Expositions on the Book of Psalms
18 THE WORKS OF ST. AUGUSTIN. [PsaLm VI.
place intimate the day of judgment, how can it be understood now? Is it a beginning of it, that men here suffer pains and torments, and above all the loss of the understanding of the truth; as I have already quoted that which is said, "God gave them over to a reprobate mind"?! For such is the blindness of the mind. Whosoever is given over thereunto, is shut out from the interior light of God: but not wholly as yet, whilst he is in this life. For there is "outer darkness," 5 which is understood to belong rather to the day of judgment; that he should rather be wholly without God, whosoever whilst there is time refuses correction. Now to be wholly without God, what else is it, but to be in extreme blindness? If indeed God " dwell in inaccessible light," ® whereinto they enter, to whom it is said, "' Enter thou into the joy of thy Lord." 7 It is then the beginning of this anger, which in this life every sinner suffers. In fear therefore of the day of judgment, he is in trial and grief; lest he be brought to that, the disastrous commencement of which he experiences now. And therefore he did not say, mine eye is extinguished, but, " mine eye is disordered by anger." But if he mean that his eye is disordered by his own anger, there is no wonder either in this. For hence perhaps it is said, " Let not the sun go down upon your wrath ; ''® because the mind, which, from her own disorder, is not permitted to see God, supposes that the inner sun, that is, the wisdom of God, suffers as it were a setting in her.
"to retain God in " their " knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind." ! From this death, and this hell, the soul earnestly prays that she may be kept safe, whilst she strives to turn to God, and feels her difficulties.
7. Wherefore he goes on to say, "I have laboured in my groaning." And as if this availed but little, he adds, "1 will wash each night my couch" (ver. 6). That is here called a couch, where the sick and weak soul rests, that is, in bodily gratification and in every worldly pleasure. Which pleasure, whoso endeavours to withdraw himself from it, washes with tears. For he sees that he already condemns carnal lusts ; and yet his weakness is held by the pleasure, and willingly lies down therein, from whence none but the soul that is made whole can rise. As for what he says, "each night,'"' he would perhaps have it taken thus: that he who, ready in spirit, perceives some light of truth, and yet, through weakness of the flesh, rests sometime in the pleasure of this world, is compelled to suffer as it were days and nights in an alternation of feeling: as when he says, " With the mind I serve the law of God," he feels as it were day; again when he says, "' but with the flesh the law of sin," ? he declines into night: until all night passeth away, and that one day comes, of which it is said, " In the morning I will stand by Thee, and will see."'3 For then he will stand, but now he lies down, when he is on his couch; which he will wash each night, that with so great abundance of tears he may obtain the most assured remedy from the mercyof God. "I will drench my bed with tears." It is a repetition.4 For when he says, " with tears," he shows with what meaning he said above, "I will wash." For we take "bed" here to be the same as "couch" above. Although, "I will drench," is something more than, "I will wash :" since anything may be washed superficially, but drenching penetrates to the more inward parts; which here signifies weeping to the very bottom of the heart. Now the variety of tenses which he uses ; the past, when he said, "I have laboured in my groaning ;"" and the future, when he said, "I will wash each night my couch;" the future again, "I will drench my bed with tears ;" this shows what every man ought to say to himself, when he labours in groaning to no purpose. As if he should say, It hath not profited when I have done this, therefore I will do the other.
g. "I have grown old in all mine enemies." He had only spoken of anger (if it were yet of his own anger that he spoke) : but thinking on his other vices, he found that he was entrenched by them all. Which vices, as they belong to the old life and the old man, which we must put off, that we may put on the new man,' it is well said, " T have grown old." But "in all mine enemies," he means, either amidst these vices, or amidst men who will not be converted to God. For these, even if they know them not, even if they bear with them, even if they use the same tables and houses and cities, with no strife arising between them, and in frequent converse together with seeming concord: notwithstanding, by the contrariety of their aims, they are enemies to those who turn unto God. For seeing that the one love and desire this world, the others wish to be freed from this world, who sees not that the first are enemies to the last? For if they can, they draw the others into punishment with them. And it is a great grace, to be conversant daily with their words, and not to depart from the way of God's commandments. For often the mind which is striving to go on to God-ward,
8. " Mine eye is disordered by anger" (ver. 7): is it by his own, or God's anger, in which he maketh petition that he might not be reproved, or chastened? But if anger in that
I Rom. i. 28. 2 Rom. vii. 25. 3 Ps. v. 3. 4 |St. Augustin was the inventor of what is now called ' The Silent Comforter," for the invalid. This Psalm, with the six other Penitential Psalms, he caused to be set up before his dying eyes. See Vita S. Aug. auctore Possidio, ed, Migne, vol. i. p. 63. — C.]
6 x Tim. vi. 16. 9 Col, iii. 9, 10. 5 Matt. xxv. 30. é 7 Matt. xxv. 21, 23. 8 Eph. iv. 26.