the former are blessed, it is rightly answered, 'Because they adhere to God,' and when it is asked why the latter are miserable, it is rightly answered, 'Because they do not adhere to God'—then there is no good of the rational or intellectual creature by which it may be blessed, save God. Thus, although not every creature can be blessed (for beasts, wood, stones, and whatever is of this kind, do not attain or receive this gift), yet that which can be, cannot be so of itself, since it was created out of nothing, but from Him by whom it was created. For having obtained Him it is blessed; having lost Him it is miserable.

But He who is blessed not by another good, but by Himself as good, cannot be miserable, because He cannot lose Himself. We say, therefore, that there is no immutable good save the one true and blessed God; and that the things which He made are indeed good, because from Him, yet mutable, because they were made not out of Him, but out of nothing. Although, therefore, they are not the supreme good—for God is a greater good than they—yet those mutable goods are great which can adhere, in order that they may be blessed, to the immutable good, which is so far their good that without it they must necessarily be miserable. Nor for that reason are the other things in this universe of creation better because they cannot be miserable;

for neither is it to be said that the other members of our body are better than the eyes because they cannot be blind. But just as a sentient nature, even when it feels pain, is better than a stone which can in no way feel pain, so a rational nature is more excellent even when miserable than that which is devoid of reason or sense, and into which therefore misery does not fall. And since this is so, to this nature, which was created in such excellence that, although it is itself mutable, yet by adhering to the immutable good—that is, to the supreme God—it attains blessedness, and does not fill up its indigence unless it be blessed, and for the filling up of this indigence nothing suffices save God—assuredly not to adhere to Him is a vice.

But every vice harms nature, and thereby is contrary to nature. That nature, therefore, which adheres to God differs from this one not in nature, but in vice; yet by this very vice the nature itself is shown to be very great and much to be praised. For where a vice is rightly blamed, without doubt the nature is praised. For the right blaming of a vice is that a praiseworthy nature is dishonored by it. Just as, then, when the vice of the eyes is called blindness, that is shown which pertains to the nature of the eyes, namely sight; and when the vice of the ears is called deafness, hearing is demonstrated to pertain to their nature: so, when the vice of the angelic creature is named, whereby it does not adhere to God, it is hence most plainly declared that it befits its nature to adhere to God.

Moreover, how great a praise it is to adhere to God, that one may live to Him, be wise thereby, rejoice in Him, and enjoy so great a good without death, without error, without trouble—who could worthily conceive or utter it? Wherefore even by the vice of the evil angels, whereby they do not adhere to God—since every vice harms nature—it is sufficiently made manifest that God created their nature so good that it is hurtful to it not to be with God. [II] Let these things be said, lest anyone, when we speak of the apostate angels, should suppose that they could have had another nature as though from another principle, and that God is not the author of their nature.

From the impiety of which error each one will be freed the more expeditiously and easily, the more sharply he shall have been able to understand what God said through the angel, when He sent Moses to the children of Israel: 'I am who I am.' For since God is the supreme essence—that is, supremely is—and is therefore immutable: He gave being to the things which He created out of nothing, but not supreme being, such as He Himself is;

and to some He gave being more amply, to others less, and thus ordered the natures of essences by degrees (for just as 'wisdom' is named from 'to be wise,' so 'essence' (essentia) is named from 'to be' (esse)—by a new word indeed, which the ancient authors of Latin speech did not use, but now in our times has come into use, lest even our language should lack that which the Greeks call ousia; for this word was expressed from word to word, so that essentia might be said). And thereby, to that nature which supremely is, by whose action are whatever things are, there is no contrary nature except that which is not. For to that which is, not-being is contrary.

And therefore to God—that is, to the supreme essence and author of all essences of whatever kind—no essence is contrary. [III] But those are called in the Scriptures the enemies of God who oppose His rule not by nature, but by vices, being able to do Him no harm, but only themselves. For they are enemies by the will of resisting, not by the power of injuring. For God is immutable and in every way incorruptible. Wherefore the vice by which those who are called His enemies resist God is an evil not to God, but to themselves; and this for no other reason than that it corrupts in them the good of nature. Nature, therefore, is not contrary to God, but vice, because it is evil, is contrary to good. But who would deny that God is supremely good?

Vice, therefore, is contrary to God, as evil is to good. But the nature which it vitiates is also good; and hence to this good also it is assuredly contrary; but to God it is contrary only as evil to good, whereas to the nature which it vitiates it is not only evil, but also hurtful. For no evils are hurtful to God, but only to mutable and corruptible natures—which are nevertheless good even by the testimony of the vices themselves. For if they were not good, vices could not harm them. For what do they do by harming, except take away integrity, beauty, health, virtue, and whatever good of a nature is wont to be withdrawn or diminished by vice? But if there be nothing of good at all, it does not harm by taking away any good, and thereby is not even a vice. For it cannot be that there is a vice and yet it does not harm.

Whence it is gathered that, although vice cannot harm the immutable good, yet it cannot harm anything except a good, because it does not exist except where it harms. This can also be said in this way: that a vice can neither be in the supreme good, nor except in some good. Goods alone, therefore, can somewhere exist; evils alone nowhere; since even those natures which have been vitiated from the beginning of an evil will are evil in so far as they are vitiated, but in so far as they are natures, are good. And when a vitiated nature is in punishments, besides the fact that it is a nature, this too is there a good, namely that it is not unpunished. For this is just, and everything just is without doubt a good. For no one pays penalties for natural vices, but for voluntary ones.

For even that vice which, strengthened by habit or by excessive progress, has grown as it were naturally, took its beginning from the will. But we are now speaking of the vices of that nature in which there is a mind capable of the intelligible light by which the just is discerned from the unjust. [IV] Moreover, to think worthy of damnation the vices of cattle, trees, and other mutable and mortal things wholly devoid of intellect, sense, or life, by which their dissoluble nature is corrupted, is ridiculous; since these creatures have received, at the nod of the Creator, such a mode that, by yielding and succeeding, they carry out the lowest beauty of the seasons, congruous in its own kind with the parts of this world.

For earthly things were not to be made equal to heavenly, nor ought these to have been lacking to the universe merely because those are better. When, therefore, in these places where such things were fitting to exist, some things arise as others fail, and lesser things succumb to greater, and the vanquished are turned into the qualities of those that surpass them, this is the order of transient things. The beauty of this order does not delight us, for the reason that, being woven into a part of it according to the condition of our mortality, we cannot perceive the whole, to which the particulars that offend us are fittingly and becomingly suited.

Whence to us, who are less able to contemplate it, the providence of the Creator is most rightly enjoined to be believed, lest in our vanity of human rashness we should dare to blame in any part the work of so great an Artificer. Although even the vices of earthly things, which are neither voluntary nor penal, commend the natures themselves—of which there is none at all whose author and founder is not God—by the same reasoning, if we attend prudently; because in these too it displeases us that by vice there is taken away what in the nature pleases us; unless, indeed, the natures themselves for the most part displease men when they become hurtful to them, men considering not the natures, but their own utility—as those animals by whose abundance the pride of the Egyptians was scourged.

But in this manner they can even find fault with the sun, since certain persons sinning, or not paying their debts, are ordered by judges to be placed in the sun. It is not, then, according to our convenience or inconvenience, but a nature considered in itself gives glory to its Artificer. So too is the nature of the eternal fire without any doubt praiseworthy, although it is to be penal to the ungodly who are condemned. For what is more beautiful than fire, flaming, vigorous, and shining? What more useful than that which warms, heals, and cooks?—although nothing is more troublesome than that which burns. The very same thing, therefore, applied in one way is destructive, which, fittingly employed, is found most beneficial. For who could suffice in words to unfold its uses in the whole world?

Nor are those to be heard who praise the light in fire, but blame the heat—according, forsooth, not to the force of nature, but to their own convenience or inconvenience. For they wish to see, but not to burn. But they little attend that this very light, which certainly also pleases them, harms weak eyes by its incongruity, and that in that heat which displeases them, not a few animals live wholesomely through its congruity. [V] All natures, therefore, since they exist and thereby have their own measure, their own species, and a certain peace of their own with themselves, are assuredly good; and when they are there where by the order of nature they ought to be, they preserve their own being, as much as they have received;

and those which have not received the power to be always, for the use and movement of the things to which by the Creator's law they are subject, are changed for the better or the worse, tending by divine providence to that outcome which the plan of governing the universe includes; so that not even so great a corruption, as leads mutable and mortal natures even to destruction, so brings it about that what was should cease to be, without there consequently coming to be from it what ought to be.

Since these things are so, God, who supremely is and thereby by Him was made every essence which does not supremely exist (because that which was made out of nothing neither ought to be equal to Him, nor could exist in any way if it had not been made by Him), is neither to be blamed on account of the offense of any vices, and is to be praised in the consideration of all natures. [VI] Accordingly, the cause of the blessedness of the good angels is found to be most truly this, that they adhere to Him who supremely is. But when the cause of the misery of the evil angels is sought, it deservedly occurs that, being turned away from Him who supremely is, they were turned to themselves, who do not supremely exist; and what else is this vice to be named than pride? For 'the beginning of all sin is pride.'

They were unwilling, therefore, to keep their strength for Him; and they who would have been more, if they had adhered to Him who supremely is, by preferring themselves to Him, preferred that which is less. This is the first defect, and the first want, and the first vice of that nature which was so created that, although it did not supremely exist, yet, for having blessedness, it could enjoy Him who supremely is; from whom being turned away, it would not indeed be nothing, but would nevertheless be less, and thereby become miserable. Moreover, if the efficient cause of this evil will be sought, nothing is found. For what is it that makes the will evil, since it is the will itself that makes the evil work? And thereby the evil will is the efficient cause of the evil work, but of the evil will there is no efficient cause.

For if there is some thing, it either has or has not some will; if it has, it assuredly has either a good or an evil one; if a good one, who would be so foolish as to say that a good will makes an evil will? For then, if it were so, a good will would be the cause of sin—than which nothing more absurd can be thought. But if that thing, which is thought to make the will evil, itself also has an evil will, I ask consequently of that thing too what made it; and thus, that there may be some limit to the inquiry, I inquire the cause of the first evil will. For that is not the first evil will which an evil will made; but that is the first which none made. For if it was preceded by that from which it came to be, that which made the other is prior.

If it be answered that no thing made it, and therefore it always existed: I ask whether it existed in some nature. For if it existed in none, it existed not at all; but if in some, it vitiated and corrupted that nature, and was hurtful to it, and thereby deprived it of good. And therefore an evil will could not be in an evil nature, but in a good one, though mutable, which this vice could harm. For if it did not harm, it certainly was not a vice, and thereby is not to be called an evil will. But if it harmed, it certainly harmed by taking away or diminishing good. Therefore an eternal evil will could not exist in that thing in which a natural good had preceded, which the evil will could by harming take away. If, then, it was not eternal, I ask who made it.

It remains to be said that some thing, in which there was no will, made the evil will. I ask whether this thing is superior, or inferior, or equal. But the superior is assuredly better; how then could it be the cause of no will, and not rather of a good will? The same is assuredly true of an equal. For two things, as long as they are equally of a good will, one does not make in the other an evil will. It remains, then, that an inferior thing, which has no will, made the evil will of the angelic nature which first sinned. But even that thing itself, whatever it is, being inferior down to the lowest earth, since it is a nature and an essence, is without doubt good, having its own measure and species in its own kind and order.

How, then, is a good thing the efficient cause of an evil will? How, I say, is good the cause of evil? For when the will, having forsaken the higher, turns itself to lower things, it becomes evil, not because that to which it turns is evil, but because the turning itself is perverse. Therefore it is not the inferior thing that made the will evil; but the will itself perversely and inordinately desired the inferior thing, because it, the will, was made. For if two persons, equally affected in soul and body, see the beauty of one body, at the sight of which one of them is moved to enjoy it unlawfully, while the other remains steadfast in a chaste will, what do we think is the cause that in the one there arises, and in the other there does not arise, an evil will? What thing made it in him in whom it was made?

For it was not that beauty of the body; for it did not make the evil will in both, since it presented itself no differently to the sight of both. Or is the flesh of the beholder the cause? Why then not also the flesh of the other? Or is it the soul? Why then not the soul of both? For we said beforehand that both were equally affected in soul and body. Or must it be said that one of them was tempted by the hidden suggestion of a malignant spirit—as though he did not, by his own will, consent to that same suggestion and to whatever persuasion? This consent, then, this evil will which he applied to the one persuading him to evil—what thing made it in him, we ask.

For that this impediment too may be removed from this question: if both are tempted by the same temptation, and one of them yields and consents to it, while the other remains the same as he was—what else appears, save that one was unwilling, the other willing, to fall away from chastity? And whence, save by his own will, where in both the same affection of body and of soul had been? By the eyes of both the same beauty was equally seen; upon both the hidden temptation equally pressed. Therefore, to those wishing to know what thing made the evil will proper to one of them, if they look well, nothing occurs. For if we should say that he himself made it, what was he himself before the evil will, save a good nature, of which God, who is the immutable good, is the author?

Whoever, then, says that he who consented to the tempter and persuader—to whom the other did not consent—to make unlawful use of the beautiful body which presented itself to be seen equally by both, when before that seeing and temptation both were alike in soul and body, himself made for himself the evil will (he who assuredly was good before the evil will): let him ask why he made it—whether because he is a nature, or because he was made out of nothing—and he will find that the evil will begins not from that which is nature, but from that which is a nature made out of nothing. For if nature were the cause of the evil will, what else are we compelled to say than that evil comes to be from good, and that good is the cause of evil?—if indeed from a good nature an evil will comes to be.

Whence can it come to pass that a good nature, though mutable, before it has an evil will, should make anything evil—that is, the evil will itself? [VII] Let no one, therefore, seek the efficient cause of the evil will; for it is not efficient, but deficient, since neither is that an effecting, but a defecting. For to fall away from that which supremely is, to that which less is—this is to begin to have an evil will. But to wish to find the causes of these defections—which are not efficient, as I have said, but deficient—is as if someone should wish to see darkness or hear silence; both of which, however, are known to us, the one only through the eyes, the other only through the ears, yet not in their appearance, but in the privation of appearance.

Let no one, then, seek to learn from me what I know that I do not know, unless perhaps to learn how not to know that which must be known to be incapable of being known. For those things which are known not in their form but in the privation of it, if they can be spoken or understood at all, are in a certain manner known by not-knowing, so that by knowing they are not known. For when the gaze even of the bodily eye ranges over bodily forms, it nowhere sees darkness except where it has begun not to see. So too it belongs to no other sense, but to the ears alone, to perceive silence, which nonetheless is in no way perceived except by not-hearing. Thus indeed our mind beholds intelligible forms by understanding; but where they fail, it learns them by not-knowing. For who understands his own faults?

This I know: that the nature of God can never, nowhere, in no part fail, whereas those things which have been made out of nothing can fail. Yet insofar as they exist the more and do good (for then indeed they do something), they have efficient causes; but insofar as they fail and thereby do evil (for what then do they do but vain things?), they have deficient causes. Likewise I know that in whomever an evil will arises, it arises in him in such a way that, had he not willed it, it would not have arisen; and therefore not necessary but voluntary defects are followed by a just penalty. For the falling-away is not toward evil things, but is done evilly; that is, not toward evil natures, but done evilly for this reason: because it is against the order of natures, turning from that which supremely is to that which is less.

For avarice is not a fault of gold, but of the man who perversely loves gold with justice forsaken, which ought incomparably to have been set above gold; nor is luxury a fault of beautiful and pleasant bodies, but of the soul that perversely loves bodily pleasures with temperance neglected, by which we are fitted to things spiritually more beautiful and incorruptibly more sweet; nor is boasting a fault of human praise, but of the soul that perversely loves to be praised by men, with the testimony of conscience despised; nor is pride a fault of him who gives power, or even of power itself, but of the soul that perversely loves its own power, with the more just power of one more mighty held in contempt.

And therefore whoever perversely loves the good of any nature whatsoever, even if he attains it, himself becomes evil in the good and wretched, being deprived of a better thing. Since, then, of an evil will there is no efficient cause that is natural or, if one may so speak, essential (for from the evil will itself arises the evil of mutable spirits, by which the good of nature is diminished and corrupted, and nothing produces such a will except the falling-away by which God is forsaken, of which falling-away the cause too utterly fails): if we should say that there is no efficient cause even of a good will, we must beware lest the good will of the good angels be believed to be uncreated and coeternal with God. Since, then, they themselves were made, how shall that good will be said not to have been made?

Furthermore, since it was made, was it made together with the angels themselves, or did they exist first without it? But if it was made together with them, there is no doubt that it was made by him by whom they too were made; and as soon as they were made, they clung, by the love with which they were made, to him by whom they were made. And these fell apart from the fellowship of those others by this: that those remained in the same good will, while these were changed by falling away from it, namely by an evil will, in the very act by which they fell away from the good will; from which they would not have fallen away had they not been willing. But if the good angels existed first without a good will and made it in themselves without God working: were they then made better by themselves than by him? Far be it! For what were they without a good will but evil?

Or if they were not evil for the reason that no evil will was in them either (for they had not fallen away from that which they had not yet begun to have), then certainly they were not yet such, not yet so good as they became when they began to have a good will. But if they could not make themselves better than he had made them, than whom no one makes anything better: surely they could not have a good will, by which they would be better, except by the working aid of the Creator. And when their good will accomplished this—that they should be turned not to themselves, who were of less being, but to him who supremely is, and by clinging to him should have more being and, by participation in him, should live wisely and blessedly:

what else is shown but that a will, however good, would have been destitute, remaining in mere desire, unless he who had made the good nature capable of receiving himself out of nothing were, out of himself, to make it better by filling it, first making it more eager by arousing it? For this too must be examined: if the good angels themselves made a good will in themselves, whether they made it by some will or by no will. If by no will, then indeed they did not make it at all. If by some will, was it an evil or a good will? If evil, how could an evil will be the maker of a good will? If good, then they already had it. And who had made this good will but he who created them with a good will, that is, with a chaste love by which they might cling to him, at once both founding their nature and bestowing grace upon them?

Whence it must be believed that the holy angels were never without a good will, that is, without the love of God. But those who, though created good, are nevertheless evil (evil by their own will, which the good nature did not make, except when it fell away of its own accord from the good, so that the cause of evil is not the good but the falling-away from the good)—these either received a lesser grace of divine love than those who persevered in that same love, or, if both were created equally good, then, while these fell by an evil will, those were more abundantly helped and attained that fullness of blessedness by which they became most certain that they would never fall; as we have already treated in the book which this one follows.

It must therefore be confessed, with the praise due to the Creator, that it belongs not only to holy men but that it may also be said of the holy angels, that the love of God has been poured out in them through the Holy Spirit who was given to them; and that it is the good not only of men, but first and chiefly of the angels, which is written: But for me it is good to cling to God. To those to whom this good is common, they have, both with him to whom they cling and among themselves, a holy fellowship, and they are one City of God and also his living sacrifice and his living temple.

Of that City a part—the part which, destined to be joined to the immortal angels, is gathered from mortal men and now sojourns changeably upon the earth, or rests in the hidden receptacles and abodes of souls among those who have undergone death—I now see must be spoken of: how, with the same God creating, it arose, just as was said concerning the angels. For from one man, whom God first founded, the human race took its beginning, according to the faith of Holy Scripture, which not undeservedly holds a marvelous authority throughout the world and among all the nations that it foretold, by its true divinity, would come to believe in it, among the other true things which it declared.

[X] Let us therefore pass over the conjectures of men who do not know what they are saying about the nature or the founding of the human race. For some, just as they believed concerning the world itself, suppose that men have always existed. Whence Apuleius too says, when he was describing this class of living beings: "Individually mortal, yet as a whole race everlasting." And when it is objected to them that, if the human race has always existed, how can that history of theirs speak truly which relates who existed and who were the discoverers of various things—who were the first founders of the liberal disciplines and of the other arts, or by whom first

this or that region and part of the earth, this or that island began to be inhabited—how can such a history speak truly? They reply that by floods and conflagrations at certain intervals of time, not indeed all lands, but very many of them, are so devastated that men are reduced to a scanty few, from whose offspring the former multitude is again restored; and that thus the same things are again and again discovered and founded as if for the first time, whereas they are rather being restored, having been interrupted and extinguished by those excessive devastations; but that a man cannot come into being at all except from a man. Yet they say what they suppose, not what they know.

[XI] They are deceived also by certain most mendacious writings, which they allege to contain, in the history of the ages, many thousands of years, whereas from the sacred writings we reckon that, from the founding of man, not yet six thousand years have been completed. Wherefore, that I may not dispute at length how the vanity of those writings—in which far more thousands of years are recorded—is refuted, and how no fitting authority for this matter is found in them: that letter of Alexander the Great to his mother Olympias, which he wrote setting forth the narration of a certain Egyptian priest, which he produced from writings held sacred among them, contains also kingdoms which Greek history too knows;

among which, in the same letter of Alexander, the kingdom of the Assyrians exceeds five thousand years; but in Greek history it has nearly one thousand three hundred years from the reign of Belus himself, whom that Egyptian too places, as king, at the beginning of that same kingdom; while the empire of the Persians and Macedonians up to Alexander himself, to whom he was speaking, that man reckons at more than eight thousand years, whereas among the Greeks the Macedonians up to the death of Alexander are found to be four hundred and eighty-five years, and the Persians, until the reign was ended by the victory of Alexander himself, are reckoned at two hundred and thirty-three. These numbers of years, then, are by far smaller than those of the Egyptians, and would not equal them even if they were reckoned three times over.

For the Egyptians are said once to have had years so short that they were completed in four months each; whence a fuller and truer year, such as ours is now and theirs also is, embraced three of their ancient years. But not even so, as I have said, does Greek history agree in the reckoning of times with the Egyptian. And therefore credence is rather to be given to the Greek, because it does not exceed the true number of years which is contained in our writings, which are truly sacred. Furthermore, if this letter of Alexander, which has become most widely known, is so much at variance in its spans of time from what may probably be believed of these matters:

how much less are those writings to be believed, which they have wished to bring forward full of fabulous, as it were, antiquities, against the authority of those most well-known and divine books—which foretold that the whole world would come to believe in them, and in which the whole world, just as was foretold by them, has believed; which show that they narrated true things past by the fact that the things they foretold as future are being fulfilled with such great truth. [XII] But others, who do not consider this world to be everlasting—whether they suppose it to be not the only one but that there are innumerable worlds, or that it is indeed the only one, but that at fixed intervals of ages it innumerably rises and passes away—must necessarily confess that the human race existed formerly without begetting men.

For not as with the inundations and burnings of lands, which those men do not think happen over the whole world at once—and therefore contend that a few men, from whom the former multitude is restored, always remain—not thus can these men suppose that anything of mankind is left in the world when the world perishes; but just as they think the world itself is reborn from its own matter, so in it, from its elements, they think the human race, and then from parents the offspring of mortals, sprouts forth, as with other animals. [XIII] But that which we answered, when the question was raised concerning the origin of the world, to those who are unwilling to believe that it did not always exist, but began to exist, as even Plato most openly confesses—although he is believed by some to have thought otherwise than he says:

this same answer I would also give concerning the first condition of man, on account of those who are similarly troubled as to why man was not created through the innumerable and infinite times back, and was created so late that, according to what is found in the sacred writings, less than six thousand years have passed since he began to be. For if the brevity of the time offends them, because so few years seem to them to have passed since man, as is read in our authorities, was established: let them consider that nothing is long-lasting in which there is anything final, and that all the spans of ages, if they be compared to boundless eternity, are to be esteemed not scanty, but nothing at all.

And therefore, if not five or six, but even sixty thousand years, or six hundred, or sixty times or six hundred times or six hundred thousand times as many years were spoken of, since God made man; or if this same sum were multiplied over and over so many times that we should no longer have any name for the number—likewise it could be asked why he did not make him before. For God's cessation from the creation of man, stretching backward, is so eternal and without beginning that, if there be compared to it however great and unspeakable a multitude of times—which nonetheless, enclosed by an end, is bounded by a fixed span—it ought not even to seem so much as if we were to compare the very briefest drop of moisture to the whole sea, even to as much as the ocean flows around;

since of these two, the one indeed is exceedingly tiny, the other incomparably great, yet both are finite; but that span of time which proceeds from some beginning and is confined by some end, however great a magnitude it be stretched to, when compared to that which has no beginning, I know not whether it is to be reckoned as the least, or rather as nothing. For hence, if from its end there be taken away even the very briefest moments one by one, though with the number decreasing—vast as it is, so that it finds no name—by going back in reverse (as if you should subtract a man's days from that in which he now lives back to that in which he was born), at some time that subtraction will be brought to the beginning.

But if there be subtracted, going backward in a span that began from no beginning, not, I say, the minute moments one by one, nor even the quantities of hours or days or months or years, but such great spans as that sum of years comprehends which can no longer be uttered by any reckoners—which nonetheless is consumed by the moment-by-moment subtraction of moments—and if these so great spans be subtracted not once and again and more often, but always: what happens, what is being done, when one never arrives at a beginning, which is utterly none at all?

Wherefore that which we now inquire, after five thousand and more years, our posterity too could inquire with the same curiosity after six hundred thousand years, if this mortality of men, by arising and dying, and this unlearned infirmity, should so long persevere. Even those who were before us could have raised this question in the very recent times of the created man. Indeed, the first man himself, on the very next day, or on the same day after he was made, could have inquired why he was not made before; and whenever he might have been made before, this controversy about the beginning of temporal things would not find one set of forces then and other forces now or even later.

[XIV] But the philosophers of this world thought that they could and ought to resolve this in no other way than by introducing cycles of times, in which they asserted that the same things had always been renewed and repeated in the nature of things, and that thus henceforth the revolutions of ages coming and passing would be without cessation; whether these cycles took place with the world remaining permanent, or whether the world, rising and passing away at fixed intervals, ever displayed the same things as though new, which had already gone by and were to come. And from this mockery they cannot free the immortal soul, even when it has attained wisdom, going without cessation to a false blessedness and returning without cessation to true misery.

For how is that a true blessedness, of whose eternity there is never any confidence, while the soul either most ignorantly, in the truth, does not know its coming misery, or most unhappily, in its blessedness, dreads it? But if, never to return thereafter to miseries, it goes from these to blessedness: then something new happens in time, which has no end of time. Why not then also the world? why not also man, made in the world? So that those—I know not what—false cycles, devised by false and deceitful sages, may be avoided in sound doctrine, on the path of the straight way. For some also wish that which is read in the book of Solomon, which is called Ecclesiastes: What is that which has been? The same which shall be. And what is that which has been done? The same which shall be done;

and there is nothing wholly new under the sun. Who shall speak and say: Behold, this is new: it has already been in the ages which were before us—they wish this to be understood as spoken on account of these cycles returning into the same things and recalling all things into the same. But he said this either concerning those things of which he was speaking above, that is, concerning generations, some going, others coming, concerning the circlings of the sun, concerning the fallings of torrents; or certainly concerning the kinds of all things which rise and set. For there were men before us, there are men with us, there will be men after us; and so likewise all living creatures or shrubs.

Monsters too, those very things which are born unusual, although they differ among themselves and some of them are related to have been produced but once, nevertheless, according to that which they are generally—miracles and monsters—assuredly both have been and will be, nor is it recent and new that a monster should be born under the sun. Although some have understood these words as though that wise man wished it to be understood that in the predestination of God all things had already been done, and therefore that nothing is recent under the sun.

But far be it from right faith that we should believe those cycles to be signified by these words of Solomon, by which they think that the same revolutions of times and of temporal things are so repeated that, for example, just as in this age Plato the philosopher taught disciples in the city of Athens and in that school which is called the Academy, so through innumerable ages back, at very long yet fixed intervals, the same Plato and the same city and the same school and the same disciples have been repeated, and are to be repeated through innumerable ages hereafter. Far be it, I say, that we should believe these things. For Christ died once for our sins;

but rising from the dead, he dies no more, and death shall no longer have dominion over him; and we, after the resurrection, shall be always with the Lord, to whom we now say what the sacred psalm admonishes: Thou, O Lord, shalt preserve us and keep us from this generation and for ever. And I think that what follows accords sufficiently with these men: The wicked walk about in a circle; not because their life, through the cycles which they imagine, will return, but because the way of their error is now such, that is, false doctrine. [XV] But what wonder is it if, wandering in these cycles, they find neither entrance nor exit? For the human race and this our mortality know neither by what beginning it began, nor by what end it is closed;

seeing that they cannot penetrate the depth of God, whereby, though he himself is eternal and without beginning, he nonetheless began times from some beginning, and made man, whom he had never before made, in time—yet not by a new and sudden, but by an immutable and eternal counsel. Who could avail to investigate this unsearchable depth and to scrutinize the inscrutable, according to which God founded man, a temporal being, before whom no man ever was, not by a mutable will, in time, and multiplied the human race from one? Seeing that the psalm itself, when it had first premised and said:

Thou, O Lord, shalt preserve us and keep us from this generation and for ever, and then had rebuffed those in whose foolish and impious doctrine no eternity of the soul's liberation and blessedness is preserved, immediately subjoining: The wicked walk about in a circle: as if it were said to it: "What then dost thou believe, feel, understand? Is it to be supposed that it suddenly pleased God to make man, whom he had never before made through an infinite eternity back, God to whom nothing new can happen, in whom there is nothing mutable?"—it immediately answered, speaking to God himself: According to thy depth thou hast multiplied the sons of men. Let men, it says, feel what they suppose, and let them opine and dispute what pleases them:

According to thy depth, which no man can know, thou hast multiplied the sons of men. For it is very deep both that thou hast always existed, and that thou hast willed to make man for the first time from some point of time, man whom thou hadst never made, and yet hast not changed thy counsel and will. [XVI] I indeed, just as I dare not say that the Lord God at any time was not Lord, so I ought not to doubt that man never before existed and that from some point of time the first man was created. But when I consider of what thing he was always Lord, if a creature did not always exist, I am afraid to affirm anything, because I both look upon myself and recall that it is written: What man is able to know the counsel of God, or who will be able to think what the Lord wills?

For the thoughts of mortals are timid, and our devisings uncertain. For the corruptible body weighs down the soul, and the earthly habitation presses down the mind that ponders many things. From these many things, then, which I ponder in this earthly habitation—many indeed for this reason, because I cannot find the one thing which, out of these or beyond these, that perhaps I do not ponder, is true—if I should say that a creature always existed, of which he was Lord who is always Lord and never was not Lord, but now this one, now another through various and various spans of times, lest we should say that any creature is coeternal with the Creator, which sound faith and reason condemn:

it must be guarded against, lest it be absurd and alien to the light of truth that a mortal creature indeed always existed through the changes of times, one passing away, another succeeding, but that an immortal creature did not begin to exist except when it came to our age, when the angels too were created—if that light first made rightly signifies them, or rather that heaven of which it was said: In the beginning God made heaven and earth—since nevertheless they did not exist before they came to be, lest, if they are said to have always existed, the immortals be believed to be coeternal with God. But if I should say that the angels were not created in time, but existed before all times, they too whose Lord God was, who was never anything but Lord:

it will be asked of me also whether, if they were made before all times, those who were made could always have existed. Here it might perhaps seem that the answer should be: How not always, since that which exists at all time may not unfittingly be said to exist always? For these existed at all time to such a degree that they were even made before all times—if indeed times began from heaven, and they already were before heaven. But if time was not from heaven, but existed even before heaven; not indeed in hours and days and months and years (for those measurements of temporal spans, which are usually and properly called times, it is manifest began from the motion of the stars; whence God too, when he was instituting these, said:

And let them be for signs and for times and for days and for years), but in some mutable motion, of which one part is prior, another posterior, passing away because they cannot exist at once;—if, therefore, before heaven there was some such thing in angelic motions, and thus time already existed, and the angels, from the time they were made, were moved temporally: then even so they existed at all time, seeing that times were made together with them. But who could say: That did not always exist, which existed at all time? But if I should answer this, it will be said to me: How then are they not coeternal with the Creator, if he always was, and they always were? How also are they to be called created, if they are understood to have always existed? To this what shall be answered?

Or must it be said that they both always existed, since they existed at all time—they who were made with time, or with whom times were made—and yet were created? For neither will we deny that times themselves were created, although no one doubts that time existed at all time. For if time did not exist at all time, then there was a time when there was no time. Who so utterly foolish would say this? For we can rightly say: There was a time when Rome was not; there was a time when Jerusalem was not; there was a time when Abraham was not; there was a time when man was not, and anything of this sort; finally, if the world was made not with the beginning of time, but after some time, we can say: There was a time when the world was not;

but truly: There was a time when there was no time, we say as unfittingly as if anyone should say: There was a man when there was no man, or: This world was, when this world was not. For if it be understood of one thing and another, it can in some way be said, that is: There was another man when this man was not; so then: There was another time when this time was not, we can rightly say; but truly: There was a time when there was no time—who, even the most senseless, would say it? Just as, then, we say that time was created, though it is for this reason said to have always existed, because at all time there was time:

so it does not follow that, if the angels always existed, they were therefore not created, so as to be said to have always existed for this reason, that they existed at all time, and to have existed at all time for this reason, that in no way could times themselves exist without them. For where there is no creature by whose mutable motions times are wrought, times can in no way exist at all; and therefore even if they always existed, they were created, nor, if they always existed, are they therefore coeternal with the Creator. For he always existed in an immutable eternity; but they were made; yet they are said to have always existed for this reason, that they existed at all time, without whom times could in no way exist;

but time, since it runs on by mutability, cannot be coeternal with immutable eternity. And therefore, even though the immortality of the angels does not pass away in time, nor is past as though it now were not, nor future as though it were not yet: nevertheless their motions, by which times are wrought, pass over from the future into the past; and therefore they cannot be coeternal with the Creator, in whose motion it must not be said either that there was what now is not, or that there will be what is not yet. Wherefore, if God was always Lord, he always had a creature serving his dominion; yet a creature not begotten of himself, but made by himself out of nothing and not coeternal with him; for he was before it, although at no time without it;

preceding it not by a passing span of time, but by abiding perpetuity. But if I should give this answer to those who inquire how he was always Creator, always Lord, if a serving creature did not always exist; or how it was created and is not rather coeternal with the Creator, if it always existed: I fear lest I be more easily judged to affirm what I do not know than to teach what I know. I return therefore to that which our Creator willed us to know; but those things which he permitted either the wiser to know in this life, or reserved to be known by the wholly perfected in the other life, I confess to be beyond my powers.

But I have thought it best to treat these matters without dogmatic assertion, so that those who read them may see from what perilous questions they ought to hold back, and may not judge themselves competent for all things, but rather understand how salutary it is to obey the Apostle when he commands: 'For I say, through the grace of God which is given to me, to all that are among you, not to be more wise than it behoveth to be wise, but to be wise unto sobriety, and according as God hath divided to every one the measure of faith.' For if an infant be nourished according to its strength, it will come to pass that in growing it will take in more; but if it exceed the powers of its capacity, it will fail before it grows. As for what ages passed before the human race was established, I confess that I do not know;

nevertheless I do not doubt that no creature whatever is coeternal with the Creator. The Apostle even speaks of eternal times, and not of times to come, but — what is more to be wondered at — of times past. For thus he says: 'In hope of life everlasting, which God, who lieth not, hath promised before the eternal times; but hath in due times manifested his word.' Behold, he said that there were eternal times in the past, which nevertheless were not coeternal with God; since indeed He not only existed before the eternal times, but even promised eternal life, which He manifested in His own times, that is, in fitting times — what else than His own Word? For this is eternal life.

But how did He promise it, since He certainly promised it to men, who did not yet exist before the eternal times — unless because in His eternity and in His very Word, coeternal with Himself, that was already fixed by predestination which was to come to pass in its own time? This too I do not doubt: that before the first man was created, there never was any man; and that neither he himself was revolved I know not through what cycles I know not how many times, nor any other like him in nature. Nor do the arguments of the philosophers deter me from this faith, of which that is thought the sharpest which says that no infinite things can be comprehended by any knowledge; and therefore, they say, God has with Himself all the finite reckonings of all the finite things He makes;

but His goodness, they say, must not be believed ever to have been idle, lest His operation be temporal, when behind it there would have been an eternal cessation — as though He had repented of His former beginningless idleness, and on that account undertook the beginning of His work; and therefore, they say, it is necessary that the same things be always repeated, and the same things be always destined for repetition to pass by — whether the world remaining changeably (which, though it never was not, was yet made without any beginning of time), or its very rise and setting being always repeated in those cycles and always destined for repetition;

lest, forsooth, if God's works are said at some time to have first begun, His prior beginningless idleness be believed in some way to have been condemned by Him as sluggish, slothful, and therefore displeasing to Himself, and on that account to have been changed; but if, on the other hand, He be reported to have wrought temporal things indeed always, yet ever different ones, and thus at some time to have arrived even at making man, whom He had never made before — then He would seem to have made what He made not by knowledge, by which they think that no infinite things can be comprehended, but as it were for the moment, as it came into His mind, by a certain fortuitous inconstancy.

Furthermore, they say, if those cycles be admitted, by which the same temporal things are repeated — whether while the world remains, or while the world itself inserts into the same cycles its own revolving risings and settings — then neither is idle leisure, especially of so long a beginningless duration, attributed to God, nor is there improvident rashness in His works; since if the same things were not repeated, they could not, varied by an infinite diversity, be comprehended by any knowledge or foreknowledge of His. These arguments, by which the impious try to turn our simple piety from the right way, that we might walk with them in a circle — if reason could not refute them, faith ought to laugh at them.

To this is added that, by the help of the Lord our God, reason plainly shatters these revolving circles which mere opinion fabricates. For this is chiefly why these men err: that they prefer to walk in a false circle rather than on the true and straight path — because they measure the divine mind, which is altogether immutable, capable of any infinity, and numbering all things innumerable without any alternation of thought, by their own human, mutable, and narrow mind; and there befalls them what the Apostle says: 'For measuring themselves by themselves, they understand not.' For because, whenever anything new comes into their mind to be done, they do it by a new counsel (since they bear changeable minds):

assuredly, thinking not of God, whom they cannot conceive, but of themselves in His stead — not Him, but themselves — they compare not Him but themselves, and compare not to Him but to themselves. But for us it is not lawful to believe that God is affected in one way when He is at rest, and in another when He works; for indeed He is not to be said to be affected at all, as though something came to be in His nature which was not there before. For whatever is affected suffers, and everything that suffers anything is mutable. Let there not therefore be imagined in His leisure any sluggishness, sloth, or inertness, just as there is no labor, effort, or toil in His work. He knows how to act while resting, and to rest while acting. He can bring to a new work a counsel not new but everlasting; nor did He begin, by any repenting because He had before ceased, to do what He had not done.

But even if He first ceased and afterward worked (which I know not in what way it can be understood by man): this beyond doubt — that which is called 'before' and 'after' — was in the things that first did not exist and afterward existed; but in Him no succeeding will changed or took away a preceding one, but by one and the same everlasting and immutable will He both brought it about that the things He created should not exist before, so long as they did not exist, and that they should exist afterward, when they began to be — thereby perhaps wondrously showing to those who can see such things how little He needed them, but created them out of gratuitous goodness, since without them He remained from an eternity lacking a beginning in no less blessedness.

But as for that other thing they say — that not even by God's knowledge can things that are infinite be comprehended: it remains for them to dare to say, and to plunge themselves into this deep abyss of impiety, that God does not know all numbers. That these are infinite is most certain; for in whatever number you should think a limit was to be made, that very number can, in the very theory and science of numbers, not only be augmented (I do not say by adding one), but — however great it be and however vast a multitude it contain — can even be multiplied. Yet each number is so bounded by its own properties that none of them can be equal to any other whatever.

Therefore they are both unequal to one another and diverse, and each single one is finite, and all together are infinite. Does God then, on account of their infinity, not know all numbers, and does the knowledge of God reach up to a certain sum of numbers and remain ignorant of the rest? Who, even the most demented, would say this? Nor will these men dare to despise numbers and say that they do not pertain to God's knowledge — men among whom Plato commends God with great authority as fashioning the world by numbers. And among us it is read as said to God: 'Thou hast ordered all things in measure, and number, and weight'; of whom the prophet also says: 'Who bringeth forth the world by number'; and the Savior in the Gospel says: 'The very hairs of your head are all numbered.'

Far be it therefore from us to doubt that every number is known to Him, of whose understanding, as is sung in the Psalm, there is no number. The infinity of number, therefore, although there be no number of infinite numbers, is nevertheless not incomprehensible to Him of whose understanding there is no number. Wherefore, if whatever is comprehended by knowledge is bounded by the comprehension of the knower: assuredly all infinity too is in some ineffable way finite to God, because it is not incomprehensible to His knowledge. Therefore, if the infinity of numbers cannot be infinite to the knowledge of God, by which it is comprehended: