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- 505547
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- confessions
- text
- eternal. Again, what He tells me in my inner ear, the expectation of
things to come becomes sight, when they are come, and this same sight
becomes memory, when they be past. Now all thought which thus varies is
mutable; and no mutable thing is eternal: but our God is eternal." These
things I infer, and put together, and find that my God, the eternal God,
hath not upon any new will made any creature, nor doth His knowledge
admit of any thing transitory. "What will ye say then, O ye gainsayers?
Are these things false?" "No," they say; "What then? Is it false, that
every nature already formed, or matter capable of form, is not, but from
Him Who is supremely good, because He is supremely?" "Neither do we deny
this," say they. "What then? do you deny this, that there is a certain
sublime creature, with so chaste a love cleaving unto the true and
truly eternal God, that although not coeternal with Him, yet is it not
detached from Him, nor dissolved into the variety and vicissitude of
times, but reposeth in the most true contemplation of Him only?" Because
Thou, O God, unto him that loveth Thee so much as Thou commandest, dost
show Thyself, and sufficest him; and therefore doth he not decline
from Thee, nor toward himself. This is the house of God, not of earthly
mould, nor of celestial bulk corporeal but spiritual, and partaker of
Thy eternity, because without defection for ever. For Thou hast made
it fast for ever and ever, Thou hast given it a law which it shall not
pass. Nor yet is it coeternal with Thee, O God, because not without
beginning; for it was made.
For although we find no time before it, for wisdom was created before
all things; not that Wisdom which is altogether equal and coeternal unto
Thee, our God, His Father, and by Whom all things were created, and in
Whom, as the Beginning, Thou createdst heaven and earth; but that
wisdom which is created, that is, the intellectual nature, which by
contemplating the light, is light. For this, though created, is also
called wisdom. But what difference there is betwixt the Light which
enlighteneth, and which is enlightened, so much is there betwixt the
Wisdom that createth, and that created; as betwixt the Righteousness
which justifieth, and the righteousness which is made by justification.
For we also are called Thy righteousness; for so saith a certain
servant of Thine, That we might be made the righteousness of God in Him.
Therefore since a certain created wisdom was created before all things,
the rational and intellectual mind of that chaste city of Thine, our
mother which is above, and is free and eternal in the heavens (in
what heavens, if not in those that praise Thee, the Heaven of heavens?
Because this is also the Heaven of heavens for the Lord);--though we
find no time before it (because that which hath been created before all
things, precedeth also the creature of time), yet is the Eternity of
the Creator Himself before it, from Whom, being created, it took the
beginning, not indeed of time (for time itself was not yet), but of its
creation.
Hence it is so of Thee, our God, as to be altogether other than Thou,
and not the Self-same: because though we find time neither before it,
nor even in it (it being meet ever to behold Thy face, nor is ever drawn
away from it, wherefore it is not varied by any change), yet is there in
it a liability to change, whence it would wax dark, and chill, but
that by a strong affection cleaving unto Thee, like perpetual noon, it
shineth and gloweth from Thee. O house most lightsome and delightsome!
I have loved thy beauty, and the place of the habitation of the glory
of my Lord, thy builder and possessor. Let my wayfaring sigh after thee,
and I say to Him that made thee, let Him take possession of me also in
thee, seeing He hath made me likewise. I have gone astray like a lost
sheep: yet upon the shoulders of my Shepherd, thy builder, hope I to be
brought back to thee.
"What say ye to me, O ye gainsayers that I was speaking unto, who yet
believe Moses to have been the holy servant of God, and his books the
oracles of the Holy Ghost? Is not this house of God, not coeternal
indeed with God, yet after its measure, eternal in the heavens, when you
seek for changes of times in vain, because you will not find them? For
that, to which it is ever good to cleave fast to God, surpasses all
extension, and all revolving periods of time." "It is," say they.
"What then of all that which my heart loudly uttered unto my God, when
inwardly it heard the voice of His praise, what part thereof do you
affirm to be false? Is it that the matter was without form, in which
because there was no form, there was no order? But where no order was,
there could be no vicissitude of times: and yet this 'almost nothing,'
inasmuch as it was not altogether nothing, was from Him certainly, from
Whom is whatsoever is, in what degree soever it is." "This also," say
they, "do we not deny."
With these I now parley a little in Thy presence, O my God, who grant
all these things to be true, which Thy Truth whispers unto my soul. For
those who deny these things, let them bark and deafen themselves as much
as they please; I will essay to persuade them to quiet, and to open in
them a way for Thy word. But if they refuse, and repel me; I beseech, O
my God, be not Thou silent to me. Speak Thou truly in my heart; for
only Thou so speakest: and I will let them alone blowing upon the dust
without, and raising it up into their own eyes: and myself will enter
my chamber, and sing there a song of loves unto Thee; groaning with
groanings unutterable, in my wayfaring, and remembering Jerusalem, with
heart lifted up towards it, Jerusalem my country, Jerusalem my mother,
and Thyself that rulest over it, the Enlightener, Father, Guardian,
Husband, the pure and strong delight, and solid joy, and all good things
unspeakable, yea all at once, because the One Sovereign and true Good.
Nor will I be turned away, until Thou gather all that I am, from this
dispersed and disordered estate, into the peace of that our most dear
mother, where the first-fruits of my spirit be already (whence I am
ascertained of these things), and Thou conform and confirm it for ever,
O my God, my Mercy. But those who do not affirm all these truths to be
false, who honour Thy holy Scripture, set forth by holy Moses, placing
it, as we, on the summit of authority to be followed, and do yet
contradict me in some thing, I answer thus; By Thyself judge, O our God,
between my Confessions and these men's contradictions.
For they say, "Though these things be true, yet did not Moses intend
those two, when, by revelation of the Spirit, he said, In the beginning
God created heaven and earth. He did not under the name of heaven,
signify that spiritual or intellectual creature which always beholds the
face of God; nor under the name of earth, that formless matter." "What
then?" "That man of God," say they, "meant as we say, this declared he
by those words." "What?" "By the name of heaven and earth would he first
signify," say they, "universally and compendiously, all this visible
world; so as afterwards by the enumeration of the several days, to
arrange in detail, and, as it were, piece by piece, all those things,
which it pleased the Holy Ghost thus to enounce. For such were that
rude and carnal people to which he spake, that he thought them fit to be
entrusted with the knowledge of such works of God only as were visible."
They agree, however, that under the words earth invisible and without
form, and that darksome deep (out of which it is subsequently shown,
that all these visible things which we all know, were made and arranged
during those "days") may, not incongruously, be understood of this
formless first matter.
What now if another should say that "this same formlessness and
confusedness of matter, was for this reason first conveyed