stop their mouths by another most clear and tainly the Father, and the Son, and the Holy
Cuap. XI.] ON THE TRINITY. 67 which a little before God said by an angel, '*For now I know that thou fearest God;"' not because it was to be understood that God then came to know, but that He brought it to pass that through God Abraham himself came to know what strength of heart he had have slain them which showed before of the coming of the Just One; of whom ye have been now the betrayers and murderers: who have received the Law by the disposition of angeis,3 and have not kept it.''+ What is more evident than this? What more strong than such an authority? The Law, indeed, was given to that people by the disposition of angels; but the advent of our Lord Jesus Christ was by it prepared and pre-announced; and He Himself, as the Word of God, was in some wonderful and unspeakable manner in the angels, by whose disposition the Law itself was given. And hence He said in the Gospel, "For had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed me; for he wrote of me.''5 Therefore then the Lord was speaking by the angels; and the son of God, who was to be the Mediator of God and men, from the seed of Abraham, was preparing His own advent by the angels, that He might find some by whom He would be received, confessing themselves guilty, whom the Law unfulfilled had made transgressors. And hence the apostle also says to the Galatians, to obey God, even to the sacrificing of his only son: after that mode of speech in which the effect is signified by the efficient,—as cold is said to be sluggish, because it makes men sluggish; so that He was therefore said to know, because He had made Abraham himself to know, who might well have not discerned the firmness of his own faith, had it not been proved by such a trial. So here, too, Abraham called the name of the place
The Lord saw,"' that is, caused Himself to be seen. For he goes on immediately to say, ''As it is said to this day, In the mount the Lord was seen.'' Here you see the same angel is called Lord: wherefore, unless because the Lord spake by the angel? But if we pass on to that which follows, the angel altogether speaks as a prophet, and reveals expressly that God is speaking by the angel. *'And the angel of the Lord,'' he says, ''called unto Abraham out of heaven the second time, and said, By myself I have sworn, saith the Lord; for because thou hast done this thing, and hast not withheld thy
Wherefore then serveth the Law? It was added because of transgressions, till the seed should come to whom the promise was made, which [seed] was ordered ® through angels in the hand of a mediator;''" that is, ordered through angels in His own hand. For He was not born in limitation, but in power. But you learn in another place that he does not mean any one of the angels as a mediator, but the Lord Jesus Christ Himself, in so far as He deigned to be made man: '' For there is one God,'' he says, ''and one Mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus.''® Hence that passover in the killing of the lamb:° hence all those things which are figuratively spoken in the Law, of Christ to come in the flesh, and to suffer, but also to rise again, which Law was given by the disposition of angels; in which angels, were certainly the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit; and in which, sometimes the Father, sometimes the Son, sometimes the Holy Spirit, and sometimes God, without any distinction of person, was figuratively signified by them, although appearing in visible and sensible forms, yet by His own creature, not by His substance, in order to the seeing of which, hearts are cleansed through all those things which are seen by the eyes and heard by the ears.
son, thine only son, on account of me,''* etc. Certainly these words, vz, that he by whom the Lord speaks should say, *' Thus saith the Lord," are commonly used by the prophets also. Does the Son of God say of the Father,
The Lord saith,'' while He Himself is that Angel of the Father? Whatthen? Do they not see how hard pressed they are about these three men who appeared to Abraham, when it had been said before, '' The Lord appeared to him?'' Were they not angels because they are called men? Let them read Daniel, saying, '' Behold the man Gabriel." ?
26. But why do we delay any longer to stop their mouths by another most clear and most weighty proof, where not an angel in the singular nor men in the plural are spoken of, but simply angels; by whom not any particular word was wrought, but the Law itself is most distinctly declared to be given; which certainly none of the faithful doubts that God gave to Moses for the control of the children of Israel, or yet, that it was given by angels. So Stephen speaks: '' Ye stiff-necked,'' he says, ''and uncircumcised in heart and ears, ye do always resist the Holy Ghost: as your fathers did,so do ye. Which of the prophets have not your fathers persecuted? and they
27. But now, as I think, that which we had undertaken to show in this book has been
4 Acts vil. 51-53. 3 In edictis angelorum. wv 7 Gal. iii. 19. 5 John v. 46, 6 Disposituse, 81 Tim. ii. 5. 9 Ex, xii.
I Gen. xxii. 2 Dan. ix. 21.
68 THE WORKS OF ST. AUGUSTIN. Book III.
and in the tongues like as of fire, which appeared with a sound from heaven on the day of Pentecost, after the ascension of the Lord," it was not the Word of God Himself by His own substance, in which He is equal and coeternal with the Father, nor the Spirit of the © Father and of the Son by His own substance, in which He Himself also is equal and coeternal with both, but assuredly a creature, such as could be formed and exist in these fashions, which appeared to corporeal and mortal senses,—it remains, I say, to consider what difference there is between these manifestations and those which were proper to the Son of God and to the Holy Spirit, although wrought by the visible creature;3 which subject we shall more conveniently begin in another book.
sufficiently discussed and demonstrated, according to cur capacity; and it has been established, both by probable reason, so far as a man, or rather, so far as I am able, and by strength of authority, so far as the divine declarations from the Holy Scriptures have been made clear, that those words and bodily appearances which were given to these ancient fathers of ours before the incarnation of the Saviour, when God was said to appear, were wrought by angels: whether themselves speaking or doing something in the person of God, as we have shown that the prophets also were wont to do, or assuming from the creature that which they themselves were not, wherein God might be shown in a figure to men; which manner of showing also, Scripture teaches by many examples, that the prophets, too, did not omit. It remains, therefore, now for us to consider,—since both in the Lord as born of a virgin, and inthe Holy Spirit de-
2 Acts li. 1-4. 3 [The reference here is to the difference between a theophany, and an incarnation; already alluded to, inthe note on p. 149.—W. scending in a corporeal form like a dove."|G T.s} t Matt. iii. 16.
BOOK? Di
EXPLAINS FOR WHAT THE SON OF GOD WAS SENT, VIZ. THAT BY CHRIST'S DYING FOR SINNERS, WE
WERE TO BE CONVINCED HOW GREAT IS GOD'S LOVE FOR US, AND ALSO WHAT MANNER OF
MEN WE ARE WHOM HE LOVED. THAT THE WORD CAME IN THE FLESH, TO THE PURPOSE
ALSO OF ENABLING US TO BE SO CLEANSED AS TO CONTEMPLATE AND CLEAVE TOGOD. THAT
OUR DOUBLE DEATH WAS ABOLISHED BY HIS DEATH, BEING ONE AND SINGLE, AND HERE-
UPON IS DISCUSSED, HOW THE SINGLE OF OUR SAVIOUR HARMONIZES TO SALVATION WITH
OUR DOUBLE; AND THE PERFECTION IS TREATED AT LENGTH OF THE SENARY NUMBER, TO
WHICH THE RATIO ITSELF OF SINGLE TO DOUBLE JIS REDUCIBLE. THAT ALL ARE GATHERED
TOGETHER FROM MANY INTO ONE BY THE ONE MEDIATOR OF LIFE, VIZ. CHRIST, THROUGH
WHOM ALONE IS WROUGHT THE TRUE CLEANSING OF THE SOUL. FURTHER IT IS DEMON-
STRATED THAT THE SQN OF GOD, ALTHOUGH MADE LESS BY BEING SENT, ON ACCOUNT OF
THE FORM OF A SERVANT WHICH HE TOOK, IS NOT THEREFORE LESS THAN THE FATHER AC-
CORDING TO THE FORM OF GOD, BECAUSE HE WAS SENT BY HIMSELF: AND THAT THE SAME
ACCOUNT IS TO BE GIVEN OF THE SENDING OF THE HOLY SPIRIT.
as having already received of free gift the pledge of salvation through his only Saviour and Enlightener of man:—such an one, so acting, and so lamenting, knowledge does not putt up, because charity edifieth;* for he has preferred knowledge to knowledge, he has preferred to know his own weakness, rather than to know the walls of the world, the foundations of the earth, and the pinnacles of heaven. And by obtaining this knowledge, he has obtained also sorrow;? but sorrow for straying away from the desire of reaching his own proper country, and the Creator of it, his own blessed God. And if among men such as these, in the family of Thy Christ, O Lord my God, I groan among Thy poor, give me out of Thy bread to answer men who do not hunger and thirst after righteousness, but are sated and abound. But it is the vain image of those things that has sated them, not Thy truth, which they have repelled and shrunk from, and so fall into their own vanity. I certainly know how many figments the human heart gives birth to. And what is my own heart but a human heart? But I
PREFACE.—THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD JS TO BE
SOUGHT FROM GOD.
1. The knowledge of things terrestrial and celestial is commonly thought much of by men. Yet those doubtless judge better _who prefer to that knowledge, the knowledge of themselves; and that mind is more praiseworthy which knows even its own weakness, than that which, without regard to this, searches out, and even comes to know, the ways of the stars, or which holds fast such knowledge already acquired, while ignorant of the way by which itself to enter into its
- own proper health and strength. But if any one has already become awake towards God, kindled by the warmth of the Holy Spirit, and in the love of God has become vile in his own eyes; and through wishing, yet not having strength to come in unto Him, and through the light He gives, has given heed to himself, and has found himself, and has learned that his own filthiness cannot mingle with His purity; and feels it sweet to weep and to entreat Him, that again and again He will have compassion, until he have put off all his wretchedness; and to pray confidently,
1 x Cor. viii. 1. 2 Kccles. i. 18. 3 Matt. v. 6.