by steps, and to seek in the inner man, both can things be loved which are not known, but
THE WORKS OF ST. AUGUSTIN. [Book XIII.
action; not yet, however, ought he to be said or thought to live according to a trinity of the inner man, if he does not love those things which are there declared, enjoined, promised. For it is possible for him also to hold and conceive these things, supposing them to be false, in order that he may endeavor to disprove them. Therefore that will, which in this case unites those things which are held in the memory with those things which are thence impressed on the mind's eye in conception, completes, indeed, some kind of trinity, since itself is a third added to two others; but the man does not live according to this, when those things which are conceived are taken to be false, and are not accepted. But when those things are believed to be true, and those things which therein ought to be loved, are loved, then at last the man does live according to atrinity of the inner man; for every one lives according to that which he loves. But how can things be loved which are not known, but only believed? This question has been already treated of in former books;* and we and body. But that same faith requires that this faith be limited in Christ, who rose in the flesh from the dead, not to die any more; and that no one is freed from the dominion of the devil, through the forgiveness of sins, save by Him; and that in the abiding place of the devil, life must needs be at once miserable and never-ending, which ought rather to be called death than life. All which I have also argued, so far as space permitted, in this book, while I have already said much on the subject in the fourth book of this work as well; but in that place for one purpose, here for another,—namely, there, that I might show why and how Christ was sent in the fullness of time by the Father,? on account of those who say that He who sent and He who was sent cannot be equal in nature; but here, in order to distinguish practical knowlege from contemplative wisdom.
26. For we wished to ascend, as it were, by steps, and to seek in the inner man, both in knowledge and in wisdom, a sort of trinity of its own special kind, such as we sought before in the outer man; in order that we may come, with a mind more practised in these lower things, to the contemplation of that Trinity which is God, according to our little measure, if indeed, we can even do this, at least in a riddle and as through a glass.3_ If, then, any one have committed to memory the words of this faith in their sounds alone, not knowing what they mean, as they commonly who do not know Greek hold in memory Greek words, or similarly Latin ones, or those of any other language of which they are ignorant, has not he a sort of trinity in his mind? because, first, those sounds of words are in his memory, even when he does not think thereupon; and next, the mental vision found, that no one loves what he is wholly | ignorant of, but that when things not known are said to be loved, they are loved from those things which are known. And now we so conclude this book, that we admonish the just to live by faith,' which faith worketh by love,® so that the virtues also themselves, by which one lives prudently, boldly, temperately, and justly, be all referred to the same faith; for not otherwise can they be true virtues. And yet these in this life are not of'so great worth, as that the remission of sins, of some kind or other, is not sometimes necessary here; and this remission comes not to pass, except through Him, who by His own blood conquered the prince of sinners. Whatsoever ideas are in the mind of the faithful man from this faith, and from such a life, when they are contained in the memory, and are looked at by recollection, and please the will, set forth a kind of trinity of its own
(aczes) -of his act of recollection is formed thence when he conceives of them; and next, the will of him who remembers and thinks unites both. Yet we should by no means say that the man in so doing busies himself with a trinity of the interior man, but rather of the exterior; because he remembers, and when he wills, contemplates as much as he wills, that alone which" 'belongs to the sense of the body, which is called hearing. Nor in such an act of thought does he do anything else than deal with images of corporeal things, that is, of sounds. But if he holds and recollects what those words signify, now indeed something of the inner man is brought into sort.? But the image of God, of which by His help we shall afterwards speak, is not yet in that trinity; a thing which will then be more apparent, when it shall have been shown where it is, which the reader may expect in a succeeding book.
4 Bk. viii. cc. 8 seqq., and Bk X..Ce Ty etc. 5 Rom. i, 17. 6 Gal. v. 6. 7 (The ternary is this: 1. The idea of a truth or fact held in the memory. 2. The contemplation of it as thus recollected. 3. The love of it. This last is the '' will'' that '' unites' the first two.—W. G. T.S.]
t Cc. 19-21. 2 Gal. iv. 4. 3 1 Cor, xiii. 12.
12 OLN GO BA,
THE TRUE WISDOM OF MAN IS TREATED OF ;
AND IT IS SHOWN THAT THE IMAGE OF GOD, WHICH
TRANSITORY THINGS, AS IN
MAN IS IN RESPECT TO HIS MIND, IS NOT PLACED PROPERLY IN
MEMORY, UNDERSTANDING, AND LOVE, WHETHER OF FAITH ITSELF AS EXISTING IN TIME, OR
EVEN OF THE MIND AS BUSIED WITH ITSELF, BUT IN THINGS THAT ARE PERMANENT ; AND
THAT THIS WISDOM IS THEN PERFECTED, WHEN THE MIND IS RENEWED IN THE KNOWLEDGE
OF GOD, ACCORDING TO THE IMAGE OF HIM WHO CREATED MAN AFTER HIS OWN IMAGE, AND
THUS ATTAINS TO WISDOM, WHEREIN THAT WHICH IS CONTEMPLATED IS ETERNAL, though the same word, indeed, is employed WHENCE THE NAME|in a different sense, where any one suffers
CHAP.
I.—WHAT THE WISDOM IS OF WHICH WE
ARE HERE TO TREAT.
evils for his sins, that he may be corrected. Whence is that in the Epistle to the Hebrews,
OF PHILOSOPHER AROSE. WHAT HAS BEEN ALREADY SAID CONCERNING THE DISTINCTION
For what son is he to whom the father giveth not discipline ?"' And this is still more apparent in the same epistle: '* Now no chastening °® for the present seemeth to be joyous,
OF KNOWLEDGE AND WISDOM. |
WE must now discourse concerning wis-! Pare not the wisdom of God, which without, doubt is God, for His onlybegotten Son is! called the wisdom of God;* but we will speak of the wisdom of man, yet of true wisdom, which is according to God, and is His true and chief worship, which is called in Greek by one term, BeocgBera. And this term, as we have already observed, when our own countrymen themselves also wished to interpret it by a single term, was by them rendered piety, whereas piety, means more commonly what the Greeks call edc¢fera. But because OeocdBeca cannot be translated perfectly by any one word, it is better translated by two, so as to render it rather by ''the worship of God."" That this is the wisdom of man, as we have already laid down in the twelfth book ? of this work, is shown by the authority of Holy Scripture, in the book of God's servant Job, where we read that the Wisdom of God said to man, '' Behold piety, that is wis- | dom; and to depart from evil is knowledge;''3 or, as some have translated the Greek word! éxtotnpyy, '' learning," 4 which certainly takes its name from learning, whence also it may but grievous: nevertheless afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby.''7 Therefore God Himself is the chiefest wisdom; but the worship of God is the wisdom of man, of which we now speak. For ''the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God."® It is in respect to this wisdom, therefore, which is the worship of God, that Holy Scripture says,
'* The multitude of the wise is the welfare of the world.'' 9
2. But if to dispute of wisdom belongs to Shall we dare indeed to profess wisdom, lest it should be mere impudence for ourselves to dispute about it? Shall we not be alarmed by the example of Pythagoras ?—who dared not profess to be a wise man, but answered that he was a philosopher, z.e., a lover of wisdom; whence arose the name, that became thenceforth so much the popular name, that no matter how great the learning wherein any one excelled, either in his own opinion or that of others, in things pertaining to wisdom, he was still called nothing more than philosopher. Or was it for this reason that no one, even of
/wise men, what shall we do?
be called knowledge. For everything is learned in order that it may be known. AI-
6 Disciplina. 7 Heb. xii, 9 Wisd. vi. 26. 5 Drsciplina. 7 El « 8 7Cor? iii. 'x9.
t Ecclus. xxiv. 5 and 1 Cor. i. 24. 3 Job. xxviii. 28.
2C, 14. 4 Disciplina, disco.