On the Profit of Believing 14–27

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.