prehend that wisdom by which God knows all by myself how wonderful and incomprehen-
206 THE WORKS OF ST. AUGUSTIN. [Book XV.
may well cry out to the living God, '' Such knowledge is too wonderful for me: it is high, I cannot attain unto it." * by myself how wonderful and incomprehensible is Thy knowledge, by which Thou madest me, when I cannot even comprehend myself whom Thou hast made! And yet, "while I was musing, the fire burned," ? so that ''I seek Thy face evermore.'' 3 self. But that He is so comes to Him thence, whence He proceeds.
13. What man, thén, is there who can comprehend that wisdom by which God knows all things, in such wise that neither what we call things past are past therein, nor what we call things future are therein waited for as coming, as though they were absent, but both past and future with things present are all present; nor yet are things thought severally, so that thought passes from one to another, but all things simultaneously are at hand in one glance;—what man, I say, is there that com-
For I understand }
CHAP. 8.—HOW THE APOSTLE SAYS THAT GOD
IS NOW SEEN BY US THROUGH A GLASS.
14, I know that wisdom is an incorporeal substance, and that it is the light by which those things are seen that are not seen by carnal eyes; and yet a man so great and so spiritual [as Paul] says, '""We see now through a glass, in an enigma, but then face to face."4 If we ask what and of what sort is this '' glass," this assuredly occurs to our minds, that in a glass nothing is discerned prehends that wisdom, and the like prudence, and the like knowledge, since in truth even our own wisdom is beyond our comprehension? For somehow we are able to behold the things that are present to our senses or to our understanding; but the things that are absent, and yet have once been present, we know by memory, if we have not forgotten them. And we conjecture, too, not the past from the future, but the future from the past, yet by an unstable knowledge. For there are some of our thoughts to which, although future, we, as it were, look onward with greater plainness and certainty as being very near; and we do this by the means of memory when we are able to do it, as much as we ever are able, although memory seems to belong not to the future, but to the past. And this may be tried in the case of any words or songs, the due order of which we are rendering by memory; for we certainly should not utter each in succession, unless we foresaw in thought what came next. And yet it is not foresight, but memory, that enables us to foresee it; for up to the very end of the words or the song, nothing is uttered except as foreseen and looked forward to. And yet in doing this, we are not said to speak or sing by foresight, but by memory; and if any one is more than commonly capable of uttering many pteces in this way, he is usually praised, men Rare wee ET
We have endeavored, then,\" but an image. so to do; in order that we might see in some way or other by this image which we are, Him by whom we are made, as bya glass. And this is intimated also in the words of the same apostle: ** But we with open face, beholding; as ina glass the glory of the Lord, are transformed into the same image, from glory to. glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.'' 5
Beholding as in a glass,''*® he has said, 7.e. seeing by means of a glass, not looking from a watch-tower: an ambiguity that does not exist in the Greek language, whence the apostolic epistles have been rendered into Latin. For in Greek, a glass,7 in which the images of things are visible, is wholly distinct in the sound of the word also from a watch-tower,?® from the height of which we command a more distant view. And it is quite plain that the apostle, in using the word '' speculantes " in respect to the glory of the Lord, meant it to come from '' speculum," not from ''specula."' But where he says, '' We are transformed into the same image,"' he assuredly means to speak of the image of God; and by calling it '* the same,'' he means that very image which we see in the glass, because that same image is also the glory of the Lord; as he says elsewhere, ''For a man indeed ought not to cover his head, forasmuch as he is the image and glory of God,''°—a text already discussed in the twelfth book. He means, then, by "'We are transformed,'' that we are changed from one form to another, and that we pass from a form that is obscure toa form not for his foresight, but for his memory. We know, and are absolutely certain, that all this takes place in our mind or by our mind; but how it takes place, the more attentively we desire to scrutinize, the more do both our very words break down, and our purpose itself fails, when by our understanding, if not our tongue, we would reach to something of clearness. And do such as we are, think, that in so great infirmity of mind we can comprehend whether the foresight of God is the same as His memory and His understanding, who does not regard in thought each several thing, but embraces all that He knows in one eternal and unchangeable and ineffable vision? In this difficulty, then, and strait, we
2°PSi xXxIxe 3 5 2 Cor. iii. 18. 8 Stecula.
3 Psucye 4. 6 Speculantes. 9 1 Cor. xi. 7.
I Ps. cxxxix. 6. 4 x Cor. xii. 12. 7 Speculunt,