Augustine: Earlier Writings
THE USEFULNESS OF BELIEF 293 ceal, or set up terrifying devices to scare the birds from them so that they may fall into their trap, not by their own choice but by lack of any other supply.
3. I might, of course, answer myself by saying that these neat and clever similes, and such censures generally, can be most po Htely and eloquently used by any adversary against all who teach any doctrine whatever. But I thought it right to put that sort of thing into my letter to warn them to cease to use similar modes of controversy. As Cicero says: "Let us give up trifling commonplaces and let us meet fact with fact, case with case, reason with reason." Let them cease to use the expression which trips from their mouths as by some necessity when some one has left them after long attending their discourses, "Light has passed completely through him." I do not bother so much about them; but you, who are my chief concern, will observe how easy and vain is this method of censuring anyone. I leave this point to your prudence. I have no fear that you will think I was the dwelling-place of light when I was involved in the life of this world, nursing shadowy hopes of a beautiful wife, of the pomp of riches, of empty honours and other pernicious and deadly pleasures. All these things, as you know, I did not cease to desire and hope for when I was their zealous hearer. I do not attribute this to their teaching, for I confess that they carefully warned me to beware of these things. Only, to say that I have been abandoned by light when I have turned away from all these shadowy things and have decided to be content with such a livelihood as is necessary for bodily health, but that I was bright and illumined when I loved these things and was held their prisoner, is the mark of a man who, to put it mildly, has no very clear insight into matters about which he loves too much to prate. But let us come to the controversy itself. ii, 4. You know well that the Manichees by their censures of the CathoHc Faith and chiefly by their destructive criticism of the Old Testament aflfect the unlearned, who do not quite know how these things are to be understood, and how, being usefully taken, they may go down into the veins and the marrow of souls still unweaned, so to speak. Because some of these things oflend ignorant and uncareful minds—the great majority—they can be popularly attacked. Not many have the power to defend them in an equally popular way, because of the mysteries they contain. The few who know how to do this do not love public controversy with its consequent publicity. Hence they are unknown except to those who seek them out. Therefore, concerning the rashness of the Manichees in censuring the Old Testament and the Catholic Faith, listen, I pray you, to the considerations which influence me. I hope and pray that you will accept them in the spirit in which they are written. God, to whom the secrets of my conscience are known, knows that in this little book I am doing nothing in malice, but in the hope that my words may be acceptable in proof of the truth. For a long time now, and with incredible solicitude, I have determined to live for the truth alone. I trust that, while it was very easy for me to err in your company, to keep with you the straight path may not be, to avoid a harsher expression, very difficult indeed. In the hope which I cherish that you will find with me the path of wisdom, I am sure he will not leave me to whom I have dedicated myself, whom day and night I seek to behold, and to whom I often pray even weeping, because I know myself incapable of beholding him, since the eye of my soul has been damaged by my sins and by my being habituated to the plagues of lethargic opinions. As eyes which are scarcely opened after a long period of darkness and blindness turn away and refuse the light which, nevertheless, they desire, especially if one try to point them to the sun, so, in my case, I do not deny that there is an ineffable and unique spiritual good visible to the mind, but I confess with weeping and groaning that I am not yet fitted to contemplate it. Nevertheless, he will not leave me if I make no pretence, if I follow the path of duty, if I love truth and friendship, if I am filled with anxiety lest you be deceived, iii, 5. The whole Old Testament Scripture, to those who diligently desire to know it, is handed down with a four-fold sense—historical, aetiological, analogical, allegorical. Don't think me clumsy in using Greek terms, because in the first place these were the terms I was taught, and I do not venture to pass on to you anything else than what I have received. You will notice also that amongst us Latins, there are no words in common use to express these ideas. If I were to attempt a translation of them I might be even clumsier. If I were to use circumlocutions I should be less speedy in my exposition. This only I ask you to believe that, however I stray, I write nothing merely in the interests of a proudly inflated style. In Scripture, according to the historical sense, we are told what has been written or done. Sometimes the historical fact is simply that such and such a thing was written. According to the aetiological sense we are told for what cause something has been done or said. According to the analogical sense we are shown that the Old and New