Early Church Fathers
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32 "The great and merciful Architect of His Church, whom not only the philosophers have styled, but the Scripture itself calls texni/thj (an artist or artificer), employs not on us the hammer and chisel with an intent to wound or mangle us, but only to square and fashion our hard and stubborn hearts into such lively stones as may both grace and strengthen His heavenly structure."-Boyle.
33 See iii. 9; iv. 3, 12, 31; v. 19.
34 As Seneca has it: "Quad ratio non quit, saepe sanabit mora" (Agam. 130).
35 See iv. cc. 1, 10 12, and vi. c. 16.
36 "Friendship," says Lord Bacon, in his essay thereon,-the sentiment being perhaps suggested by Cicero's "Secundas res splendidiores facit amicitia et adversas partiens communicansque leviores" (De Amicit. 6),-"redoubleth joys, and cutteth griefs in halves." Augustin appears to have been eminently open to influences of this kind. In his De Duab. Anim. con. Manich. (c. ix.) he tells us that friendship was one of the bonds that kept him in the ranks of the Manichaeans; and here we find that, aided by time and weeping, it restored him in his great grief. See also v. sec. 19, and vi. sec 26, below.
40 Ps. cxix. 142, and John xvii. 17.
43 See iv. cc. 1, 12, and vi. c. 16, below.
44 It is interesting in connection with the above passages to note what Augustin says elsewhere as to the origin of the law of death in the sin of our first parents. In his De Gen. ad Lit. (vi. 25) he speaks thus of their condition in the garden, and the provision made for the maintenance of their life: "Aliud est non posse mori, sicut quasdam naturas immortales creavit Deus; aliud est autem posse non mori, secundum quem modum primus creatus est homo immortalis." Adam, he goes on to say, was able to avert death, by partaking of the tree of life. He enlarges on this doctrine in Book xiii. De Civ. Dei. He says (sec. 20): "Our first parents decayed not with years, nor drew nearer to death-a condition secured to them in God's marvellous grace by the tree of life, which grew along with the forbidden tree in the midst of Paradise." Again (sec. 19) he says: "Why do the philosophers find that absurd which the Christian faith preaches, namely, that our first parents were so created, that, if they had not sinned, they would not have been dismissed from their bodies by any death, but would have been endowed with immortality as the reward of their obedience, and would have lived eternally with their bodies?" That this was the doctrine of the early Church has been fully shown by Bishop Bull in his State of Man before the Fall, vol. ii. Theophilus of Antioch was of opinion (Ad Autolyc. c. 24) that Adam might have gone on from strength to strength, until at last he "would have been taken up into heaven." See also on this subject Dean Buckland's Sermon on Death; and Delitzsch, Bibl. Psychol. vi. secs. 1 and 2.
48 A similar illustration occurs in sec. 15, above.
49 Augustin is never weary of pointing out that there is a lex occulta (in Ps. lvii. sec. 1), a law written on the heart, which cries to those who have forsaken the written law, "Return to your hearts, ye transgressors." In like manner he interprets (De Serm. Dom. in Mon. ii. sec. 11) "Enter into thy closet," of the heart of man. The door is the gate of the senses through which carnal thoughts enter into the mind. We are to shut the door, because the devil (in Ps. cxli. 3) si clausum invenerit transit. In sec. 16, above, the figure is changed, and we are to fear lest these objects of sense render us "deaf in the ear of our heart" with the tumult of our folly. Men will not, he says, go back into their hearts, because the heart is full of sin, and they fear the reproaches of conscience, just (in Ps. xxxiii. 5) "as those are unwilling to enter their houses who have troublesome wives." These outer things, which too often draw us away from Him, God intends should lift us up to Him who is better than they, though they could all be ours at once, since He made them all; and "woe," he says (De Lib. Arb. ii. 16), "to them who love the indications of Thee rather than Thee, and remember not what these indicated."
51 See iv. cc. 1, 10, above, and vi. c. 16, below.
57 "The Son of God," says Augustin in another place, "became a son of man, that the sons of men might be made sons of God." He put off the form of God-that by which He manifested His divine glory in heaven-and put on the "form of a servant" (Phil. ii. 6, 7), that as the outshining [a0pau/gasma] of the Father's glory (Heb. i. 3) He might draw us to Himself. He descended and emptied Himself of His dignity that we might ascend, giving an example for all time (in Ps. xxxiii. sec. 4); for, "lest man should disdain to imitate a humble man, God humbled Himself, so that the pride of the human race might not disdain to walk in the footsteps of God." See also v. sec. 5, note, below.
59 "There is something in humility which, strangely enough, exalts the heart, and something in pride which debases it. This seems, indeed, to be contradictory, that loftiness should debase and lowliness exalt. But pious humility enables us to submit to what is above us; and nothing is more exalted above us than God; and therefore humility, by making us subject to God, exalts us."-De Civ. Dei, xiv. sec. 13.
65 Augustin tells us (De Civ. Dei, xix. 1) that Varro, in his lost book De Philosophia, gives two hundred and eighty-eight different opinions as regards the chief good, and shows us how readily they may be reduced in number. Now, as then, philosophers ask the same questions. We have our hedonists, whose "good" is their own pleasure and happiness; our materialists, who would seek the common good of all; and our intuitionists, who aim at following the dictates of conscience. When the pretensions of these various schools are examined without prejudice, the conclusion is forced upon us that we must have recourse to Revelation for a reconcilement of the difficulties of the various systems: and that the philosophers, to employ Davidson's happy illustration (Prophecies, Introd.), forgetting that their faded taper has been insensibly kindled by gospel light, are attempting now, as in Augustin's time (ibid. sec. 4), "to fabricate for themselves a happiness in this life based upon a virtue as deceitful as it is proud." Christianity gives the golden key to the attainment of happiness, when it declares that "godliness is profitable for all things, having the promise of the life which now is, and of that which is to come " (I Tim. iv. 8). It was a saying of Bacon (Essay on Adversity), that while "prosperity is the blessing of the old Testament, adversity is the blessing of the New." He would have been nearer the truth had he said that while temporal rewards were the special promise of the Old Testament, spiritual rewards are the special promise of the New. For though Christ's immediate followers had to suffer "adversity" in the planting of our faith, adversity cannot properly be said to be the result of following Christ. It has yet to be shown that, on the whole, the greatest amount of real happiness does not result, even in this life, from a Christian life, for virtue is, even here, its own reward. The fulness of the reward, however, will only be received in the life to come. Augustin's remark, therefore, still holds good that "life eternal is the supreme good, and death eternal the supreme evil, and that to obtain the one and escape the other we must live rightly" (ibid. sec. 4); and again, that even in the midst of the troubles of life, "as we are saved, so we are made happy, by hope. And as we do not as yet possess a present, but look for a future salvation, so it is with our happiness,...we ought patiently to endure till we come to the ineffable enjoyment of unmixed good." See Abbé Anselme, Sur le Souverain Bien, vol. v. serm. 1; and the last chapter of Professor Sidgwick's Methods of Ethics, for the conclusions at which a mind at once lucid and dispassionate has arrived on this question.
66 "Or `an unintelligent soul: 0' very good Mss. reading `sensu, 0' the majority, it appears, `sexu. 0' If we read `sexu, 0' the absolute unity of the first principle or Monad, may be insisted upon, and in the inferior principle, divided into `violence 0' and `lust, 0' `violence, 0' as implying strength, may be looked on as the male, `lust 0' was, in mythology, represented as female if we take `sensu, 0' it will express the living but unintelligent soul of the world in the Manichaean, as a pantheistic system."-E. B. P.
67 Ps. xviii. 28. Augustin constantly urges our recognition of the truth that God is the "Father of lights." From Him as our central sun, all light, whether of wisdom or knowledge proceedeth, and if changing the figure, our candle which He hath lighted be blown out, He again must light it. Compare Enar. in Ps. xciii. 147; and Sermons, 67 and 341.
71 Jas. iv, 6, and I Pet. v. 5.
73 It may assist those unacquainted with Augustin's writings to understand the last three sections, if we set before them a brief view of the Manichaean speculations as to the good and evil principles, and the nature of the human soul:-(1) The Manichaeans believed that there were two principles or substances, one good and the other evil, and that both were eternal and opposed one to the other. The good principle they called God, and the evil, matter or Hyle (Con. Faust. xxi. 1, 2). Faustus, in his argument with Augustin, admits that they sometimes called the evil nature "God," but simply as a conventional usage. Augustin says thereon (ibid. sec. 4): "Faustus glibly defends himself by saying, `We speak not of two gods, but of God and Hyle: 0' but when you ask for the meaning of Hyle, you find that it is in fact another god. If the Manichaeans gave the name of Hyle, as the ancients did, to the unformed matter which is susceptible of bodily forms, we should not accuse them of making two gods. But it is pure folly and madness to give to matter the power of forming bodies, or to deny that what has this power is God." Augustin alludes in the above passage to the Platonic theory of matter, which, as the late Dean Mansel has shown us (Gnostic Heresies, Basilides, etc.), resulted after his time in Pantheism, and which was entirely opposed to the dualism of Manichaeus. It is to this "power of forming bodies" claimed for matter, then, that Augustin alludes in our text (sec. 24) as "not only a substance but real life also." (2) The human soul the Manichaeans declared to be of the same nature as God, though not created by Him-it having originated in the intermingling of part of His being with the evil principle, in the conflict between the kingdoms of light and darkness (in Ps. cxl. sec. 10). Augustin says to Faustus: " You generally call your soul not a temple, but a part or member of God " (Con. Faust. xx. 15): and thus, "identifying themselves with the nature and substance of God" (ibid. xii. 13), they did not refer their sin to themselves, but to the race of darkness, and so did not "prevail over their sin." That is, they denied original sin, and asserted that it necessarily resulted from the soul's contact with the body. To this Augustin steadily replied, that as the soul was not of the nature of God, but created by Him and endowed with free will, man was responsible for his transgressions. Again, referring to the Confessions, we find Augustin speaking consistently with his then belief, when he says that he had not then learned that the soul was not a "chief and unchangeable good" (sec. 24), or that "it was not that nature of truth" (sec. 25): and that when he transgressed "he accused flesh" rather than himself: and, as a result of his Manichaean errors (sec. 26), "contended that God's immutable substance erred of constraint, rather than admit that his mutable substance had gone astray of free will, and erred as a punishment."
76 As the mathematicians did their figures, in dust or sand.
77 "The categories enumerated by Aristotle are o0usi/a, po/son, poi=on, pro/sti, pou=, po/te, keisqai, e_xein, poiei=n, pa/sxein; which are usually rendered, as adequately as perhaps they can be in our language, substance, quantity, quality, relation, place, time, situation, possession, action, suffering. The catalogue which certainly is but a very crude one) has been by some writers enlarged, as it is evident may easily be done by subdividing some of the heads; and by others curtailed, as it is no less evident that all may ultimately be referred to the two heads of substance and attribute, or, in the language of some logicians, `accident 0'" (Whately's Logic, iv. 2, sec. 1, note). "These are called in Latin the praedicaments, because they can be said or predicated in the same sense of all other terms, as well as of all the objects denoted by them, whereas no other term can be correctly said of them, because no other is employed to express the full extent of their meaning" (Gillies, Analysis of Aristotle, c. 2).
83 See iii. 12; iv. 3, 12; v. 19.
86 See xi. sec. 5, note, below.
