On the Profit of Believing

If, Honoratus, a heretic and a man who believes heretics seemed to me one and the same thing, I would think that I ought to keep silent in this matter, with tongue as well as pen. But in fact there is a very great difference between the two. For a heretic, in my opinion, is one who for the sake of some temporal advantage, and above all for the sake of his own glory and pre-eminence, either originates or follows false and new opinions; whereas the one who believes such men is a man deceived by a certain semblance of truth and piety. Since this is so, I have not thought that I ought to keep silent before you about what I think concerning the finding and holding of truth, for which, as you know, we have burned with great love from our early youth. But it is a matter far removed from the minds of vain men, who, having gone too far into these bodily things and slipped into them, think that nothing exists except what they perceive through those five well-known messengers of the body; and the impressions and images they have received from these they turn over within themselves even when they try to withdraw from the senses, and by the deadly and utterly deceptive rule of these images they think they measure most correctly the ineffable inner sanctuaries of truth. Nothing is easier, my dearest friend, than not only to say but even to believe that one has found the truth; but how very difficult it is in reality you will recognize, I trust, from this letter of mine. That it may benefit you, or at least do no harm to you or to anyone at all into whose hands it may chance to come, I have prayed God and I pray; and I hope that it will be so, if I am rightly conscious that I have taken up this pen with a pious and dutiful mind, not from desire of a vain name and of trifling display.

My purpose, then, is to prove to you, if I can, that the Manichaeans sacrilegiously and rashly attack those who, following the authority of the Catholic faith, are fortified by believing before they are able to behold that truth which is seen by a pure mind, and are prepared for God who will enlighten them. For you know, Honoratus, that we fell in with such men for no other reason than that they said that, setting aside fearful authority, they would lead those who were willing to listen to them to God by pure and simple reason, and free them from all error. For what else compelled me, for nearly nine years, spurning the religion that had been implanted in me as a little boy by my parents, to follow those men and listen to them diligently, except that they said we were terrified by superstition and that faith was imposed on us before reason, whereas they pressed no one to faith unless the truth had first been discussed and unravelled? Who would not be enticed by these promises, especially the mind of a young man eager for truth, and moreover proud and talkative from the disputations of certain learned men at school, such as they then found me: one who despised what seemed, of course, old wives’ tales, and longed to take hold of and drink in the open and pure truth they promised? But again, what reason held me back from clinging to them completely, so that I kept myself in that grade they call “Hearers” and did not give up the hope and business of this world, except that I noticed that they too were more eloquent and copious in refuting others than firm and sure in proving their own views? But what shall I say of myself, who was already a Catholic Christian? Those breasts, after a very long thirst, almost drained and parched, I have now sought again with all eagerness, and weeping and groaning I have shaken and pressed them more deeply, that they might yield what would suffice for my refreshment in such a state and for bringing back the hope of life and salvation. What, then, shall I say of myself? You, when you were not yet a Christian, and when you vehemently cursed them, were at my urging barely brought to think them worth hearing and examining: recall, I beg you, what else delighted you, I ask, except a certain great presumption and promise of reasons? But because they disputed long and much, at great length and with great vehemence, about the errors of the unlearned — which I learned late is very easy for anyone moderately educated — if they also instilled in us anything of their own, we thought it must of necessity be retained, since nothing else occurred to us in which we might rest. So they did to us what cunning fowlers usually do, who fix limed twigs near water to deceive thirsty birds. For they fill in and in some way cover the other waters round about, or else frighten the birds away from them by alarming contrivances, so that they fall into their snares not by choice but from want.

But why do I not answer myself that such elegant and pleasant comparisons, and reproaches of this kind, can be poured out very urbanely and wittily by any opponent whatever against all who teach anything? But I thought something of this kind ought to be put into my letter in order to warn them to stop acting in such ways, so that, as that writer says, with the trifles of commonplaces set aside, matter may contend with matter, cause with cause, reason with reason. Let them stop, therefore, saying what they always have on their lips as though it were necessary, whenever someone who had listened to them for a long time leaves them: “The light has passed through him.” For you see, you who are my chief concern — for I am not overly anxious about them — how empty this is and how very easy for anyone to refute. So I leave it to your good sense to examine. For I do not fear that you will think me to have been inhabited by the light when I was entangled in the life of this world, cherishing a dark hope of a beautiful wife, of the pomp of riches, of the emptiness of honours, and of other harmful and destructive pleasures. For all these things, as you well know, I did not stop desiring and hoping for while I listened to them eagerly. Nor do I attribute this to their teaching; for I admit that they too earnestly warn that these things be avoided. But to say that I am now deserted by the light, when I have turned away from all these shadows of things and have resolved to be content with only the food necessary for the health of the body, but that I was illuminated and shining when I loved those things and was held bound up in them, is the mark of a man — to put it most mildly — who does not consider very acutely the matters he loves to talk about a great deal. But let us come to the case, if you please.

For you know well that the Manichaeans, by censuring the Catholic faith and above all by tearing apart and mangling the Old Testament, stir up the unlearned, who certainly do not know how far those things are to be accepted and in what way, when drunk in, they may pass profitably into the veins and marrow of souls that are still, as it were, crying infants. And because there are some things there which somewhat offend minds that are ignorant and careless of themselves — and these are the great majority — they can be attacked in a way that pleases the crowd; but they cannot be defended in a way that pleases the crowd by very many, because of the mysteries contained in them. And the few who know how to do this do not love public and much-talked-of contests in debate, and for this reason are hardly known except to those who seek them out most earnestly. Concerning this rashness of the Manichaeans, then, by which they censure the Old Testament and the Catholic faith, hear, I beg you, what moves me. I wish and hope that you will receive it in the spirit in which I say it. For God, to whom the secrets of my conscience are known, knows that I do nothing with malice in this discourse, but, as I think it ought to be taken, for the sake of proving the truth — for which one thing we resolved long ago to live, and with incredible anxiety lest it should have been very easy for me to err with you, but very difficult, not to speak more harshly, to keep the right way with you. But I presume that in this hope, in which I hope you will attain the way of wisdom with me, he to whom I am consecrated will not desert me: him I try to behold day and night, and, carrying an eye of the soul wounded by my sins and by habit with the blows of long-standing opinions, I recognize, often with tears, that I am weak. And just as, after long blindness and darkness, eyes barely opened still refuse the light, blinking and turning away from it though they long for it, especially if someone tries to show them this sun, so it happens to me now: I do not deny that there is a certain ineffable and unique good of the soul which is seen by the mind, and I confess with weeping and groaning that I am not yet fit to contemplate it. He will not, then, desert me, if I feign nothing, if I am led by duty, if I love truth, if I cherish friendship, if I greatly fear that you may be deceived.

All the Scripture, then, that is called the Old Testament is handed down in four ways to those who diligently wish to know it: according to history, according to aetiology, according to analogy, according to allegory. Do not think me foolish for using Greek names. First, because this is how I received it, and I do not dare to convey it to you otherwise than I received it. Second, you yourself notice that we have no names in common use for these things: if I had coined them by translating, I would certainly be more foolish; and if I used circumlocution, I would be less ready in my discussion. I only ask you to believe that, however I may err, I do nothing from being puffed up and swollen. It is handed down according to history, then, when one is taught what was written or what was done, and what was not done but only written as though it had been done. According to aetiology, when it is shown for what cause something was done or said. According to analogy, when it is demonstrated that the two testaments, the Old and the New, are not opposed to each other. According to allegory, when one is taught that certain things that are written are not to be taken literally but are to be understood figuratively.

Our Lord Jesus Christ and the apostles used all these ways. For the following is taken from history, when it was objected that his disciples had plucked ears of grain on the Sabbath day: “Have you not read,” he said, “what David did when he was hungry, and those who were with him: how he entered the house of God and ate the loaves of the presence, which it was not lawful for him to eat, nor for those who were with him, but only for the priests?” To aetiology belongs this: when Christ had forbidden a wife to be put away except for the cause of sexual immorality, and those questioning him replied that Moses had granted permission by giving a bill of divorce, he said, “Moses did this because of the hardness of your heart.” For here the cause is given why that was rightly permitted by Moses for the time, so that what Christ was commanding might show that other times had now come. But it would take long to explain how the succession and order of these times has been arranged and composed by a wonderful disposition of divine providence.

Now as for analogy, by which the agreement of both testaments is perceived, why should I say that all whose authority they yield to have used it, when they can consider for themselves how many things they are accustomed to say were inserted into the divine Scriptures by some corrupters of the truth or other? That claim always seemed to me very weak, even when I was listening to them; and not to me alone, but also to you — for I remember well — and to all of us who tried to use a little more care in judging than the crowd of believers. But now, after many things have been explained and unravelled for me that used to move me most — those, namely, in which their discourse mostly boasts, and exults the more freely the more securely it runs on without an opponent — nothing seems to me to be said by them more shamelessly, or, to put it more mildly, more carelessly and feebly, than that the divine Scriptures have been corrupted, when they cannot prove it by any copies extant, though the matter is so recent in memory. For if they said that they had thought these Scriptures ought not to be accepted by them at all, because they were written by men whom they did not believe to have written the truth, their evasion would be in some way more straightforward, or their error more human. For this is what they did with that book entitled “Acts of the Apostles.” When I consider this plan of theirs, I cannot wonder enough. For in this matter I look not for human wisdom but for ordinary sense. For that book has so much that is like what they accept that it seems to me great foolishness not to accept this one too, and, if anything there offends them, to say that it is false and inserted. Or if such talk is shameless, as it is, why do they think those things have any force in the epistles of Paul and in the four books of the gospel, in which there are perhaps proportionately far more things that they wish to be believed inserted by corrupters than could have been in that book? But surely the reason is this, as it seems to me, and I ask you to consider it with me with a most calm and serene judgment. For you know that, trying to bring the person of their founder Mani into the number of the apostles, they say that the Holy Spirit, whom the Lord promised he would send to his disciples, came to us through him. So if they accepted those Acts of the Apostles, in which the coming of the Holy Spirit is clearly proclaimed, they would find no way to say that this was inserted. For they would have it that there were some corrupters of the divine books before the time of Mani himself, and that those who corrupted them were men who wished to mix the law of the Jews with the gospel. This they cannot say about the Holy Spirit, unless perhaps they claim that those men foresaw it and put in their books something to be brought forward against a Mani who would one day come and say that the Holy Spirit had been sent through himself. But we will speak more plainly about the Holy Spirit elsewhere. Now let us return to what I had intended.

That the history of the Old Testament, and its aetiology and analogy, are found in the New Testament has, I think, been sufficiently shown; it remains to show this of allegory. Our Deliverer himself in the gospel uses allegory from the Old Testament. “This generation,” he says, “seeks a sign; and no sign will be given it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For as Jonah was in the belly of the whale three days and three nights, so also the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.” And what shall I say of the apostle Paul, who in the first epistle to the Corinthians indicates that even the very history of Exodus was an allegory of the Christian people to come? “I do not want you to be ignorant, brothers, that our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea; and all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual rock that followed them; and the rock was Christ. But with most of them God was not well pleased; for they were laid low in the desert. Now these things were figures of us, that we should not be desirers of evil things, as they also desired. Nor let us worship idols, as some of them did, as it is written: ‘The people sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to play.’ Nor let us commit sexual immorality, as some of them committed sexual immorality, and twenty-three thousand men fell in one day. Nor let us tempt Christ, as some of them tempted and perished by serpents. Nor let us murmur, as some of them murmured and perished by the destroyer. Now all these things happened to them in a figure; and they were written for our correction, upon whom the end of the ages has come.” There is also in the apostle a certain allegory very relevant indeed to our case, because these same men are accustomed to bring it forward and display it in disputation. For the same Paul says to the Galatians: “For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by the slave woman and one by the free woman; but he who was of the slave woman was born according to the flesh, while he who was of the free woman was born through the promise. These things are said by way of allegory. For these are the two testaments: one from Mount Sinai, bearing children for slavery, which is Hagar. For Sinai is a mountain in Arabia, which borders on the present Jerusalem, and she is in slavery with her children. But the Jerusalem above is free, which is the mother of us all.”

Here, then, these men — no bad men indeed! — while trying to make the law void, compel us to approve these Scriptures. For they fix on the saying that those who are under the law are in slavery, and above all they toss about that last saying: “You have been emptied of Christ, you who are justified in the law; you have fallen from grace.” We grant that all these things are true, and we say that that law is not necessary except for those to whom slavery is still useful; and that it was usefully given for this reason, that men who could not be recalled from sins by reason had to be restrained by such a law — that is, by the threats and terrors of those punishments which even fools can see. When the grace of Christ frees us from these, it does not condemn that law, but invites us at last to obey its love, not to be slaves to the fear of the law. This is grace, that is, a benefit, which those who still wish to be under the bonds of the law do not understand has come to them from God. Paul rightly rebukes them as unbelievers, because they do not believe that they have now been freed through our Lord Jesus from the slavery to which they had been subjected for a fixed time by God’s most just disposition. Hence this saying of the same apostle: “For the law was our pedagogue in Christ.” He therefore gave men a pedagogue whom they might fear, and afterwards a master whom they might love. Yet in these precepts and commands of the law, which it is not now lawful for Christians to keep — such as the Sabbath, or circumcision, or sacrifices, and anything of that kind — such great mysteries are contained that every pious person understands that nothing is more destructive than to take whatever is there literally, that is, word for word, and nothing more wholesome than to have it unveiled by the Spirit. Hence the saying: “The letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.” Hence the saying: “That same veil remains in the reading of the Old Testament, which is not unveiled, because it is made void in Christ.” For what is made void in Christ is not the Old Testament but its veil, so that through Christ what is obscure and covered without Christ may be understood and, as it were, laid bare. For the same apostle immediately adds: “But when you have passed over to Christ, the veil will be taken away.” For he does not say, “the law will be taken away,” or “the Old Testament.” It is not, then, that through the Lord’s grace useless things that were hidden there have been taken away, but rather the covering by which useful things were hidden. This is how one deals with those who seek the meaning of those Scriptures earnestly and piously, not in a disorderly and wicked spirit; and one carefully demonstrates the order of events, the causes of deeds and sayings, and so great an agreement of the Old Testament with the New that not a jot is left that does not harmonize, and such great secrets of figures that everything drawn out by interpretation compels those who wish to condemn these things before learning them to confess themselves wretched.

But, setting aside for the moment the depth of knowledge, let me deal with you as I think one should deal with a close friend, that is, as I am able, not as I have admired very learned men as able. There are three kinds of error by which men err when they read something. I will speak of each. The first kind is that in which what is false is thought true, when the writer thought otherwise. The second, though not so widespread, is no less harmful: when what is false is thought true, but what is thought is also what the writer thought. The third is when from another’s writing something true is understood, though the writer did not understand it. In this kind there is no little profit; indeed, if you consider it more carefully, the whole fruit of reading is intact in it. An example of the first kind would be if someone, for instance, were to say and believe that Rhadamanthus hears and judges the cases of the dead in the underworld, because he had read it in Maro’s poem. For he errs in two ways: he believes something that is not to be believed, and the one he read is not to be thought to have believed it. The second kind can be seen thus: if someone, because Lucretius writes that the soul is made of atoms and that after death it is dissolved into those same atoms and perishes, should think this true and something he must believe. For this man too is no less wretched, if on so great a matter he has persuaded himself for certain of what is false, even though Lucretius, by whose books he was deceived, held that opinion. For what does it profit him to be certain of the author’s view, when he has chosen him not as one through whom he erred, but as one with whom he erred? To the third kind this is suited: if someone, having read in Epicurus’s books a passage where he praises self-control, should assert that he placed the highest good in virtue and therefore is not to be blamed. For what harm does Epicurus’s error do to this man, if Epicurus believes the highest good of man to be bodily pleasure, since this man has not given himself to so shameful and harmful an opinion, and Epicurus pleases him for no other reason than that he thinks he did not hold what ought not to be held? This error is not only human but often most worthy of a man. For what if it were reported to me about someone I loved that, when he was a grown, bearded man, he had said in the hearing of many that childhood and infancy so pleased him that he even swore he wished to live in the same way, and this were so proved to me that I would be shameless to deny it? Would I seem blameworthy to anyone if I thought that when he said this he wished to indicate that innocence pleased him, and that his mind was estranged from the desires in which the human race is entangled, and on that account loved him more and more than I loved him before — even if perhaps he had foolishly come to love a certain freedom in playing and eating, and idle leisure, in the years of boyhood? For suppose that he died after this was reported to me, and that I could not ask him anything so that he might disclose his meaning: would anyone be so wicked as to be angry with me for praising the man’s intention and will through the very words I had received? Indeed, a just judge of things would perhaps not hesitate even to praise my opinion and will, since innocence pleased me and I, a man, thought well of a man in a doubtful matter, when I might also have thought ill.

This being so, hear also as many conditions and differences of these same writings; for there must necessarily be as many. Either someone has written profitably and is understood unprofitably by someone; or both are done unprofitably; or the reader understands profitably, though the one who is read wrote the contrary. Of these three, I do not disapprove of the first, and the last does not concern me. For I cannot blame a man who has been misunderstood through no fault of his own, nor can I be troubled that someone is read who did not see the truth, when I see that it does the readers no harm. One kind, then, is most approved and, as it were, most purified: when good things have been written and are taken in a good sense by the readers. Yet this too is further divided into two, for it does not entirely exclude error. For it often happens that when the writer has thought rightly, the reader also thinks rightly, but something other than the writer thought, sometimes better, sometimes worse, yet profitably. But when we also think what the one we read thought — and this is most suited to living well — truth is present in the fullest measure, and no place for falsehood opens from any side. This kind, when the reading concerns very obscure matters, is altogether very rare, and in my opinion it cannot be clearly known, but only believed. For by what arguments shall I gather the will of an absent or dead man so as to be able to swear to it, when even if he were present and questioned there might be many things which, if he were not a bad man, he would most dutifully conceal? But I think it of no use for knowing the matter what sort of man the writer was; yet he is most honourably believed good whose writings have served the human race and posterity.

So I wish these men would tell me in which kind they place what they consider the error of the Catholic church. If in the first, it is a grave charge indeed, but it requires no long defence; for it is enough to deny that we understand in the way they suppose when they attack us. If in the second, it is no less grave, but they will be refuted by the same reply. If in the third, it is no charge at all. Come, then, and consider the Scriptures themselves. What do they object to the books of what is called the Old Testament? Is it that they are good but are badly understood by us? But they themselves do not accept them. Or that they are neither good nor well understood? But the defence above sufficiently overthrows this. Or will they say: “Although you understand them well, they are nevertheless bad”? What is this but to acquit the living opponents with whom the dispute is carried on and to accuse men long dead with whom there is no contention? I for my part believe that those men both committed everything to memory profitably and were great and divine, and that that law was promulgated and established by God’s command and will; and although I know very few books of that kind, I can nevertheless easily persuade anyone of this, if a fair and not at all obstinate mind is brought to it. And I will do so when I am granted the opportunity of well-disposed ears and of your mind; but that when I can. For now, is it not enough for me, however this matter stands, not to have been deceived?

I call to witness, Honoratus, my conscience and God who dwells in pure souls that I consider nothing wiser, purer, or more religious than all those Scriptures which the Catholic church keeps under the name of the Old Testament. You are surprised, I know. For I cannot pretend that we were once persuaded far otherwise. But surely nothing is more full of rashness — and such rashness was in us then as boys — than to forsake the expositors of any books whatever, who profess that they hold them and can teach them to their pupils, and to seek their meaning from those who, for some reason or other, have declared most bitter war on the men who composed and wrote them. For who ever thought that the abstruse and obscure books of Aristotle should be expounded to him by an enemy of Aristotle — to speak of those disciplines in which a reader may perhaps slip without sacrilege? Or who ever wished to read or learn the geometrical writings of Archimedes with Epicurus as his teacher, against which Epicurus argued very obstinately, understanding nothing of them, as I think? Or are these Scriptures of the law so very plain that these men attack them in vain and emptily, as though they were set forth for the common crowd? They seem to me like that silly woman whom they themselves are accustomed to mock: angry that this sun was being praised to her and commended by a certain Manichaean woman as an object of worship, simple and religious as she was, she leapt up in agitation and, stamping again and again on the spot which the sun had lit through the window, began to cry: “Look, I am trampling on the sun and your god!” Utterly foolish and womanish — who denies it? But do not these men seem to you just like her, who, tearing with great violence of speech and with abuse at things they do not understand — neither why they are so, nor at all what they are, things which look like common things lying about, yet are subtle and divine to those who understand — think they are making some progress because the unlearned applaud them? Believe me, whatever is in those Scriptures is lofty and divine: there is truth in them altogether, and a teaching most suited to refreshing and renewing souls, and plainly so measured out that there is no one who cannot draw from it what is enough for himself, if only he comes to draw devoutly and piously, as true religion requires. To prove this to you requires many reasons and a longer discourse. For I must first work with you so that you do not hate the authors themselves, and then so that you love them; and this must be done in any other way rather than by expounding their meanings and writings. For if we had hated Virgil — or rather, if we had not loved him, before he was understood, on the commendation of our elders — we would never be satisfied about those countless questions of his by which the grammarians are commonly troubled and perplexed; nor would we listen gladly to one who resolved them with praise of Virgil, but we would favour the one who tried to show through them that he had erred and raved. But as it is, when many try to explain them in various ways, each according to his capacity, those are applauded most through whose exposition the poet is found better — the poet who is believed, even by those who do not understand him, not only to have made no mistake but to have sung nothing that is not praiseworthy. So in some small question, when the teacher fails and has no answer, we are angry with him rather than thinking him silent through a fault of Maro. And if in his own defence he tried to assert a fault in so great an author, his pupils would hardly stay with him even if they were paid. How great a thing would it have been to show a like good will to those through whom, as has been confirmed by so long an antiquity, the Holy Spirit spoke? But of course we, most intelligent young men and wonderful examiners of reasons, without so much as unrolling those writings, without seeking teachers, without blaming our own slowness a little, and finally without granting even ordinary sense to those who wished such writings to be read, preserved, and studied throughout the whole world for so long, thought that nothing in them was to be believed, moved by the voice of those who are hostile and inimical to them, among whom, by a false promise of reason, we were made to believe and revere thousands of unheard-of fables.

But now let me carry out, if I can, what I have undertaken, and deal with you in such a way that I do not yet lay open the Catholic faith, but show to those who care for their souls the hope of divine fruit and of finding the truth, so that they may search into its great mysteries. No one doubts that whoever seeks true religion either already believes that the soul is immortal, which that religion is to benefit, or else wishes to find this very thing in that same religion. All religion, therefore, is for the sake of the soul; for however the nature of the body may be, it causes no care or anxiety to one whose soul has attained, especially after death, the state in which it is happy. True religion, then, if there is one, has been established for the sake of the soul alone, or chiefly. But this soul — I will see for what cause, and I confess that this too is very obscure — errs, nonetheless, and is foolish, as we see, until it obtains and grasps wisdom; and perhaps wisdom itself is true religion. Am I sending you to fables? Am I forcing you to believe anything rashly? I say that our soul, entangled and sunk in error and folly, seeks the way of truth, if there is one. If this is not so in you, forgive me, and share your wisdom with me, I ask; but if you recognize in yourself what I say, let us seek the truth together, I beg you.

Suppose that we have not yet heard anyone who teaches any religion. Here is a new matter, a task we have undertaken. We must seek out, I suppose, those who profess this thing, if there is any. Suppose that we have found some holding one opinion and others another, each wishing to draw us to himself by the diversity of opinions; but that among them some stand out meanwhile by the celebrity of their fame and by their hold on almost all peoples. Whether they hold the truth is a great question; but should they not be examined first, so that, as long as we err — since we are human — we may be seen to err together with the human race itself?

“But the truth is with a certain few.” Then you already know what it is, if you know with whom it is. Had I not said a little before that we should seek as though we were beginners? But if you conjecture from the very nature of truth that few hold it, but do not know who they are, what then? If those who know the truth are so few that they hold the multitude by their authority, how can the few extricate themselves and, as it were, distil themselves into those secrets? Do we not see how few attain the height of eloquence, though schools of rhetoric throughout the whole world resound with crowds of young men? Do all who wish to turn out good orators, frightened by the multitude of the unskilled, think that they should give their effort to the speeches of Caecilius or Erucius rather than to those of Tully? All aim at the things confirmed by the authority of our forebears. The crowds of the unskilled strive to learn the same things which have been accepted as worth learning by a few learned men; yet very few attain them, fewer practise them, and fewest become famous. What if true religion is something like this? What if a multitude of the unskilled throngs the churches, but that is no argument that therefore no one has been made perfect in those mysteries? And yet if as few studied eloquence as there are eloquent men, our parents would never have thought of entrusting us to such teachers. Since, then, the multitude, largely made up of the unskilled, invited us to these studies, so that we came to love what few can attain, why are we unwilling to have a similar case in religion, which perhaps we despise at great peril to our souls? For if the truest and purest worship of God, though it is with few, is nevertheless with those with whom the multitude agrees, though entangled in desires and far from purity of understanding — and who would doubt that this can happen? — then, I ask, if someone should reproach our rashness and folly for not diligently searching among its teachers for the thing we are so greatly concerned to find, what could we answer? “The multitude deterred me”? Why did no multitude deter us from the study of the liberal arts, which bring scarcely any advantage even to this present life, or from seeking money, or from gaining honour, or from getting and keeping good health, or finally from the very pursuit of a happy life, when all are busy with these things and few excel?

“But absurd things seemed to be said there.” Who asserted this? Enemies, surely — for whatever cause, for whatever reason (that is not the question now) — yet enemies. “When I read them, I found it out for myself.” Is that so? Without training in poetry you would not dare to touch Terentianus Maurus without a teacher — Asper, Cornutus, Donatus, and countless others are needed in order that any poet whatever may be understood, whose songs seem even to court the applause of the theatre — and yet you rush without a guide into those books which, whatever they may be, are proclaimed holy and full of divine things by the admission of almost the whole human race, and you dare to pass judgment on them without a teacher; and if anything occurs to you there that seems absurd, you do not blame your own slowness and your mind rotted by the corruption of this world, such as is the mind of all the foolish, rather than those writings which perhaps cannot be understood by such as you? You should have sought someone at once pious and learned, or someone said by general agreement to be such, by whose precepts you might become better and by whose teaching more skilled. Was he not easily found? He should have been searched out with labour. Was there none in the land where you lived? What cause could more usefully compel you to travel? Was he altogether hidden, or not to be found, on the continent? You should have sailed. If he was not found across the sea close by, you should have gone on as far as those lands in which the things contained in those books are said to have taken place. Did we do anything of this kind, Honoratus? And yet a religion that is perhaps most holy — for I am still speaking as though it were in doubt — whose reputation has now filled the whole world, we most wretched boys condemned by our own will and judgment. What if those things in the same Scriptures that seem to offend some unskilled people were placed there so that, when things repugnant to the sense of ordinary men, not to say wise and holy men, were read, we might seek the hidden meaning much more earnestly? Do you not see how men try to interpret the Catamite of the Bucolics, over whom a rough shepherd pined away, and assert that the boy Alexis, on whom Plato too is said to have written a love poem, signifies something great, beyond the judgment of the unskilled — though the richest of poets could, without any sacrilege, be seen to have published lustful ditties?

But in truth, did the sanction of some law hold us back and forbid us to seek, or the power of opponents, or the low standing or evil reputation of those consecrated, or the novelty of the institution, or a secret profession? None of these is so. All laws, divine and human, allow us to seek the Catholic faith; and to hold and practise it is certainly permitted by human law, even if, while we are in error, it is uncertain whether it is by divine law. No enemy frightens our weakness — although truth and the salvation of the soul, if, after diligent search where it is safest, they are not found, ought to be sought at any risk whatever. All ranks of dignities and powers serve this divine worship most devoutly; the name of this religion is most honourable and most renowned. What, then, prevents us from searching out and examining with pious and careful inquiry whether this is that which few must know and keep in its full purity, even if the will and favour of all nations conspire towards it?

This being so, suppose, as I said, that we are now for the first time seeking to which religion we should hand over our souls to be cleansed and renewed. Without doubt we must begin with the Catholic church. For there are now more Christians than the Jews and the worshippers of idols put together. And among these Christians, though there are many heresies and all wish to be thought Catholic and call the others besides themselves heretics, there is one church, as all admit: if you consider the whole world, more crowded with numbers, and, as those who know it affirm, purer in truth than all the others. But the truth is another question. What is enough for those who are seeking is this: there is one Catholic church, on which the other heresies impose various names, while each of them is itself called by its own name, which they dare not deny. From this it may be understood, by judges whom no favour hinders, to which church the name “Catholic,” which all covet, should be given. But lest anyone think this should be discussed at great length or superfluously, there is certainly one church in which even human laws are in a certain way Christian. I do not wish any prejudgment to be made from this, but I judge it the most suitable starting point for the inquiry. For there is no fear that the true worship of God, relying on no strength of its own, should seem to need propping up by those whom it ought to prop up; but it is certainly perfect happiness if the truth can be found where both the search for it and the keeping of it are safest. If it cannot, then at last other things must be approached and explored at whatever risk.

These points being settled — and they are, I think, so just that I ought to win this case with you against any opponent — I will set out for you, as best I can, what way I followed when I was seeking the true religion in the spirit in which I have now explained it should be sought. When I left you and crossed the sea, I was already hesitating and wavering over what I should hold and what I should let go — a hesitation that grew greater day by day from the time I heard that man whose coming, as you know, was promised to us as if from heaven to explain everything that troubled us, and found him, apart from a certain eloquence, to be such as the others were. Once settled in Italy, I reasoned with myself and deliberated at length, not whether I should remain in that sect into which I regretted having fallen, but how the truth was to be found; my sighs for love of it are known to no one better than to you. Often it seemed to me that it could not be found, and the great waves of my thoughts were carried over to vote with the Academics. Often, again, looking as well as I could at the human mind, so lively, so sagacious, so clear-sighted, I thought that the truth did not lie hidden, except that the method of seeking it lay hidden, and that this very method must be taken from some divine authority. It remained to seek what that authority was, since amid such great dissensions each promised that he would hand it on. So there met me a forest with no way through, which I was very reluctant to enter; and amid all this my mind was driven without any rest by the desire to find the truth. Yet I unstitched myself more and more from those whom I had already resolved to leave. Nothing else remained amid such great dangers than to beg divine providence with tearful and pitiful cries to bring me help. And this I did earnestly; and by now certain discourses of the bishop of Milan had almost moved me to want, not without some hope, to inquire into many things about the Old Testament itself, which, as you know, we used to curse because it had been badly commended to us. And I had decided to remain a catechumen in the church to which I had been entrusted by my parents until I either found what I wanted or persuaded myself that it should not be sought. At that time, then, anyone who could teach might have found me most ready and very teachable. In this way, then, and with like care, look after your own soul. You see that you too have long been troubled; and if you think you have been tossed about enough and wish to put an end to labours of this kind, follow the way of Catholic teaching, which has flowed down from Christ himself through the apostles even to us, and will flow from here to those who come after.

“That is ridiculous,” you say, “since all profess to hold and teach this.” All heretics profess this, I cannot deny; but in such a way that they promise those whom they entice that they will give them a reason concerning the most obscure matters; and they accuse the Catholic church above all of this, that those who come to it are commanded to believe, while they boast that they impose not the yoke of believing but open the fountain of teaching. “What could be said,” you say, “more to their credit?” It is not so. For they do this endowed with no strength, but in order to win over some crowd by the name of reason; the human soul naturally rejoices at this promise, and, not considering its own strength and health, by craving the food of the healthy, which is ill given except to the strong, it rushes into the poisons of deceivers. For true religion can by no means be rightly entered unless those things are believed which each person afterwards, if he conducts himself well and is worthy, attains and grasps, and altogether not without a certain weighty command of authority.

But perhaps you want to receive some reason on this very point, to persuade you that you ought not to be taught by reason before faith. That can easily be done, if only you show yourself fair. But to do it conveniently, I want you to answer as it were my questions, and first tell me why you think one ought not to believe. “Because credulity itself,” you say, “from which people are called credulous, seems to me a vice; otherwise we would not commonly throw this name at someone as a reproach. For if the suspicious man is at fault because he suspects things not ascertained, how much more the credulous man, who differs from the suspicious in this, that the one allows some doubt about unknown things, the other none.” For the moment I accept this opinion and distinction. But you know also that we do not usually call someone “curious” without reproach, but call him “studious” even with praise. So consider, please, what difference you see between these two as well. You answer, surely, that though both are driven by a great desire to know, the curious man seeks things that do not concern him, while the studious man, on the contrary, seeks things that concern himself. But since we do not deny that a man’s wife and children and their welfare concern him, if someone living abroad earnestly asks everyone who arrives how his wife and children are and how they are getting on, he is certainly driven by a great desire to know. And yet we do not call him studious, though he both greatly wishes to know and wishes to know things that concern him most of all. So you now understand that this definition of the studious man wavers, because every studious man wishes to know the things that concern him, yet not everyone who does this is to be called studious, but only he who seeks most eagerly the things that concern the liberal nourishing and adorning of the mind. Yet we rightly call someone “eager,” especially when we add what he is eager to hear. For we can call a man eager for his family, if he loves only his own family; yet without some addition we do not think him worthy of the general name of studious. A man desirous of hearing how his family are faring I would not call studious of hearing, unless, rejoicing in good news, he wished to hear it often; but I would call him eager, even if only once. Now turn your mind to the curious man and tell me: if someone gladly listened to a little story that would do him no good at all, that is, about things that did not concern him, and did so not tiresomely and often but very rarely and very modestly, at a dinner or in some circle or gathering, would he seem to you curious? I think not; but he would certainly seem to have some interest in the thing, since he listened gladly. So the definition of the curious man too must be corrected by the same rule as that of the studious. See, then, whether those earlier definitions must be corrected also. For why should he not be undeserving of the name of suspicious who suspects something now and then, and of credulous, who believes something now and then? So, just as there is a great difference between one who is eager for something and one who is studious in general, and again between one who takes interest and one who is curious, so there is a very great difference between one who believes and one who is credulous.

“But now see,” you will say, “whether we ought to believe in religion. For if we grant that to believe is one thing and to be credulous another, it does not follow that there is no fault in believing in matters of religion. For what if both believing and being credulous are faults, as are being drunk and being a drunkard?” Whoever thinks this certain seems to me unable to have any friend. For if it is shameful to believe anything, either he acts shamefully who believes a friend, or, if he believes a friend in nothing, I do not see how he can call either the friend or himself a friend. Here perhaps you may say: “I grant that something must sometimes be believed; now explain how in religion it is not shameful to believe before knowing.” I will, if I can. So I ask you which you think the graver fault: to hand on religion to one who is unworthy, or to believe what is said by those who hand it on. If you do not understand whom I call unworthy, I mean one who approaches with a feigned heart. You grant, I think, that it is more blameworthy to lay open to such a man whatever holy secrets there are than to believe religious men who affirm something about religion itself. Nor would any other answer become you. So now suppose that he is present who is to hand on religion to you: how will you convince him that you approach with a sincere mind and that there is in you no deceit or pretence in this matter? You will say, with a good conscience, that you feign nothing, asserting it with the strongest words you can — but still with words. For man cannot lay open to man the hiding places of his mind so as to be known inwardly. But if he says, “See, I believe you; but is it not fairer that you also believe me, since you will receive the benefit, if I hold anything true, and I shall give it?” — what shall we answer but that we must believe?

“But,” you say, “would it not have been better for you to give me a reason, so that I might follow it wherever it led me, without any rashness?” Perhaps it would; but since the matter is so great — that you should come to know God by reason — do you think that all are fit to grasp the reasons by which the human mind is led to divine understanding, or many, or few? “Few, I think,” you say. Do you believe that you are among their number? “It is not for me to answer that,” you say. So you think it is for him to believe you on this too; and indeed he does. Only remember that he has now twice believed you when you said uncertain things, while you are unwilling to believe him even once when he admonishes you religiously. But suppose that you do approach with a sincere mind to receive religion, and that you are one of the few men who can grasp the reasons by which the divine power is brought to certain knowledge: what then? Do you think religion must be denied to other men, who are not endowed with so clear a mind? Or that they must be led step by step, by certain stages, to those highest inner sanctuaries? You see plainly which is more religious. For no man at all who desires so great a thing can seem to you in any way to deserve to be deserted or rejected. But do you not think that unless he first believes that he will attain what he has set out for, and offers a suppliant mind, and, obeying certain great and necessary precepts, purifies himself by a certain conduct of life, he will not otherwise attain those things that are purely true? Certainly you think so. What harm, then, will it do to those men — of whose kind I now believe you are — who can most easily grasp the divine secrets by certain reason, if they come by the way by which those come who first believe? None, I think. “But still,” you say, “what need is there to delay them?” Because, even if they will do themselves no harm by the act, they will harm others by their example. For there is hardly anyone who thinks of himself as highly as he is able; but the one who thinks less must be roused, and the one who thinks more must be restrained, so that the one is not broken by despair nor the other hurled headlong by daring. This is easily done if even those who are able to fly are made to walk for a while, so as not to be a dangerous enticement to anyone, by the way that is safe for the others too. This is the providence of true religion; this is commanded by God, this was handed down by our blessed forebears, this has been kept even to our time: to wish to disturb and pervert this is nothing else than to seek a sacrilegious way to true religion. Those who do so cannot reach where they are aiming, even if they are granted what they want. For however they may excel in talent, unless God is present they crawl on the ground. And he is present if they care for human fellowship with those who are making their way to God. No step more secure towards heaven can be found than this. For my part, I cannot resist this reasoning; for how can I say that nothing is to be believed without knowledge, when friendship is altogether nothing unless something is believed that cannot be demonstrated by certain reason, and when stewards who are slaves are often believed by their masters without any fault on the masters’ part? But in religion what can be more unjust than that the bishops of God should believe us when we promise a sincere mind, and we should be unwilling to believe them when they give us precepts? Finally, what way can be more wholesome than first to become fit to receive the truth, by giving faith to those things which have been established by God to prepare and make ready the mind beforehand? Or, if you are already altogether fit, to go round a little by the way that is safest to walk, rather than be to yourself the cause of danger and to others an example of rashness?

So it now remains for us to consider why those who promise to lead us by reason are not to be followed. For how we can without fault follow those who bid us believe has already been said; but some think they come to these guarantors of reason not only without blame but even with some praise. But it is not so. For there are two kinds of persons in religion who are praiseworthy: one, of those who have already found, whom we must also judge most blessed; the other, of those who seek most earnestly and most rightly. The first, then, are already in possession; the second are on the way, yet the way by which one most surely arrives. There are three other kinds of men, certainly to be disapproved and detested. One is of those who hold opinions, that is, those who think they know what they do not know; the second, of those who are aware that they do not know, but do not seek in such a way that they can find; the third, of those who neither think they know nor wish to seek. There are likewise three things in men’s minds that border, as it were, on one another and are most worth distinguishing: to understand, to believe, to hold an opinion. Considered in themselves, the first is always without fault, the second sometimes with fault, the third never without fault. For to understand great and honourable or even divine things is most blessed; to understand superfluous things does no harm, though perhaps learning them did harm, if they took up the time for necessary things. And even to understand harmful things is not wretched, but to do or suffer them is. For if someone understands how an enemy could be killed without danger to himself, he is guilty not by the understanding itself but by the desire; and if that is absent, what can be called more innocent? But believing is blameworthy when either something unworthy is believed of God or something is too readily believed of a man. In other matters, if anyone believes something and understands that he does not know it, there is no fault. For I believe that the most wicked conspirators were once put to death by the courage of Cicero; and yet I not only do not know this, but I know for certain that I cannot possibly know it. But holding an opinion is most shameful for two reasons: because one who has persuaded himself that he already knows cannot learn, if the thing can be learned at all; and because rashness in itself is a sign of a mind not well disposed. For even if someone thinks he knows this very thing I said about Cicero — though nothing prevents him from learning, since the matter itself cannot be held by any knowledge — yet because he does not understand that there is a great difference between something being seen by the mind with certain reason, which we call understanding, and something being usefully commended to posterity by report or writings to be believed, he certainly errs. And no error is free of shame. What we understand, then, we owe to reason; what we believe, to authority; what we opine, to error. But everyone who understands also believes, and everyone who opines believes; not everyone who believes understands; no one who opines understands. If, then, these three are related to those five kinds of men we mentioned a little before — that is, the two to be approved, which we put first, and the remaining three faulty — we find that the first kind, the blessed, believe the truth itself, and the second, those who are eager for and love the truth, believe authority. In these two kinds belief is praiseworthy. But in the first of the faulty kinds, that is, those who opine that they know what they do not know, there is certainly a faulty credulity. The other two kinds to be disapproved believe nothing: both those who seek the truth despairing of finding it and those who do not seek at all — and this only in matters belonging to some branch of learning. For in the rest of life’s conduct I do not know at all how a man could believe nothing. Although even those who say that in acting they follow what is probable would rather seem unable to know anything than to believe nothing. For who does not believe what he approves? Or how is what they follow probable, if it is not approved? So there can be two kinds of opponents of truth: one of those who attack only knowledge, not faith; the other of those who condemn both — and yet whether such can be found among men I again do not know. These things have been said so that we might understand that, by keeping faith even in those things which we do not yet comprehend, we are freed from the rashness of those who opine. For those who say that nothing is to be believed except what we know guard against one name only, that of opinion, which must be admitted to be shameful and most wretched; but if they considered carefully that there is a very great difference between someone thinking he knows and someone believing, moved by some authority, what he understands that he does not know, they would certainly avoid the charge of error and of inhumanity and pride.

For I ask: if what is not known is not to be believed, how are children to serve their parents and love them with mutual devotion, if they do not believe them to be their parents? For this cannot in any way be known by reason; but through the mother’s authority the father is believed, and concerning the mother herself, belief is usually given not even to the mother but to midwives, nurses, servants. For can she not, deceived herself, deceive, when her son could be stolen and another put in his place? Yet we believe, and believe without any doubt, what we admit cannot be known. For who does not see that unless it is so, filial devotion, the most sacred bond of the human race, is violated by a most arrogant crime? For who, even a madman, would think a man blameworthy who has paid the dutiful services owed to those he believed to be his parents, even if they were not? Who, on the other hand, would not judge that one deserves banishment who has not loved those who were perhaps his true parents, because he feared to love false ones? Many things could be brought forward to show that nothing at all of human society remains intact if we resolve to believe nothing that we cannot hold as perceived.

But now hear what I trust I will now more easily persuade you of. When it is a question of religion, that is, of worshipping and understanding God, those are less to be followed who forbid us to believe while very readily promising reason. For no one doubts that all men are either foolish or wise. Now I call wise not those who are sensible and clever, but those in whom there is, as far as there can be in a man, a most firmly grasped knowledge of man himself and of God, and a life and conduct in keeping with that knowledge; all others, whatever arts or lack of arts they have, whatever way of life they have, to be approved or disapproved, I would count among the foolish. This being so, who of moderate understanding would not plainly see that it is more useful and wholesome for the foolish to obey the precepts of the wise than to live by their own judgment? For every act, if it is not rightly done, is a sin; and nothing can in any way be rightly done that does not proceed from right reason. Now right reason is virtue itself. And in whom among men is virtue present except in the mind of the wise man? The wise man alone, then, does not sin. Every foolish man, therefore, sins, except in those acts in which he has obeyed a wise man; for such acts proceed from right reason, and the foolish man is not to be considered, so to speak, the master of his own act, since he is as it were the instrument and servant of the wise man. So if not sinning is better than sinning for all men, all the foolish would certainly live better if they could be the servants of the wise. And if no one doubts that this is advantageous in lesser matters — as in trading or farming, in taking a wife, in bearing and bringing up children, and finally in managing one’s household — much more is it so in religion. For human things are easier to discern than divine ones; and in all matters that are holier and more excellent, the greater the obedience and reverence we owe them, the more wicked and dangerous it is to sin. You see, then, that nothing at all remains for us, as long as we are foolish, if we have at heart the best and religious life, but to seek wise men, by obeying whom we may both feel the dominion of folly less while it is in us and at last escape from it.

Here again a most difficult question arises. How shall we, who are foolish, be able to find a wise man, when, though scarcely anyone dares claim this name openly, most claim it indirectly, and when they disagree among themselves about the very things in the knowledge of which wisdom consists, so that either none of them, or certainly only one, must be wise? But who that one is, when a foolish man is looking for him, how he can be clearly discerned and recognized, I do not see at all. For one cannot recognize anything by any signs whatever unless one knows the thing of which they are signs. Yet the foolish man does not know wisdom. For it is not as with gold and silver and other things of that kind, which one may recognize when one sees them and yet not possess; wisdom cannot be seen by the eye of the mind of one who lacks it. For whatever we touch by bodily sense is presented to us from outside, and so we may see with our eyes things that belong to others, even when we have none of them or of their kind. But what is grasped by the understanding is within, in the mind, and to have it is nothing else than to see it. But the foolish man lacks wisdom; therefore he does not know wisdom. For he could not see it with his eyes; and he cannot see it and not have it, nor have it and be foolish. He does not know it, then, and while he does not know it, he cannot recognize it in another. No one, then, as long as he is foolish, can find with most certain knowledge a wise man by obeying whom he may be freed from so great an evil as folly.

For so enormous a difficulty, then, since we are inquiring about religion, God alone can provide a remedy; and unless we believe both that he exists and that he helps human minds, we ought not even to seek true religion itself. For what, pray, do we desire to search out with such great effort? What do we wish to attain? Where do we long to arrive? At something we do not believe exists or concerns us? Nothing is more perverse than such a mind. Would you, who would not dare to ask a favour of me — or would dare only shamelessly — unless you believed I would grant it, come demanding the discovery of religion, when you think that God neither exists nor, if he exists, cares for us? What if it is so great a thing that it cannot be found unless it is sought earnestly and with all one’s strength? What if the very difficulty of finding it exercises the mind of the seeker for grasping and bringing forth what has been found? For what is more pleasant and familiar to our eyes than this light? Yet after long darkness they cannot bear and endure it. What is more suitable to a body worn out by sickness than food and drink? Yet we see convalescents restrained and held back from daring to give themselves the full meals of the healthy, and made by the very food to return to that sickness in which they refused it. I speak of convalescents. What of the sick themselves? Do we not urge them to take something? In which they would certainly not obey us with such distress if they did not believe that they would escape the disease. When, then, will you give yourself to a most toilsome and laborious search? When will you dare to lay on yourself such care and effort as the matter itself deserves, when you do not believe that what you seek exists? Rightly, then, has it been established by the majesty of Catholic teaching that those who approach religion are persuaded to faith before all things.

So what reason, I ask you, can that heretic offer me — since our discussion concerns those who wish to be called Christians? What is there by which he may call me back from believing as from rashness? If he bids me believe nothing, I do not believe that this very true religion exists anywhere among men; and since I do not believe it exists, I do not seek it. But he, I suppose, is going to show it to one who seeks; for so it is written: “He who seeks will find.” So I would not come to the one who forbids me to believe unless I believed something. Is there any greater madness than that I should displease him by faith alone, which is supported by no knowledge, when faith alone has brought me to him?

What of the fact that all heretics urge us to believe in Christ? Can they contradict themselves more? On this point they must be pressed in two ways. First, they must be asked where the reason is that they promised, where their rebuke of rashness, where their confidence in knowledge. For if it is shameful to believe anyone without reason, what do you expect, why do you take such trouble that I should believe someone without reason, so that I may more easily be led by your reason? Will your reason build anything firm on a foundation of rashness? I speak according to those whom we displease by believing. For I judge that to believe before reason, when you are not fit to grasp reason, and by faith itself to cultivate the mind to receive the seeds of truth, is not only most wholesome but such that without it health cannot return to sick minds. Since this seems to them ridiculous and full of rashness, they certainly act shamelessly in getting us to believe in Christ. Secondly, I admit that I have already believed in Christ and have brought my mind to accept that what he said is true, even if it is supported by no reason. Is this the starting point from which you, heretic, will lead me? Let me consider a little by myself — since I have not seen Christ himself as he willed to appear to men, he who is proclaimed to have been seen even by these common eyes — whom I believed concerning him, so that I may come to you already furnished with such faith. I see that I have believed no one but the settled opinion and exceedingly widespread report of peoples and nations; and these peoples the mysteries of the Catholic church have taken hold of everywhere. Why, then, should I not most diligently ask of them above all what Christ commanded, by whose authority I was moved to believe already that Christ commanded something useful? Will you explain to me better what he said, whom I would not think had existed or exists if this were commended to me as something to be believed by you? This, then, I believed, as I said, on the strength of a report confirmed by its wide spread, by agreement, and by antiquity. But you, so few, so turbulent, and so new, no one doubts, can put forward nothing worthy of authority. What, then, is this great madness? “Believe them that Christ is to be believed, and learn from us what he said.” Why, I beg you? For if they failed and could teach me nothing, I would much more easily persuade myself that Christ is not to be believed than that I should learn anything about him except from those through whom I had believed him. What enormous confidence, or rather folly! “I teach you what Christ, in whom you believe, commanded.” What if I did not believe him? Could you teach me anything about him? “But you must believe,” he says. On your commendation? “No,” he says; “for we lead by reason those who believe him.” Why then should I believe him? “Because the report is well founded.” Through you, or through others? “Through others,” he says. Shall I then believe them so that you may teach me? Perhaps I should, were it not that they especially warn me not to approach you at all; for they say you hold pernicious doctrines. You will answer, “They lie.” How then shall I believe them about Christ, whom they have not seen, and not believe them about you, whom they do not wish to see? “Believe the writings,” he says. But every writing, if it is brought forward as new and unheard of, or is commended by a few with no reason to confirm it, is believed not for itself but for those who bring it forward. So if you, so few and unknown, bring forward these writings, I do not care to believe them. At the same time you also act against your promise, by commanding faith rather than giving a reason. You will call me back again to numbers and report. Restrain at last your obstinacy and your somehow unbridled lust for spreading your name, and advise me rather to seek out the leaders of this multitude, and to seek most diligently and laboriously, so that I may learn something about these writings from those without whom I would not know that they were to be learned at all. As for you, go back into your hiding places and lay no snares under the name of truth, which you are trying to take from those to whom you yourself grant authority.

But if they deny that even Christ is to be believed unless an indubitable reason has been given, they are not Christians. For certain pagans say this against us — foolishly indeed, but not contradicting or opposing themselves. But who could bear these men professing to belong to Christ, who contend that nothing is to be believed unless they have set out a most evident reason about God to the foolish? Yet we see that he himself, as far as that history teaches to which they too yield, wished nothing earlier or more strongly than to be believed, since those with whom he had to deal were not yet fit to grasp the divine secrets. For what else is the purpose of so many and such great miracles, when he himself said that they were done for no other reason than that he might be believed? He led the foolish by faith; you lead by reason. He cried out that he should be believed; you cry out against it. He praised those who believed; you rebuke them. Unless, indeed, he would have turned water into wine — to omit other things — if men could follow him doing nothing of the kind but only teaching; or else that saying is of no account, “Believe in God, and believe in me”; or else he is to be blamed for rashness who did not wish him to come to his house, believing that his servant’s illness would yield at his mere command. So he, bringing a medicine that would heal the most corrupt morals, won authority by miracles, earned faith by authority, gathered a multitude by faith, secured antiquity by the multitude, and strengthened religion by antiquity — a religion that neither the most foolish novelty of heretics, working by fraud, nor even the inveterate error of the nations, opposing it by violence, could shake in any part.

Therefore, although I am not able to teach, I do not cease to advise that, since many wish to seem wise and it is not easy for the foolish to discern whether they are, you should pray to God with all your effort and with all your prayers, with groans, and even, if it can be, with tears, that he may free you from the evil of error, if you have a happy life at heart. This will be done more easily if you willingly obey his precepts, which he willed to be confirmed by the great authority of the Catholic church. For since the wise man is so joined to God in mind that nothing comes between to separate them — for God is truth, and no one is in any way wise unless he touches truth with his mind — we cannot deny that between the folly of man and the most pure truth of God there is placed something in the middle, the wisdom of man. For the wise man imitates God, as far as is granted; and for the foolish man there is nothing nearer to imitate wholesomely than a wise man. And since, as has been said, it is not easy to understand him by reason, it was necessary that certain miracles should be brought before the very eyes, which the foolish use much more readily than the mind, so that, by the authority of men thus moved, their life and conduct might first be purified and so they might become fit to receive reason. Since, then, man was to be imitated and yet hope was not to be placed in man, what could have been done by God more indulgent and generous than that the pure, eternal, and unchangeable Wisdom of God itself, to which we must cleave, should deign to take up a man? He not only did those things by which we might be invited to follow God, but also suffered those things by which we were deterred from following God. For since no one can attain the most certain and highest good unless he loves it fully and perfectly — which will by no means happen as long as the evils of the body and of fortune are feared — he won our love by being born wonderfully and by his works, and by dying and rising he shut out fear. And in all other things, which it would be long to go through, he showed himself such that we might feel both how far the divine mercy could reach and how far human weakness could be raised.

This, believe me, is the most wholesome authority; this is the first lifting of our mind from its dwelling on earth; this is its turning from love of this world to the true God. Authority alone moves the foolish to hasten to wisdom. As long as we cannot understand pure truths, it is wretched indeed to be deceived by authority; but it is certainly more wretched not to be moved by it. For if God’s providence does not preside over human affairs, there is no need to trouble about religion. But if the beauty of all things, which we must surely believe flows from some fountain of truest beauty, and some inner conscience or other, exhort, as it were publicly and privately, all the better minds to seek God and to serve God, we must not despair that some authority has been established by that same God, resting on which, as on a sure step, we may be lifted up to God. This authority, setting aside reason — which, as we have often said, is most difficult for the foolish to understand in its purity — moves us in two ways: partly by miracles, partly by the multitude of those who follow. None of this is necessary for the wise man, who denies it? But what we are now about is that we may be able to be wise, that is, to cleave to the truth; and this a soiled mind certainly cannot do. Now the soil of the mind, to explain it briefly, is the love of any things whatever except the mind and God; and the more one is cleansed of this soil, the more easily one sees the truth. To wish to see the truth in order to cleanse the mind, when it is cleansed in order that you may see, is surely perverse and backward. So for a man who cannot behold the truth, authority is at hand, so that he may become fit for it and allow himself to be cleansed; and no one doubts that it has its force, as I said a little before, partly by miracles, partly by the multitude. I call a miracle whatever appears difficult or unusual, beyond the hope or power of the one who marvels. In this kind nothing is more suited to the peoples, and to foolish men generally, than what is brought before the senses. But these again are divided into two: for some produce only wonder, while others also win great gratitude and good will. For if someone sees a man flying, since this brings the spectator no advantage beyond the spectacle itself, he only wonders. But if someone suffering from a grave and hopeless disease immediately recovers as soon as he is commanded, he will surpass his wonder at his healing by his love for the one who healed him. Such things were done at the time when God appeared to men, as far as was sufficient, in a true man: the sick were healed, lepers cleansed; walking was restored to the lame, sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf. The men of that time saw water turned into wine, five thousand fed with five loaves, seas crossed on foot, the dead rising. So some things served men’s bodies by a more evident benefit, others their minds by a more hidden sign, and all bore witness to his majesty. In this way the divine authority then moved the wandering souls of mortals towards itself. “Why,” you say, “are these things not done now?” Because they would not move us unless they were marvellous; and if they were customary, they would not be marvellous. For take the succession of day and night, the most constant order of the heavenly bodies, the fourfold turning of the year, the leaves falling from trees and returning, the boundless power of seeds, the beauty of light, the variety of colours, sounds, smells, and tastes: give these to someone who sees and perceives them for the first time, with whom we can nevertheless speak, and he is stunned and overwhelmed by miracles; but we despise all these things, not because they are easy to know — for what is more obscure than their causes? — but certainly because we constantly perceive them. Those miracles, then, were done most opportunely, so that when by them a multitude of believers had been gathered and spread abroad, authority might be turned to good use upon conduct itself.

Customs, of whatever kind, have such power to hold men’s minds that we can more quickly disapprove and detest what is wrong in them — which usually happens when lusts prevail — than abandon or change it. Do you think it little provision for human affairs that not a few very learned men argue, but even the unlearned common people, men and women of so many and different kinds, both believe and proclaim that nothing earthly, nothing fiery, nothing, finally, that the senses of the body touch, is to be worshipped as God, to whom one must make one’s approach by the understanding alone? That self-control is carried as far as the scantiest diet of bread and water, and fasts not only daily but prolonged through several days together; that chastity is carried as far as contempt of marriage and offspring; patience as far as disregard of crosses and flames; generosity as far as the distribution of inheritances to the poor; and finally contempt of this whole world as far as the desire for death? Few do these things, fewer do them well and wisely; but the peoples approve, the peoples praise, the peoples favour, and at last the peoples love. The peoples accuse their own weakness for not being able to do them, not without some advance of the mind towards God and not without certain sparks of virtue. This has been brought about by divine providence through the oracles of the prophets, through the humanity and teaching of Christ, through the journeys of the apostles, through the insults, crosses, blood, and deaths of the martyrs, through the praiseworthy life of the saints, and in all these, as the times required, through miracles worthy of such great deeds and virtues. Since, then, we see so great a help from God, so great progress and fruit, shall we hesitate to hide ourselves in the lap of that church which, from the apostolic see through the successions of bishops, has held the summit of authority, even to the acknowledgment of the human race, while heretics bark around it in vain and have been condemned partly by the judgment of the people itself, partly by the weight of councils, partly also by the majesty of miracles? To refuse it the first place is surely either the height of impiety or headlong arrogance. For if there is no sure way to wisdom and salvation for souls except when faith prepares them for reason, what else is it to be ungrateful for God’s help and aid than to wish to resist an authority endowed with such strength? And if every discipline, however lowly and easy, requires a teacher or master in order to be learned, what is more full of rash pride than to be unwilling to learn the books of the divine sacraments from their interpreters, and to dare to condemn them unknown?

Therefore, if either our reasoning or our speech has moved you at all, and if you have, as I believe, a true care for yourself, I would like you to listen to me and to entrust yourself, with pious faith, eager hope, and simple love, to the good teachers of Catholic Christianity, and not to cease praying to God himself, by whose goodness alone we were made, by whose justice we pay penalties, and by whose mercy we are set free. So you will lack neither the precepts and discussions of most learned and truly Christian men, nor books, nor those calm reflections themselves, by which you may easily find what you seek. As for those wordy and wretched men — for what milder word could I use? — leave them entirely: while they inquire too much where evil comes from, they find nothing but evil. On this question they often rouse their hearers to inquire, but once they are roused they teach them such things that it would be better to sleep forever than to wake up in that way. For out of lethargic patients they make frantic ones; and between these diseases, though each is usually fatal, there is this difference: lethargics die without troubling others, but a frantic man is to be feared by many healthy people, and most of all by those who wish to help him. For God is not the author of evil, nor has he ever repented of anything he did, nor is he disturbed by the storm of any emotion of the mind, nor is a little portion of earth his kingdom; he approves or commands no shameful deeds or crimes; he never lies. For these and similar things used to move us, when they assailed them with great invective and charged that this was the teaching of the Old Testament — which is altogether most false. So I grant that they rightly censure these things. What, then, have I learned? What do you think, except that when these things are censured, Catholic teaching is not censured? So what I had learned as true among them I hold; what I had thought false I reject. But the Catholic church has taught me many other things too, to which those men, bloodless in body but gross in mind, cannot aspire: that God is not corporeal, that no part of him can be perceived by bodily eyes, that nothing of his substance and nature is in any way liable to injury or change, or composite, or fashioned. If you grant me these — and one must not think otherwise of God — all their machinery is overthrown. But how it is that God neither begot nor made evil, and that there is not and never was any nature and substance which God did not either beget or make, and yet that he frees us from evil, is proved by reasons so compelling that it cannot be doubted at all — especially by you and such as you, if only piety and a certain peace of mind are joined to good ability, without which nothing whatever can be understood about such great matters. And here there is no tale about smoke and some Persian fable or other, for which it is enough to lend an ear and a mind, not subtle, but plainly childish. Far, far otherwise does the truth stand than the Manichaeans foolishly imagine. But since this discourse of ours has gone on much longer than I thought, let us end the book here. In it I want you to remember that I have not yet begun to refute the Manichaeans or to attack those trifles, nor have I disclosed anything great about the Catholic church itself, but have wished only to root out of you, if I could, the false opinion about true Christians maliciously or ignorantly instilled into us, and to rouse you to learn certain great and divine things. So let this volume stand as it is; when your mind has become more peaceable, I will perhaps be readier in the rest. Amen.