Augustine: Earlier Writings
them by making a good use of them, and not by being associated with them through any misery of their own, for they have none. But if sinful souls were allowed to inhabit celestial regions, it would be wrong, for they are not suited to things of which they cannot make a good use, and on which they can confer no honour.
28. Although this earthly globe must be accounted among corruptible things, yet it preserves, so far as it can, the image of higher things, and ceases not to show us examples and traces of higher things. If we see some good and great man burned by fire, so far as his body is concerned, in obedience to the command of duty, we do not call that the penalty of sin, but the evidence of courage and endurance. Though the basest corruption consumes his bodily members, we love him more for it than we should if he suffered nothing of that kind. We marvel that his nilnd did not share the mutability of his body. If we see the members of a cruel brigand consumed by a like punishment, we approve the legal order. Both throw a certain glory upon their torments, but the one by the merit of his virtue, the other by the demerit of his sin. But suppose after or even before the burning we saw the good man changed in a manner agreeable to the celestial habitation and carried up to the stars, we should be glad. But who would not be offended if we saw the criminal brigand, either before or after his punishment but continuing to serve the cause of willing crime, carried to the eternal seat of glory in heaven? So both of them can adorn inferior creatures, but only one of them can adorn superior creatures. So are we bidden to take note that the first man adorned the mortality of our flesh inasmuch as his punishment befitted his sin; and that our Lord Jesus did so likewise, inasmuch as his mercy set us free from sin. The just man, abiding in justice, could have a mortal body. But the wicked man, while he continues in iniquity, cannot in the same way reach the immortality of the saints, that is, sublime and angeHc immortality. I do not mean the immortality of those angels of whom the apostle wrote: *'Know ye not that we shall judge angels" (I Cor. 6:3). But of those of whom the Lord spoke: **They shall be equal to the angels of God" (Luke 20:36). Those who desire equality with angels for their own vain glory do not really want to be themselves equal with the angels but to have the angels equal with them. If they persist in so wi Uing, they will be made equal in punishment with the apostate angels who loved their own power rather than the power of Almighty
ON FREE WILL 189
God. To such, placed upon his left hand because they did not seek God by way of the door of humihty which the Lord Jesus
Christ showed us in his own Person, and because they lived proudly and without mercy, he will say: "Depart into eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels" (Matt. 25:41).
X, 29. There are two sources of sin, a man's own spontaneous thought, and the persuasion of a neighbour. That is what the prophet meant when he said: "Cleanse me from my secret sins, O Lord, and keep thy servant from the sins ofothers" (Ps. 1 9 : 1 2-
Both, however, are voluntary. The man who sins by his own thought does not sin unwillingly, and if he consents to one who persuades him to evil, he does not consent without his own will.
It is more serious to sin by one's own will with none persuading, and in addition by envy and guile to persuade another to sin, than to be brought to sin by the persuasion of another. But in both kinds of sin the justice of the Lord in punishing is preserved. In weighing the case equitably it was found just not to keep man from fal Ung into the power even of the devil, who by evil persuasion had subjected man to himself It would have been inequitable that he should not have had dominion over his captive. But it cannot be that the justice of God, most high and most true, which extends everywhere, should take no part in preserving order even after the downfall of sinners. Because man had sinned less than the devil, he was aided in the recovery of salvation by the very fact that he had been given over until death to the prince of this world, that is, the lowest and mortal part of the universe, to the prince of all sin and the lord of death. Timid, as a result of his consciousness of his mortality, fearing sufferings and death from the vilest, most abject, even the most minute of beasts, and uncertain of the future, man accustomed himself to restrain unlawful pleasures, and especially to curb pride which had persuaded him to his fall, a vice which alone refuses the medicine of mercy. Who needs mercy more than the miserable man; and who is less worthy of it than he who is at once both proud and miserable?
30. Hence it happened that the Word of God, by whom all things were made and whom all the happy angels enjoy, stretched forth his clemency to our misery. "The Word became flesh and dwelt among us." So man could eat the bread of angels.
But man was not yet made equal to the angels, even if the Bread of angels did think fit to make himself the equal of men. But by coming down to us he did not abandon the angels. Remaining at the same time one with them and one with us, he nourishes