Confessions 7.2–7.18

So I, grown gross of heart and not even clear to myself, thought that whatever was not extended through some spaces, or diffused, or massed together, or swelling, or did not take or could not take some such form, was absolutely nothing. For through such forms as my eyes usually travel, through such images my heart traveled; nor did I see that this very attention by which I formed those images was not something of that kind; and yet it would not form them unless it were something great. So I thought of you too, Life of my life, as great, penetrating through infinite spaces on every side the whole mass of the world, and beyond it in every direction through immensities without limit, so that the earth would have you, the sky would have you, all things would have you, and they would be bounded in you, but you nowhere. And just as the body of the air, this air above the earth, would not hinder the light of the sun from passing through it, penetrating it not by bursting or cutting it but by filling it wholly, so I thought that the body not only of the sky and air and sea but also of the earth was open to you, and penetrable in all its greatest and smallest parts to receive your presence, as by a hidden inspiration you govern within and without all the things you have created. So I supposed, because I could think of nothing else; but it was false. For in that way a larger part of the earth would have a larger part of you, and a smaller a smaller; and all things would be full of you in such a way that the body of an elephant would contain more of you than that of a sparrow, by as much as it was larger and occupied a larger place; and so you would make your parts present piecemeal to the parts of the world, large parts to large ones and small to small. But it is not so. But you had not yet lightened my darkness.

It was enough for me, Lord, against those deceived deceivers and talkative mutes, since your Word did not sound from them; it was enough, then, that argument which Nebridius used to put forward long ago at Carthage, and all of us who heard it were shaken: what would that nation of darkness, which they usually set up as an opposing mass, have done to you if you had refused to fight with it? For if the answer were that it would have done you some harm, you would be violable and corruptible. But if it were said that it could have done you no harm, no reason would be given for fighting, and for fighting in such a way that some portion of you, some member of yours, or offspring of your very substance, should be mingled with hostile powers and natures not created by you, and be so far corrupted by them and changed for the worse as to be turned from happiness into misery and need help to be rescued and cleansed; and that this is the soul, to which your Word, free, pure, and whole, came to the aid of it in its slavery, contamination, and corruption; yet the Word too would be corruptible, since it would be of one and the same substance. So if they said that you, whatever you are, that is, your substance by which you are, were incorruptible, all those things of theirs were false and abominable; but if corruptible, that very statement was false and to be abhorred at the first word. So this argument was enough against them, that they should be utterly vomited out from an oppressed heart, since they had no way out without horrible sacrilege of heart and tongue in thinking and speaking such things about you.

But I too, although I said and firmly held that our Lord, the true God, who made not only our souls but also our bodies, and not only our souls and bodies but all beings and all things, was undefilable and unalterable and in no part changeable, still did not grasp the cause of evil clearly and unraveled. Yet whatever it was, I saw that it must be sought in such a way that I would not be forced by it to believe the unchangeable God changeable, lest I myself should become what I was seeking. So I sought it without anxiety, and certain that what those people said was not true, whom I was fleeing with all my heart; because I saw that in seeking where evil comes from, they were filled with malice, by which they would rather think that your substance suffers evil than that their own does evil.

And I strained to see what I had heard, that the free choice of the will is the cause of our doing evil, and your just judgment the cause of our suffering it; and I could not see it clearly. So, trying to draw the sight of my mind up out of the depths, I sank again; and trying often, I sank again and again. For what raised me toward your light was that I knew I had a will as surely as I knew I was alive. So when I willed or did not will something, I was most certain that it was no one other than I who willed or did not will; and I was just beginning to notice that the cause of my sin lay there. But what I did unwillingly I saw that I suffered rather than did, and I judged it not a fault but a punishment, by which I quickly admitted I was not unjustly punished, thinking of you as just. But again I would say: “Who made me? Was it not my God, who is not only good but goodness itself? Where then does my willing evil and not willing good come from? So that there might be a reason for my being justly punished? Who put this in me and sowed in me this seedbed of bitterness, when I was made wholly by my most sweet God? If the devil is the author, where does the devil himself come from? And if he too was made a devil from a good angel by a perverse will, where did the evil will in him come from, by which he became a devil, when the angel was made wholly by the best creator?” By these thoughts I was pressed down again and stifled; but I was not brought down to that hell of error where no one confesses to you, while it is thought that you suffer evil rather than that a human being does it.

For I was striving to find the rest in the same way as I had already found that the incorruptible is better than the corruptible; and so I confessed that you, whatever you are, are incorruptible. For no soul ever could or ever will be able to conceive of anything better than you, who are the highest and best good. And since the incorruptible is most truly and certainly preferred to the corruptible, as I already preferred it, I could already reach in thought something better than my God, if you were not incorruptible. So where I saw that the incorruptible was to be preferred to the corruptible, there I ought to have sought you, and from there to notice where evil is, that is, where corruption itself comes from, by which your substance can in no way be violated. For corruption in no way whatever violates our God: by no will, by no necessity, by no unforeseen chance; since he is God, and what he wills for himself is good, and he himself is that same good; but to be corrupted is not good. Nor are you forced to anything against your will, because your will is not greater than your power. It would be greater if you yourself were greater than yourself: for the will and power of God is God himself. What is unforeseen to you, who know all things? And no nature exists except because you know it. And why do we say so much about why the substance which is God is not corruptible, when, if it were, it would not be God?

And I asked where evil comes from, and I asked badly, and I did not see the evil in my very inquiry. And I set before the sight of my spirit the whole creation, whatever we can see in it, such as earth and sea and air and stars and trees and mortal animals, and whatever we do not see in it, such as the firmament of heaven above, and all the angels and all its spiritual beings; but even these, as if they were bodies, arranged in their various places, as my imagination had it. And I made your creation one great mass, distinguished by kinds of bodies, whether real bodies or those I had invented in place of spirits; and I made it great, not as great as it was, which I could not know, but as great as I pleased, though bounded on every side; and you, Lord, surrounding it and penetrating it on every side, but infinite in every direction: as if there were a sea everywhere, and on every side through immensity nothing but an infinite sea, and it had within it a sponge, as large as you like, but still finite; that sponge would of course be full in every part from the immense sea. So I thought your creation, finite, was full of you, the infinite; and I said: “See God, and see what God has created; and God is good, and most mightily and incomparably surpasses these things; but still, being good, he created good things; and see how he surrounds and fills them. Where then is evil, and from where, and by what way did it creep in here? What is its root, and what its seed? Or does it not exist at all? Why then do we fear and guard against what does not exist? Or if we fear in vain, the fear itself is an evil, by which the heart is goaded and tormented for nothing; and so much the worse an evil, since there is nothing to fear and yet we fear. Therefore either there is evil that we fear, or this is the evil, that we fear. Where then does it come from, since God, being good, made all these things good? He, the greater and highest good, made lesser goods; but still both creator and created are all good. Where does evil come from? Or was there some evil matter from which he made them, and he formed and ordered it, but left something in it that he did not turn into good? Why that too? Was he powerless to turn and change the whole of it, so that no evil remained, though he is almighty? Finally, why did he want to make anything from it, and not rather, by the same omnipotence, cause it not to exist at all? Or could it exist against his will? Or if it was eternal, why did he let it be so for so long, through infinite spaces of time past, and only so much later decide to make something from it? Or if he suddenly wanted to do something, would not the Almighty rather have done this, that it should not exist, and he alone should be, the whole, true, highest, and infinite good? Or if it was not good that he who was good should not also make and establish something good, why did he not remove and reduce to nothing the matter that was evil, and himself establish good matter from which to create all things? For he would not be almighty if he could not establish something good without being helped by matter he had not himself established.” Such things I turned over in my wretched breast, weighed down with the most gnawing cares about the fear of death and about not finding the truth. Yet the faith of your Christ, our Lord and Savior, as held in the catholic church, was firmly fixed in my heart; in many points still unformed and wavering from the norm of doctrine; yet my mind did not abandon it, but rather drank it in more and more day by day.

By now I had also rejected the deceptive divinations and impious ravings of the astrologers. Let your mercies confess to you for this too, my God, from the inmost depths of my soul! For it was you, you alone (for who else calls us back from the death of all error but the Life that does not know how to die, and the Wisdom that enlightens needy minds while needing no light itself, by which the world is governed down to the fluttering leaves of the trees?), you who provided for my obstinacy, with which I had struggled against Vindicianus, a shrewd old man, and Nebridius, a young man of admirable soul. The former vehemently affirmed, and the latter, though with some hesitation, often said, that there was no art of foreseeing the future, but that human guesses often have the force of chance, and that by saying many things many that would happen are said, without those who say them knowing it, but hitting upon them by not keeping silent. You provided, then, a friend, not indeed a lazy consulter of the astrologers, nor well versed in their writings, but, as I said, a curious consulter, and yet one who knew something he said he had heard from his father; how much it could do to overturn belief in that art he did not know. This man, named Firminus, liberally educated and cultivated in eloquence, consulted me as a very dear friend about certain affairs of his, in which his worldly hopes had swelled, asking what I thought according to his so-called constellations. I, who had already begun to be swayed toward Nebridius's opinion on this matter, did not refuse to conjecture and say what occurred to my wavering mind, but added that I was almost persuaded by now that those things were ridiculous and empty. Then he told me that his father had been very curious about such books, and had had a friend who pursued them equally and together with him. With equal zeal and sharing of notes they burned for those trifles with the fire of their hearts, so much so that they even observed the moments of birth of dumb animals, if any gave birth in their houses, and noted the position of the sky at those moments, to gather experimental evidence for that so-called art. So he said he had heard from his father that when his mother was pregnant with this same Firminus, a certain maidservant of that friend of his father's was also growing big with child. This could not escape her master, who took care to know even the births of his dogs with the most exact diligence. And so it happened that while the one counted the days and hours and the smaller divisions of the hours for his wife, and the other for his maidservant, with the most careful observation, both women gave birth at the same time, so that they were forced to cast the same constellations, down to the same minutes, for each newborn, the one for his son, the other for his little slave. For when the women began to be in labor, they informed each other what was happening in each one's house, and they prepared messengers to send to each other, so that the birth, as soon as it happened, would be announced to each; and they had easily arranged, as in their own domain, that it should be announced immediately. And so the messengers sent by each, he said, met each other at a point equidistant from the two houses, so that neither of them was able to note any other position of the stars or any other fraction of a moment. And yet Firminus, born to an ample position among his family, ran along the brighter paths of the world, grew in riches, was raised to honors; while that slave served his masters, the yoke of his condition not at all loosened, as the very man who knew him reported.

When I had heard and believed this (for such a man had told it), all my resistance collapsed and fell; and first I tried to call Firminus himself back from that curiosity, telling him that if, on inspecting his constellations, I were to declare the truth, I should certainly have seen there parents who were leading citizens among their own people, a noble family in their city, free birth, a respectable upbringing, and liberal education; but if that slave had consulted me on the basis of the same constellations (since they were his too), then in order to tell him too the truth I should have seen there a most lowly family, a servile condition, and everything else far removed and far different from the first. So if, looking at the same things, I were to say different things, I would be speaking truly; but if I said the same things, I would be speaking falsely. From this it could be concluded with the greatest certainty that the true things said on consideration of the constellations are said not by art but by chance, and the false ones not from lack of skill in the art but from the lies of chance.

With this opening, and ruminating on such things by myself, so that none of those madmen who pursued such gain, whom I now longed to attack and refute with ridicule, could resist me by saying that Firminus had told me falsehoods or his father had told him, I turned my attention to those who are born twins. Most of them come from the womb so soon one after the other that the small interval of time, however much force they claim it has in the nature of things, cannot be caught by human observation or recorded at all in the tables that the astrologer is to inspect in order to declare the truth. And they will not be true, because, inspecting the same tables, he would have had to say the same things of Esau and Jacob; but the same things did not happen to both. So he would speak falsely; or, if he spoke truly, he would not say the same things; yet he would be inspecting the same things. So he would speak truly not by art but by chance. For you, Lord, most just ruler of the universe, by a hidden instinct, while those who consult and those consulted do not know it, bring it about that each one who consults hears what he ought to hear, according to the hidden merits of souls, from the abyss of your just judgment. Let no one say to you, “What is this?” or “Why is this?” Let him not say it, let him not say it; for he is a human being.

So now, my Helper, you had freed me from those chains, and I was asking where evil comes from, and there was no way out. But you did not allow me to be carried away by any waves of thought from the faith by which I believed that you exist, and that your substance is unchangeable, and that you care for human beings and judge them, and that in Christ, your Son, our Lord, and in the Holy Scriptures, which the authority of your catholic church commended, you had set the way of human salvation to the life that will come after this death. With these things safe and unshakably strengthened in my mind, I sought feverishly where evil comes from. What torments of my heart in labor, what groans, my God! And your ears were there, though I did not know it. And when I sought vigorously in silence, the silent contritions of my mind were loud cries to your mercy. You knew what I was suffering, and no human being did. For how much of it was expressed through my tongue into the ears of my closest friends? Did the tumult of my soul, for which neither time nor my mouth sufficed, sound to them? Yet all of it went into your hearing, “what I roared from the groaning of my heart; and my desire was before you, and the light of my eyes was not with me.” For it was within, and I was outside; nor was it in a place. But I was attending to things contained in places, and there I found no place to rest; nor did those things receive me so that I could say, “It is enough, and it is well”; nor did they let me return to where it would be well enough for me. For I was superior to those things, but inferior to you; and you are my true joy when I am subject to you, and you had subjected to me the things you created below me. And this was the right balance and the middle region of my salvation: that I should remain in your image, and by serving you be master of the body. But when I rose up proudly against you and “ran against the Lord with the thick neck of my shield,” even these lowest things were placed above me and pressed me down, and there was nowhere any relief or breathing space. They met me on every side in heaps and masses as I looked; and as I thought, the images of bodies themselves blocked my return, as if to say, “Where are you going, unworthy and filthy one?” And these things had grown out of my wound, because “you humbled the proud like one wounded,” and by my swelling I was separated from you, and my face, too puffed up, closed my eyes.

But you, Lord, “abide forever,” and you are not “angry with us forever,” since you have had pity on dust and ashes, and it pleased you in your sight to reform my deformities. And you stirred me with inner goads, so that I would be restless until you were certain to me by inner sight. And my swelling subsided under the hidden hand of your healing, and the troubled and darkened sight of my mind was healed from day to day by the sharp salve of salutary sorrows.

And first, wishing to show me how you “resist the proud but give grace to the humble,” and with how great mercy the way of humility has been shown to people, in that “the Word was made flesh and dwelt” among men, you procured for me, through a certain man puffed up with most monstrous pride, some books of the Platonists translated from Greek into Latin. And there I read, not indeed in these words, but entirely the same thing urged by many and varied reasons: that “in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God; he was in the beginning with God; all things were made through him, and without him nothing was made that was made; in him is life, and the life was the light of men; and the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it”; and that the soul of man, though it “bears witness to the light,” is not itself the light, but the Word, God himself, is “the true light that enlightens every man coming into this world”; and that “he was in this world, and the world was made through him, and the world did not know him.” But that “he came to his own, and his own did not receive him; but as many as received him, to them he gave power to become children of God, to those who believe in his name,” I did not read there.

I also read there that the Word, God, was born “not of flesh, nor of blood, nor of the will of man, nor of the will of the flesh, but of God.” But that “the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us,” I did not read there. For I found in those writings, said variously and in many ways, that the Son, being “in the form of the Father, did not think it robbery to be equal with God,” because by nature he is the very same. But that “he emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, made in the likeness of men and found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself, becoming obedient unto death, even the death of the cross; wherefore God exalted him” from the dead “and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, on earth, and under the earth, and every tongue confess that the Lord Jesus is in the glory of God the Father”: those books do not have. That before all times and above all times your only-begotten Son abides unchangeably, coeternal with you, and that souls receive “of his fullness” so as to be happy, and that they are renewed by participation in the wisdom that abides in itself so as to be wise: this is there. But that “in due time he died for the ungodly,” and that “you did not spare your only Son, but delivered him up for us all,” is not there. For “you have hidden these things from the wise and revealed them to little ones,” so that “those who labor and are burdened” might come to him and he might refresh them, because he is “gentle and humble of heart,” and “guides the gentle in judgment and teaches the meek his ways, seeing our humility and our toil and forgiving all our sins.” But those who are lifted up on the tragic buskin, as it were, of a loftier teaching do not hear him saying, “Learn from me, for I am gentle and humble of heart, and you will find rest for your souls”; and “although they know God, they do not glorify him as God or give thanks, but become vain in their thoughts, and their foolish heart is darkened; saying that they are wise, they become fools.”

And so I also read there that the glory of your incorruption had been changed into idols and various images, "into the likeness of the image of corruptible man, and of birds and four-footed beasts and serpents": that is, into the Egyptian food for which Esau lost his birthright, since your first-born people honored the head of a four-footed beast in place of you, turning back in heart to Egypt and bowing your image, their own soul, before the image "of a calf that eats hay." I found these things there, and I did not feed on them. For it pleased you, O Lord, to take away from Jacob the reproach of being the lesser, "that the elder should serve the younger"; and you called the Gentiles into your inheritance. And I had come to you from among the Gentiles, and I set my mind on the gold which you willed your people to carry away from Egypt, since it was yours wherever it was. And you said to the Athenians through your apostle that in you "we live and move and have our being," as some of their own had also said; and it was from there, surely, that those books came. And I paid no heed to the idols of the Egyptians, whom they served with your gold, they "who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator."

And being admonished by this to return to my own self, I entered into my inmost being with you as my guide, and I was able to, because "you had become my helper." I entered, and with the eye of my soul, such as it was, I saw above that same eye of my soul, above my mind, the unchangeable light: not this common light visible to all flesh, nor something of the same kind, only greater, as if this light were to shine far, far more brightly and fill all things with its greatness. It was not that, but something else, something very different from all these. Nor was it above my mind as oil is above water, or as heaven is above earth; it was higher, because it made me, and I was lower, because I was made by it. Whoever knows the truth knows it, and whoever knows it knows eternity. Love knows it. O eternal truth and true love and beloved eternity! You are my God; to you I sigh day and night. And when I first knew you, you lifted me up so that I might see that there was something to see, but that I was not yet one able to see it. And you beat back the weakness of my sight, shining upon me with great force, and I trembled with love and dread; and I found that I was far from you in the region of unlikeness, as if I heard your voice from on high: "I am the food of the full-grown; grow, and you will feed on me. Nor will you change me into you, like the food of your flesh; you will be changed into me." And I knew that "for iniquity you have chastened man, and made my soul waste away like a spider's web," and I said, "Is truth then nothing, since it is not spread through space, either finite or infinite?" And you cried from afar: "I am who I am." And I heard, as one hears in the heart, and there was no longer any ground at all for me to doubt; I would sooner have doubted that I was alive than that truth exists, "which is clearly seen, being understood through the things that are made."

And I looked at the other things below you, and I saw that they neither wholly are nor wholly are not: they are, because they are from you; yet they are not, because they are not what you are. For that truly is which remains unchangeably. "But it is good for me to cling to God," because if I do not remain in him, I shall not be able to remain in myself either. But he, "remaining in himself, renews all things"; and "you are my Lord, since you have no need of my goods."

And it was made plain to me that things which are corrupted are good. They could not be corrupted if they were the highest goods, nor could they be corrupted unless they were good: if they were the highest goods, they would be incorruptible; but if they were not good at all, there would be nothing in them to be corrupted. For corruption does harm, and unless it diminished some good, it would do no harm. So either corruption does no harm, which cannot be, or, what is most certain, all things that are corrupted are deprived of some good. But if they are deprived of all good, they will not exist at all. For if they exist and can no longer be corrupted, they will be better, because they will remain incorruptibly. And what could be more monstrous than to say that things become better by losing all good? So if they are deprived of all good, they will be nothing at all; therefore, as long as they exist, they are good. Therefore whatever exists is good, and that evil whose origin I was seeking is not a substance, because if it were a substance, it would be good. For it would be either an incorruptible substance, which is certainly a great good, or a corruptible substance, which could not be corruptible unless it were good. And so I saw, and it was made plain to me, that you made all things good, and that there are absolutely no substances which you did not make. And because you did not make all things equal, all things exist in this way: each one is good, and all together are very good, since "our God made all things very good."