The Essential Augustine
MORAL AND RELIGIOUS LIFE 171 then, for fear he may kill himself or other people. It must wait until he is restored to his right mind. Here, then, there is no duplicity, because when the friend entrusted with the sword promised to return it at the owner's request, he never imagined it would be demanded in a fit of madness. Even our Lord therefore concealed the truth when His disciples were unprepared for it. J have yet many things to say to you, He told them, but you cannot bear them now. [John 16:12] The Apostle Paul has likewise declared: I, brethren, could not speak to you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal.
[I Cor. 3:1] Hence it follows that to suppress the truth is not necessarily wrong. But you will never find lying conceded to the perfect.
FAITH, HOPE, AND CHARITY*
Again, can anything be hoped for which is not an 8. object of faith? It is true that a thing which is not an object of hope may be believed. What true Christian, for example, does not believe in the punishment of the wicked? And yet such a one does not hope for it. And the man who believes that punishment to be hanging over himself, and who shrinks in horror from the prospect, is more properly said to fear than to hope. And these two states of mind the poet carefully distinguishes, when he says: "Permit the fearful to have hope." [Lucan, Pharsalia, 2.15] Another poet, who is usually much superior to this one, makes a wrong use of the word, when he says: "If I have been able to hope for so great a grief as this." [Virgil, Aeneid, 4.419] And some grammarians take this case as an example of impropriety of speech, saying, "He said sperare [to hope] instead of timere [to fear]." Accordingly, faith may have for its object evil as well as good; for both good and evil are believed, and the faith that believes them is not evil, but good. Faith, moreover, is concerned with the past, the present, and the future, all three. We believe, for example, that Christ died—an event in the past; we believe that He is sitting at the right hand of God—a state of things which is present; we believe that He will come to judge the quick and the dead—an event of the future. Again, faith applies both to one's own circumstances and those of others. Everyone, for example, believes that his own existence had a * Enchiridion, 8; trans. Dods.