Chapter 7 (80): 1. That Faith Properly Concerns Things Which Are Not Seen, And
100 | THE SENTENCES, BOOK 3
3. But if faith is taken for that through which belief occurs, then faith is said to be one not by reason of its being one in number in everyone, but by its kind or likeness.—AUGUSTINE, IN BOOK 13, ON THE TRINITY. Hence
Augustine: "That faith, which they who have it are called the faithful, and those who do not unbelievers, is common to all the faithful, in the same way in which a face is said to be common to many men, and yet each of them has his own. For faith is not one in number, but in kind; as it is in one, so it is in others, and yet not the very same one, but a similar one, and because of the similarity we speak of one faith rather than of many.
In the same way, the will of those who will the same thing ts said to be one, even though each has his own will, and the face of two people who are very like to each other is said to be one."
Chapter 7 (80)
1. THAT FAITH PROPERLY CONCERNS THINGS WHICH ARE NOT SEEN, AND
YET IT ITSELF IS SEEN BY THE ONE IN WHOM ITIS. It is also to be noted that faith properly concerns only things which are not seen.—GREGORY, IN SOME HOMILY. Hence Gregory: "Visible things do not require faith, but knowledge."'—THE SAME, IN A DIALOGUE. The same: "Although Paul says: Faith is the substance of things to be hoped for, the evidence of things that do not appear,' that is truly said to be believed which cannot be seen, for it is impossible to believe that which can be seen."' "Thomas saw one thing, and believed another: he saw a man, but he confessed [him to be] God, saying: My God and my Lord.'*"
2. AUGUSTINE, IN BOOK 13, ON THE TRINITY. Concerning this same matter, Augustine too says: "Each one sees faith itself to be in his own heart, if he believes, or not to be there, if he does not believe. But not in the same way as we know those bodies which we see with our bodily eyes, and think about even when absent through their images which we retain in our memory. Nor even as those things which we have not seen, and which we shape in our thought from those which we have seen, and commit them to memory. Nor as a man, whose soul we do not see, and yet conjecture [its existence] from our own; and we also recognize him from the motions of his body, as we have learned them from looking at him.
This is not the way in which faith is seen in the heart in which it is, by him whose it is; but he holds on to it with a most certain knowledge. And "Augustine, De Trinitate, bk 13 c2 n5.
'Gregory, In Evangelia, hom. 26 n8.
*Hebr. 11, 1.
*Gregory, Dialogi, bk 4 c6.
"Jn. 20, 28.
Gregory, In Evangelia, hom. 26 n8.