born are the very same when the will finds rest only reach the point of being known, but yet
ON THE TRINITY.
CuHapP. X.]
speaks of pain or labor as conceived, when those things are conceived which it is not sufficient to know and will, and when the mind burns and grows sick with want, until it arrives at those things, and, as it were, brings them forth. Whence i in the Latin language we have the word parta" used elegantly for both "' reperta'' and '' comperta," which words sound as if derived from bringing forth.3 Since ** lust, when it hath conceived, bringeth forth sin."'4 Wherefore the Lord proclaims, '*Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden;''s and in another place '' Woe unto them that are with child, and to them that give suck, in those days!"® And when therefore He referred all either right actions or sins to the bringing forth of the word, '' By thy mouth,''" He says, ''thou shalt be justified, and by thy mouth® thou shalt be condemned,''® intending thereby not the visible mouth, but that which is within and invisible, of the thought and of the heart.
CHAP. 8.—IN WHAT DESIRE AND LOVE DIFFER. [Conceived] therefore, either by desire or by love: not that the creature ought not to be loved; but if that love [of the creature] is referred to the Creator, then it will not be desire (cupzditas), but love (charitas). For it is desire when the creature is loved for itself. And then it does not help a man through making use of it, but corrupts him in the enjoying it. When, therefore, the creature is either equal to us or inferior, we must use the inferior in order to God, but we must enjoy the equal only in God. For as thou oughtest to enjoy thyself,not in thyself, but in Him who made thee, so also him whom thou lovest as thyself. Let us enjoy, therefore, both ourselves and our brethren in the Lord; and hence let us not dare to yield, and as it were to relax, ourselves to ourselves in the direction downwards. Now a word is born, when, being thought out, it pleases us either to the effect of sinning, or to that of doing right. Therefore love, as it were a mean, conjoins our word and the mind from which it is conceived, and without any confusion binds itself asa third with them, in an incorporeal embrace.
CHAP. I0.—WHETHER ONLY KNOWLEDGE THAT
IS LOVED IS THE WORD OF THE MIND.
15. It is rightly asked then, whether all knowledge is a word, or only knowledge that is loved. For we also know the things which we hate ; but what we do not like, cannot be
CHAP. 9.—IN THE LOVE OF SPIRITUAL THINGS THE WORD BORN IS THE SAME AS THE WORD CONCEIVED, IT IS OTHERWISE IN THE LOVE said to be either conceived or brought forth by the mind. For not all things which in anyway touch it, are conceived by it; but some only reach the point of being known, but yet are not spoken as words, as for instance those of which we speak now. For those are called words in one way, which occupy spaces of |time by their syllables, whether they are pro-
OF CARNAL THINGS.
14. But the word conceived and the word born are the very same when the will finds rest in knowledge itself, as is the case in the love
For instance, he who} knows righteousness perfectly, and loves it) f spiritual things.
perfectly, is already righteous; even if no necessity exist of working according to it outwardly through the members of the body.
nounced or only thought; and in another way, 'all that is known is called a word imprinted on the mind, as long as it can be brought forth from the memory and defined, even though we dislike the thing itself; and in another way still, when we like that which is conceived in the mind. And that which the apostle says, must be taken according to this last kind of word, '* No man can Say that Jesus is the Lord, but by the Holy Ghost;'' since those also say this, but according to another meaning of the term '' word," of whom the Lord Himself says, ** Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven.''* Nay, even in the case of things which we hate, when we tightly dislike and rightly censure them, we approve and like the censure bestowed upon them, and it becomes a word. Nor is it the knowledge of vices that displeases us, but the ut in the love of carnal and temporal things, as in the offspring of animals, the conception of the word is one thing, the bringing forth another. For here what is conceived by desiring is born by attaining. Since it does not suffice to avarice to know and to love gold, except it also have it; nor to know and love to eat, or to lie with any one, unless also one does it; nor to knowand love honors and power, unless they actually come to pass. Nay, all these things, even if obtained, do not suffice. '' Whosoever drinketh of this water,' He says, °' shall thirst again."* And So also the Psalmist, '' He hath conceived pain and brought forth iniquity."? And he is analogous to the eternal generation of the Eternal Wisdom in the infinite essence of God expressed in the Eternal Word. Both are alike, in that something spiritual issues from something spiritual, without division or diminution of substance. Buta thought of the human mind is not an objective thing or substance; while the Eternal Word is.—W. G, T.S.]
3 Partus. 4 Jas. i, 15. 5 Matt. xi. 28. 6 Matt. xxiv. 19. 7 Words. 8 Words.—A. V. 9 Matt. xii. 37. 10 x Cor, xii. 3. 11 Matt. vil. 21.
I John iv, 13. 2 Ps, vii. 14.
THE WORKS OF ST. AUGUSTIN. [Boox IX.
fore we knew Him, and above all when the same knowledge being also liked and worthily loved becomes a word, and sothat knowiedge becomes a kind of likeness of God; yet that knowledge is of a lower kind, since it isin a lower nature; for the mind is creature, but God is Creator, And from this it may be inferred, that when the mind knows and approves itself, this same knowledge is in such way its word, as that it is altogether on | a par and equal with it, and the same ; because } it is neither the knowledge of a lower essence, as of the body, nor of a higher, as of God. And whereas knowledge bears a likeness to that which it knows, that is, of which it is the knowledge ; in this case it has perfect and equal likeness, when the mind itself, which knows, is known. And so it is both image and word ; because it is uttered concerning that mind to which it is equalled in knowing, | and that which is begotten is equal to the; begetter.
vices themselves. For I like to know and define what intemperance is; and this is its word. Just as there are known faults in art, and the knowledge of them is rightly approved, when a connoisseur discerns the species or the privation of excellence, as to affirm and deny that it is orthat it is not; yet to be without excellence and to fall away into fault, is worthy of condemnation. And to define intemperance, and to say its word, belongs to the artof morals ; but to be intemperate belongs to that which that art censures. Just as to know and define what a solecism is, belongs to the art of speaking ; but to be guilty of one, is a fault which the same art reprehends. A word, then, which is the point we wish now to discern and intimate, is knowledge together with love. Whenever, then, the mind knows and loves itself, its word is joined to it by love. And since it loves knowledge and knows love, both the word is in love and love is in the word, and both are in him who loves and speaks.* o a
CHAP. 12.—WHY LOVE IS NOT THE OFFSPRING
OF THE MIND, AS KNOWLEDGE IS SO. THE
CHAP. II.— THAT THE IMAGE OR BEGOTTEN WORD OF THE MIND THAT KNOWS ITSELF IS EQUAL TO THE MIND ITSELF.
. SOLUTION OF THE QUESTION. THE MIND | WITH THE KNOWLEDGE OF ITSELF AND THE | LOVE OF ITSELF IS THE IMAGE OF THE TRINITY.
16. But all knowledge according to species is like the thing whichit knows. For there is another knowledge according to privation, according to which we speak a word only when we condemn. And this condemnation of a privation is equivalent to praise of the species, and so is approved. The mind, then, contains some likeness to a known species, whether when liking that species or when disliking its privation. And hence, in so far as we know God, we are like Him, but not like to the point of equality, since we do not know Him to the extent of His own being. And as, when we speak of bodies by means of the bodily sense, there arises in our mind some likeness of them, whichis a phantasm of the memory; for the bodies themselves are not at all in the mind, when we think them, but only the likenesses 'of those bodies; therefore, when we approve the latter for the former, we err, for the approving of one thing for another is an error; yet the image of the body in the mind is a thing of a better sort than the species of the body itself, inasmuch as the former is in a better nature, vzz. in a living substance, as the mind is: so when we know God, although we are made better than we were be-
17. What then is love? Willit not be an
Will it not image? Will it not be a word? be begotten? For why does the mind beget its knowledge when it knows itself, and not beget its love when it loves itself? Forif it is the cause of its own knowing, for the reason that it is knowable, it is also the cause of its own love because it is lovable. It is hard, then, to say why it does not beget both. For there is a further question also respecting the supreme Trinity itself, the omnipotent God the Creator, after whose image man is made, which troubles men, whom the truth of God invites to the faith by human speech ; wz. why the Holy Spirit is not also to be either believed or understood to be begotten by God the Father, so that He also may be,called a Son. And this question we are endeavoring in some way to investigate in the human mind, in order that from a lower image, in which our own nature itself as it were answers, upon being questioned, in a way more familiar to ourselves, we may be able to direct a more practised mental vision from the enlightened creature to the unchangeable light ; assumin however, that the truth itself has eraiade us, that as no Christian doubts the Word of God to be the Son, so that the Holy Spirit is love. Let us return, then, to a more careful questioning and consideration upon this subject of that image which is the creature, that is, of the rational mind ; wherein the knowlt [The meaning of this obscure chapter seems to be, that only what the mind is pleased with, is the real expression and index of the mind—its true '' word."' The true nature of the mind is revealed in its sympathies. But this requires some qualification. For in the case of contrary qualities, like right and wrong, beauty and ugliness, the real nature of the mind is seen also in its antipathy as well as in its sympathy; in its hatred of wrong as well as in | its love of right. Fach alike isa true index of the mind, because each really implies the other.—W. G. T. S.]