The Confessions of St. Augustine
I suffered rather than did, and I judged not to be my fault, but my
punishment; whereby, however, holding Thee to be just, I speedily
confessed myself to be not unjustly punished. But again I said, Who made
me? Did not my God, Who is not only good, but goodness itself? Whence
then came I to will evil and nill good, so that I am thus justly
punished? who set this in me, and ingrafted into me this plant of
bitterness, seeing I was wholly formed by my most sweet God? If the
devil were the author, whence is that same devil? And if he also by his
own perverse will, of a good angel became a devil, whence, again, came
in him that evil will whereby he became a devil, seeing the whole nature
of angels was made by that most good Creator? By these thoughts I was
again sunk down and choked; yet not brought down to that hell of error
(where no man confesseth unto Thee), to think rather that Thou dost
suffer ill, than that man doth it.
For I was in such wise striving to find out the rest, as one who had
already found that the incorruptible must needs be better than the
corruptible: and Thee therefore, whatsoever Thou wert, I confessed to
be incorruptible. For never soul was, nor shall be, able to conceive any
thing which may be better than Thou, who art the sovereign and the
best good. But since most truly and certainly, the incorruptible is
preferable to the corruptible (as I did now prefer it), then, wert Thou
not incorruptible, I could in thought have arrived at something better
than my God. Where then I saw the incorruptible to be preferable to the
corruptible, there ought I to seek for Thee, and there observe "wherein
evil itself was"; that is, whence corruption comes, by which Thy
substance can by no means be impaired. For corruption does no ways
impair our God; by no will, by no necessity, by no unlooked-for chance:
because He is God, and what He wills is good, and Himself is that
good; but to be corrupted is not good. Nor art Thou against Thy will
constrained to any thing, since Thy will is not greater than Thy power.
But greater should it be, were Thyself greater than Thyself. For the
will and power of God is God Himself. And what can be unlooked-for by
Thee, Who knowest all things? Nor is there any nature in things, but
Thou knowest it. And what should we more say, "why that substance which
God is should not be corruptible," seeing if it were so, it should not
be God?
And I sought "whence is evil," and sought in an evil way; and saw not
the evil in my very search. I set now before the sight of my spirit
the whole creation, whatsoever we can see therein (as sea, earth, air,
stars, trees, mortal creatures); yea, and whatever in it we do not see,
as the firmament of heaven, all angels moreover, and all the spiritual
inhabitants thereof. But these very beings, as though they were
bodies, did my fancy dispose in place, and I made one great mass of Thy
creation, distinguished as to the kinds of bodies; some, real bodies,
some, what myself had feigned for spirits. And this mass I made huge,
not as it was (which I could not know), but as I thought convenient, yet
every way finite. But Thee, O Lord, I imagined on every part environing
and penetrating it, though every way infinite: as if there were a sea,
every where, and on every side, through unmeasured space, one only
boundless sea, and it contained within it some sponge, huge, but
bounded; that sponge must needs, in all its parts, be filled from that
unmeasurable sea: so conceived I Thy creation, itself finite, full of
Thee, the Infinite; and I said, Behold God, and behold what God hath
created; and God is good, yea, most mightily and incomparably better
than all these: but yet He, the Good, created them good; and see how
He environeth and fulfils them. Where is evil then, and whence, and how
crept it in hither? What is its root, and what its seed? Or hath it no
being? Why then fear we and avoid what is not? Or if we fear it idly,
then is that very fear evil, whereby the soul is thus idly goaded and
racked. Yea, and so much a greater evil, as we have nothing to fear, and
yet do fear. Therefore either is that evil which we fear, or else evil
is, that we fear. Whence is it then? seeing God, the Good, hath created
all these things good. He indeed, the greater and chiefest Good, hath
created these lesser goods; still both Creator and created, all are
good. Whence is evil? Or, was there some evil matter of which He made,
and formed, and ordered it, yet left something in it which He did not
convert into good? Why so then? Had He no might to turn and change the
whole, so that no evil should remain in it, seeing He is All-mighty?
Lastly, why would He make any thing at all of it, and not rather by
the same All-mightiness cause it not to be at all? Or, could it then be
against His will? Or if it were from eternity, why suffered He it so to
be for infinite spaces of times past, and was pleased so long after to
make something out of it? Or if He were suddenly pleased now to effect
somewhat, this rather should the All-mighty have effected, that this
evil matter should not be, and He alone be, the whole, true, sovereign,
and infinite Good. Or if it was not good that He who was good should not
also frame and create something that were good, then, that evil matter
being taken away and brought to nothing, He might form good matter,
whereof to create all things. For He should not be All-mighty, if He
might not create something good without the aid of that matter which
Himself had not created. These thoughts I revolved in my miserable
heart, overcharged with most gnawing cares, lest I should die ere I had
found the truth; yet was the faith of Thy Christ, our Lord and Saviour,
professed in the Church Catholic, firmly fixed in my heart, in many
points, indeed, as yet unformed, and fluctuating from the rule of
doctrine; yet did not my mind utterly leave it, but rather daily took in
more and more of it.
By this time also had I rejected the lying divinations and impious
dotages of the astrologers. Let Thine own mercies, out of my very
inmost soul, confess unto Thee for this also, O my God. For Thou, Thou
altogether (for who else calls us back from the death of all errors,
save the Life which cannot die, and the Wisdom which needing no light
enlightens the minds that need it, whereby the universe is directed,
down to the whirling leaves of trees?)--Thou madest provision for my
obstinacy wherewith I struggled against Vindicianus, an acute old man,
and Nebridius, a young man of admirable talents; the first vehemently
affirming, and the latter often (though with some doubtfulness) saying,
"That there was no such art whereby to foresee things to come, but that
men's conjectures were a sort of lottery, and that out of many things
which they said should come to pass, some actually did, unawares to them
who spake it, who stumbled upon it, through their oft speaking."
Thou providedst then a friend for me, no negligent consulter of the
astrologers; nor yet well skilled in those arts, but (as I said) a
curious consulter with them, and yet knowing something, which he said
he had heard of his father, which how far it went to overthrow the
estimation of that art, he knew not. This man then, Firminus by name,
having had a liberal education, and well taught in Rhetoric, consulted
me, as one very dear to him, what, according to his so-called
constellations, I thought on certain affairs of his, wherein his worldly
hopes had risen, and I, who had herein now begun to incline towards
Nebridius' opinion, did not altogether refuse to conjecture, and tell
him what came into my unresolved mind; but added, that I was now almost
persuaded that these were but empty and ridiculous follies. Thereupon he
told me that his father had been very curious in such books, and had
a friend as earnest in them as himself, who with joint study and
conference fanned the flame of their affections to these toys, so that
they would observe the moments whereat the very dumb animals, which bred
about their houses, gave birth, and then observed the relative position
of the heavens, thereby to make fresh experiments in this so-called art.
He said then that he had heard of his father, that what time his mother
was about to give birth to him, Firminus, a woman-servant of that friend
of his father's was also with child, which could not escape her master,
who took care with most exact diligence to know the births of his very
puppies. And so it was that (the one for his wife, and the other for his
servant, with the most careful observation, reckoning days, hours,
nay, the lesser divisions of the hours) both were delivered at the same
instant; so that both were constrained to allow the same constellations,
even to the minutest points, the one for his son, the other for his
new-born slave. For so soon as the women began to be in labour, they
each gave notice to the other what was fallen out in their houses, and
had messengers ready to send to one another so soon as they had notice
of the actual birth, of which they had easily provided, each in his own
province, to give instant intelligence. Thus then the messengers of
the respective parties met, he averred, at such an equal distance from
either house that neither of them could make out any difference in the
position of the stars, or any other minutest points; and yet Firminus,
born in a high estate in his parents' house, ran his course through
the gilded paths of life, was increased in riches, raised to honours;
whereas that slave continued to serve his masters, without any
relaxation of his yoke, as Firminus, who knew him, told me.
Upon hearing and believing these things, told by one of such
credibility, all that my resistance gave way; and first I endeavoured to
reclaim Firminus himself from that curiosity, by telling him that upon
inspecting his constellations, I ought if I were to predict truly, to
have seen in them parents eminent among their neighbours, a noble family
in its own city, high birth, good education, liberal learning. But if
that servant had consulted me upon the same constellations, since they
were his also, I ought again (to tell him too truly) to see in them
a lineage the most abject, a slavish condition, and every thing else
utterly at variance with the former. Whence then, if I spake the truth,
I should, from the same constellations, speak diversely, or if I
spake the same, speak falsely: thence it followed most certainly that
whatever, upon consideration of the constellations, was spoken truly,
was spoken not out of art, but chance; and whatever spoken falsely, was
not out of ignorance in the art, but the failure of the chance.
An opening thus made, ruminating with myself on the like things, that
no one of those dotards (who lived by such a trade, and whom I longed
to attack, and with derision to confute) might urge against me that
Firminus had informed me falsely, or his father him; I bent my thoughts
on those that are born twins, who for the most part come out of the womb
so near one to other, that the small interval (how much force soever
in the nature of things folk may pretend it to have) cannot be noted
by human observation, or be at all expressed in those figures which the
astrologer is to inspect, that he may pronounce truly. Yet they cannot
be true: for looking into the same figures, he must have predicted the
same of Esau and Jacob, whereas the same happened not to them. Therefore
he must speak falsely; or if truly, then, looking into the same figures,
he must not give the same answer. Not by art, then, but by chance, would
he speak truly. For Thou, O Lord, most righteous Ruler of the Universe,
while consulters and consulted know it not, dost by Thy hidden
inspiration effect that the consulter should hear what, according to the