Augustine: DE CIVITATE DEI

[I] Antequam de institutione hominis dicam, ubi duarum ciuitatum, quantum ad rationalium mortalium genus adtinet, apparebit exortus, sicut superiore libro apparuisse in angelis iam uidetur: prius mihi quaedam de ipsis angelis uideo esse dicenda, quibus demonstretur, quantum a nobis potest, quam non inconueniens neque incongrua dicatur esse hominibus angelisque societas, ut non quattuor (duae scilicet angelorum totidemque hominum), sed duae potius ciuitates, hoc est societates, merito esse dicantur, una in bonis, altera in malis non solum angelis, uerum etiam hominibus constitutae.

[I] Before I speak about the institution of man, where the origin of the two cities, so far as it pertains to the race of rational mortals, will appear, just as in the preceding book it seems already to have appeared in the angels: first I see that certain things must be said about the angels themselves, by which it may be demonstrated, as far as can be by us, how the society of men and angels is said to be not unfitting nor incongruous, so that not four (namely two of angels and as many of men), but rather two cities, that is, societies, are deservedly said to exist—one constituted in the good, the other in the evil—established not only of angels, but also of men.

Angelorum bonorum et malorum inter se contrarios adpetitus non naturis principiisque diuersis, cum Deus omnium substantiarum bonus auctor et conditor utrosque creauerit, sed uoluntatibus et cupiditatibus extitisse dubitare fas non est, dum alii constanter in communi omnibus bono, quod ipse illis Deus est, atque in eius aeternitate ueritate caritate persistunt; alii sua potestate potius delectati, uelut bonum suum sibi ipsi essent, a superiore communi omnium beatifico bono ad propria defluxerunt et habentes elationis fastum pro excelsissima aeternitate, uanitatis astutiam pro certissima ueritate, studia partium pro indiuidua caritate superbi fallaces inuidi effecti sunt. Beatitudinis igitur illorum causa est adhaerere Deo; quocirca istorum miseriae causa ex contrario est intellegenda, quod est non adhaerere Deo. Quam ob rem si, cum quaeritur, quare illi beati sint, recte respondetur: Quia Deo adhaerent; et cum quaeritur, cur isti sint miseri, recte respondetur: Quia non adhaerent Deo: non est creaturae rationalis uel intellectualis bonum, quo beata sit, nisi Deus.

The mutually contrary appetites of good and bad angels have arisen, not from diverse natures and principles—since God, the good author and founder of all substances, created both—but from wills and cupidities; while some steadfastly persist in the common good of all, which God himself is for them, and in his eternity, truth, and charity; others, more delighted with their own power, as though they were their own good to themselves, have flowed down from the higher common beatifying good of all to their own private things, and, having the haughtiness of elation instead of the most exalted eternity, the craftiness of vanity instead of the most certain truth, and partisanship instead of undivided charity, they have become proud, deceitful, envious. The cause, therefore, of those angels’ beatitude is to adhere to God; wherefore the cause of these angels’ misery is to be understood conversely, which is not to adhere to God. Accordingly, if, when it is asked why those are blessed, it is rightly answered: Because they adhere to God; and when it is asked why these are wretched, it is rightly answered: Because they do not adhere to God: there is no good of a rational or intellectual creature by which it is blessed, except God.

Ita quamuis non omnis beata possit esse creatura (neque enim hoc munus adipiscuntur aut capiunt ferae ligna saxa et si quid huius modi est), ea tamen, quae potest, non ex se ipsa potest, quia ex nihilo creata est, sed ex illo, a quo creata est. Hoc enim adepto beata, quo amisso misera est. Ille uero qui non alio, sed se ipso bono beatus est, ideo miser non potest esse, quia non se potest amittere.

Thus, although not every creature can be blessed (for wild beasts, woods, stones, and whatever is of this sort do not attain or seize this gift), yet that which can does not do so from itself, since it was created out of nothing, but from Him by whom it was created. For by obtaining this it is blessed, and by losing it, wretched. But He who is blessed not by another, but by His own good self, for that reason cannot be wretched, because He cannot lose Himself.

Dicimus itaque inmutabile bonum non esse nisi unum uerum beatum Deum; ea uero, quae fecit, bona quidem esse, quod ab illo, uerum tamen mutabilia, quod non de illo, sed de nihilo facta sunt. Quamquam ergo summa non sint, quibus est Deus maius bonum: magna sunt tamen ea mutabilia bona, quae adhaerere possunt, ut beata sint, inmutabili bono, quod usque adeo bonum eorum est, ut sine illo misera esse necesse sit. Nec ideo cetera in hac creaturae uniuersitate meliora sunt, quia misera esse non possunt; neque enim cetera membra corporis nostri ideo dicendum est oculis esse meliora, quia caeca esse non possunt.

We say, therefore, that the immutable good is none other than the one true blessed God; but the things which he made are indeed good, because they are from him, yet nevertheless mutable, because they were made not out of him but out of nothing. Although, then, they are not the supreme things, since for them God is the greater good, nevertheless those mutable goods which can adhere to the immutable good, so that they may be blessed, are great; which is so much their good that without it it is necessary that they be miserable. Nor for this reason are the other things in this universe of creature better, because they cannot be miserable; for neither are the other members of our body on that account to be said to be better than the eyes, because they cannot be blind.

Sicut autem melior est natura sentiens et cum dolet quam lapis qui dolere nullo modo potest: ita rationalis natura praestantior etiam misera, quam illa quae rationis uel sensus est expers, et ideo in eam non cadit miseria. Quod cum ita sit, huic naturae, quae in tanta excellentia creata est, ut, licet sit ipsa mutabilis, inhaerendo tamen incommutabili bono, id est summo Deo, beatitudinem consequatur nec expleat indigentiam suam nisi utique beata sit eique explendae non sufficiat nisi Deus, profecto non illi adhaerere uitium est. Omne autem uitium naturae nocet ac per hoc contra naturam est.

Just as, moreover, a sensing nature, even when it suffers pain, is better than a stone which can in no way feel pain: so a rational nature, even when wretched, is more preeminent than that which is devoid of reason or sense, and therefore misery does not befall it. Since this is so, for this nature, which was created in so great excellence that, although it is itself mutable, yet by adhering to the immutable good, that is, to the highest God, it may obtain beatitude, and may not fill up its indigence unless indeed it be blessed, and for the filling of it nothing suffices except God, assuredly not to adhere to Him is a vice. But every vice harms nature and therefore is against nature.

Ab illa igitur, quae adhaeret Deo, non natura differt ista, sed uitio; quo tamen etiam uitio ualde magna multumque laudabilis ostenditur ipsa natura. Cuius enim recte uituperatur uitium, procul dubio natura laudatur. Nam recta uitii uituperatio est, quod illo dehonestatur natura laudabilis.

Therefore, from that which adheres to God, this differs not by nature but by vice; yet even by that vice the nature itself is shown to be very great and much laudable. For when a vice is rightly vituperated, without doubt the nature is praised. For the right vituperation of a vice is that by it the laudable nature is dishonored.

Sicut ergo, cum uitium oculorum dicitur caecitas, id ostenditur, quod ad naturam oculorum pertinet uisus; et cum uitium aurium dicitur surditas, ad earum naturam pertinere demonstratur auditus: ita, cum uitium creaturae angelicae dicitur, quo non adhaeret Deo, hinc apertissime declaratur, eius naturae ut Deo adhaereat conuenire. Quam porro magna sit laus adhaerere Deo, ut ei uiuat, inde sapiat, illo gaudeat tantoque bono sine morte sine errore sine molestia perfruatur, quis digne cogitare possit aut eloqui? Quapropter etiam uitio malorum angelorum, quo non adhaerent Deo, quoniam omne uitium naturae nocet, satis manifestatur Deum tam bonam eorum creasse naturam, cui noxium sit non esse cum Deo.

Thus, just as, when the vice of the eyes is called blindness, by that is shown that vision pertains to the nature of the eyes; and when the vice of the ears is called deafness, it is demonstrated that hearing pertains to their nature: so, when the vice of the angelic creature is named, by which it does not adhere to God, from this it is most plainly declared that it befits its nature to adhere to God. Moreover, how great is the praise of adhering to God—that it may live to him, be wise from him, rejoice in him, and enjoy so great a good without death, without error, without trouble—who could worthily conceive or utter? Wherefore even by the vice of the evil angels, by which they do not adhere to God, since every vice harms nature, it is sufficiently made manifest that God created their nature so good, to which it is noxious not to be with God.

[II] Haec dicta sint, ne quisquam, cum de angelis apostaticis loquimur, existimet eos aliam uelut ex alio principio habere potuisse naturam, nec eorum naturae auctorem Deum. Cuius erroris impietate tanto quisque carebit expeditius et facilius, quanto perspicacius intellegere potuerit, quod per angelum Deus dixit, quando Moysen mittebat ad filios Israel: Ego sum, qui sum. Cum enim Deus summa essentia sit, hoc est summe sit, et ideo inmutabilis sit: rebus, quas ex nihilo creauit, esse dedit, sed non summe esse, sicut est ipse; et aliis dedit esse amplius, aliis minus, atque ita naturas essentiarum gradibus ordinauit (sicut enim ab eo, quod est sapere, uocatur sapientia, sic ab eo, quod est esse, uocatur essentia, nouo quidem nomine, quo usi ueteres non sunt Latini sermonis auctores, sed iam nostris temporibus usitato, ne deesset etiam linguae nostrae, quod Graeci appellant *ou)si/an; hoc enim uerbum e uerbo expressum est, ut diceretur essentia); ac per hoc ei naturae, quae summe est, qua faciente sunt quaecumque sunt, contraria natura non est, nisi quae non est.

[2] Let these things have been said, lest anyone, when we speak of apostate angels, suppose that they could have had another nature as it were from another principle, and not God as the author of their nature. From the impiety of which error each person will be rid so much the more readily and easily, the more perspicaciously he will have been able to understand what God said through the angel when he was sending Moses to the sons of Israel: I am who I am. For since God is the highest Essence, that is, he supremely is, and therefore is immutable: to the things which he created out of nothing he gave being, but not to be supremely, as he himself is; and to some he gave being more, to others less, and thus he ordered the natures of essences by grades (for just as from that which is to be wise is called sapience, so from that which is to be is called essence—indeed by a new name, which the ancient authors of the Latin tongue did not use, but now in our times is in common use—lest there be lacking even to our language what the Greeks call *ou)si/an; for this word is expressed from a word, so that it might be called essentia); and through this, to that Nature which supremely is, by whose making whatever things are exist, there is no contrary nature, except that which is not.

Ei quippe, quod est, non esse contrarium est. Et propterea Deo, id est summae essentiae et auctori omnium qualiumcumque essentiarum, essentia nulla contraria est.

For to that which is, non-being is contrary. And therefore to God, that is, to the highest essence and the author of all whatsoever essences, no essence is contrary.

[III] Dicuntur autem in scripturis inimici Dei, qui non natura, sed uitiis aduersantur eius imperio, nihil ei ualentes nocere, sed sibi. Inimici enim sunt resistendi uoluntate, non potestate laedendi. Deus namque inmutabilis est et omni modo incorruptibilis.

[3] They are called in the Scriptures enemies of God, who not by nature, but by vices are adverse to his imperium, able to harm him in nothing, but themselves. For they are enemies by a will of resisting, not by a power of injuring. For God is immutable and in every way incorruptible.

Idcirco uitium, quo resistunt Deo qui eius appellantur inimici, non est Deo, sed ipsis malum, neque hoc ob aliud, nisi quia corrumpit in eis naturae bonum. Natura igitur contraria non est Deo, sed uitium quia malum est, contrarium est bono. Quis autem neget Deum summe bonum?

Therefore the vice by which those who are called his enemies resist God is not an evil to God, but to themselves; and this for no other reason than because it corrupts in them the good of nature. Nature, therefore, is not contrary to God; but vice, because it is evil, is contrary to the good. Who, moreover, would deny God to be supremely good?

Vitium ergo contrarium est Deo, tamquam malum bono. Porro autem bonum est et natura quam uitiat; unde et huic bono utique contrarium est; sed Deo tantummodo tamquam bono malum, naturae uero, quam uitiat, non tantum malum, sed etiam noxium. Nulla quippe mala Deo noxia, sed mutabilibus corruptibilibusque naturis, bonis tamen ipsorum quoque testimonio uitiorum.

Therefore vice is contrary to God, as evil to good. Moreover, the nature which it vitiates is good; whence it is assuredly contrary to this good as well; but to God it is an evil only as to the Good, whereas to the nature which it vitiates it is not only an evil but also noxious. For no evils are noxious to God, but to mutable and corruptible natures—good, however, as is attested even by the testimony of the vices themselves.

Si enim bonae non essent, eis uitia nocere non possent. Nam quid eis nocendo faciunt, nisi adimunt integritatem pulchritudinem, salutem uirtutem et quidquid boni naturae per uitium detrahi siue minui consueuit? Quod si omnino desit, nihil boni adimendo non nocet ac per hoc nec uitium est.

For if they were not good, vices could not harm them. For what do they do to them by harming, except take away integrity, pulchritude, health, virtue, and whatever of the good of nature is wont to be detracted or diminished through vice? But if that be altogether lacking, it does not harm by taking away any good, and therefore is not even a vice.

Nam esse uitium et non nocere non potest. Unde colligitur, quamuis non possit uitium nocere incommutabili bono, non tamen posse nocere nisi bono, quia non inest, nisi ubi nocet. Hoc etiam isto modo dici potest, uitium esse nec in summo posse bono nec nisi in aliquo bono.

For a vice to exist and not to harm is not possible. Whence it is gathered that, although a vice cannot harm the immutable good, yet it can harm only a good, because it is not present except where it harms. This can also be said in this way: that a vice exists, and it can be neither in the highest good nor anywhere save in some good.

Sola ergo bona alicubi esse possunt, sola mala nusquam; quoniam naturae etiam illae; quae ex malae uoluntatis initio uitiatae sunt, in quantum uitiosae sunt, malae sunt, in quantum autem naturae sunt, bonae sunt. Et cum in poenis est natura uitiosa, excepto eo, quod natura est, etiam hoc ibi bonum est, quod inpunita non est. Hoc enim est iustum et omne iustum procul dubio bonum.

Therefore only goods can exist somewhere, evils alone nowhere; since even those natures which from the inception of an evil will have been vitiated, inasmuch as they are vicious, are evil, but inasmuch as they are natures, are good. And when in punishments there is a vicious nature, with the exception of that which is nature, even this is good there: that it is not unpunished. For this is just, and every just thing is, beyond doubt, good.

Non enim quisquam de uitiis naturalibus, sed de uoluntariis poenas luit. Nam etiam quod uitium consuetudine nimioue progressu roboratum uelut naturaliter inoleuit, a uoluntate sumpsit exordium. De uitiis quippe nunc loquimur eius naturae, cui mens inest capax intellegibilis lucis, qua discernitur iustum ab iniusto.

For no one pays penalties for natural vices, but for voluntary ones. For even that vice which, strengthened by custom or by excessive progression, has, as it were, grown in naturally, took its inception from the will. For we are now speaking of the vices of that nature in which a mind is present, capable of intelligible light, by which the just is discerned from the unjust.

[IV] Ceterum uitia pecorum et arborum aliarumque rerum mutabilium atque mortalium uel intellectu uel sensu uel uita omnino carentium, quibus eorum dissolubilis natura corrumpitur, damnabilia putare ridiculum est, cum istae creaturae eum modum nutu Creatoris acceperint, ut cedendo ac succedendo peragant infimam pulchritudinem temporum in genere suo istius mundi partibus congruentem. Neque enim caelestibus fuerant terrena coaequanda, aut ideo uniuersitati deesse ista debuerunt, quoniam sunt illa meliora. Cum ergo in his locis, ubi esse talia competebat, aliis alia deficientibus oriuntur et succumbunt minora maioribus atque in qualitates superantium superata uertuntur, rerum est ordo transeuntium.

[4] But the “faults” of cattle and of trees and of other things mutable and mortal, or altogether lacking in intellect or sense or life, by which their dissoluble nature is corrupted— to deem them damnable is ridiculous, since these creatures have received by the nod of the Creator such a measure that, by yielding and succeeding, they accomplish the lowest beauty of the times, in their kind, congruent to the parts of this world. For earthly things were not to be made equal to the heavenly, nor therefore ought these to be lacking to the universe because those are better. When, then, in the places where it was fitting that such things be, as some things fail others arise, and the lesser succumb to the greater, and the things overcome are turned into the qualities of the surpassing, this is the order of transitory things.

Cuius ordinis decus nos propterea non delectat, quoniam parti eius pro condicione nostrae mortalitatis intexti uniuersum, cui particulae, quae nos offendunt, satis apte decenterque conueniunt, sentire non possumus. Vnde nobis, in quibus eam contemplari minus idonei sumus, rectissime credenda praecipitur prouidentia Conditoris, ne tanti artificis opus in aliquo reprehendere uanitate humanae temeritatis audeamus. Quamquam et uitia rerum terrenarum non uoluntaria neque poenalia naturas ipsas, quarum nulla omnino est, cuius non sit auctor et conditor Deus, si prudenter adtendamus, eadem ratione commendant, quia et in eis hoc nobis per uitium tolli displicet, quod in natura placet; nisi quia hominibus etiam ipsae naturae plerumque displicent, cum eis fiunt noxiae, non eas considerantibus, sed utilitatem suam, sicut illa animalia, quorum abundantia Aegyptiorum superbia uapulauit.

The beauty of which order does not therefore delight us, since, being woven into a part of it according to the condition of our mortality, we cannot perceive the whole, to which the little parts that offend us fit quite aptly and decorously. Whence for us—wherein we are less suited to contemplate it—the providence of the Maker is most rightly enjoined to be believed, lest we dare, by the vanity of human temerity, to reprehend in anything the work of so great an artificer. Although even the defects of earthly things, which are not voluntary nor penal, commend the natures themselves—of which there is absolutely none of which God is not the author and founder—if we attend prudently, because even in them it displeases us that, through a defect, that is taken away from us which in the nature pleases; unless it is because to human beings even the natures themselves for the most part are displeasing when they become noxious to them, they considering not the natures but their own utility, as with those animals, by the abundance of which the pride of the Egyptians was scourged.

Sed isto modo possunt et solem uituperare, quoniam quidam peccantes uel debita non reddentes poni a iudicibus iubentur ad solem. Non itaque e commodo uel incommodo nostro, sed per se ipsam considerata natura dat artifici suo gloriam. Sic est et natura ignis aeterni sine ulla dubitatione laudabilis, quamuis damnatis impiis futura poenalis.

But in this way they could also vituperate the sun, since certain men sinning or not rendering their debts are ordered by judges to be set in the sun. Therefore not from our convenience or inconvenience, but nature, considered per se itself, gives glory to its artificer. So too the nature of the eternal fire is without any doubt laudable, although it is going to be penal for the damned impious.

Quid enim est igne flammante uigente lucente pulchrius? quid calfaciente curante coquente utilius? quamuis eo nihil sit urente molestius.

For what is more beautiful than fire, flaming, vigorous, lucent? What is more useful than its warming, caring, and cooking? although nothing is more troublesome than it when burning.

Idem igitur ipse aliter adpositus perniciosus, qui conuenienter adhibitus commodissimus inuenitur. Nam eius in uniuerso mundo utilitates uerbis explicare quis sufficit? Nec audiendi sunt, qui laudant in igne lucem, ardorem autem uituperant, uidelicet non ex ui naturae, sed ex suo commodo uel incommodo.

Therefore the very same thing, when set otherwise, is pernicious, which, when applied suitably, is found most commodious. For who is sufficient to explicate in words its utilities in the whole world? Nor are they to be listened to, who praise in fire the light but vituperate the heat—manifestly not from the power of nature, but from their own convenience or inconvenience.

Videre enim uolunt, ardere nolunt. Sed parum adtendunt eam ipsam lucem, quae certe et illis placet, oculis infirmis per inconuenientiam nocere, et in illo ardore, qui eis displicet, nonnulla animalia per conuenientiam salubriter uiuere.

For they want to see; they do not want to burn. But they pay too little heed that this very light, which surely pleases them too, harms weak eyes by inconvenience, and that in that ardor which displeases them, some animals, by convenience, live salubriously.

[V] Naturae igitur omnes, quoniam sunt et ideo habent modum suum, speciem suam et quandam secum pacem suam, profecto bonae sunt; et cum ibi sunt, ubi esse per naturae ordinem debent, quantum acceperunt, suum esse custodiunt; et quae semper esse non acceperunt, pro usu motuque rerum, quibus Creatoris lege subduntur, in melius deteriusue mutantur, in eum diuina prouidentia tendentes exitum, quem ratio gubernandae uniuersitatis includit; ita ut nec tanta corruptio, quanta usque ad interitum naturas mutabiles mortalesque perducit, sic faciat non esse quod erat, ut non inde fiat consequenter quod esse debebat. Quae cum ita sint, Deus, qui summe est atque ob hoc ab illo facta est omnis essentia, quae non summe est (quia neque illi aequalis esse deberet, quae de nihilo facta esset, neque ullo modo esse posset, si ab illo facta non esset), nec ullorum uitiorum offensione uituperandus et omnium naturarum consideratione laudandus est.

[5] Therefore all natures, since they are and therefore have their own measure, their own species (form), and a certain peace of their own with themselves, are assuredly good; and when they are where by the order of nature they ought to be, they preserve, to the extent they have received, their own being; and those which have not received to be always, according to the use and motion of things to which they are subjected by the law of the Creator, are changed for the better or for the worse, tending by divine providence to that outcome which the reason of governing the universe includes; so that not even so great a corruption, as brings mutable and mortal natures to destruction, so makes what was cease to be as not from it in consequence to come to be what ought to be. Since these things are so, God, who supremely is and on account of this from Him was made every essence which is not supreme (since neither ought that which was made out of nothing to be equal to Him, nor could it in any way be, if it were not made by Him), is not to be blamed by the offense of any vices and is to be praised by the consideration of all natures.

[VI] Proinde causa beatitudinis angelorum bonorum ea uerissima reperitur, quod ei adhaerent qui summe est. Cum uero causa miseriae malorum angelorum quaeritur, ea merito occurrit, quod ab illo, qui summe est, auersi ad se ipsos conuersi sunt, qui non summe sunt; et hoc uitium quid aliud quam superbia nuncupetur? Initium quippe omnis peccati superbia.

[6] Accordingly the cause of the beatitude of the good angels is found to be most true, namely that they adhere to Him who supremely is. But when the cause of the misery of the evil angels is sought, this rightly occurs: that, turned away from Him who supremely is, they were converted to themselves, who do not supremely exist; and what else should this vice be denominated but pride? For the beginning of every sin is pride.

Noluerunt ergo ad illum custodire fortitudinem suam, et qui magis essent, si ei qui summe est adhaererent, se illi praeferendo id quod minus est praetulerunt. Hic primus defectus et prima inopia primumque uitium eius naturae, quae ita creata est, ut nec summe esset, et tamen ad beatitudinem habendam eo, qui summe est, frui posset, a quo auersa non quidem nulla, sed tamen minus esset atque ob hoc misera fieret. Huius porro malae uoluntatis causa efficiens si quaeratur, nihil inuenitur.

Therefore they were unwilling to guard their fortitude toward Him, and they, who would be more if they adhered to Him who supremely is, by preferring themselves to Him preferred that which is less. This is the first defect and the first indigence and the first vice of that nature, which was so created that it was not supremely, and yet, for the having of beatitude, could enjoy Him who supremely is; from whom, when turned away, it would not indeed be nothing, but yet would be less, and on this account would become miserable. Moreover, if the efficient cause of this evil will be sought, nothing is found.

Quid est enim quod facit uoluntatem malam, cum ipsa faciat opus malum? Ac per hoc mala uoluntas efficiens est operis mali, malae autem uoluntatis efficiens nihil est. Quoniam si res aliqua est, aut habet aut non habet aliquam uoluntatem; si habet, aut bonam profecto habet aut malam; si bonam, quis ita desipiat, ut dicat quod bona uoluntas faciat uoluntatem malam?

For what is there that makes an evil will, since it itself makes an evil work? And therefore an evil will is the efficient cause of an evil work, but the efficient cause of an evil will is nothing. For if there is some thing, it either has or does not have some will; if it has, it surely has either a good one or an evil one; if a good one, who would be so foolish as to say that a good will makes an evil will?

Erit enim, si ita est, bona uoluntas causa peccati, quo absurdius putari nihil potest. Si autem res ista, quae putatur facere uoluntatem malam, ipsa quoque habet uoluntatem malam, etiam eam quae fecerit res consequenter interrogo, atque ita, ut sit aliquis inquirendi modus, causam primae malae uoluntatis inquiro. Non est enim prima uoluntas mala, quam fecit uoluntas mala; sed illa prima est, quam nulla fecit.

For then, if it is so, a good will will be the cause of sin, than which nothing can be thought more absurd. But if that thing which is supposed to make the evil will itself also has an evil will, I consequently also question the thing that made it; and thus, so that there may be some mode of inquiry, I inquire into the cause of the first evil will. For the first evil will is not that which an evil will made; rather, that one is first which none made.

Nam si praecessit a qua fieret, illa prior est, quae alteram fecit. Si t respondetur quod eam nulla res fecerit et ideo semper fuerit: quaero utrum in aliqua natura fuerit. Si enim in nulla fuit, omnino non fuit; si autem in aliqua, uitiabat eam et corrumpebat eratque illi noxia ac per hoc bono priuabat.

For if there preceded something by which it might be made, that is prior which made the other. If it is answered that no thing made it and therefore it has always been, I ask whether it was in some nature. For if it was in none, it was not at all; but if in some, it was vitiating it and corrupting it, and was noxious to it, and thus was depriving it of good.

Et ideo in mala natura uoluntas mala esse non poterat, sed in bona, mutabili tamen, cui uitium hoc posset nocere. Si enim non nocuit, non utique uitium fuit, ac per hoc nec mala uoluntas fuisse dicenda est. Porro si nocuit, bonum auferendo uel minuendo utique nocuit.

And therefore in an evil nature an evil will could not be, but in a good one—yet mutable—to which this vice could do harm. For if it did not harm, it was not, assuredly, a vice; and accordingly an evil will is not to be said to have existed. But if it did harm, it assuredly harmed by taking away or by diminishing the good.

Non igitur esse potuit sempiterna uoluntas mala in ea re, in qua bonum naturale praecesserat, quod mala uoluntas nocendo posset adimere. Si ergo non erat sempiterna, quis eam fecerit quaero. Restat ut dicatur, quod ea res fecerit malam uoluntatem, in qua nulla uoluntas fuit.

Therefore a sempiternal evil will could not have existed in that thing, in which a natural good had preceded, which an evil will, by harming, could take away. If therefore it was not sempiternal, I ask who made it. It remains to be said that that thing made the evil will, in which there was no will.

Haec utrum superior sit, requiro, an inferior, an aequalis. Sed superior utique melior; quo modo ergo nullius, ac non potius bonae uoluntatis? Hoc idem profecto et aequalis.

I inquire whether this is superior, or inferior, or equal. But the superior is assuredly better; how then is it of no will, and not rather of a good will? The same assuredly holds also for the equal.

Duo quippe quamdiu sunt pariter uoluntatis bonae, non facit alter in altero uoluntatem malam. Relinquitur ut inferior res, cui nulla uoluntas est, fecerit angelicae naturae, quae prima peccauit, uoluntatem malam. Sed etiam res ipsa quaecumque est inferior usque ad infimam terram, quoniam natura et essentia est, procul dubio bona est, habens modum et speciem suam in genere atque ordine suo.

For two, indeed, so long as they are together of good will, the one does not make in the other an evil will. It remains that a lower thing, which has no will, made the angelic nature’s will evil—the one that sinned first. But even the thing itself, whatever it is, lower even down to the lowest earth, since it is nature and essence, is beyond doubt good, having its mode and its species in its genus and its own order.

Quo modo ergo res bona efficiens est uoluntatis malae? Quo modo, inquam, bonum est causa mali? Cum enim se uoluntas relicto superiore ad inferiora conuertit, efficitur mala, non quia malum est, quo se conuertit, sed quia peruersa est ipsa conuersio.

How, then, is a good thing the efficient of an evil will? How, I say, is the good the cause of evil? For when the will, the superior left behind, turns itself to inferior things, it is made evil, not because that to which it turns is evil, but because the conversion itself is perverse.

Idcirco non res inferior uoluntatem malam fecit, sed rem inferiorem praue atque inordinate, ipsa quia facta est, adpetiuit. Si enim aliqui duo aequaliter affecti animo et corpore uideant unius corporis pulchritudinem, qua uisa unus eorum ad inlicite fruendum moueatur, alter in uoluntate pudica stabilis perseueret, quid putamus esse causae, ut in illo fiat, in illo non fiat uoluntas mala? Quae illam res fecit in quo facta est?

Therefore it was not the lower thing that made the evil will, but the lower thing was desired wickedly and inordinately by it, itself, since it is made. For if two persons, equally affected in mind and body, see the beauty of one body, and, this having been seen, one of them is moved to enjoy it illicitly, while the other remains steadfast in a chaste will, what do we suppose is the cause that in the one an evil will comes to be, and in the other it does not come to be? What thing made that in him in whom it was made?

Neque enim pulchritudo illa corporis; nam eam non fecit in ambobus, quando quidem amborum non dispariliter occurrit aspectibus. An caro intuentis in causa est? cur non et illius?

For neither is that pulchritude of the body; for it did not make it in both, since indeed it presented itself to the sight of both not disparately. Or is the flesh of the beholder the cause? why not of the other’s as well?

An uero animus? cur non utriusque? Ambos enim et animo et corpore aequaliter affectos fuisse praediximus.

Or indeed the mind? why not of both? For we have previously said that both were equally affected in mind and body.

An dicendum est alterum eorum occulta maligni spiritus suggestione temptatum, quasi non eidem suggestioni et qualicumque suasioni propria uoluntate consenserit? Hanc igitur consensionem, hanc malam quam male suadenti adhibuit uoluntatem quae in eo res fecerit, quaerimus. Nam ut hoc quoque inpedimentum ab ista quaestione tollatur, si eadem temptatione ambo temptentur, et unus ei cedat atque consentiat, alter idem qui fuerat perseueret: quid aliud apparet, nisi unum noluisse, alterum uoluisse a castitate deficere?

Or must it be said that one of them was tempted by the occult suggestion of a malign spirit, as though he had not by his own will consented to the same suggestion and to whatever suasion? This consent, therefore—this evil will which he applied to the one advising ill—what it effected in him, we inquire. For that this hindrance also may be removed from this question, if by the same temptation both are tempted, and one cedes and consents to it, the other perseveres the same as he was: what else appears, except that the one was unwilling, the other willing to fall away from chastity?

Vnde, nisi propria uoluntate, ubi eadem fuerat in utroque corporis et animi affectio? Amborum oculis pariter uisa est eadem pulchritudo, ambobus pariter institit occulta temptatio; propriam igitur in uno eorum uoluntatem malam res quae fecerit scire uolentibus, si bene intueantur, nihil occurrit. Si enim dixerimus quod ipse eam fecerit, quid erat ipse ante uoluntatem malam nisi natura bona, cuius auctor Deus, qui est inmutabile bonum?

Whence, if not from his own will, when the same affection of body and mind had been in each? The same beauty was equally seen by the eyes of both, the occult temptation pressed equally upon both; therefore, to those willing to know what thing it was that made in one of them his own evil will, if they look well, nothing suggests itself. For if we say that he himself made it, what was he himself before the evil will, if not a good nature, whose author is God, who is the immutable good?

Qui ergo dicit eum, qui consensit temptanti atque suadenti, cui non consensit alius, ad inlicite utendum pulchro corpore, quod uidendum ambobus pariter adfuit, cum ante illam uisionem ac temptationem similes ambo animo et corpore fuerint, ipsum sibi fecisse uoluntatem malam, qui utique bonus ante uoluntatem malam fuerit: quaerat cur eam fecerit, utrum quia natura est, an quia ex nihilo facta est, et inueniet uoluntatem malam non ex eo esse incipere quod natura est, sed ex eo quod de nihilo facta natura est. Nam si natura causa est uoluntatis malae, quid aliud cogimur dicere, nisi a bono fieri malum et bonum esse causam mali? si quidem a natura bona fit uoluntas mala.

Therefore whoever says that he who consented to the tempter and suader, to whom the other did not consent, to use illicitly a beautiful body, which was equally present to be seen by both, since before that vision and temptation both had been alike in mind and body—says that he himself made for himself the evil will, who assuredly had been good before the evil will—let him inquire why he made it: whether because it is by nature, or because it was made from nothing; and he will find that the evil will begins not from that wherein it is nature, but from that wherein the nature was made from nothing. For if nature is the cause of the evil will, what else are we compelled to say, except that evil is made from good and that good is the cause of evil? since indeed from a good nature the evil will is made.

Quod unde fieri potest, ut natura bona, quamuis mutabilis, antequam habeat uoluntatem malam, faciat aliquid mali, hoc est ipsam uoluntatem malam?

How can it come to pass that a good nature, although mutable, before it has an evil will, should make something evil—that is, the evil will itself?

[VII] Nemo igitur quaerat efficientem causam malae uoluntatis; non enim est efficiens sed deficiens, quia nec illa effectio sed defectio. Deficere namque ab eo, quod summe est, ad id, quod minus est, hoc est incipere habere uoluntatem malam. Causas porro defectionum istarum, cum efficientes non sint, ut dixi, sed deficientes, uelle inuenire tale est, ac si quisquam uelit uidere tenebras uel audire silentium, quod tamen utrumque nobis notum est, neque illud nisi per oculos, neque hoc nisi per aures, non sane in specie, sed in speciei priuatione.

[7] Let no one, therefore, seek an efficient cause of the evil will; for it is not efficient but deficient, since that is not an effecting but a defection. For to defect from that which supremely is to that which is less—this is to begin to have an evil will. Moreover, to wish to find the causes of these defections, since, as I said, they are not efficient but deficient, is like someone wishing to see darkness or to hear silence—both of which are known to us, indeed, yet neither the former except through the eyes nor the latter except through the ears, not, to be sure, in species, but in the privation of species.

Nemo ergo ex me scire quaerat, quod me nescire scio, nisi forte ut nescire discat, quod sciri non posse sciendum est. Ea quippe quae non in specie, sed in eius priuatione sciuntur, si dici aut intellegi potest, quodam modo nesciendo sciuntur, ut sciendo nesciantur. Cum enim acies etiam oculi corporalis currit per species corporales, nusquam tenebras uidet, nisi ubi coeperit non uidere.

Let no one, therefore, seek from me to know what I know that I do not know, unless perhaps so that he may learn not to know what it must be known cannot be known. For those things which are known not in species but in its privation—if it can be said or understood—are in a certain manner known by not-knowing, so that by knowing they are not known. For when the acuity of even the bodily eye runs along through bodily species (forms), it nowhere sees darkness, except where it has begun not to see.

Ita etiam non ad aliquem alium sensum, sed ad solas aures pertinet sentire silentium, quod tamen nullo modo nisi non audiendo sentitur. Sic species intellegibiles mens quidem nostra intellegendo conspicit; sed ubi deficiunt, nesciendo condiscit. Delicta enim quis intellegit?

So also it pertains not to any other sense, but to the ears alone, to perceive silence, which nevertheless is in no way perceived except by not hearing. Thus the intelligible species our mind indeed beholds by understanding; but where they fail, it learns by not-knowing. For who understands offenses?

[VIII] Hoc scio, naturam Dei numquam, nusquam, nulla ex parte posse deficere, et ea posse deficere, quae ex nihilo facta sunt. Quae tamen quanto magis sunt et bona faciunt (tunc enim aliquid faciunt), causas habent efficientes; in quantum autem deficiunt et ex hoc mala faciunt (quid enim tunc faciunt nisi uana?), causas habent deficientes. Itemque scio, in quo fit mala uoluntas, id in eo fieri, quod si nollet non fieret, et ideo non necessarios, sed uoluntarios defectus iusta poena consequitur.

[8] This I know: the nature of God can never, nowhere, in no part be able to fail; and that those things can fail which were made out of nothing. Yet the more they are and do good (for then they do something), they have efficient causes; but insofar as they fail and from this do evils (for what do they then do except vain things?), they have deficient causes. Likewise I know that, where an evil will comes to be, it comes to be in that which, if it were unwilling, would not come to be; and therefore not necessary, but voluntary defects are followed by just punishment.

Deficitur enim non ad mala, sed male, id est non ad malas naturas, sed ideo male, quia contra ordinem naturarum ab eo quod summe est ad id quod minus est. Neque enim auri uitium est auaritia, sed hominis peruerse amantis aurum iustitia derelicta, quae incomparabiliter auro debuit anteponi; nec luxuria uitium est pulchrorum suauiumque corporum, sed animae peruerse amantis corporeas uoluptates neglecta temperantia, qua rebus spiritaliter pulchrioribus et incorruptibiliter suauioribus coaptamur; nec iactantia uitium est laudis humanae, sed animae peruerse amantis laudari ab hominibus spreto testimonio conscientiae; nec superbia uitium est dantis potestatem uel ipsius etiam potestatis, sed animae peruerse amantis potestatem suam potentioris iustiore contempta. Ac per hoc qui peruerse amat cuiuslibet naturae bonum, etiamsi adipiscatur, ipse fit in bono malus et miser meliore priuatus.

For one fails not unto evils, but badly—that is, not unto evil natures, but badly because, contrary to the order of natures, from that which supremely is to that which is less. For avarice is not the vice of gold, but of the man perversely loving gold, with justice abandoned, which ought incomparably to have been preferred to gold; nor is luxury the vice of fair and pleasant bodies, but of the soul perversely loving corporeal pleasures, with temperance neglected, by which we are coapted to things spiritually more beautiful and incorruptibly sweeter; nor is vaunting the vice of human praise, but of the soul perversely loving to be praised by men, the testimony of conscience being scorned; nor is pride the vice of the giver of power or even of power itself, but of the soul perversely loving its own power, the power of One more powerful and more just being despised. And therefore he who perversely loves the good of any nature, even if he attains it, himself becomes in a good thing evil and wretched, being deprived of the better.

[IX] Cum ergo malae uoluntatis efficiens naturalis uel, si dici potest, essentialis nulla sit causa (ab ipsa quippe incipit spirituum mutabilium malum, quo minuitur atque deprauatur naturae bonum, nec talem uoluntatem facit nisi defectio, qua deseritur Deus, cuius defectionis etiam causa utique deficit): si dixerimus nullam esse efficientem causam etiam uoluntatis bonae, cauendum est, ne uoluntas bona bonorum angelorum non facta, sed Deo coaeterna esse credatur. Cum ergo ipsi facti sint, quo modo illa non esse facta dicetur? Porro quia facta est, utrum cum ipsis facta est, an sine illa fuerunt prius?

[9] Since therefore there is no natural—or, if it can be said, essential—efficient cause of an evil will (for from it, in fact, the evil of mutable spirits begins, whereby the good of nature is diminished and depraved, nor does anything make such a will except a defection, whereby God is deserted, of which defection the cause, assuredly, also fails): if we should say that there is no efficient cause even of a good will, we must beware lest the good will of the good angels be believed not to have been made, but to be coeternal with God. Since therefore they themselves have been made, how will that be said not to have been made? Furthermore, since it has been made, was it made with them, or were they previously without it?

Sed si cum ipsis, non dubium quod ab illo facta sit, a quo et ipsi; simulque ut facti sunt, ei, a quo facti sunt, amore, cum quo facti sunt, adhaeserunt; eoque sunt isti ab illorum societate discreti, quod illi in eadem bona uoluntate manserunt, isti ab ea deficiendo mutati sunt, mala scilicet uoluntate hoc ipso quod a bona defecerunt; a qua non defecissent, si utique noluissent. Si autem boni angeli fuerunt prius sine bona uoluntate eamque in se ipsi Deo non operante fecerunt: ergo meliores a se ipsis quam ab illo facti sunt? Absit.

But if [the good will] was made together with them, it is not doubtful that it was made by Him by whom they also were; and at once, as soon as they were made, they adhered to Him, by love, with which they were made; and by this these are separated from their fellowship, in that those remained in the same good will, while these, by defecting from it, were changed—by an evil will, namely, in the very fact that they defected from the good; from which they would not have defected, if indeed they had been unwilling. But if the good angels were previously without good will and themselves made it in themselves with God not operating: then were they made better by themselves than by Him? Far be it.

Quid enim erant sine bona uoluntate nisi mali? Aut si propterea non mali, quia nec mala uoluntas eis inerat (neque enim ab ea, quam nondum coeperant habere, defecerant), certe nondum tales, nondum tam boni quam esse cum bona uoluntate coeperunt. At si non potuerunt se ipsos facere meliores; quam eos ille fecerat, quo nemo melius quicquam facit: profecto et bonam uoluntatem, qua meliores essent, nisi operante adiutorio Creatoris habere non possent.

For what were they without good will, if not evil? Or, if for that reason not evil, because an evil will was not in them (for they had not fallen away from that which they had not yet begun to have), certainly they were not yet such, not yet so good as they began to be when they had a good will. But if they could not make themselves better than he had made them—he than whom no one makes anything better—assuredly even a good will, by which they would be better, they could not have unless by the operating assistance of the Creator.

Et cum id egit eorum uoluntas bona, ut non ad se ipsos, qui minus erant, sed ad illum, qui summe est, conuerterentur eique adhaerentes magis essent eiusque participatione sapienter beateque uiuerent: quid aliud ostenditur nisi uoluntatem quamlibet bonam inopem fuisse in solo desiderio remansuram, nisi ille, qui bonam naturam ex nihilo sui capacem fecerat, ex se ipso faceret inplendo meliorem, prius faciens excitando auidiorem?

And when their good will achieved this, that they should be turned not to themselves, who were lesser, but to Him who supremely is, and by adhering to Him should be more, and by participation in Him should live wisely and blessedly: what else is shown but that a will, however good, was destitute, destined to remain in mere desire, unless He who made a good nature out of nothing capable of Himself should from Himself make it better by filling it, first making it more avid by arousing it?

Nam et hoc discutiendum est, si boni angeli ipsi in se fecerunt bonam uoluntatem, utrum aliqua eam an nulla uoluntate fecerunt. Si nulla, utique nec fecerunt. Si aliqua, utrum mala an bona?

For this too must be discussed: if the good angels themselves made a good will in themselves, did they make it by some will or by no will? If by none, then certainly they did not make it. If by some, was it an evil one or a good one?

Si mala, quo modo esse potuit mala uoluntas bonae uoluntatis effectrix? Si bona, iam ergo habebant. Et istam quis fecerat nisi ille, qui eos cum bona uoluntate, id est cum amore casto, quo illi adhaererent, creauit, simul eis et condens naturam et largiens gratiam?

If evil, how could an evil will be the producer of a good will? If good, then they already had it. And who made this, unless it was he who created them with a good will—that is, with chaste love, by which they might adhere to him—at once both establishing their nature for them and lavishing grace?

Vnde sine bona uoluntate, hoc est Dei amore, numquam sanctos angelos fuisse credendum est. Isti autem, qui, cum boni creati essent, tamen mali sunt (mala propria uoluntate, quam bona natura non fecit, nisi cum a bono sponte defecit, ut mali causa non sit bonum, sed defectus a bono), aut minorem acceperunt diuini amoris gratiam quam illi, qui in eadem perstiterunt, aut si utrique boni aequaliter creati sunt, istis mala uoluntate cadentibus illi amplius adiuti ad eam beatitudinis plenitudinem, unde se numquam casuros certissimi fierent, peruenerunt; sicut iam etiam in libro, quem sequitur iste, tractauimus. Confitendum est igitur cum debita laude Creatoris non ad solos sanctos homines pertinere, uerum etiam de sanctis angelis posse dici, quod caritas Dei diffusa sit in eis per Spiritum sanctum, qui datus est eis; nec tantum hominum, sed primitus praecipueque angelorum bonum esse, quod scriptum est: Mihi autem adhaerere Deo bonum est.

Whence, without good will, that is, love of God, it must never be believed that the holy angels ever were. But those who, although created good, nevertheless are evil (by an evil will of their own, which good nature did not make, except when it voluntarily defected from the good, so that the cause of evil is not the good, but the defect from the good), either received a lesser grace of divine love than those who persisted in the same, or, if both were created good equally, these falling by an evil will, those were further aided and arrived at that fullness of beatitude, from which they became most certain that they would never fall; as we have already treated also in the book which follows this one. It must be confessed, therefore, with due praise of the Creator, that it pertains not to holy men alone, but can also be said of the holy angels, that the charity of God has been poured out in them through the Holy Spirit who was given to them; and that it is a good not only of men, but first and most especially of the angels, that which has been written: But for me, to adhere to God is good.

Hoc bonum quibus commune est, habent et cum illo cui adhaerent et inter se sanctam societatem et sunt una ciuitas Dei eademque uiuum sacrificium eius uiuumque templum eius. Cuius pars, quae coniungenda inmortalibus angelis ex mortalibus hominibus congregatur et nunc mutabiliter peregrinatur in terris uel in eis, qui mortem obierunt, secretis animarum receptaculis sedibusque requiescit, eodem Deo creante quem ad modum exorta sit, sicut de angelis dictum est, iam uideo esse dicendum. Ex uno quippe homine, quem primum Deus condidit, humanum genus sumpsit exordium secundum sanctae scripturae fidem, quae mirabilem auctoritatem non inmerito habet in orbe terrarum atque in omnibus gentibus, quas sibi esse credituras inter cetera uera, quae dixit, uera diuinitate praedixit.

This good, to whom it is common, they have both with him to whom they adhere and among themselves a holy society, and they are one City of God and likewise his living sacrifice and his living temple. A part of it, which is to be conjoined to the immortal angels, is gathered from mortal men and now changeably sojourns on earth, or, for those who have undergone death, rests in secret receptacles and seats of souls; how it has arisen, with the same God as Creator, as was said about the angels, I now see must be said. For from one man, whom God first founded, the human race took its beginning according to the credence of Holy Scripture, which not undeservedly has marvelous authority in the orb of the lands and among all nations, whom it foretold by true divinity would believe in it among the other truths that it declared.

[X] Omittamus igitur coniecturas hominum nescientium quid loquantur de natura uel institutione generis humani. Alii namque, sicut de ipso mundo crediderunt, semper fuisse homines opinantur. Vnde ait et Apuleius, cum hoc animantium genus describeret: "Singillatim mortales, cuncti tamen uniuerso genere perpetui." Et cum illis dictum fuerit, si semper fuit humanum genus, quonam modo uerum eorum loquatur historia narrans qui fuerint quarumque rerum inuentores, qui primi liberalium disciplinarum aliarumque artium institutores, uel a quibus primum.

[10] Let us therefore omit the conjectures of men unknowing what they are saying about the nature or institution of the human genus. For some, just as they have believed about the world itself, suppose that men have always existed. Whence also Apuleius says, when he was describing this genus of living beings: "Individually mortal, yet all perpetual in the universal genus." And when it is said to them: if the human race has always existed, how can the history that recounts who were the inventors, and of which things, who were the first institutors of the liberal disciplines and other arts, or from whom at first, speak truly about them?

illa uel illa regio parsque terrarum, illa atque illa insula incoli coeperit, respondent diluuiis et conflagrationibus per certa interualla temporum non quidem omnia, sed plurima terrarum ita uastari, ut redigantur homines ad exiguam paucitatem, ex quorum progenie rursus multitudo pristina reparetur; ac sic identidem reperiri et institui quasi prima, cum restituantur potius, quae fuerant illis nimiis uastationibus interrupta et extincta; ceterum hominem nisi ex homine existere omnino non posse. Dicunt autem quod putant, non quod sciunt.

when they are asked when this or that region and part of the lands, this and that island, began to be inhabited, they answer that by deluges and conflagrations at fixed intervals of times not indeed all, but very many of the lands are so laid waste, that human beings are reduced to a meager paucity, from whose progeny again the pristine multitude is restored; and thus repeatedly things are found and instituted as if for the first time, whereas rather they are being restored, which had been interrupted and extinguished by those excessive devastations; moreover, that a human cannot at all come to exist except from a human. They say, however, what they suppose, not what they know.

[XI] Fallunt eos etiam quaedam mendacissimae litterae, quas perhibent in historia temporum multa annorum milia continere, cum ex litteris sacris ab institutione hominis nondum completa annorum sex milia computemus. Vnde ne multa disputem quem ad modum illarum litterarum, in quibus longe plura annorum milia referuntur, uanitas refellatur et nulla in illis rei huius idonea reperiatur auctoritas: illa epistula Alexandri Magni ad Olympiadem matrem suam, quam scripsit narrationem cuiusdam Aegyptii sacerdotis insinuans, quam protulit ex litteris quae sacrae apud illos haberentur, continet etiam regna, quae Graeca quoque nouit historia; in quibus regnum Assyriorum in eadem epistula Alexandri quinque milia excedit annorum; in Graeca uero historia mille ferme et trecentos habet ab ipsius Beli principatu, quem regem et ille Aegyptius in eiusdem regni ponit exordio; Persarum autem et Macedonum imperium usque ad ipsum Alexandrum, cui loquebatur, plus quam octo annorum milia ille constituit, cum apud Graecos Macedonum usque ad mortem Alexandri quadringenti octoginta quinque reperiantur, Persarum uero, donec ipsius Alexandri uictoria finiretur, ducenti et triginta tres computentur. Longe itaque hi numeri annorum illis Aegyptiis sunt minores, nec eis, etiamsi ter tantum computarentur, aequarent.

[11] Certain most mendacious letters also deceive them, which they allege in a history of times to contain many thousands of years, whereas from the sacred letters we compute from the establishment of man not yet a completed 6,000 years. Whence, so that I may not dispute many things about how the vanity of those letters—in which far more thousands of years are reported—may be refuted, and how no suitable authority for this matter is found in them: that epistle of Alexander the Great to Olympias his mother, which he wrote insinuating the narration of a certain Egyptian priest, which he produced from letters that were held as sacred among them, contains also the kingdoms which Greek history likewise knows; among which the kingdom of the Assyrians in that same epistle of Alexander exceeds 5,000 years; but in Greek history it has nearly 1,300 from the principate of Belus himself, whom that Egyptian likewise sets as king at the beginning of that same reign; moreover, the empire of the Persians and of the Macedonians up to Alexander himself, to whom he was speaking, he fixes at more than 8,000 years, whereas among the Greeks there are found for the Macedonians up to the death of Alexander 485, and for the Persians, until the victory of Alexander himself was brought to an end, 233 are computed. Therefore by far these numbers of years are less than those of the Egyptians, nor would they equal them, even if they were reckoned three times as much.

Perhibentur enim Aegyptii quondam tam breues annos habuisse, ut quaternis mensibus finirentur; unde annus plenior et uerior, qualis nunc et nobis et illis est, tres eorum annos complectebatur antiquos. Sed ne sic quidem, ut dixi, Graeca Aegyptiae numero temporum concordat historia. Et ideo Graecae potius fides habenda est, quia ueritatem non excedit annorum, qui litteris nostris, quae uere sacrae sunt, continentur.

For the Egyptians are reported once to have had years so brief that they were finished in four months; whence a fuller and truer year, such as now is both for us and for them, encompassed three of their ancient years. But not even so, as I said, does the Greek history concord with the Egyptian reckoning of times. And therefore credit is rather to be given to the Greek, because it does not exceed the truth of the years which are contained in our writings, which are truly sacred.

Porro si haec epistula Alexandri, quae maxime innotuit, multum abhorret in spatiis temporum a probabili fide rerum: quanto minus credendum est illis litteris, quas plenas fabulosis uelut antiquitatibus proferre uoluerint contra auctoritatem notissimorum diuinorumque librorum, quae totum orbem sibi crediturum esse praedixit, et cui totus orbis, sicut ab ea praedictum est, credidit; quae uera se narrasse praeterita ex his, quae futura praenuntiauit, cum tanta ueritate inplentur, ostendit.

Moreover, if this epistle of Alexander, which has become most well-known, greatly departs, in the spans of time, from the probable credibility of the events: how much less is one to believe those writings which they have wished to bring forth, full of fabled, as-it-were, antiquities, against the authority of the most well-known and divine books—books which foretold that the whole orb would believe them, and which the whole orb, just as was foretold by it, has believed; which shows that it has told true things about the past from those things which it foretold as future, as they are fulfilled with such great truth.

[XII] Alii uero, qui mundum istum non existimant sempiternum, siue non eum solum,sed innumerabiles opinentur, siue solum quidem esse, sed certis saeculorum interuallis innumerabiliter oriri et occidere, necesse est fateantur hominum genus prius sine hominibus gignentibus extitisse. Neque enim ut alluuionibus incendiisque terrarum, quas illi non putant toto prorsus orbe contingere, et ideo paucos homines, ex quibus multitudo pristina reparetur, semper remanere contendunt, ita et hi possunt putare, quod aliquid hominum pereunte mundo relinquatur in mundo; sed sicut ipsum mundum ex materia sua renasci existimant, ita in illo ex elementis eius genus humanum ac deinde a parentibus progeniem pullulare mortalium, sicut aliorum animalium.

[12] Others, indeed, who do not reckon this world to be sempiternal—either they suppose not it alone, but innumerable (worlds), or that it alone exists, but at fixed intervals of ages is innumerably born and dies—must needs confess that the human race earlier existed without human begetters. For not, as in the case of alluvions and conflagrations of lands (which they do not think to occur over the whole orb entirely), and therefore they contend that a few men always remain, from whom the pristine multitude is restored, can these likewise suppose that anything of mankind is left behind in the world when the world perishes; but just as they think the world itself is reborn from its own matter, so in it, from its elements, the human race, and thereafter from parents the progeny of mortals, sprouts forth, as with other animals.

[XIII] Quod autem respondimus, cum de mundi origine quaestio uerteretur, eis, qui nolunt credere non eum semper fuisse, sed esse coepisse, sicut etiam Plato apertissime confitetur, quamuis a nonnullis contra quam loquitur sensisse credatur: hoc etiam de prima hominis conditione responderim, propter eos, qui similiter mouentur, cur homo per innumerabilia atque infinita retro tempora creatus non sit tamque sero sit creatus, ut minus quam sex milia sint annorum, ex quo esse coepisse in sacris litteris inuenitur. Si enim breuitas eos offendit temporis, quod tam pauci eis uidentur anni, ex quo institutus homo in nostris auctoritatibus legitur: considerent nihil esse diuturnum , in quo est aliquid extremum, et omnia saeculorum spatia definita, si aeternitati interminae comparentur, non exigua existimanda esse, sed nulla. Ac per hoc si non quinque uel sex, uerum etiam sexaginta milia siue sescenta, aut sexagiens aut sescentiens aut sescentiens miliens dicerentur annorum, aut itidem per totidem totiens multipficaretur haec summa, ubi iam nullum numeri nomen haberemus, ex quo Deus hominem fecit: similiter quaeri posset, cur ante non fecerit.

[13] But what we answered, when the question about the world’s origin was being debated, to those who are unwilling to believe that it has not always existed but began to be—just as even Plato most openly confesses, although by some he is believed to have felt contrary to what he says—this too I would answer concerning the first condition of man, for the sake of those who are similarly moved: why was man not created through innumerable and infinite times past, and why was he created so late that there are less than six thousand years since he is found in the sacred letters to have begun to be? For if the shortness of the time offends them, because so few years seem to them to have passed since man is read in our authorities to have been instituted, let them consider that nothing is long-lasting in which there is some extremity, and that all spans of the ages, being finite, if they are compared to interminable eternity, are to be considered not small but nothing. And therefore, if not five or six, but even sixty thousand or six hundred, or sixty times or six hundred times or six hundred thousand times were said of years, or likewise if this sum were multiplied as many times by as many—where we would now have no name of number—since God made man, it could similarly be asked why He did not make him earlier.

Dei quippe ab hominis creatione cessatio retrorsus aeterna sine initio tanta est, ut, si ei conferatur quamlibet magna et ineffabilis numerositas temporum, quae tamen fine conclusa certi spatii terminatur, nec saltem tanta uideri debeat, quanta si umoris breuissimam guttam uniuerso mari, etiam quantum oceanus circumfluit, comparemus; quoniam istorum duorum unum quidem perexiguum est, alterum incomparabiliter magnum, sed utrumque finitum; illud uero temporis spatium, quod ab aliquo initio progreditur et aliquo termino cohercetur, magnitudine quantacumque tendatur, comparatum illi, quod initium non habet, nescio utrum pro minimo an potius pro nullo deputandum est. Hinc eum si a fine uel breuissma singillatim momenta detrahantur, decrescente numero licet tam ingenti, ut uocabulum non inueniat, retrorsum redeundo (tamquam si hominis dies ab illo, in quo nunc uiuit, usque ad illum, in quo natus est, detrahas) quandoque ad initium illa detractio perducetur. Si autem detrahantur retrorsus in spatio, quod a nullo coepit exordio, non dico singillatim minuta momenta uel horarum aut dierum aut mensum aut annorum etiam quantitates, sed tam magna spatia, quanta illa summa conprehendit annorum, quae iam dici a quibuslibet computatoribus non potest, quae tamen momentorum minutatim detractione consumitur, et detrahantur haec tanta spatia non semel atque iterum saepiusque, sed semper: quid fit, quid agitur, quando numquam ad initium, quod omnino nullum est, peruenitur?

For God’s cessation from the creation of man, stretching backward eternally without beginning, is so great that, if there be compared to it any however great and ineffable numerosity of times—which yet is closed by an end and bounded by a fixed span—it ought not even to seem as great as if we were to compare the briefest drop of moisture to the whole sea, even as far as the ocean flows around; since of these two the one is very small, the other incomparably great, but both are finite; whereas that span of time which proceeds from some beginning and is confined by some terminus, however much it be extended in magnitude, when compared with that which has no beginning, I know not whether it should be reckoned as the least or rather as nothing. Hence, if from the end the most brief moments are subtracted one by one, with the number decreasing—though so huge that it finds no vocabulary—by going backward (as if you subtract a man’s days from that on which he now lives back to that on which he was born), that subtraction will at some time be brought to the beginning. But if they are subtracted backward in a span which began from no origin, I do not say minute moments singly or even the quantities of hours or days or months or years, but spans as great as that total of years comprises which already cannot be stated by any calculators, which nevertheless is consumed by the minute-by-minute subtraction of moments—and let these so great spans be subtracted not once and again and more often, but always: what comes to pass, what is done, when one never arrives at a beginning, which is absolutely none?

Quapropter quod nos modo quaerimus post quinque milia et quod excurrit annorum, possent et posteri etiam post annorum sescentiens miliens eadem curiositate requirere, si in tantum haec mortalitas hominum exoriendo et occubando et inperita perseueraret infirmitas. Potuerunt et qui fuerunt ante nos ipsis recentibus hominis creati temporibus istam mouere quaestionem. Ipse denique primus homo uel postridie uel eodem die postea quam factus est potuit inquirere, cur non ante sit factus; et quandocumque antea factus esset, non uires tunc alias et alias nunc uel etiam postea ista de initio rerum temporalium controuersia reperiret.

Wherefore, what we now inquire after five thousand years and some over, posterity too could with the same curiosity inquire even after six hundred thousand years, if this mortality of men, by being born and by dying, and its unskilled infirmity, should persist to such an extent. Those also who were before us, in the very times fresh from the creation of man, could have raised this question. The very first man himself, indeed, either on the next day or on the same day after he was made, could have asked why he had not been made earlier; and whenever he had been made earlier, would not this controversy about the beginning of temporal things then find arguments of one sort and now others, or even later?

[XIV] Hanc autem se philosophi mundi huius non aliter putauerunt posse uel debere dissoluere, nisi ut circuitus temporum inducerent, quibus eadem semper fuisse renouata atque repetita in rerum natura atque ita deinceps fore sine cessatione adseuerarent uolumina uenientium et praetereuntium saeculorum; siue in mundo permanente isti circuitus fierent, siue certis interuallis oriens et occidens mundus eadem semper quasi noua, quae transacta et uentura sunt, exhiberet. A quo ludibrio prorsus inmortalem animam, etiam cum sapientiam perceperit, liberare non possunt, euntem sine cessatione ad falsam beatitudinem et ad ueram miseriam sine cessatione redeuntem. Quo modo enim uera beatitudo est, de cuius numquam aeternitate confiditur, dum anima uenturam miseriam aut inperitissime in ueritate nescit aut infelicissime in beatitudine pertimescit?

[14] But the philosophers of this world thought that they could or ought to dissolve it in no other way than by introducing circuits of times, whereby they would asseverate that the same things had always been renovated and repeated in the nature of things, and that so thereafter, without cessation, the revolvings of coming and passing ages would be; whether these circuits should occur with the world remaining, or, at fixed intervals, the world rising and setting would always exhibit as if new the same things that are past and to come. From which mockery they cannot at all free the immortal soul, even when it has apprehended wisdom, going without cessation to false beatitude and returning without cessation to true misery. For how is it true beatitude, whose eternity one never confides in, while the soul either most unskilfully does not know the misery to come in the truth, or most unhappily in beatitude is in great fear of it?

At si ad miserias numquam ulterius reditura ex his ad beatitudinem pergit: fit ergo aliquid noui in tempore, quod finem non habet temporis. Cur non ergo et mundus? cur non et homo factus in mundo?

But if it goes on from these to beatitude, never to return further to miseries: then something new comes to be in time, which has no end of time. Why not, then, the world as well? why not also man made in the world?

ut illi nescio qui falsi circuitus a falsis sapientibus fallacibusque comperti in doctrina sana tramite recti itineris euitentur.

so that those I-know-not-what false circuits, discovered by false and deceitful wise men, may be avoided by the path of the straight way in sound doctrine.

Nam quidam et illud, quod legitur in libro Salomonis, qui uocatur ecclesiastes: Quid est quod fuit? Ipsum quod erit. Et quid est quod factum est?

For some also [bring forward] that which is read in the book of Solomon, which is called Ecclesiastes: “What is that which has been? The very thing which will be. And what is that which has been done?”

Ipsum quod fiet; et non est omne recens sub sole. Qui loquetur et dicet: Ecce hoc nouum est: iam fuit saeculis quae fuerunt ante nos, propter hos circuitus in eadem redeuntes et in eadem cuncta reuocantes dictum intellegi uolunt; quod ille aut de his rebus dixit, de quibus superius loquebatur, hoc est de generationibus aliis euntibus, aliis uenientibus, de solis anfractibus, de torrentium lapsibus; aut certe de omnium rerum generibus, quae oriuntur atque occidunt. Fuerunt enim homines ante nos, sunt et nobiscum, erunt et post nos; ita quaeque animantia uel arbusta.

The very thing that will come to be; and there is not anything entirely new under the sun. Whoever will speak and say, “Behold, this is new,” it has already been in the ages that were before us—they want the saying to be understood on account of these circuits returning into the same and recalling all things into the same; namely, that he either said it about those matters of which he was speaking above, that is, of generations—some departing, others coming—of the sun’s windings, of the descents of torrents; or certainly about the kinds of all things which arise and set. For there were men before us, there are also with us, and there will be after us; so too with the animals and the groves.

Monstra quoque ipsa, quae inusitata nascuntur, quamuis inter se diuersa sint et quaedam eorum semel facta narrentur, tamen secundum id, quod generaliter miracula et monstra sunt, utique et fuerunt et erunt, nec recens et nouum est, ut monstrum sub sole nascatur. Quamuis haec uerba quidam sic intellexerint, tamquam in praedestinatione Dei iam facta fuisse omnia sapiens ille uoluisset intellegi, et ideo nihil recens esse sub sole. Absit autem a recta fide, ut his Salomonis uerbis illos circuitus significatos esse credamus, quibus illi putant sic eadem temporum temporaliumque rerum uolumina repeti, ut uerbi gratia, sicut isto saeculo Plato philosophus in urbe Atheniensi et in ea schola, quae Academia dicta est, discipulos docuit, ita per innumerabilia retro saecula multum quidem prolixis interuallis, sed tamen.certis, et idem Plato et eadem ciuitas et eadem schola idemque discipuli repetiti et per innumerabilia deinde saecula repetendi sint.

The very monsters, too, which are born as unusual, although they are diverse among themselves and some of them are reported to have happened once for all, nevertheless, inasmuch as they are in general marvels and monsters, assuredly both have been and will be, nor is it a fresh and new thing that a monster should be born under the sun. Although certain people have understood these words in such a way as if that wise man wished it to be understood that all things have already been done in the predestination of God, and therefore that nothing is recent under the sun. But far be it from right faith that we should believe that by these words of Solomon those circuits are signified, by which they suppose that the same cycles of times and of temporal things are thus repeated, for example, just as in this age Plato the philosopher in the city of Athens and in that school which is called the Academy taught his disciples, so through innumerable ages in the past, with intervals indeed very long but nevertheless fixed, the same Plato and the same city and the same school and the same disciples have been repeated, and through innumerable ages thereafter are to be repeated.

Absit, inquam, ut nos ista credamus. Semel enim Christus mortuus est pro peccatis nostris; surgens autem a mortuis iam non moritur, et mors ei ultra non dominabitur, et nos post resurrectionem semper cum Domino erimus, cui modo dicimus, quod sacer admonet psalmus: Tu, Domine, seruabis nos et custodies nos a generatione hac et in aeternum. Satis autem istis existimo conuenire quod sequitur: In circuitu impii ambulabunt; non quia per circulos, quos opinantur, eorum uita est recursura, sed quia modo talis est erroris eorum uia, id est falsa doctrina.

Far be it, I say, that we should believe those things. For Christ died once for our sins; but rising from the dead he no longer dies, and death will no longer have dominion over him; and we, after the resurrection, will always be with the Lord, to whom we now say, as the sacred psalm admonishes: You, O Lord, will keep us and will guard us from this generation and forever. Moreover, I judge that what follows fits these people well: “In a circuit the impious will walk”; not because their life is going to recur through the circles which they suppose, but because just now such is the way of their error, that is, their false doctrine.

[XV] Quid autem mirum est, si in his circuitibus errantes nec aditum nec exitum inueniunt? quia genus humanum atque ista nostra mortalitas nec quo initio coepta sit sciunt, nec quo fine claudatur; quando quidem altitudinem Dei penetrare non possunt, qua, cum ipse sit aeternus et sine initio, ab aliquo tamen initio exorsus est tempora et hominem, quem numquam antea fecerat, fecit in tempore, non tamen nouo et repentino, sed inmutabili aeternoque consilio. Quis hanc ualeat altitudinem inuestigabilem uestigare et inscrutabilem perscrutari, secundum quam Deus hominem temporalem, ante quem nemo umquam hominum fuit, non mutabili uoluntate in tempore condidit et genus humanum ex uno multiplicauit?

[15] But what is there to marvel at, if, wandering in these circuits, they find neither an entrance nor an exit? for the human race and this our mortality know neither with what beginning it was commenced nor with what end it is closed; since indeed they cannot penetrate the height of God, whereby, although he himself is eternal and without beginning, yet from some beginning he commenced the times and made man—whom he had never before made—in time, not, however, by a new and sudden resolve, but by an immutable and eternal counsel. Who is able to investigate this uninvestigable height and to scrutinize the inscrutable, according to which God, with an unchangeable will, in time fashioned temporal man, before whom no human being had ever been, and multiplied the human race from one?

Quando quidem psalmus ipse cum praemisisset atque dixisset: Tu, Domine, seruabis nos et custodies nos a generatione hac et in aeternum, ac deinde repercussisset eos, in quorum stulta impiaque doctrina nulla liberationis et beatitudinis animae seruatur aeternitas, continuo subiciens: In circuitu impii ambulabunt: tamquam ei diceretur: "Quid ergo tu credis, sentis, intellegis? numquidnam existimandum est subito Deo placuisse hominem facere, quem numquam antea infinita retro aeternitate fecisset, cui nihil noui accidere potest, in quo mutabile aliquid non est?" continuo respondit ad ipsum Deum loquens: Secundum altitudinem tuam multiplicasti filios hominum. Sentiant, inquit, homines quod putant, et quod eis placet opinentur et disputent: Secundum altitudinem tuam, quam nullus potest nosse hominum, multiplicasti filios hominum.

Since indeed the psalm itself, after it had premised and had said, “You, O Lord, will preserve us and will guard us from this generation and forever,” and then had struck back at those in whose stupid and impious doctrine no eternity of the soul’s deliverance and beatitude is preserved, immediately subjoining: “In a circuit the impious will walk”—as though it were said to him: “What then do you believe, feel, understand? Is it to be thought that it suddenly pleased God to make man, whom in infinite backward eternity he had never before made, to whom nothing new can befall, in whom there is nothing mutable?”—he straightway answered, speaking to God himself: “According to your altitude you have multiplied the sons of men.” Let men, he says, feel what they think, and opine and dispute what pleases them: “According to your altitude, which no one of men can know, you have multiplied the sons of men.”

Valde quippe altum est et semper fuisse, et hominem, quem numquam fecerat, ex aliquo tempore primum facere uoluisse, nec consilium uoluntatemque mutasse.

For indeed it is very deep: both that He has always existed, and that He willed, from some point of time, to make man for the first time—whom He had never made—and that He did not change counsel and will.

[XVI] Ego quidem sicut Dominum Deum aliquando dominum non fuisse dicere non audeo, ita hominem numquam antea fuisse et ex quodam tempore primum hominem creatum esse dubitare non debeo. Sed cum cogito cuius rei dominus semper fuerit, si semper creatura non fuerit, adfirmare aliquid pertimesco, quia et me ipsum intueor et scriptum esse recolo: Quis hominum potest scire consilium Dei, aut quis poterit cogitare quid uelit Dominus? Cogitationes enim mortalium timidae et incertae adinuentiones nostrae.

[16] I indeed, just as I do not dare to say that the Lord God was ever not Lord, so I ought not to doubt that man had never existed before and that from a certain time man was first created. But when I consider of what thing he was always Lord, if a creature was not always, I dread to affirm anything, because I both look upon myself and recall that it is written: Who among men can know the counsel of God, or who will be able to cogitate what the Lord wills? For the cogitations of mortals are timid, and our inventions uncertain.

Curruptibile enim corpus adgrauat animam, et deprimit terrena inhabitatio sensum multa cogitantem. Ex his igitur, quae in hac terrena inhabitatione multa cogito (ideo utique multa, quia unum, quod ex illis uel praeter illa, quod forte non cogito, uerum est, inuenire non possum), si dixero semper fuisse creaturam, cuius dominus esset, qui semper est dominus nec dominus umquam non fuit; sed nunc illam, nunc aliam per alia atque alia temporum spatia, ne aliquam Creatori coaeternam esse dicamus, quod fides ratioque sana condemnat: cauendum est, ne sit absurdum et a luce ueritatis alienum mortalem quidem per uices temporum semper fuisse creaturam, decedentem aliam, aliam succedentem; inmortalem uero non esse coepisse, nisi cum ad nostrum saeculum uentum est, quando et angeli creati sunt, si eos recte lux illa primum facta significat aut illud potius caelum, de quo dictum est: In principio fecit Deus caelum et terram, cum tamen non fuerint, antequam fierent, ne inmortales, si semper fuisse dicuntur, Deo coaeterni esse credantur. Si autem dixero non in tempore creatos angelos, sed ante omnia tempora c:t ipsos fuisse, quorum Deus dominus esset, qui numquam nisi dominus fuit: quaeretur a me etiam, si ante omnia tempora facti sunt, utrum semper potuerint esse qui facti sunt.

For the corruptible body weighs down the soul, and the earthly habitation presses down the sense that is thinking many things. From these things, therefore, which in this earthly habitation I think in many ways (indeed therefore many, because the one thing which out of them, or apart from them—which perhaps I do not think—is true, I cannot find), if I say that there has always been a creature, of which he would be lord who is always Lord and was never not lord; but now this one, now another, through one and another span of times, lest we say that some creature is coeternal with the Creator, which faith and sound reason condemn: it must be guarded against, lest it be absurd and alien from the light of truth to assert that a mortal creature has indeed always existed by turns of times, one departing, another succeeding; but that an immortal did not begin to exist except when it came down to our age, when also the angels were created—if that light first made rightly signifies them, or rather that heaven of which it is said: In the beginning God made heaven and earth—although they had not been before they were made, lest the immortals, if they are said always to have existed, be believed coeternal with God. But if I say that the angels were created not in time but before all times, and that there were those very ones of whom God would be Lord—He who was never anything except Lord—there will also be asked of me, if they were made before all times, whether those who were made could have been always.

Hic respondendum forte uideatur: Quo modo non semper, cum id, quod est omni tempore, non inconuenienter semper esse dicatur? Vsque adeo autem isti omni tempore fuerunt, ut etiam ante omnia tempora facti sint; si tamen a caelo coepta sunt tempora, et illi iam erant ante caelum. At si tempus non a caelo, uerum et ante caelum fuit; non quidem in horis et diebus et mensibus et annis (nam istae dimensiones temporalium spatiorum, quae usitate ac proprie dicuntur tempora, manifestum est quod a motu siderum coeperint; unde et Deus, cum haec institueret, dixit: Et sint in signa et in tempora et in dies et in annos), sed in aliquo mutabili motu, cuius aliud prius, aliud posterius praeterit, eo quod simul esse non possunt; - si ergo ante caelum in angelicis motibus tale aliquid fuit et ideo tempus iam fuit atque angeli, ex quo facti sunt, temporaliter mouebantur: etiam sic omni tempore fuerunt, quando quidem cum illis facta sunt tempora.

Here perhaps it may seem that one should reply: How not “always,” since that which is at every time may without incongruity be said to be always? And these indeed were at every time to such a degree that they were even made before all times; if, however, times began from heaven, then they already were before heaven. But if time was not from heaven, but even before heaven; not indeed in hours and days and months and years (for those dimensions of temporal spaces, which are commonly and properly called “times,” manifestly began from the motion of the stars; whence also God, when he established these things, said: And let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and for years), but in some mutable motion, of which one thing prior, another posterior passes by, because they cannot be simultaneously; — if therefore before heaven in angelic motions there was such a thing, and thus time already was and the angels, from the point when they were made, were being moved temporally: even so they were at every time, since with them times were made.

Quis autem dicat: Non semper fuit, quod omni tempore fuit?

But who would say: “What has been at every time has not always been”?

Sed si hoc respondero, dicetur mihi: Quo modo ergo non coaeterni Creatori, si semper ille, semper illi fuerunt? Quo modo etiam creati dicendi sunt, si semper fuisse intelleguntur? Ad hoc quid respondebitur?

But if I answer this, it will be said to me: How then are they not coeternal with the Creator, if he has always been, they have always been? How are they even to be said created, if they are understood to have always been? To this, what will be answered?

An dicendum est et semper eos fuisse, quoniam omni tempore fuerunt, qui cum tempore facti sunt, aut cum quibus facta sunt tempora, et tamen creatos ? Neque enim et ipsa tempora creata esse negabimus, quamuis omni tempore tempus fuisse nemo ambigat. Nam si non omni tempore fuit tempus, erat ergo tempus, quando nullum erat tempus. Quis hoc stultissimus dixerit?

Or is it to be said that they also always were, since they were at every time—those who were made with time, or with whom the times were made—and yet that they were created? For neither shall we deny that the times themselves were created, although no one doubts that time has been at every time. For if time was not at every time, then there was therefore a time when there was no time. Who would be so foolish as to say this?

Possumus enim recte dicere: Erat tempus, quando non erat Roma; erat tempus, quando non erat Hierusalem; erat tempus, quando non erat Abraham; erat tempus, quando non erat homo, et si quid huius modi; postremo si non cum initio temporis, sed post aliquod tempus factus est mundus, possumus dicere: Erat tempus, quando non erat mundus; at uero: Erat tempus, quando nullum erat tempus, tam inconuenienter dicimus, ac si quisquam dicat: Erat homo, quando nullus erat homo, aut: Erat iste mundus, quando iste non erat mundus. Si enim de alio atque alio intellegatur, potest dici aliquo modo, hoc est: Erat alius homo, quando non erat iste homo; sic ergo: Erat aliud tempus, quando non erat hoc tempus, recte possumus dicere; at uero: Erat tempus, quando nullum erat tempus, quis uel insipientissimus dixerit? Sicut ergo dicimus creatum tempus, cum ideo semper fuisse dicatur, quia omni tempore tempus fuit: ita non est consequens, ut, si semper fuerunt angeli, ideo non sint creati, ut propterea semper fuisse dicantur, quia omni tempore fuerunt, et propterea omni tempore fuerunt, quia nullo modo sine his ipsa tempora esse potuerunt.

For we can rightly say: There was a time when there was not Rome; there was a time when there was not Jerusalem; there was a time when there was not Abraham; there was a time when there was not man, and anything else of this sort; finally, if the world was made not with the beginning of time, but after some time, we can say: There was a time when there was not the world; but as for: There was a time when there was no time at all, we speak as incongruously as if anyone should say: There was a man when there was no man, or: This world existed when this world did not exist. For if it be understood of one and another, it can in some way be said, that is: There was another man when this man was not; so then: There was another time when this time was not, we can rightly say; but: There was a time when there was no time at all, who would say this, even the most foolish? Therefore, just as we say that time was created, although it is said on that account to have always existed, because at every time there was time: so it does not follow that, if the angels have always existed, therefore they were not created; rather, they are said to have always existed for this reason, because they were at every time, and they were at every time for this reason, because in no way could the times themselves exist without them.

Vbi enim nulla creatura est, cuius mutabilibus motibus tempora peragantur, tempora omnino esse n on possunt; ac per hoc etsi semper fuerunt, creati sunt, nec si semper fuerunt, ideo Creatori coaeterni sunt. Ille enim semper fuit aeternitate inmutabili; isti autem facti sunt; sed ideo semper fuisse dicuntur, quia omni tempore fuerunt, sine quibus tempora nullo modo esse potuerunt; tempus autem quoniam mutabilitate transcurrit, aeternitati inmutabili non potest esse coaeternum. Ac per hoc etiamsi inmortalitas angelorum non transit in tempore, nec praeterita est quasi iam non sit, nec futura quasi nondum sit: tamen eorum motus, quibus tempora peraguntur, ex futuro in praeteritum transeunt, et ideo Creatori, in cuius motu dicendum non est uel fuisse quod iam non sit, uel futurum esse quod nondum sit, coaeterni esse non possunt.

For where no creature exists, by whose mutable motions times might be carried through, times altogether cannot exist; and therefore even if they have always been, they were created, nor, if they have always been, are they for that reason coeternal with the Creator. For He has always been in immutable eternity; but they have been made; yet they are said to have always been because they were at every time, without which times could by no means exist; but since time runs its course by mutability, it cannot be coeternal with immutable eternity. And therefore, even if the immortality of the angels does not pass away in time—neither as past, as though it were now no longer, nor as future, as though it were not yet—nevertheless their motions, by which times are accomplished, pass from future into past; and so they cannot be coeternal with the Creator, in whose motion it must not be said either “to have been,” as though it now were not, or “to be going to be,” as though it were not yet.

Quapropter si Deus semper dominus fuit, semper habuit creaturam suo dominatui seruientem; uerum tamen non de ipso genitam, sed ab ipso de nihilo factam nec ei coaeternam; erat quippe ante illam, quamuis nullo tempore sine illa; non eam spatio transcurrente, sed manente perpetuitate praecedens. Sed hoc si respondero eis qui requirunt, quo modo semper creator, semper dominus fuit, si creatura seruiens non semper fuit; aut quo modo creata est et non potius creatori coaeterna est, si semper fuit: uereor ne facilius iudicer adfirmare quod nescio, quam docere quod scio. Redeo igitur ad id, quod creator noster scire nos uoluit; illa uero, quae uel sapientioribus in hac uita scire permisit uel omnino perfectis in alia uita scienda seruauit, ultra uires meas esse confiteor.

Quapropter, if God was always Lord, He always had a creature serving His dominion; yet truly not begotten from Himself, but made by Him out of nothing, nor coeternal with Him; for He was before it, although at no time without it; preceding it not by a space that runs on, but by an abiding perpetuity. But if I should answer thus to those who inquire how He was always Creator, always Lord, if the serving creature was not always; or how it was created and not rather coeternal with the Creator, if it always was: I fear lest I be judged more readily to affirm what I do not know than to teach what I do know. I return, therefore, to that which our Creator willed us to know; but those things which He either permitted the wiser to know in this life, or altogether reserved to be known by the perfect in the other life, I confess to be beyond my powers.

Sed ideo putaui sine adfirmatione tractanda, ut qui haec legunt uideant a quibus quaestionum periculis debeant temperare, nec ad omnia se idoneos arbitrentur potiusque intellegant quam sit apostolo obtemperandum praecipienti salubriter, ubi ait: Dico autem per gratiam Dei quae data est mihi omnibus qui sunt in uobis, non plus sapere quam oportet sapere, sed sapere ad temperantiam, unicuique sicut Deus partitus est mensuram fidei. Si enim pro uiribus suis alatur infans, fiet, ut crescendo plus capiat; si autem uires suae capacitatis excedat, deficiet antequam crescat.

But for that reason I thought it should be handled without affirmation, so that those who read these things may see from which perils of questions they ought to keep themselves in check, and not judge themselves fit for all things, but rather understand how much the Apostle is to be obeyed, wholesomely enjoining, where he says: I say, however, through the grace of God which has been given to me, to all who are among you, not to be wise beyond what it behooves to be wise, but to be wise unto temperance, to each as God has apportioned the measure of faith. For if an infant is nourished according to his strengths, it will come about that, by growing, he may take in more; but if he exceed the forces of his capacity, he will fail before he grows.

[XVII] Quae saecula praeterierint antequam genus institueretur humanum, me fateor ignorare; non tamen dubito nihil omnino creaturae Creatori esse coaeternum. Dicit etiam apostolus tempora aeterna, nec ea futura, sed, quos magis est mirandum, praeterita. Sic enim ait: In spem uitae aeternae, quam promisit non mendax Deus ante tempora aeterna; manifestauit autem temporibus suis uerbum suum.

[17] What ages have passed before the human race was instituted, I confess myself to be ignorant; yet I do not doubt that nothing at all of creature is coeternal with the Creator. The apostle also speaks of eternal times, and not as future, but—as is more to be wondered at—as past. For thus he says: In hope of eternal life, which the non-mendacious God promised before eternal times; but he manifested his word in his own times.

Ecce dixit retro quod fuerint tempora aeterna, quae tamen non fuerint Deo coaeterna, si quidem ille ante tempora aeterna non solum erat, uerum etiam promisit uitam aeternam, quam manifestauit temporibus suis, id est congruis, quid aliud quam Verbum suum? Hoc est enim uita aeterna. Quo modo autem promisit, cum hominibus utique promiserit, qui nondum erant ante tempora aeterna, nisi quia in eius aeternitate atque in ipso Verbo eius eidem coaeterno iam praedestinatione fixum erat, quod suo tempore futurum erat?

Behold, he said back above that there were eternal times, which nevertheless were not coeternal with God; since indeed he, before the eternal times, not only was, but even promised eternal life, which he manifested in his own times, that is, congruent ones—what else than his Word? For this is eternal life. But how did he promise, since surely he promised to human beings, who did not yet exist before the eternal times, unless because in his eternity and in his very Word, coeternal with him, there had already by predestination been fixed what was going to be in its own time?

[XVIII] Illud quoque non dubito, antequam homo primus creatus esset, numquam quemquam fuisse hominem; nec eundem ipsum nescio quibus circuitibus nescio quotiens reuolutum, nec alium aliquem natura similem. Neque ab hac fide me philosophorum argumenta deterrent, quorum acutissimum illud putatur, quod dicunt nulla infinita ulla scientia posse conprehendi; ac per hoc Deus, inquiunt, rerum quas facit omnium finitarum omnes finitas apud se rationes habet; bonitas autem eius numquam uacua fuisse credenda est, ne sit temporalis eius operatio, cuius retro fuerit aeterna cessatio, quasi paenituerit eum prioris sine initio uacationis ac propterea sit operis adgressus initium; et ideo necesse est, inquiunt, eadem semper repeti eademque semper repetenda transcurrere, uel manente mundo mutabiliter, qui licet numquam non fuerit et sine initio temporis tamen factus est, uel eius quoque ortu et occasu semper illis circuitibus repetito semperque repetendo; ne uidelicet, si aliquando primum Dei opera coepta dicuntur, priorem suam sine initio uacationem tamquam inertem ac desidiosam et ideo sibi displicentem damnasse quodam modo atque ob hoc mutasse credatur; si autem semper quidem temporalia, sed alia atque alia perbibetur operatus ac sic aliquando etiam ad hominem faciendum, quem numquam antea fecerat, peruenisse, non scientia, qua putant non posse quaecumque infinita conprehendi, sed quasi ad horam, sicut ueniebat in mentem, fortuita quadam inconstantia uideatur fecisse quae fecit. Porro si illi circuitus admittantur, inquiunt, quibus uel manente mundo uel ipso quoque reuolubiles ortus suos et occassus eisdem circuitibus inserente eadem temporalia repetuntur, nec ignauum otium, praesertim tam longae sine initio diuturnitatis, Deo tribuitur, nec inprouida temeritas operum suorum; quoniam si non eadem repetantur, non possunt infinita diuersitate uariata ulla eius scientia uel praescientia conprehendi.

[18] This too I do not doubt: before the first man was created, never had anyone been a man; nor that this same one had been, I know not how many times, revolved through I know not what circuits, nor some other person by nature similar. Nor do the arguments of the philosophers deter me from this faith—of which that one is held the most acute, namely, that they say no infinites can be comprehended by any science; and therefore, they say, God, of all the things that he makes, all being finite, has with himself all finite reasons; but his goodness is never to be believed to have been vacant, lest his operation be temporal, of which previously there would have been an eternal cessation—as though he repented of his prior beginningless vacation, and on that account set about the beginning of a work. And so, they say, it is necessary that the same things be always repeated, and the same things, ever to be repeated, run their course—either with the world remaining, yet mutably, which, although it has never not been and yet was made without a beginning of time, or with its own rising and setting also, being revoluble, inserted into the same circuits, always repeated and ever to be repeated—lest, to wit, if at some time the works of God are said to have first begun, he be believed in some manner to have condemned his prior beginningless vacation as inert and slothful and therefore displeasing to himself, and on this account to have changed; but if he is said to have always indeed operated temporal things, yet this thing and that thing, and thus at some time even to have come to the making of man, whom he had never before made, he should seem to have done what he did not by knowledge—by which they think whatever infinites cannot be comprehended—but, as it were, for the hour, as it came into mind, by a certain fortuitous inconstancy. Furthermore, if those circuits be admitted, they say, by which—either with the world remaining, or with it itself also, inserting its own revoluble risings and settings into the same circuits—the same temporal things are repeated, neither is sluggish idleness, especially of so long a duration without beginning, attributed to God, nor improvident temerity of his works; since, if the same things be not repeated, things varied by infinite diversity cannot be comprehended by any knowledge or prescience of his.

Has argumentationes, quibus impii nostram simplicem pietatem, ut cum illis in circuitu ambulemus, de uia recta conantur auertere, si ratio refutare non posset, fides inridere deberet. Huc accedit, quod in adiutorio Domini Dei nostri hos uolubiles circulos, quos opinio confingit, ratio manifesta confringit. Hinc enim maxime isti errant, ut in circuitu falso ambulare quam uero et recto itinere malint, quod mentem diuinam omnino inmutabilem, cuiuslibet infinitatis capacem et innumera omnia sine cogitationis alternatione numerantem, de sua humana mutabili angustaque metiuntur; et fit illis quod ait apostolus: Comparantes enim semet ipsos sibimet ipsis non intellegunt.

These argumentations, by which the impious try to avert our simple piety from the straight way, so that we may walk with them in a circuit, if reason could not refute, faith ought to ridicule. To this is added that, with the aid of the Lord our God, those whirling circles which opinion fabricates, manifest reason shatters. For hence especially they err, in that they prefer to walk in a false circuit rather than on the true and straight itinerary, because they measure the divine mind—altogether immutable, capable of any infinity, and numbering all innumerable things without alternation of cogitation—by their own human mind, mutable and narrow; and it befalls them what the apostle says: For comparing themselves with themselves, they do not understand.

Nam quia illis quidquid noui faciendum uenit in mentem, nouo consilio faciunt (mutabiles quippe mentes gerunt: profecto non Deum, quem cogitare non possunt, sed semet ipsos pro illo cogitantes, non illum, sed se ipsos, nec illi, sed sibi comparant. Nobis autem fas non est credere, aliter affici Deum cum uacat, aliter cum operatur; quia nec affici dicendus est, tamquam in eius natura fiat aliquid, quod ante non fuerit. Patitur quippe qui afficitur, et mutabile est omne quod aliquid patitur.

For since, whenever whatever new-to-be-done comes into their mind, they do it with a new counsel (for indeed they bear mutable minds: assuredly, not God, whom they cannot conceive, but themselves, thinking in place of him, they compare—not him, but themselves; not to him, but to themselves. But for us it is not lawful to believe that God is affected one way when he is at leisure and another when he operates; because he is not even to be said to be affected, as though in his nature something should come to be which before was not. For he suffers, indeed, who is affected, and everything that suffers something is mutable.

Non itaque in eius uacatione cogitetur ignauia desidia inertia, sicut nec in eius opere labor conatus industria. Nouit quiescens agere et agens quiescere. Potest ad opus nouum non nouum, sed sempiternum adhibere consilium; nec paenitendo, quia prius cessauerat, coepit facere quod non fecerat.

Therefore, let there not be imagined in his rest cowardice, sloth, inertia, just as neither in his work are labor, conation, or industry. Resting, he knows how to act, and acting, how to rest. He can apply to a new work not a new but an everlasting counsel; nor, by repenting because he had previously ceased, did he begin to do what he had not done.

Sed et si prius cessauit et posterius operatus est (quod nescio quem ad modum ab homine possit intellegi): hoc procul dubio, quod dicitur prius et posterius, in rebus prius non existentibus et posterius existentibus fuit; in illo autem non alteram praecedentem altera subsequens mutauit aut abstulit uoluntatem, sed una eademque sempiterna et inmutabili uoluntate res, quas condidit, et ut prius non essent egit, quamdiu non fuerunt, et ut posterius essent, quando esse coeperunt, hinc eis, qui talia uidere possunt, mirabiliter fortassis ostendens, quam non eis indiguerit, sed eas gratuita bonitate condiderit, cum sine illis ex aeternitate initio carente in non minore beatitate permansit.

But even if he earlier ceased and later worked (which I do not know how a human could understand): this, without doubt, what is called earlier and later, belonged to things earlier non-existent and later existent; but in him, one will preceding was not changed or taken away by another subsequent, but by one and the same sempiternal and immutable will he both brought it about that the things which he founded should earlier not be, so long as they were not, and that they should later be, when they began to be—thereby, perhaps wondrously showing to those who can see such things how he had no need of them, but created them by gratuitous goodness, since without them, from eternity lacking a beginning, he remained in no lesser beatitude.

[XIX] Illud autem aliud quod dicunt, nec Dei scientia quae infinita sunt posse conprehendi: restat eis, ut dicere audeant atque huic se uoragini profundae inpietatis inmergant, quod non omnes numeros Deus nouerit. Eos quippe infinitos esse, certissimum est; quoniam in quocumque numero finem faciendum putaueris, idem ipse, non dico uno addito augeri, sed quamlibet sit magnus et quamlibet ingentem multitudinem continens, in ipsa ratione atque scientia numerorum non solum duplicari, uerum etiam multiplicari potest. Ita uero suis quisque numerus proprietatibus terminatur, ut nullus eorum par esse cuicumque alteri possit.

[19] But that other thing which they say, that not even by God’s knowledge can the things which are infinite be comprehended: it remains for them to dare to say, and to plunge themselves into this abyss of profound impiety, that God does not know all numbers. For that they are infinite is most certain; since in whatever number you think an end should be made, that very same, I do not say can be increased by one added, but however great it may be and however immense a multitude it contains, in the very rationale and science of numbers it can not only be doubled, but even multiplied. Thus, indeed, each number is bounded by its own properties, so that none of them can be equal to any other whatsoever.

Ergo et dispares inter se atque diuersi sunt, et singuli quique finiti sunt, et omnes infiniti sunt. Itane numeros propter infinitatem nescit omnes Deus, et usque ad quandam summam numerorum scientia Dei peruenit, ceteros ignorat? Quis hoc etiam dementissimus dixerit?

Therefore they are both disparate and diverse among themselves, and each individual is finite, and all are infinite. Is it then that, on account of their infinitude, God does not know all numbers, and does the knowledge of God reach only up to a certain sum of numbers, the rest He is ignorant of? Who would say this—even the most demented?

Nec audebunt isti contemnere numeros et eos dicere ad Dei scientiam non pertinere, apud quos Plato Deum magna auctoritate commendat mundum numeris fabricantem. Et apud nos Deo dictum legitur: Omnia in mensura et numero et pondere disposuisti; de quo et propheta dicit: Qui profert numerose saeculum, et Saluator in euangelio: Capilli, inquit, uestri omnes numerati sunt. Absit itaque ut dubitemus, quod ei notus sit omnis numerus, cuius intellegentiae, sicut in psalmo canitur, non est numerus.

Nor will these men dare to contemn numbers and say that they do not pertain to the knowledge of God, among whom Plato with great authority commends God as fashioning the world by numbers. And among us it is read as said to God: You have disposed all things in measure and number and weight; concerning which the prophet also says: Who brings forth the age by number, and the Savior in the Gospel: The hairs, he says, of your head are all numbered. Far be it, therefore, that we should doubt that every number is known to Him, whose understanding, as it is sung in the psalm, has no number.

Infinitas itaque numeri, quamuis infinitorum numerorum nullus sit numerus, non est tamen inconprehensibilis ei, cuius intellegentiae non est numerus. Quapropter si, quidquid scientia conprehenditur, scientis conprehensione finitur: profecto et omnis infinitas quodam ineffabili modo Deo finita est, quia scientiae ipsius inconprehensibilis non est. Quare si infinitas numerorum scientiae Dei, qua conprehenditur, esse non potest infinita: qui tandem nos sumus homunculi, qui eius scientiae limites figere praesumamus, dicentes quod, nisi eisdem circuitibus temporum eadem temporalia repetantur, non potest Deus cuncta quae facit uel praescire ut faciat, uel scire cum fecerit?

Therefore the infinity of number, although there is no number of infinite numbers, is nevertheless not incomprehensible to him whose intelligence is without number. Wherefore, if whatever is comprehended by knowledge is bounded by the comprehension of the knower, assuredly even every infinity is in a certain ineffable way finite to God, because it is not incomprehensible to his knowledge. Wherefore, if the infinity of numbers, to the knowledge of God by which it is comprehended, cannot be infinite: who then are we little men, that we should presume to fix limits to his knowledge, saying that, unless in the same circuits of times the same temporals are repeated, God cannot either foreknow all the things that he does in order to do them, or know them when he has done them?

cuius sapientia simpliciter multiplex et uniformiter multiformis tam inconprehensibili conprehensione omnia inconprehensibilia conprehendit, ut, quaecumque noua et dissimilia consequentia praecedentibus si semper facere uellet, inordinata et inprouisa habere non posset, nec ea prouideret ex proximo tempore, sed aeterna praescientia contineret.

whose wisdom, simply manifold and uniformly multiform, with so incomprehensible a comprehension comprehends all incomprehensibles, that, whatever new and dissimilar things consequent upon the preceding he should will always to make, he could not have them inordinate and unforeseen, nor would he foresee them from proximate time, but would hold them in eternal prescience.

[XX] Quod utrum ita faciat, et continuata sibi conexione copulentur quae appellantur saecula saeculorum, alia tamen atque alia ordinata dissimilitudine procurrentia, eis dumtaxat, qui ex miseria liberantur, in sua beata inmortalitate sine fine manentibus; an ita dicantur saecula saeculorum, ut intellegantur saecula in sapientia Dei inconcussa stabilitate manentia istorum, quae cum tempore transeunt, tamquam efficientia saeculorum, definire non audeo. Fortassis enim possit dici saeculum, quae sunt saecula, ut nihil aliud perhibeatur saeculum saeculi quam saecula saeculorum, sicut nihil aliud dicitur caelum caeli quam caeli caelorum. Nam caelum Deus uocauit firmamentum super quod sunt aquae; et tamen psalmus: Et aquae, inquit, quae super caelos, laudent nomen Domini.

[20] Whether He does it thus, and that what are called the ages of ages are coupled to themselves by a continuous connection, yet, proceeding forth with ordered dissimilarity, with only those who are freed from misery abiding without end in their own blessed immortality; or whether they are called ages of ages in such a way that the ages abiding in the unshaken stability in the wisdom of God are understood, as the efficient causes of the ages of those things which pass along with time—I do not dare to define. Perhaps indeed “age” can be said for what are “ages,” so that nothing else is asserted by “age of age” than “ages of ages,” just as nothing else is said by “heaven of heaven” than “heavens of heavens.” For God called “heaven” the firmament above which are the waters; and yet the psalm: “And the waters,” he says, “which are above the heavens, let them praise the name of the Lord.”

Quid ergo istorum duorum sit, an praeter haec duo aliquid aliud de saeculis saeculorum possit intellegi, profundissima quaestio est, neque hoc quod nunc agimus inpedit, si indiscussa interim differatur; siue aliquid in ea definire ualeamus, siue nos faciat cautiores diligentior ipsa tractatio, ne in tanta obscuritate rerum adfirmare temere aliquid audeamus. Nunc enim contra opinionem disputamus, qua illi circuitus asseruntur, quibus semper eadem per interualla temporum necesse esse repeti existimantur; quaelibet autem illarum sententiarum de saeculis saeculorum uera sit, ad hos circuitus nihil pertinet; quoniam siue saecula saeculorum sint non eadem repetita, sed alterum ex altero contextione ordinatissima procurrentia, liberatorum beatitudine sine ullo recursu miseriarum certissima permanente, siue saecula saeculorum aeterna sint temporalium tamquam dominantia subditorum, circuitus illi eadem reuoluentes locum non habent, quos maxime refellit aeterna uita sanctorum.

What therefore of these two it is, or whether besides these two something else about the ages of ages can be understood, is a most profound question, nor does this hinder what we are now doing if, left undiscussed for the time being, it be deferred; whether we are able to define something in it, or the more diligent tractation itself make us more cautious, lest in so great an obscurity of things we dare to affirm anything rashly. For now we are disputing against the opinion by which those circuits are asserted, in which the same things are thought to have to be repeated always at intervals of times; but whichever of those opinions about the ages of ages be true, it pertains nothing to these circuits; since, whether the ages of ages are not the same things repeated, but, one from another, proceeding in a most orderly contexture, the blessedness of the liberated remaining most certain without any recurrence of miseries, or whether the ages of ages be eternal, of temporals as if dominant over subjects, those circuits that revolve the same things have no place, which the eternal life of the saints most especially refutes.

[XXI] Quorum enim aures piorum ferant post emensam tot tantisque calamitatibus uitam (si tamen uita ista dicenda est, quae potius mors est, ita grauis, ut mors, quae ab hac liberat, mortis huius amore timeatur), post tam magna mala tamque multa et horrenda tandem aliquando per ueram religionem atque sapientiam expiata atque finita ita peruenire ad conspectum Dei atque ita fieri beatum contemplatione incorporeae lucis per participationem inmutabilis inmortalitatis eius, cuius adipiscendae amore flagramus, ut eam quandoque necesse sit deseri et eos, qui deserunt, ab illa aeternitate ueritate felicitate deiectos tartareae mortalitati, turpi stultitiae, miseriis exsecrabilibus implicari, ubi Deus amittatur, ubi odio ueritas habeatur, ubi per inmundas nequitias beatitudo quaeratur, et hoc itidem atque itidem sine ullo fine priorum et posteriorum certis interuallis et dimensionibus saeculorum factum et futurum; et hoc propterea, ut possint Deo circuitibus definitis euntibus semper atque redeuntibus per nostras falsas beatitudines et ueras miserias alternatim quidem, sed reuolutione incessabili sempiternas nota esse opera sua, quoniam neque a faciendo quiescere neque sciendo potest ea, quae infinita sunt, indagare? Quis haec audiat? quis credat?

[21] For what ears of the pious could bear that, after a life passed through so many and so great calamities (if indeed this is to be called a life, which is rather a death, so grievous that the death which frees from it is feared for love of this death), after such great, so many, and horrendous evils have at last sometime been expiated and ended through true religion and wisdom, one should thus come to the sight of God and thus be made blessed by the contemplation of incorporeal light through participation in his immutable immortality, for the attaining of which we burn with love, only that it must at some point be abandoned, and that those who abandon it be cast down from that eternity, truth, felicity, and be entangled in Tartarean mortality, shameful stupidity, execrable miseries—where God is lost, where truth is held in hatred, where beatitude is sought through unclean iniquities—and that this, again and again, without any end of befores and afters, in fixed intervals and dimensions of the ages, has been done and will be done; and this for the reason that, by defined circuits always going and returning through our false beatitudes and true miseries, alternately indeed but by an incessant revolution, his works may be known to God as everlasting—since he can neither rest from doing nor, by knowing, track out the things that are infinite? Who would hear this? who would believe it?

quis ferat? Quae si uera essent, non solum tacerentur prudentius, uerum etiam (ut quo modo ualeo dicam quod uolo) doctius nescirentur. Nam si haec illic in memoria non habebimus et ideo beati erimus, cur hic per eorum scientiam grauatur amplius nostra miseria?

who would endure it? Which things, if they were true, not only would be more prudently kept silent, but also (that, in whatever way I can, I may say what I want) more learnedly be unknown. For if we shall not have these there in memory, and on that account shall be blessed, why is our misery here made heavier by the knowledge of them?

Si autem ibi ea necessario scituri sumus, hic saltem nesciamus, ut hic felicior sit expectatio quam illic adeptio summi boni; quando hic aeterna uita consequenda expectatur; ibi autem beata, sed non aeterna, quandoque amittenda cognoscitur.

But if there we shall necessarily know those things, here at least let us not know them, so that here expectation may be happier than there the adeption of the supreme good; since here eternal life to be obtained is expected; but there a blessed, yet not eternal, life, sometime to be lost, is recognized.

Si autem dicunt neminem posse ad illam beatitudinem peruenire, nisi hos circuitus, ubi beatitudo et miseria uicissim alternant, in huius uitae eruditione cognouerit: quo modo ergo fatentur, quanto plus quisque amauerit Deum, tanto eum facilius ad beatitudinem peruenturum, qui ea docent, quibus amor ipse torpescat? Nam quis non remissius et tepidius amet eum, quem se cogitat necessario deserturum et contra eius ueritatem sapientiamque sensurum, et hoc cum ad eius plenam pro sua capacitate notitiam beatitudinis perfectione peruenerit? quando nec hominem amicum possit quisque amare fideliter, cui se futurum nouit inimicum.

If, however, they say that no one can arrive at that beatitude, unless he has learned in the erudition of this life these circuits, where beatitude and misery alternate in turn: how then do they confess that, the more each person shall have loved God, by so much the more easily he will come to beatitude—they who teach those things by which love itself may grow torpid? For who would not love more remissly and more tepidly him whom he thinks himself necessarily going to desert and to experience what is against his truth and wisdom—and this when he has come, according to his capacity, to the full knowledge of him by the perfection of beatitude? since not even a human friend can anyone love faithfully, whom he knows he will hereafter be an enemy to.

Sed absit ut uera sint, quae nobis minantur ueram miseriam numquam finiendam, sed interpositionibus falsae beatitudinis saepe ac sine fine rumpendam. Quid enim illa beatitudine falsius atque fallacius, ubi nos futuros miseros aut in tanta ueritatis luce nesciamus aut in summa felicitatis arce timeamus? Si enim uenturam calamitatem ignoraturi sumus, peritior est hic nostra miseria, ubi uenturam beatitudinem nouimus; si autem nos illic clades inminens non latebit, beatius tempora transigit anima misera, quibus transactis ad beatitudinem subleuetur, quam beata, quibus transactis in miseriam reuoluatur.

But far be it that those things be true which threaten us with a true misery never to be ended, but to be broken often and without end by interpositions of false beatitude. For what is more false and more fallacious than that beatitude, where, either in so great a light of truth we are ignorant that we shall be wretched, or in the highest citadel of felicity we fear it? For if we are going to be ignorant of the calamity to come, more experienced is our misery here, where we know the beatitude to come; but if there the imminent disaster will not lie hidden from us, the wretched soul passes its times more blessedly, after which it is lifted up to beatitude, than a blessed one, after which it is rolled back into misery.

Atque ita spes nostrae infelicitatis est felix et felicitatis infelix. Vnde fit, ut, quia hic mala praesentia patimur, ibi metuimus inminentia, uerius semper miseri quam beati aliquando esse possimus.

And thus the hope of our infelicity is felicitous, and of felicity infelicitous. Whence it comes about that, since here we suffer present evils, there we fear impending ones, we can more truly always be miserable than ever be blessed.

Sed quoniam haec falsa sunt clamante pietate, conuincente ueritate (illa enim nobis ueraciter promittitur uera felicitas, cuius erit semper retinenda et nulla infelicitate rumpenda certa securitas): uiam rectam sequentes, quod nobis est Christus, eo duce ac saluatore a uano et inepto impiorum circuitu iter fidei mentemque auertamus. Si enim de istis circuitibus et sine cessatione alternantibus itionibus et reditionibus animarum Porphyrius Platonicus suorum opinionem sequi noluit, siue ipsius rei uanitate permotus siue iam tempora Christiana reueritus, et, quod in libro decimo commemoraui, dicere maluit animam propter cognoscenda mala traditam mundo, ut ab eis liberata atque purgata, cum ad Patrem redierit, nihil ulterius tale patiatur: quanto magis nos istam inimicam Christianae fidei falsitatem detestari ac deuitare debemus! His autem circuitibus euacuatis atque frustratis nulla necessitas nos compellit ideo putare non habere initium temporis ex quo esse coeperit genus humanum, quia per nescio quos circuitus nihil sit in rebus noui, quod non et antea certis interuallis temporum fuerit et postea sit futurum.

But since these things are false, piety crying out, truth convicting (for true felicity is truly promised to us, whose sure security will always be to be retained and by no infelicity to be broken): following the straight way, which for us is Christ, with him as guide and savior, let us turn the road of faith and our mind away from the vain and inept circuit of the impious. For if, concerning those circuits and the unceasing alternating goings and returnings of souls, Porphyry the Platonist did not wish to follow the opinion of his own party, whether moved by the vanity of the matter itself or already reverencing the Christian times, and—as I recalled in Book 10—preferred to say that the soul was handed over to the world for the sake of knowing evils, so that, freed and purged from them, when it shall have returned to the Father, it may suffer nothing further of such a sort: how much more ought we to detest and avoid that falsity inimical to the Christian faith! But with these circuits emptied and frustrated, no necessity compels us therefore to think that there is not a beginning of time from which the human race began to be, on the ground that through I-know-not-what circuits there is nothing new in things which has not also before been at fixed intervals of times and will afterward be future.

Si enim liberatur anima non reditura ad miserias, sicut numquam antea liberata est: fit in illa aliquid, quod antea numquam factum est, et hoc quidem ualde magnum, id est quae numquam desinat aeterna felicitas. Si autem in natura inmortali fit tanta nouitas nullo repetita, nullo repetenda circuitu: cur in rebus mortalibus fieri non posse contenditur? Si dicunt non fieri in anima beatitudinis nouitatem, quoniam ad eam reuertitur, in qua semper fuit, ipsa certe liberatio noua fit, cum de miseria liberatur in qua numquam fuit, et ipsa miseriae nouitas in ea facta est quae numquam fuit.

If indeed the soul is freed, not to return to miseries, just as it was never before freed: there comes to be in it something that never before was done, and this indeed very great—that is, an eternal felicity which never ceases. But if in an immortal nature so great a novelty comes to be, repeated by no circuit and to be repeated by none, why is it contended that in mortal things it cannot come to be? If they say that there does not occur in the soul a novelty of beatitude, since it returns to that in which it always was, assuredly the very liberation becomes new, when it is freed from a misery in which it never was, and the very novelty of misery has been made in it which never was.

Haec autem nouitas si non in rerum, quae diuina prouidentia gubernantur, ordinem uenit, sed casu potius euenit, ubi sunt illi determinati dimensique circuitus, in quibus nulla noua fiunt, sed repetuntur eadem quae fuerunt? Si autem et haec nouitas ab ordinatione prouidentiae non excluditur, siue data sit anima siue lapsa sit: possunt fieri noua, quae neque antea facta sint nec tamen a rerum ordine aliena sint. Et si potuit anima per inprudentiam facere sibi nouam miseriam, quae non esset inprouisa diuinae prouidentiae, ut hanc quoque in rerum ordine includeret et ab hac eam non inprouide liberaret: qua tandem temeritate humanae uanitatis audemus negare diuinitatem facere posse res, non sibi, sed mundo nouas, quas neque antea fecerit nec umquam habuerit inprouisas?

But if this novelty does not come within the order of things which are governed by divine providence, but rather happens by chance, where are those determined and measured circuits, in which nothing new comes to be, but the same things that were are repeated? But if even this novelty is not excluded from the ordination of providence, whether the soul be given or fallen: new things can happen which neither were done before nor yet are alien to the order of things. And if the soul could through imprudence make for itself a new misery, which would not be unforeseen by divine providence, so as to include this too within the order of things and not improvidently to free it from this: with what rashness of human vanity do we dare to deny that the divinity can make things new, not for itself, but for the world—things which it had not made before nor ever had as unforeseen?

Si autem dicunt liberatas quidem animas ad miseriam non reuersuras, sed cum hoc fit in rebus nihil noui fieri, quoniam semper aliae atque aliae liberatae sunt et liberantur et liberabuntur: hoc certe concedunt, si ita est, nouas animas fieri, quibus sit et noua miseria et noua liberatio. Nam si antiquas eas esse dicunt et retrorsum sempiternas, ex quibus cotidie noui fiant homines, de quorum corporibus, si sapienter uixerint, ita liberentur, ut numquam ad miserias reuoluantur, consequenter dicturi sunt infinitas. Quantuslibet namque finitus numerus fuisset animarum, infinitis retro saeculis sufficere non ualeret, ut ex illo semper homines fierent, quorum essent animae ab ista semper mortalitate liberandae, numquam ad eam deinceps rediturae.

But if, however, they say that souls once liberated will not revert to misery, yet that when this happens nothing novel happens among things, since always others and others have been liberated and are being liberated and will be liberated: this certainly they concede, if it is so, that new souls come to be, for whom there is both a new misery and a new liberation. For if they say that they are antique and sempiternal backward, from which new men are made daily, and that from their bodies, if they shall have lived wisely, they are thus liberated that they never revolve back to miseries, they will consequently be saying that they are infinite. For whatever finite number of souls there might have been, it would not have been able to suffice for infinite ages backward, so that from that stock men should always come to be, whose souls were always to be liberated from this mortality, never thereafter to return to it.

Nec ullo modo explicabunt, quo modo in rebus, quas, ut Deo notae esse possint, finitas uolunt, infinitus sit numerus animarum.

Nor will they in any way explain how, in things which they wish to be finite so that they may be known to God, there is an infinite number of souls.

Quapropter quoniam circuitus illi iam explosi sunt, quibus ad easdem miserias necessario putabatur anima reditura: quid restat conuenientius pietati quam credere non esse inpossibile Deo et ea, quae numquam fecerit, noua facere et ineffabili praescientia uoluntatem mutabilem non habere? Porro autem utrum animarum liberatarum nec ulterius ad miserias rediturarum numerus possit semper augeri, ipsi uiderint, qui de rerum infinitate cohibenda tam subtiliter disputant; nos uero ratiocinationem nostram ex utroque latere terminamus. Si enim potest, quid causae est, ut negetur creari potuisse quod numquam antea creatum esset, si liberatarum animarum numerus, qui numquam antea fuit, non solum factus est semel, sed fieri numquam desinet?

Wherefore, since those circuits have now been exploded, by which it was thought that the soul would of necessity return to the same miseries: what remains more congruent to piety than to believe it is not impossible for God both to make new things which He has never made, and, with ineffable prescience, to have no mutable will? Moreover, whether the number of souls liberated and not thereafter to return to miseries can always be increased, let those see to it who so subtly dispute about the cohibiting of the infinitude of things; but we, for our part, terminate our ratiocination on both sides. For if it can, what cause is there that it be denied that what had never before been created could have been created, if the number of liberated souls, which had never before existed, not only has been made once, but will never cease to be made?

Si autem oportet ut certus sit liberatarum aliquis numerus animarum, quae ad miseriam numquam redeant, neque iste numerus ulterius augeatur: etiam ipse sine dubio, quicumque erit, ante utique numquam fuit; qui profecto crescere et ad suae quantitatis terminum peruenire sine aliquo non posset initio; quod initium eo modo antea numquam fuit. Hoc ergo ut esset, creatus est homo, ante quem nullus fuit.

If, however, it must be that there be some certain number of liberated souls who never return to misery, and that this number be not further increased: even that same number, without doubt, whatever it shall be, assuredly had never been before; which indeed could not grow and reach the boundary of its quantity without some beginning; which beginning in that manner had never been before. Therefore, in order that this might be, man was created, before whom there was none.

[XXII] Hac igitur quaestione difficillima propter aeternitatem Dei noua creantis sine nouitate aliqua uoluntatis, quantum potuimus, explicata non est arduum uidere multo fuisse melius quod factum est, ut ex uno homine, quem primum condidit, multiplicaret genus humanum, quam si id incohasset a pluribus. Nam cum animantes alias solitarias et quodam modo soliuagas, id est, quae solitudinem magis adpetant, sicuti sunt aquilae milui, leones lupi et quaecumque ita sunt, alias congreges instituerit, quae congregatae atque in gregibus malint uiuere, ut sunt columbi sturni, cerui dammulae et cetera huius modi: utrumque tamen genus non ex singulis propagauit, sed plura simul iussit existere. Hominem uero, cuius naturam quodam modo mediam inter angelos bestiasque condebat, ut, si Creatori suo tamquam uero domino subditus praeceptum eius pia oboedientia custodiret, in consortium transiret angelicum, sine morte media beatam inmortalitatem absque ullo termino consecutus; si autem Dominum Deum suum libera uoluntate superbe atque inoboedienter usus offenderet, morti addictus bestialiter uiueret, libidinis seruus aeternoque post mortem supplicio destinatus, unum ac singulum creauit, non utique solum sine humana societate deserendum, sed ut eo modo uehementius ei commendaretur ipsius societatis unitas uinculumque concordiae, si non tantum inter se naturae similitudine, uerum etiam cognationis affectu homines necterentur; quando ne ipsam quidem feminam copulandam uiro sicut ipsum creare illi placuit, sed ex ipso, ut omnino ex homine uno diffunderetur genus humanum.

[22] Therefore, this most difficult question, on account of the eternity of God creating new things without any newness of will, having been explained as far as we were able, it is not arduous to see that what was done was much better: that from one man, whom he first fashioned, he multiplied the human race, than if he had begun it from many. For whereas he has appointed some living creatures to be solitary and, in a certain manner, wanderers—namely those that rather seek solitude, such as eagles, kites, lions, wolves, and whatever are thus—and others to be gregarious, which prefer to live gathered and in flocks, as doves, starlings, stags, fallow-deer, and other things of this kind: yet he propagated neither kind from single individuals, but commanded several to exist at once. But Man, whose nature he was fashioning, in a certain way, as a mean between angels and beasts—so that, if, being subject to his Creator as to the true Lord, he should keep his precept with pious obedience, he would pass into angelic consortium, attaining blessed immortality without death intervening and without any terminus; but if, by free will, using it proudly and disobediently, he should offend the Lord his God, he would, adjudged to death, live beastially, a slave of lust and destined to eternal punishment after death—him he created one single individual, not, to be sure, to be left alone without human society, but in order that in this way the unity of that society and the bond of concord might be the more vehemently commended to him, if men were knit together not only by the likeness of nature but also by the affection of kinship; since it pleased him not even to create the very woman to be joined to the man as he created him, but from him, so that wholly from one man the human race might be diffused.

[XXIII] Nec ignorabat Deus hominem peccaturum et morti iam obnoxium morituros propagaturum eoque progressuros peccandi inmanitate mortales, ut tutius atque pacatius inter se rationalis uoluntatis expertes bestiae sui generis uiuerent, quarum ex aquis et terris plurium pullulauit exordium, quam homines, quorum genus ex uno est ad commendandam concordiam propagatum. Neque enim umquam inter se leones aut inter se dracones, qualia homines, bella gesserunt. Sed praeuidebat etiam gratia sua populum piorum in adoptionem uocandum remissisque peccatis iustificatum spiritu sancto sanctis angelis in aeterna pace sociandum, nouissima inimica morte destructa; cui populo esset huius rei consideratio profutura, quod ex uno homine Deus ad commendandum hominibus, quam ei grata sit etiam in pluribus unitas, genus instituisset humanum.

[23] Nor was God ignorant that man would sin and, already liable to death, would propagate mortals, and would advance in the savagery of sinning to such a degree that beasts of their kind, devoid of rational will, would live more safely and more peacefully among themselves than men, whose race was propagated from one, to commend concord. For never have lions among themselves, or dragons among themselves, waged wars such as men. But he also foresaw, by his grace, that a people of the devout would be called into adoption, their sins remitted, justified, to be joined by the Holy Spirit to the holy angels in eternal peace, the last enemy, death, having been destroyed; for which people the consideration of this fact would be profitable: that from one man God had established the human race, to commend to human beings how pleasing to him unity is, even in many.

[XXIV] Fecit ergo Deus hominem ad imaginem suam. Talem quippe illi animam creauit, qua per rationem atque intellegentiam omnibus esset praestantior animalibus terrestribus et natatilibus et uolatilibus, quae mentem huius modi non haberent. Et cum uirum terreno formasset ex puluere eique animam qualem dixi siue quam iam fecerat sufflando indidisset siue potius sufflando fecisset eumque flatum, quem sufflando fecit (nam quid est aliud sufflare quam flatum facere?), animam hominis esse uoluisset, etiam coniugem illi in adiutorium generandi ex eius latere osse detracto fecit, ut Deus.

[24] Therefore God made man in His image. Indeed, He created for him such a soul that, through reason and intelligence, he would be more preeminent than all the terrestrial, swimming, and flying animals, which did not have a mind of this kind. And when He had formed the man of earth from dust and had inserted into him the soul of the sort I have said—either that which He had already made by breathing it in, or rather had made by breathing—and had willed that the breath which He made by breathing (for what is to breathe-in but to make breath?) be the soul of man, He also made for him a spouse as a helper for generating, from his side, a bone having been taken away, as God.

Neque enim haec carnali consuetudine cogitanda sunt, ut uidere solemus opifices ex materia quacumque terrena corporalibus membris, quod artis industria potuerint, fabricantes. Manus Dei potentia Dei est, qui etiam uisibilia inuisibiliter operatur. Sed haec fabulosa potius quam uera esse arbitrantur, qui uirtutem ac sapientiam Dei, qua nouit et potest etiam sine seminibus ipsa certe facere semina, ex his usitatis et cotidianis metiuntur operibus; ea uero, quae primitus instituta sunt, quoniam non nouerunt, infideliter cogitant, quasi non haec ipsa, quae nouerunt de humanis conceptibus atque partubus, si inexpertis narrarentur, incredibiliora uiderentur; quamuis et ea ipsa plerique magis naturae corporalibus causis quam operibus diuinae mentis adsignent.

For these things are not to be thought of by carnal custom, as we are accustomed to see artificers, with corporeal members, fabricating out of whatever earthly material whatever they have been able by the industry of their art. The hand of God is the power of God, who also works visible things invisibly. But those reckon these things to be fabulous rather than true who measure the virtue and wisdom of God—by which he knows and is able even without seeds to make the seeds themselves, to be sure—by these usual and quotidian works; whereas the things that were instituted in the beginning, since they do not know them, they think of faithlessly, as though these very things which they know about human conceptions and births, if they were narrated to the inexperienced, would seem more incredible; although even those very things most men assign rather to the corporeal causes of nature than to the works of the divine mind.

[XXV] Sed cum his nullum nobis est in his libris negotium, qui diuinam mentem facere uel curare ista non credunt. Illi autem qui Platoni suo credunt non ab illo summo Deo, qui fabricatus est mundum, sed ab aliis minoribus, quos quidem ipse creauerit, permissu siue iussu eius animalia facta esse cuncta mortalia, in quibus homo praecipuum diisque ipsis cognatum teneret locum, si superstitione careant, qua quaerunt unde iuste uideantur sacra et sacrificia facere quasi conditoribus suis, facile carebunt etiam huius opinionis errore. Neque enim fas est ullius naturae quamlibet minimae mortalisque creatorem nisi Deum credere ac dicere, et antequam possit intellegi.

[25] But we have no business in these books with those who do not believe that the divine mind makes or cares for these things. But those who trust their Plato, that not by that highest God, who fabricated the world, but by other lesser ones—whom indeed he himself created—by his permission or command all mortal animals were made, among which man would hold a principal place and be cognate with the gods themselves, if they lack the superstition whereby they seek a pretext to seem justly to perform sacred rites and sacrifices as if to their own creators, will easily lack also the error of this opinion. For it is not right to believe and to say that the creator of any nature, however smallest and mortal, is anyone but God, and this even before it can be understood.

Angeli autem, quos illi deos libentius appellant, etiamsi adhibent uel iussi uel permissi operationem suam rebus quae gignuntur in mundo, tam non eos dicimus creatores animalium, quam nec agricolas frugum atque arborum. [XXVI] Cum enim alia sit species, quae adhibetur extrinsecus cuicumque materiae corporali, sicut operantur homines figuli et fabri atque id genus opifices, qui etiam pingunt et effingunt formas similes corporibus animalium; alia uero, quae intrinsecus efficientes causas habet de secreto et occulto naturae uiuentis atque intellegentis arbitrio, quae non solum naturales corporum species, uerum etiam ipsas animantium animas, dum non fit, facit: supra dicta illa species artificibus quibusque tribuatur; haec autem altera non nisi uni artifici, creatori et conditori Deo, qui mundum ipsum et angelos sine ullo mundo et sine ullis angelis fecit. Qua enim ui diuina et, ut ita dicam, effectiua, quae fieri nescit, sed facere, accepit speciem, cum mundus fieret, rutunditas caeli et rutunditas solis: eadem ui diuina et effectiua, quae fieri nescit, sed facere, accepit speciem rutunditas oculi et rutunditas pomi et ceterae figurae naturales, quas uidemus in rebus quibusque nascentibus non extrinsecus adhiberi, sed intima Creatoris potentia, qui dixit: Caelum et terram ego impleo, et cuius sapientia est, quae adtingit a fine usque ad finem fortiter et disponit omnia suauiter.

But the angels, whom they more readily call gods, even if they apply—either commanded or permitted—their operation to the things that are begotten in the world, we no more call them creators of animals than we call farmers creators of crops and trees. [26] For since the one kind (species) is that which is applied from without to any corporeal matter, as men work—potters and smiths and artisans of that sort—who also paint and fashion forms like to the bodies of animals; and another kind, which has efficient causes from within, from the secret and hidden judgment of a living and intelligent nature, which, while it is not itself made, makes not only the natural forms of bodies but even the very souls of living beings: let that former kind (species) mentioned above be attributed to the various artificers; but this latter to none save to the one Artificer, the Creator and Founder God, who made the world itself and the angels without any world and without any angels. For by that divine and, so to speak, effective power, which knows not how to be made, but to make, the rotundity of the heaven and the rotundity of the sun received form when the world was made; by that same divine and effective power, which knows not how to be made, but to make, the rotundity of the eye and the rotundity of the apple received form, and the other natural figures which we see in things as they are born—not being applied from without, but by the inmost power of the Creator, who said: “I fill heaven and earth,” and whose Wisdom it is “which attains from end to end mightily and disposes all things sweetly.”

Proinde facti primitus angeli cuius modi ministerium praebuerint Creatori cetera facienti nescio; nec tribuere illis audeo quod forte non possunt, nec debeo derogare quod possunt. Creationem tamen conditionemque omnium naturarum, qua fit ut omnino naturae sint, eis quoque fauentibus illi Deo tribuo, cui se etiam ipsi debere quod sunt cum gratiarum actione nouerunt. Non solum igitur agricolas non dicimus fructuum quorumque creatores, cum legamus: Neque qui plantat est aliquid neque qui rigat, sed qui incrementum dat Deus; sed ne ipsam quidem terram, quamuis mater omnium fecunda uideatur, quae germinibus erumpentia promouet et fixa radicibus continet, cum itidem legamus: Deus illi dat corpus quo modo uoluerit et unicuique seminum proprium corpus.

Accordingly, of what sort of ministry the angels, made at the first, rendered to the Creator while he was making the rest, I do not know; nor do I dare to attribute to them what perhaps they cannot, nor ought I to derogate from what they can. Yet the creation and constitution of all natures, by which it comes about that they are natures at all, I attribute to that God—with they themselves also favoring—whom they too know with thanksgiving that they owe what they are. Not only, therefore, do we not call the farmers creators of any fruits whatever, since we read: “Neither he who plants is anything nor he who waters, but God who gives the increase;” but not even the earth itself, although it seems the fertile mother of all, which promotes the shoots bursting forth and holds fast those fixed by roots, since likewise we read: “God gives it a body as he has willed, and to each of the seeds its proper body.”

Ita nec feminam sui puerperii creatricem appellare debemus, sed potius illum qui cuidam famulo suo dixit: Priusquam te formarem in utero, noui te. Et quamuis anima sic uel sic affecta praegnantis ualeat aliquibus uelut induere qualitatibus fetum, sicut de uirgis uariatis fecit Iacob, ut pecora colore uaria gignerentur: naturam tamen illam, quae gignitur, tam ipsa non fecit, quam nec ipsa se fecit. Quaelibet igitur corporales uel seminales causae gignendis rebus adhibeantur, siue operationibus angelorum aut hominum aut quorumque animalium siue manum feminarumque mixtionibus; quaelibet etiam desideria motusue animae matris ualeant aliquid liniamentorum aut colorum aspergere teneris mollibusque conceptibus: ipsas omnino naturas, quae sic uel sic in suo genere afficiantur, non facit nisi summus Deus, cuius occulta potentia cuncta penetrans incontaminabili praesentia facit esse quidquid aliquo modo est, in quantumcumque est; quia nisi faciente illo non tale uel tale esset, sed prorsus esse non posset. Quapropter si in illa specie, quam forinsecus corporalibus opifices rebus inponunt, urbem Romam et urbem Alexandriam non fabros et architectos, sed reges, quorum uoluntate consilio imperio fabricatae sunt, illam Romam, illam Alexandrum habuisse dicimus conditores: quanto potius non nisi Deum debemus conditorem dicere naturarum, qui neque ex ea materia facit aliquid, quam ipse non fecerit, nec operarios habet, nisi quos ipse creauerit; et si potentiam suam, ut ita dicam, fabricatoriam rebus subtrahat, ita non erunt, sicut ante quam fierent non fuerunt.

Thus neither ought we to call a woman the creatress of her own childbirth, but rather Him who said to a certain servant of his: Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you. And although the soul of a pregnant woman, affected now thus now so, can, as it were, clothe the fetus with certain qualities—just as Jacob did with the variegated rods, so that the cattle might be begotten of diverse color—yet that nature which is begotten she no more made than she made herself. Therefore whatever bodily or seminal causes are applied for generating things, whether by the operations of angels or men or of whatever animals, or by the minglings of males and females; whatever desires or motions of the mother’s soul may be able to sprinkle something of lineaments or colors upon the tender and soft conceptions: the very natures themselves, which in their kind are affected thus or thus, none makes save the Most High God, whose hidden power, penetrating all things with uncontaminable presence, makes to be whatever in any way is, to whatever extent it is; for unless He were the maker, it would not be of this or that sort, but could not be at all. Wherefore, if in that “form” which craftsmen of bodies impose from without upon things, we say that the city Rome and the city Alexandria had as founders not the workmen and the architects, but the kings by whose will, counsel, and command they were fabricated—that Rome had that king, that Alexandria had Alexander—how much more ought we to call none but God the founder of natures, who neither makes anything out of any matter which He himself has not made, nor has workmen except those whom He himself has created; and if He should withdraw His, so to speak, fabricative power from things, thus they will not be, just as before they were made they were not.

Sed ante dico aeternitate, non tempore. Quis enim alius creator est temporum, nisi qui fecit ea, quorum motibus currerent tempora?

But I say “before” by eternity, not by time. For who else is the creator of times, if not he who made those things, by whose motions the times run?

[XXVII] Ita sane Plato minores et a summo Deo factos deos effectores esse uoluit animalium ceterorum, ut inmortalem partem ab ipso sumerent, ipsi uero mortalem adtexerent. Proinde animarum nostrarum eos creatores noluit esse, sed corporum. Vnde quoniam Porphyrius propter animae purgationem dicit corpus omne fugiendum simulque cum suo Platone aliisque Platonicis sentit eos, qui inmoderate atque inhoneste uixerint, propter luendas poenas ad corpora redire mortalia, Plato quidem etiam bestiarum, Porphyrius tantummodo ad hominum: sequitur eos, ut dicant deos istos, quos a nobis uolunt quasi parentes et conditores nostros coli, nihil esse aliud quam fabros compedum carcerumue nostrorum, nec institutores, sed inclusores adligatoresque nostros ergastulis aerumnosis et grauissimis uinculis.

[27] Thus indeed Plato wished the lesser gods, made by the supreme God, to be makers of the other animals, so that they should take the immortal part from him, but themselves attach the mortal. Accordingly he did not wish them to be creators of our souls, but of bodies. Whence, since Porphyry, for the purgation of the soul, says that every body must be fled, and, together with his Plato and the other Platonists, holds that those who have lived immoderately and dishonorably return to mortal bodies to pay penalties—Plato indeed even into those of beasts, Porphyry only into those of men—it follows for them to say that those gods, whom they want to be worshiped by us as our parents and founders, are nothing else than fabricators of our fetters and prisons, not institutors but enclosers and binders of us in toilsome ergastula and in most heavy chains.

Aut ergo desinant Platonici poenas animarum ex istis corporibus comminari, aut eos nobis deos colendos non praedicent, quorum in nobis operationem, ut quantum possumus fugiamus et euadamus, hortantur, cum tamen sit utrumque falsissimum. Nam neque ita luunt poenas animae, cum ad istam uitam denuo reuoluuntur, et omnium uiuentium siue in caelo siue in terra nullus est conditor, nisi a quo facta sunt caelum et terra. Nam si nulla causa est uiuendi in hoc corpore nisi propter pendenda supplicia: quo modo dicit idem Plato aliter mundum fieri non potuisse pulcherrimum atque optimum, nisi omnium animalium, id est et inmortalium et mortalium, generibus impleretur?

Therefore let the Platonists either cease to threaten the punishments of souls from these bodies, or not proclaim to us as gods to be worshiped those whose operation in us they urge us, so far as we can, to flee and to escape—although both are most false. For neither do souls thus pay penalties when they are rolled back again to this life, and of all living beings, whether in heaven or on earth, there is no founder except the one by whom heaven and earth were made. For if there is no cause of living in this body except for penalties to be paid, how does that same Plato say that the world could not have been made otherwise most beautiful and best, unless it were filled with the kinds of all animals, that is, both immortal and mortal?

Si autem nostra institutio, qua uel mortales conditi sumus, diuinum munus est: quo modo poena est ad ista corpora, id est ad diuina beneficia, remeare? Et si Deus, quod adsidue Plato commemorat, sicut mundi uniuersi, ita omnium animalium species aeterna intellegentia continebat: quo modo non ipse cuncta condebat? An aliquorum esse artifex nollet, quorum efficiendorum artem ineffabilis eius et ineffabiliter laudabilis mens haberet?

If, however, our constitution, whereby we have been created as mortals, is a divine gift: how is it a punishment to return to these bodies, that is, to divine benefactions? And if God, as Plato assiduously commemorates, contained in his eternal intelligence the species of the whole universe and likewise of all animals: how was he not himself creating all things? Or would he be unwilling to be the artifex of certain things, for the effecting of which his ineffable and ineffably laudable mind held the art?

[XXVIII] Merito igitur uera religio, quem mundi uniuersi, eum animalium quoque uniuersorum, hoc est et animarum et corporum, conditorem agnoscit et praedicat. In quibus terrenis praecipuus ab illo ad eius imaginem homo propter eam causam, quam dixi, et si qua forte alia maior latet, factus est unus, sed non relictus est solus. Nihil enim est quam hoc genus tam discordiosum uitio, tam sociale natura.

[28] Rightly therefore the true religion recognizes and proclaims him as the creator of the whole universe, and also of all animals— that is, both of souls and of bodies. Among these earthly things, the human being was made by him according to his image as preeminent, for that cause which I have said, and if perhaps some other greater one lies latent, he was made one, but he was not left alone. For nothing is so discordant by vice, so social by nature, as this kind.

Neque commodius contra uitium discordiae uel cauendum ne existeret, uel sanandum cum extitisset, natura loqueretur humana, quam recordationem illius parentis, quem propterea Deus creare uoluit unum, de quo multitudo propagaretur, ut hac admonitione etiam in multis concors unitas seruaretur. Quod uero femina illi ex eius latere facta est, etiam hic satis significatum est quam cara mariti et uxoris debeat esse coniunctio. Haec opera Dei propterea sunt utique inusitate, quia prima.

Nor could human nature speak more suitably against the vice of discord—either to be guarded against lest it arise, or to be healed when it has arisen—than by the recollection of that parent, whom for this reason God willed to create one, from whom a multitude would be propagated, so that by this admonition even among many a concordant unity might be preserved. And that the woman was made for him from his side, even here it has been sufficiently signified how dear the conjunction of husband and wife ought to be. These works of God are therefore assuredly unusual, because they are the first.

Qui autem ista non credunt, nulla facta prodigia debent credere; neque enim et ipsa, si usitato naturae curriculo gignerentur, prodigia dicerentur. Quid autem sub tanta gubernatione diuinae prouidentiae, quamuis eius causa lateat, frustra gignitur? Ait quidam psalmus sacer: Venite et uidete opera Domini, quae posuit prodigia super terram.

But those who do not believe these things ought to believe no prodigies at all; for neither would they themselves be called prodigies, if they were begotten by the usual course of nature. And what, under so great a governance of divine providence, though its cause lie hidden, is brought forth in vain? A certain sacred psalm says: Come and see the works of the Lord, who has set prodigies upon the earth.

Cur ergo ex latere uiri femina facta sit, et hoc primum quodam modo prodigium quid praefigurauerit, dicetur alio loco, quantum me Deus adiuuerit.

Why, therefore, a woman was made from the side of the man, and what this first prodigy, in a certain manner, prefigured, will be said in another place, insofar as God shall aid me.

Nunc quoniam liber iste claudendus est, in hoc [primo] homine, qui primitus factus est, nondum quidem secundum euidentiam, iam tamen secundum Dei praescientiam exortas fuisse existimemus in genere humano societates tamquam ciuitates duas. Ex illo enim futuri erant homines, alii malis angelis in supplicio, alii bonis in praemio sociandi, quamuis occulto Dei iudicio, sed tamen iusto. Cum enim scriptum sit: Vniuersae uiae Domini misericordia et ueritas: nec iniusta eius gratia nec crudelis potest esse iustitia.

Now, since this book must be closed, in this [first] man, who was made first, let us suppose that, not yet indeed according to evidence, yet already according to God’s prescience, societies—as it were two cities—had arisen in the human race. For from him there would be men, some to be associated with evil angels in punishment, others with good in reward, although by God’s hidden judgment, yet nevertheless just. Since it is written: All the ways of the Lord are mercy and truth: neither can his grace be unjust nor his justice cruel.