Augustine: Earlier Writings
ON FREE WILL aij such love, let us be so enraptured with his brightness, that nothing coming into our experience from the lower realms may rob us of our vision of the higher things. And if any suggestion springing from a desire for the inferior should deflect our purpose, the eternal damnation and torments of the devil will recall us to the true path.
77. Such is the beauty of justice, such the pleasure of the eternal light, that is, of unchangeable truth and wisdom, that, even if we could not abide in it more than the space of a single day, for that day alone innumerable years of this life full of delights and abundance of temporal goods would be rightly and deservedly despised. Deep and unfeigned is the emotion expressed in these words: "One day in thy courts is better than thousands" {Ps. 84:10). These words can be understood in another sense. Thousands of days might be understood of mutable time, and by the expression "one day" changeless eternity might be denoted. I do not know whether I have omitted any point in replying, as God has deigned to give me the power, to your questions. Even if anything else occurs to you, moderation compels us now to bring this book to an end, and to take some rest after this disputation.