On True Religion 45–54

Therefore even in this pleasure of the body we find something to remind us to despise it: not because the nature of the body is evil, but because the soul, which has been granted to cling to the first things and enjoy them, wallows shamefully in the love of the lowest good. When a charioteer is dragged along and pays the penalty for his rashness, he blames whatever it was that he was using. But let him call for help; let the Lord of things give the command; let the horses be checked (while others are already making a spectacle of his fall and would make one of his death, if no help came); let him be restored to his place, set upon the wheels, given back control of the reins, and let him guide more carefully the horses, now obedient and tamed: then he will realize how well the chariot and the whole team were built, which by his fall had both injured him and lost the course of the most fitting control. For in this way too the greed of the soul that used it badly in paradise brought forth weakness for this body, when it seized the forbidden food against the instruction of the physician, in which eternal health is contained. If, then, in this very weakness of the visible flesh, where the happy life cannot be, a reminder of the happy life is found, because of the beauty that reaches from the highest down to the lowest, how much more in the craving for nobility and eminence, and in all the pride and empty pomp of this world! For what else does a man seek in it but to be, if possible, the only one to whom all things are subject, in a perverse imitation, that is, of almighty God? If he imitated him as a subject, by living according to his commandments, he would through him have all other things subject to him, and he would not come to such deformity as to fear a little beast while wishing to rule over men. Pride, then, also has a certain craving for unity and omnipotence, but in the rule of temporal things, which all pass away like a shadow. We want to be unconquered, and rightly so; for our mind's nature has this after God, by whom it was made to his image. But his commandments were to be kept; had they been kept, no one would conquer us. But now, while she to whose words we shamefully consented is subdued by the pain of childbearing, and we toil on the earth, we are also overcome, to our great disgrace, by everything that can move and disturb us. So we do not want to be conquered by men, and we cannot conquer anger. What more detestable than this disgrace can be named? We admit that a man is what we are; and yet, even if he has vices, he is not himself a vice. How much more honorable it is, then, for a man to conquer us than a vice! And who would doubt that envy is a monstrous vice, by which anyone who does not want to be conquered in temporal things must be tormented and subdued? It is better, then, that a man should conquer us than envy or any other vice.

But no one can be conquered by a man who has conquered his own vices. For no one is conquered except one from whom an adversary snatches away what he loves. He, then, who loves only what cannot be snatched from one who loves it is beyond doubt unconquered, and is not tormented by that envy. For he loves something which, the more people come to love and grasp it, the more abundantly he rejoices with them. For he loves God with his whole heart, and with his whole soul, and with his whole mind; and he loves his neighbor as himself. So he does not envy him for being what he himself is; rather, he even helps him as much as he can. Nor can he lose the neighbor whom he loves as himself, since even in himself he does not love the things that lie open to the eyes or to any other bodily senses. So he has within himself the one he loves as himself. And the rule of love is this: that the goods he wishes to come to himself he wishes for the other too, and the evils he does not wish to befall himself he does not wish for the other either. This will he keeps toward all men. For evil must be done to no one, and “love of neighbor works no evil.” Let us then love even our enemies, as we are commanded, if we truly wish to be unconquered. For no human being is unconquered through himself, but through that unchangeable law which those who serve it are alone free. For in this way what they love cannot be taken from them; and this one thing makes men unconquered and perfect. For if a man loves even another man not as himself but as a beast of burden, or as the baths, or as a painted or chattering little bird, that is, in order to get from him some temporal pleasure or advantage, he must serve not a man but, what is more shameful, so foul and detestable a vice that he does not love the man as a man ought to be loved. While that vice rules, he is led on to the end of life, or rather to death. But not even in the way that brothers after the flesh, or sons, or wives, or any kindred, or relatives by marriage, or fellow citizens are loved should a man be loved by a man. For that love too is temporal. For we should have none of these ties, which arise through being born and dying, if our nature, remaining in the commandments and in the image of God, had not been banished into this corruption. And so the Truth itself, calling us back to our original and perfect nature, commands us to resist the habit of the flesh, teaching that no one is fit for the kingdom of God who does not hate these fleshly ties. Nor should this seem inhuman to anyone. For it is more inhuman to love in a man not that he is a man but that he is a son; for this is to love in him not what belongs to God, but what belongs to oneself. What wonder, then, if he does not reach the kingdom who loves not what is common but what is private? “Both rather,” someone says. “That one thing rather,” says God. For the Truth says most truly: “No one can serve two masters.” For no one can perfectly love that to which we are called, unless he hates that from which we are called back. We are called to a perfect human nature, such as God made before our sin; we are called back from the love of the nature we deserved by sinning. We must hate what we wish to be freed from. Let us then hate temporal ties, if we burn with the love of eternity. Let a man love his neighbor as himself. For surely no one is to himself a father, or son, or relative by marriage, or anything of that kind, but only a man. He then who loves someone as himself ought to love in him what he is to himself. But bodies are not what we are; so in a man the body is not to be sought or desired. For to this point also applies the commandment: “You shall not covet your neighbor's property.” Therefore whoever loves in his neighbor something other than what he is to himself does not love him as himself. Human nature itself, then, is to be loved without the condition of the flesh, whether it is still to be perfected or already perfect. All who love God and do his will are kindred under one God and Father. And they are to one another both fathers, when they counsel one another, and sons, when they obey one another, and above all brothers, because one Father by his testament calls them to one inheritance.

Why, then, should this man not be unconquered in loving a man, since he loves nothing in him but the man, that is, a creature of God made to his image, and since the perfect nature he loves cannot be lacking to him, when he himself is perfect? For example, if someone loves a good singer, not this one or that one, but any good singer at all, being himself a perfect singer, he wishes all to be such, yet without what he loves being lacking to him, because he himself sings well. For if he envies anyone who sings well, he no longer loves that, but either praise or something else which he wants to obtain by singing well, and which can be lessened or taken from him if another also sings well. He, then, who envies a good singer does not love the good singer; and again, he who needs him does not himself sing well. This can be said much more fittingly of the one who lives well, because he can envy no one: for what those who live well attain is the same for all, and it does not become less when more have it. There can be a time when a good singer cannot fittingly sing, and needs another's voice by which what he loves is offered to him, as when he is at a banquet somewhere where it would be unseemly for him to sing but seemly to listen to a singer; but to live well is always seemly. So whoever both loves and does this not only does not envy those who imitate him, but gives himself to them most gladly and most kindly as far as he can; and yet he does not need them. For what he loves in them he has whole and perfect in himself. So when he loves his neighbor as himself, he does not envy him, because he does not envy himself; he gives him what he can, because he does so for himself too; he does not need him, because he does not need himself either: he needs only God, by clinging to whom he is happy. And no one snatches God from him. That man, then, is most truly and most surely unconquered who clings to God, not so as to earn some good from him outside him, but one for whom nothing other than clinging to God is good. Such a man, as long as he is in this life, uses a friend for repaying kindness, uses an enemy for patience, uses those he can for doing good, uses all for good will. And though he does not love temporal things, he himself uses temporal things rightly, and looks after men according to their lot, if he cannot do so equally for all. So if he speaks more readily to one of his close friends than to anyone else, it is not that he loves him more, but that he has greater confidence toward him and a more open door of opportunity. For he deals with those given over to time the better, the less he himself is bound to time. So since he cannot benefit all whom he loves equally, he would be unjust if he did not prefer to benefit those more closely joined to him. And a bond of mind is greater than one of the places or times in which we are born in this body; but the greatest is the one that prevails over all. So this man is not afflicted by anyone's death, since he who loves God with his whole mind knows that what does not perish to God does not perish to him either. And God is Lord of both the living and the dead. He is not wretched through anyone's wretchedness, because he is not just through anyone's justice either. And as no one takes justice and God from him, so no one takes away his happiness. And if at times he is moved by someone's danger, or error, or grief, he lets it avail as far as helping, correcting, or consoling the other, not as far as his own overthrow. And in all dutiful labors he is not broken, through the sure expectation of the rest to come. For what will harm him who can make good use even of an enemy? For he does not fear enmities, protected and defended by him at whose command and by whose gift he loves his enemies. For such a man it is too little not to be saddened in tribulations, unless he also rejoices, knowing that “tribulation works patience, patience proof, proof hope, and hope does not put to shame; because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.” Who will harm him? Who will subdue him? A man who makes progress in prosperity learns in adversity what progress he has made. For when there is plenty of changeable goods, he does not trust them; but when they are withdrawn, he discovers whether they had not taken hold of him. For often, when they are with us, we think that we do not love them; but when they begin to be absent, we find out who we are. For what was present without our love departs without our grief. So the one who seems to conquer is conquered, if by overcoming he attains what he will lose with grief; and the one who seems to be conquered conquers, if by yielding he attains what he does not lose against his will.

Let him, then, who delights in freedom seek to be free from the love of changeable things; and let him who delights in ruling cling, as a subject, to the one ruler of all, God, loving him more than himself. And this is perfect justice, by which we love the better things more and the lesser things less. Let him love a wise and perfect soul as he sees it to be; a foolish one not as it is, but because it can become perfect and wise; for he ought not to love even himself as foolish. For he who loves himself as foolish will not make progress toward wisdom; nor will anyone become what he desires to be unless he hates himself as he is. But until wisdom and perfection are reached, let him bear his neighbor's folly with the same mind with which he would bear his own if he were foolish and loved wisdom. Therefore, if even pride itself is a shadow of true freedom and true kingship, through it too divine providence reminds us what we signify when we are corrupt, and where we ought to return when we are corrected.

Again, all spectacles and everything that is called curiosity: what do they seek but the joy of knowing things? What, then, is more wonderful, what more beautiful, than truth itself, which every spectator admits he desires to reach, when he watches keenly not to be deceived, and boasts if he perceives and judges something more sharply and more quickly than others in the watching? Even a conjurer, who professes nothing but deception, they watch closely and observe most carefully; and if they are fooled, since they cannot delight in their own knowledge, they delight in the knowledge of the man who fools them. For if he too did not know by what means the spectators are deceived, or were believed not to know, no one would applaud him, since he would be in error like them. But if one of the crowd catches him out, he thinks he deserves greater praise than the conjurer, for no other reason than that he could not be deceived and fooled. And if the trick is plain to many, the conjurer is not praised, but the others who cannot catch such things are laughed at. So every prize is given to knowledge, and skill, and the grasp of truth; which those who seek it outside never reach. And so we are sunk in such trifles and shameful things that when asked which is better, the true or the false, we answer with one voice that the true is better; yet we cling far more eagerly to jests and games, where it is certainly not true things but fictions that delight us, than to the precepts of truth itself. So we are punished by our own judgment and our own mouth, approving one thing by reason and following another through vanity. Yet a thing is laughable and amusing only as long as we know the truth in comparison with which it is laughed at. But by loving such things we fall away from the true, and no longer find of what things they are imitations; we gape at them as if they were the first beauties, and, withdrawing from those beauties, we embrace our own phantoms. For when we return to search for the truth, these meet us on the way and do not let us pass, waylaying us not by force but by great ambushes, because we do not understand how widely that saying applies: “Beware of idols.” And so some have wandered in roving thought through innumerable worlds. Others have thought that God could only be a fiery body. Others, imagining the brightness of an immense light stretched out in every direction through infinite spaces, yet split on one side as by a kind of black wedge, and supposing two opposed kingdoms and setting up such principles of things, have told tales with their phantoms. If I were to make them swear whether they know these things to be true, perhaps they would not dare, but would say in turn, “Then you show what is true.” If I answered them only by telling them to seek that light by which it is evident and certain to them that believing is one thing and understanding another, they themselves would swear that this light cannot be seen with the eyes, nor thought of with any vastness of places, and that it is everywhere present to those who seek it, and that nothing more certain and more serene can be found. And again, all that I have now said about this light of the mind is made plain by no other light than this same light. For through it I understand that what has been said is true, and through it again I understand that I understand this. And I understand that this goes on again and again to infinity, when anyone understands that he understands something and again understands that very thing; and I understand that here there are no spaces of any bulk or motion. I understand also that I cannot understand unless I live, and I understand more certainly that by understanding I become more alive. For eternal life surpasses temporal life by its very liveliness; nor do I behold what eternity is except by understanding. For by the gaze of the mind I separate all changeableness from eternity, and in eternity itself I see no spaces of time; because spaces of time consist of the past and future motions of things. But in the eternal nothing passes and nothing is future: for what passes ceases to be, and what is future has not yet begun to be; but eternity only is; it neither was, as though it no longer is, nor will be, as though it is not yet. Therefore it alone could say most truly to the human mind, “I am who am”; and of it could be said most truly, “He who is has sent me.”

If we cannot yet cling to it, let us at least rebuke our phantoms and cast out of the theater of the mind games so trifling and deceptive. Let us use the steps which divine providence has deigned to build for us. For when, too much delighted by playful fictions, we were vanishing into our own thoughts and turning our whole life into empty dreams, the ineffable mercy of God did not disdain, through the rational creature serving its laws, by sounds and letters, fire, smoke, cloud, pillar, as by visible words, to play in a way with our infancy by parables and likenesses, and to heal our inner eyes with clay of this kind. Let us distinguish, then, what faith we owe to history and what faith to understanding; what we commit to memory without knowing it to be true, yet believing it; and where the true is, which does not come and pass away but always remains in the same way. What is the method of interpreting allegory, which is believed to be spoken through wisdom in the Holy Spirit: whether it is enough to carry it from older visible things to more recent visible things, or on to the affections and nature of the soul, or on to unchangeable eternity; or whether some allegories signify visible deeds, others movements of minds, others the law of eternity; or whether some are found in which all these are to be traced. And what is the stable faith, whether historical and temporal or spiritual and eternal, to which all interpretation of Authority must be directed. And what faith in temporal things profits for understanding and holding the eternal, where the end of all good actions lies. And what difference there is between allegory of history, allegory of fact, allegory of speech, and allegory of sacrament. And how the very language of the divine Scriptures is to be taken according to the idiom of each tongue. For every language has certain kinds of expression of its own, which seem absurd when they are carried over into another language. What is the profit of such lowliness of speech that in the sacred books are found not only the anger of God, and sadness, and waking from sleep, and memory and forgetting, and some other things that can befall good men, but even the words repentance, jealousy, drunkenness, and others of the kind. And whether the eyes of God, and hands, and feet, and other members of this kind named in the Scriptures, are to be referred to the visible form of the human body, or to the meanings of intelligible and spiritual powers, like helmet, and shield, and sword, and belt, and the like. And, what is most to be asked, what profit it is to the human race that divine providence has spoken with us in this way through the rational, generative, and bodily creature serving it. Once this one thing is known, all childish insolence is shut out of minds, and holy religion is brought in.

So, leaving aside and rejecting the trifles of the theater and the poets, let us feed and refresh with the study and handling of the divine Scriptures a mind worn out and parched by the hunger and thirst of vain curiosity, and longing in vain to be refreshed and filled with empty phantoms, as with painted banquets. Let us be trained in a healthful way by this truly liberal and noble game. If the wonders and beauty of spectacles delight us, let us long to see that Wisdom which “reaches from end to end mightily, and orders all things sweetly.” For what is more wonderful than an incorporeal power that builds and governs the corporeal world? Or what more beautiful than that power ordering and adorning it?

But if all admit that these things are perceived through the body, and that the mind is better than the body, will the mind see nothing by itself? Or can what it sees be anything but far more excellent and far superior? Rather, reminded by the things we judge, let us look at what it is by which we judge; and, turning from the works of the arts to the law of the arts, we shall behold with the mind that beauty in comparison with which the things that are beautiful by its kindness are ugly. “For the invisible things of God, from the creation of the world, are clearly seen, being understood through the things that are made, his eternal power also and divinity.” This is the return from temporal things to eternal, and the re-forming from the life of the old man into the new man. What is there from which a man cannot be reminded to take up the virtues, when he can be reminded by the vices themselves? For what does curiosity seek but knowledge, which cannot be certain except of eternal things that are always the same? What does pride seek but power, which refers to ease of action, and which the soul does not find perfect unless it is subject to God and turned to his kingdom with the highest love? What does bodily pleasure seek but rest, which exists only where there is no want and no corruption? Therefore we must beware of the lower hell, that is, the heavier punishments after this life, where there can be no remembrance of truth, because there is no reasoning; and no reasoning because the true light, “which enlightens every man coming into this world,” does not flood it. So let us hasten and walk while it is day, lest darkness overtake us. Let us hasten to be freed from the second death, where there is no one who is mindful of God, and from hell, where no one will confess to God.

But wretched men, to whom what is known becomes cheap and who rejoice in novelties, would rather learn than know, though knowledge is the end of learning. And those to whom ease of action is cheap would rather strive than win, though victory is the end of striving. And those to whom the health of the body is cheap would rather eat than be filled, and would rather enjoy the genital members than suffer no such excitement; there are even those who would rather sleep than not be drowsy, though the end of all that pleasure is not to hunger and thirst, not to desire intercourse, and not to be wearied in body. Therefore those who desire the ends themselves first are free of curiosity, knowing that the certain knowledge is the one that is within, and enjoying it as far as they can in this life. Next they receive ease of action, laying aside obstinacy, knowing that the greater and easier victory is not to resist anyone's hostility; and this they experience as far as they can in this life. Last, they receive rest of the body also, by abstaining from the things without which this life can be lived; so they taste how sweet the Lord is. Nor will they doubt what is to come after this life; and they are nourished in their perfection by faith, hope, and love. But after this life knowledge will be made perfect, because “now we know in part, but when that which is perfect has come, it will not be in part”; and all peace will be present, for now “another law in my members fights against the law of my mind, but the grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord will free us from the body of this death,” because for the most part we agree with our adversary while we are with him on the way; and complete health, and no want, and no weariness will be present to the body, because “this corruptible” will, in its time and order, when the resurrection of the flesh is to take place, “put on incorruption.” And it is no wonder if this will be given to those who in knowledge love only truth, in action only peace, and in the body only health. For in them after this life will be perfected what in this life they love more.

Those, then, who misuse so great a good of the mind as to desire visible things outside it, by which they ought to have been reminded to behold and love intelligible things, will be given the outer darkness. For the beginning of that darkness is the prudence of the flesh and the weakness of the bodily senses. And those who delight in contests will be estranged from peace and entangled in the greatest difficulties. For the beginning of the greatest difficulty is war and strife. And this, I think, is what is signified by their hands and feet being bound, that is, all ease of acting is taken away. And those who want to thirst and hunger, and to burn with lust and grow weary, so that they may eat and drink and lie together and sleep with pleasure, love want, which is the beginning of the greatest pains. So what they love will be perfected in them, so that they will be where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. For there are many who love all these vices together, whose life is to watch shows, to contend, to eat, to drink, to lie together, to sleep, and in their thought to embrace nothing but the phantoms they gather from such a life; and from their deceit to fix rules of superstition or impiety, by which they are deceived and to which they cling, even if they try to abstain from the allurements of the flesh. For they do not make good use of the talent entrusted to them, that is, the keenness of the mind, in which all who are called learned or refined or witty seem to excel. But they keep it tied up in a napkin or buried in the earth, that is, wrapped up in delicate and superfluous things or pressed down by earthly desires. So their hands and feet will be bound, and they will be cast into the outer darkness; there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Not because they loved these things (for who would love them?), but because the things they loved are the beginnings of these, and necessarily lead their lovers to them. For those who love going out more than returning or arriving must be sent farther away, because they are “flesh, and a spirit that goes and does not return.” But he who makes good use even of the five senses of the body, for believing and proclaiming the works of God and nourishing love of him, or of action or knowledge for bringing peace to his own nature and knowing God, enters into the joy of his Lord. Therefore the talent that is taken from the one who uses it badly is given to him who has used five talents well: not because keenness of understanding can be transferred, but this signifies that the careless and the ungodly, though gifted, can lose it, and that the diligent and godly, though slower in gifts, can attain it. For that talent was not given to the one who had received two, for he who already lives well in action and knowledge has this too; but to the one who had received five. For he who believes only visible, that is, temporal things does not yet have the keenness of mind fit for contemplating the eternal; but he can have it who praises God as the maker of all these sensible things, and holds him by faith, awaits him in hope, and seeks him in love.