On the Profit of Believing 28–36

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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