Augustine: Earlier Writings (continued)
blamed. If a created rational nature is to be praised, no one can doubt that its creator is also to be praised. If it is to be blamed, no doubt even by blaming it its creator is praised. If we blame it because it will not enjoy the highest and unchanging good, that is, its creator, clearly we are praising him. How great is that chief good! And how ineffably by every tongue and every thought is God the Creator of all things to be honoured and praised! For we can be neither praised nor blamed without praise being given to him. The only reason for blaming us for not abiding in him is that to abide in him is our first and greatest and highest good. How so, if it be not that he is ineffably good? And how can he be blamed for our sins, seeing there can be no blame for our sins which docs not imply his praise?
38. In things which arc blamed nothing is blamed but their fault. And nothing has a fault to be blamed if it has not a nature to be praised. Either what you blame is natural and not a fault, and you are to be taught to correct your fault-finding. Or, if it is really a fault and rightly to be blamed, it must be contrary to nature. Every fault, by the very fact that it is a fault, is contrary to nature. It is no fault if it does no damage to nature. If it docs damage, it is for that reason alone a fault, and, therefore, it is a fault because it is contrary to nature. If a nature is corrupted by another's fault and not by its own, it is unjust to blame it, and we must inquire whether the other nature is not corrupted by its own fault whereby it has the power to corrupt another nature. What is it to be vitiated, if not to be corrupted by vice or fault? A nature which is not vitiated has no fault. But it has a fault if another nature can be vitiated by it. Hence anything that has the power to corrupt another thing with its own fault is itself vitiated to begin with and corrupts with its own fault. Hence we conclude that all fault or vice is contrary to nature, contrary also to the nature of the thing to which the fault originally belongs. Nothing is blamed in anything except vice or fault, and vice is vice precisely because it is contrary to the nature of the thing in which it is found. Therefore a fault is not rightly blamed without at the same time praising the nature in which the fault is found. You have no right to be displeased with a fault except in so far as it vitiates a nature that pleases you. xiv, 39. Now we must see whether a nature can be truly said to be corrupted by another's vice without any vice of its own. If one thing approaches another in order to corrupt it with its own vice, it cannot do so unless it finds something there