On True Religion 25–34

Since, then, divine providence provides not only for individual men, as it were privately, but for the whole human race, as it were publicly, what is done with individuals is known to God who does it and to those with whom it is done. But what is done with the human race he willed to be made known through history and through prophecy. And faith in temporal things, whether past or future, avails more by believing than by understanding. But it is for us to consider which men or which books are to be believed in order to worship God rightly, which is the one salvation. The first question in this matter is whether we should rather believe those who call us to worship many gods or those who call us to worship one God. Who would doubt that those are rather to be followed who call to one, especially since those worshipers of many agree about this one Lord and ruler of all? And certainly number begins from one. So those are to be followed first who say that the one supreme God is the only true God and alone to be worshiped. If truth does not shine out among them, then at last one must move elsewhere. For as in the very nature of things the authority of the one who brings all things to one is greater, and in the human race a multitude has no power unless it is in agreement, that is, of one mind, so in religion the authority of those who call to one ought to be greater and more worthy of faith. Another consideration is the dissension that has arisen among men about the worship of the one God. But we have received that our forefathers, at that stage of faith by which one ascends from temporal to eternal things, followed visible miracles (for they could not do otherwise), and through them it was brought about that these should not be necessary for posterity. For since the catholic Church has been spread and founded throughout the whole world, those miracles were not allowed to last into our times, lest the mind should always seek visible things, and the human race grow cold through familiarity with the things by whose novelty it had been set aflame; nor ought we now to doubt that those are to be believed who, though they preached things which few attain, yet were able to persuade the peoples to follow them. For the question now is whom one should believe before one is fit to undertake reasoning about divine and invisible things; for to reason itself, that of a purer soul which has reached clearly seen truth, human authority is in no way preferred. But no pride leads to it. If there were no pride, there would be no heretics, nor schismatics, nor those circumcised in the flesh, nor worshipers of creatures and idols. Yet if these did not exist before the perfection of the people which is promised, truth would be sought much more sluggishly.

The temporal dispensation, then, and the medicine of divine providence toward those who by sin deserved mortality, is handed down as follows. First, the nature and education of any one man who is born is considered. His first age, infancy, is spent in bodily nourishment, to be wholly forgotten as he grows. Childhood follows it, from which we begin to remember something. To this succeeds adolescence, to which nature now permits the propagation of offspring and makes one a father. Then youth takes over from adolescence, now to be exercised in public duties and tamed under laws; in which the more vehement prohibition of sins, and the punishment of sinners coercing slavishly, produces in carnal souls more violent assaults of lust, and doubles every offense. For it is no simple sin to commit what is not only evil but also forbidden. After the labors of youth, some peace is granted to the elder. Then a worse and faded age, more subject to diseases and weak, leads on to death. This is the life of man living from the body and bound by desires for temporal things. He is called the old man, and the outer, and the earthly, even if he obtains what the crowd calls happiness, in a well-ordered earthly city, whether under kings, or under princes, or under laws, or under all of these: for otherwise a people cannot be well ordered, even one that pursues earthly things; for it too has a certain measure of beauty of its own.

This man, whom we have described as old and outer and earthly, whether moderate in his kind or even exceeding the measure of servile justice, some live wholly from the rising of this life to its setting. But some begin this life necessarily from him, but are reborn inwardly, and by their spiritual strength and growth in wisdom destroy and kill the other parts of it, and bind them to heavenly laws, until after visible death the whole is restored. This one is called the new man, and the inner, and the heavenly, he too having, proportionally, certain spiritual ages of his own, distinguished not by years but by advances. The first at the breasts of useful history, which nourishes with examples. The second, now forgetting human things and tending toward divine, in which he is not held in the lap of human authority, but strives toward the supreme and unchangeable law by the steps of reason. The third, now more confident, marrying carnal appetite to the strength of reason, and rejoicing inwardly in a certain conjugal sweetness, when the soul is joined to the mind and veiled with the veil of modesty, so that he is no longer compelled to live rightly, but, even if all permit it, takes no pleasure in sinning. The fourth, now doing the same much more firmly and orderly, and shining forth into the perfect man, apt and fit for enduring and breaking all persecutions and the storms and waves of this world. The fifth, peaceful and wholly tranquil, living in the riches and abundance of the unchangeable kingdom of supreme and ineffable wisdom. The sixth, of total change into eternal life, passing, to the complete forgetting of temporal life, into the perfect form which was made to the image and likeness of God. For the seventh is eternal rest and perpetual happiness, not to be distinguished by any ages. For as the end of the old man is death, so the end of the new man is eternal life. For the former is the man of sin, the latter the man of righteousness.

But as these two undoubtedly are such that one man can live one of them, the old and earthly, through this whole life, but no one can live the new and heavenly in this life except together with the old (for he must begin from it, and it lasts with him until visible death, though it declines as he advances), so, proportionally, the whole human race, whose life, as of one man, runs from Adam to the end of this world, is so governed under the laws of divine providence that it appears divided into two kinds. In one of them is the crowd of the impious, bearing the image of the earthly man from the beginning of the world to the end. In the other, the succession of the people dedicated to the one God, but from Adam to John the Baptist living the life of the earthly man with a certain servile justice: its history is called the Old Testament, as promising an earthly kingdom; and all of it is nothing else than an image of the new people, and of the New Testament promising the kingdom of heaven. The temporal life of this people meanwhile begins from the Lord's coming in humility and runs until the day of judgment, when he will come in glory. After that judgment, when the old man is extinguished, there will be that change which promises the angelic life: “For we shall all rise, but we shall not all be changed.” The pious people, then, will rise, so as to transform the remnants of its old man into the new. And the impious people, which from beginning to end has borne the old man, will rise to be cast headlong into the second death. Those who read carefully find the divisions between the ages; and they do not shudder at tares or chaff. For the impious lives for the pious, and the sinner for the just, so that by comparison with them the just may rise up more eagerly until he is perfected.

Whoever, in the times of the earthly people, deserved to attain the illumination of the inner man helped the human race for its time, showing it what that age required, and intimating by prophecy what it was not opportune to show: such are the patriarchs and prophets found to be by those who do not leap at them childishly, but piously and diligently treat so good and so great a secret of divine and human things. This I see most cautiously provided for, in the times of the new people too, by great and spiritual men, nurslings of the catholic Church: they do nothing publicly which they understand it is not yet the time to do with the people; they pour milk food abundantly and urgently into the many weaker ones who are eager, but share stronger food with the few wise. For they speak wisdom among the perfect, but from the carnal and natural men, though new men, still little ones, they cover some things, but they lie about nothing. For they do not consult their own vain honors and empty praises, but the benefit of those with whom they have been granted to share the fellowship of this life. For this is the law of divine providence: that no one is helped by superiors to know and receive the grace of God who has not helped inferiors to the same with pure affection. So, from our sin, which our very nature committed in the sinful man, the human race has also become a great glory and ornament of the earth, and is so fittingly governed by the care of divine providence that the ineffable art of medicine turns the very foulness of vices into a certain beauty of its own kind.

And since we have spoken of the beneficence of authority as much as seemed enough for the present, let us see how far reason can advance, ascending from visible to invisible things and from temporal to eternal. For it is not in vain and idly that one should behold the beauty of the sky, the order of the stars, the brightness of light, the alternations of days and nights, the monthly courses of the moon, the fourfold tempering of the year, corresponding to the four elements, the great power of seeds producing forms and numbers, and all things keeping their proper measure and nature in their own kind. In considering these, no vain and perishing curiosity is to be exercised, but a step is to be made toward immortal and ever-abiding things. For the next thing is to attend to what that living nature is which perceives all these things; which surely, since it gives life to the body, must be more excellent than the body. For no mass whatever, however brightly it shines with this visible light, is to be highly esteemed if it lacks life. For any living substance whatever is placed by the law of nature above any non-living substance. But since no one doubts that irrational animals also live and perceive, that is most excellent in the human mind, not that by which it perceives sensible things, but that by which it judges about sensible things. For many beasts both see more sharply and touch bodies more keenly with the other bodily senses than men; but to judge about bodies belongs not to a merely perceiving life but to a reasoning one; in this they are lacking, and we excel. Now it is very easy to see that the one judging is more excellent than the thing about which it judges. And rational life judges not only about sensible things but about the senses themselves: why an oar in water must appear broken when it is straight, and why it must be perceived so through the eyes; for the sight of the eyes can report this, but in no way judge it. Therefore it is clear that, as sensitive life excels the body, so rational life excels both.

So if rational life judges according to itself, there is no nature more excellent. But since it is clear that it is changeable, being found now skilled, now unskilled, and it judges the better the more skilled it is, and is the more skilled the more it shares in some art or discipline or wisdom, the nature of art itself must be sought. And I do not want art now to be understood as what is noted by experience, but what is tracked down by reasoning. For what splendid thing does he know who knows that stones cohere more firmly with mortar made of lime and sand than with mud? Or he who builds so elegantly that, where there are several things, like answers to like, and where there are single things, they hold the middle place? Though this sense is now nearer to reason and truth. But surely it must be asked why it offends us if, of two windows placed not one above the other but side by side, one is larger or smaller, when they could have been equal; but if they are one above the other, even if both are unequal by as much as half, that inequality does not offend so; and why we do not much care how much one of them is larger or smaller, because there are two. But in three, sense itself seems to demand either that they not be unequal, or that between the largest and the smallest the middle one be such that it exceeds the smaller by as much as it is exceeded by the larger. For so nature itself is first consulted, as it were, about what it approves. Here it is especially to be noted how what displeased less when seen alone is rejected in comparison with something better. So it is found that common art is nothing else than the memory of things experienced and found pleasing, with a certain practice of body and work added; if you lack this, you can still judge about works, which is much more excellent, though you cannot produce works of skill.

But since in all arts harmony pleases, by which alone all things are sound and beautiful, and harmony itself seeks equality and unity, either by the likeness of equal parts or by the gradation of unequal ones, who is there who finds supreme equality or likeness in bodies, and dares to say, when he has considered carefully, that any body is truly and simply one, since all things change by passing either from form to form or from place to place, and consist of parts occupying their own places, through which they are divided into different spaces? Moreover, true equality and likeness itself, and true and first unity itself, is beheld not with eyes of flesh nor with any such sense, but by the mind that understands. For whence would any equality whatever be sought in bodies, or whence would one be convinced that it differs very greatly from perfect equality, unless the perfect were seen by the mind? If indeed what is not made is to be called perfect. And while all things that are sensibly beautiful, whether produced by nature or worked by arts, are beautiful in places and times, like a body and the motions of a body, that equality and unity known only to the mind, according to which judgment is made about bodily beauty through the sense as messenger, is neither swollen in place nor unstable in time. For it cannot rightly be said that a round wheel-rim is judged according to it and a round little vessel not, or a round little vessel according to it and a round denarius not. Similarly in times and in the motions of bodies, it is ridiculous to say that equal years are judged according to it and equal months not, or equal months according to it and equal days not. But whether something moves harmoniously through these spaces, or through hours, or through briefer moments, it is judged by the same one unchangeable equality. And if smaller and larger spaces of figures and motions are judged according to the same law of parity, or likeness, or congruence, the law itself is greater than all these, but in power. In space, however, whether of place or time, it is neither greater nor smaller: because if it were greater, we would not judge smaller things according to the whole of it; and if it were smaller, we would not judge larger things according to it. But now, since a square forum, a square stone, a square tablet and a square gem are judged according to the whole law of squareness; and again, according to the whole law of equality the motions of the feet of a running ant are judged to be in harmony, and according to the same those of a walking elephant: who would doubt that it is neither greater nor smaller in intervals of places and times, while in power it surpasses all things? And since this law of all arts is wholly unchangeable, while the human mind, to which it is granted to see such a law, can undergo the changeableness of error, it is clear enough that above our mind there is a law, which is called truth.

Nor is it any longer to be doubted that the unchangeable nature which is above the rational soul is God; and that the first life and the first essence are where the first wisdom is. For this is that unchangeable truth which is rightly called the law of all arts and the art of the almighty Artificer. So, since the soul perceives that it judges the appearance and motion of bodies not according to itself, it must at the same time recognize that its own nature excels the nature about which it judges, but that the nature according to which it judges, and about which it can in no way judge, excels it. For I can say why the members of any body ought to correspond to each other similarly on both sides: because I delight in supreme equality, which I behold not with the eyes of the body but of the mind; and therefore I judge the things I see with the eyes to be the better the nearer they are, according to their nature, to those which I understand with the mind. But why those are so, no one can say; nor would anyone soberly say that they ought to be so, as though they could be otherwise. And why they please us, and why, when we are wiser, we love them most vehemently, not even this will anyone dare to say, if he understands them rightly. For as we and all rational souls judge rightly about lower things according to truth, so about us, when we cleave to it, truth itself alone judges. But about it not even the Father judges, for it is not less than he; and therefore what the Father judges, he judges through it. For all things that seek unity have this as their rule, or form, or exemplar, or whatever other word it allows itself to be called by; since it alone has fulfilled the likeness of him from whom it received being, if indeed ‘received’ is not unfittingly said, in the sense in which it is called the Son, because it is not from itself but from the first and supreme principle, who is called the Father, from whom every fatherhood in heaven and on earth is named. “The Father, therefore, judges no one, but has given all judgment to the Son”; and, “The spiritual man judges all things, but he himself is judged by no one,” that is, by no man, but only by that very law according to which he judges all things; since this too was said most truly: “We must all be presented before the judgment seat of Christ.” He judges all things, therefore, because he is above all things when he is with God. And he is with him when he understands most purely and loves with all charity what he understands. So, as far as he can, he himself also becomes that very law according to which he judges all things, and about which no one can judge. As in these temporal laws, although men judge about them when they establish them, yet once they have been established and confirmed, it will not be permitted for a judge to judge about them, but only according to them. Yet the founder of temporal laws, if he is a good and wise man, consults that eternal law, about which it is given to no soul to judge, so that according to its unchangeable rules he may discern what is to be commanded and forbidden for the time. It is lawful, then, for pure souls to know the eternal law, but not lawful to judge it. And the difference is this: for knowing it is enough that we see that something is so or not so; but for judging we add something by which we signify that it can also be otherwise; as when we say, ‘It ought to be so,’ or ‘It ought to have been so,’ or ‘It will have to be so,’ as craftsmen do in their works.

But for many human delight is the end, and they do not want to strive toward higher things so as to judge why these visible things please. So if I ask a builder, when one arch has been built, why he constructs another equal to it on the other side, he will answer, I believe, so that the members of the building may correspond, like to like. If I go on to ask why he chooses that very thing, he will say that it is fitting, that it is beautiful, that it delights those who see it: he will dare nothing more. For, bent down, he rests on his eyes, and does not understand on what it depends. But I will not cease to urge a man who has inner eyes and sees invisibly to ask why these things please, so that he may dare to be judge of human delight itself. For so he rises above it and is not held by it, while he judges not according to it but judges it. And first I will ask whether things are beautiful because they delight, or delight because they are beautiful. Here I shall be answered without hesitation that they delight because they are beautiful. I will then ask why they are beautiful; and if there is hesitation, I will suggest whether it is because their parts are like one another and are brought by some joining into one harmony. When he has found this to be so, I will ask whether they supremely achieve this very unity which they are shown to seek, or lie far below it and in some way lie about it. If this is so (for who, once reminded, does not see that there is no form and no body at all which does not have some trace of unity, and that no body, however beautiful, since it necessarily has one part here and another there through intervals of place, can attain the unity which it pursues?), if this is so, I will demand that he answer where he himself sees this unity, or from where he sees it: for if he did not see it, how would he know both what the form of bodies imitates and what it cannot achieve? For now, when he says to bodies, ‘You would be nothing unless some unity held you together, but again, if you were unity itself, you would not be bodies,’ he is rightly asked: ‘Whence do you know that unity according to which you judge bodies, which unless you saw it you could not judge that they do not fulfill it? But if you saw it with these bodily eyes, you would not truly say that, though they are held by its trace, they are far from it; for with these bodily eyes you see only bodily things: so it is with the mind that we see it.’ But where do we see it? If it were in this place where our body is, one who in this way judges about bodies in the East would not see it. So it is not contained in place; and while it is present wherever one judges, it is nowhere through spaces of place, and through power it is nowhere absent.

But if bodies lie about it, we must not believe them when they lie, lest we fall into the vanities of the vain; but we must rather ask, since they lie about it in that they seem to show it to the eyes of flesh while it is seen by the pure mind, whether they lie insofar as they are like it, or insofar as they do not attain it. For if they attained it, they would fulfill what they imitate. And if they fulfilled it, they would be wholly like it. If they were wholly like it, there would be no difference between that nature and this. And if that were so, they would not lie about it: for they would be what it is. Yet to those who consider more carefully they do not lie: for he lies who wishes to seem what he is not; but what, without willing it, is thought to be other than it is, does not lie, but only deceives. For the liar is distinguished from the deceiver in this, that in every liar there is the will to deceive, even if he is not believed; but one cannot be a deceiver who does not deceive. So bodily form, since it has no will, does not lie; and if it is not even thought to be what it is not, it does not deceive either.

But not even the eyes themselves deceive, for they can report to the mind nothing but their own affection. And if not only they but all the senses of the body report as they are affected, I do not know what more we ought to demand of them. Take away the vain, then, and there will be no vanity. If someone thinks an oar is broken in water and made whole when it is taken out, he does not have a bad messenger, but is a bad judge. For the sense, by its nature, could not perceive it otherwise in water, nor ought it to have: for if air is one thing and water another, it is right that it be perceived one way in air and another in water. So the eye is right, for it was made for this, only to see; but the soul is perverse, for which the mind, not the eye, was made to contemplate the supreme beauty. But it wants to turn the mind to bodies, and the eyes to God. For it seeks to understand carnal things and to see spiritual things, which cannot be done.

Wherefore this perversity must be corrected, because unless one makes what is above below and what is below above, he will not be fit for the kingdom of heaven. Let us not then seek the highest things in the lowest, nor cling to the lowest themselves. Let us judge them, lest we be judged with them; that is, let us attribute to them only as much as the lowest form deserves, lest, when we seek the first things among the last, we be counted by the first among the last. This does no harm to those last things, but very much to us. Nor is the administration of divine providence any less seemly on that account; for both the unjust are ordered justly and the foul beautifully. And if the beauty of visible things deceives us because it is held together by unity and does not fulfill unity, let us understand, if we can, that we are deceived not by what is but by what is not. For every body is a true body but a false unity. For it is not supremely one, nor does it imitate unity so far as to fulfill it; and yet it would not even be a body unless it were in some way one. Moreover, it could not be in some way one unless it had this from that which is supremely one.

O stubborn souls, give me someone who sees without any imagining of carnal sights. Give me someone who sees that the principle of everything that is one is nothing but the One alone, from whom every one thing is, whether it fulfills that unity or not. Give me one who sees, not one who quarrels, not one who wants to seem to see what he does not see. Give me one who resists the senses of the flesh and the blows by which through them he has been beaten in his soul; who resists the custom of men, resists the praises of men; who is pierced with compunction in his chamber, who re-carves his spirit, who does not love vanities outside and seek lies; who already knows how to say to himself: If there is one Rome, which some Romulus or other is said to have founded by the Tiber, this one which I fashion in thought is false: for it is not that Rome, nor am I there in mind; for then I would surely know what is happening there now. If there is one sun, this one which I fashion in thought is false: for that one runs its courses in fixed places and times; this one I set where I will and when I will. If that friend of mine is one, this one whom I fashion in thought is false: for where that one is I do not know; this one is fashioned where I will. I myself am certainly one, and I feel my body to be in this place; and yet by a figment of thought I go where I please and speak with whom I please. These things are false; and no one understands false things. So I do not understand when I contemplate these and believe them; for what I contemplate with the intellect must be true. Are these perhaps what are commonly called phantasms? Whence then is my soul filled with illusions? Where is the true which is beheld by the mind? To one thinking thus it can now be said: That light is true by which you know that these are not true. Through it you see that One by which you judge whatever else you see to be one, and yet judge that whatever changeable thing you see is not what that One is.