|
Of this, too, I have no doubt, that before the first man was
created, there never had been a man at all, neither this same man
himself recurring by I know not what cycles, and having made I know
not how many revolutions, nor any other of similar nature. From this
belief I am not frightened by philosophical arguments, among which
that is reckoned the most acute which is founded on the assertion that
the infinite cannot be comprehended by any mode of knowledge.
Consequently, they argue, God has in his own mind finite conceptions
of all finite things which He makes. Now it cannot be supposed that
His goodness was ever idle; for if it were, there should be ascribed
to Him an awakening to activity in time, from a past eternity of
inactivity, as if He repented of an idleness that had no beginning,
and proceeded, therefore, to make a beginning of work. This being
the case, they say it must be that the same things are always
repeated, and that as they pass, so they are destined always to
return, whether amidst all these changes the world remains the same,
the world which has always been, and yet was created, or that the
world in these revolutions is perpetually dying out and being renewed;
otherwise, if we point to a time when the works of God were begun, it
would be believed that He considered His past eternal leisure to be
inert and indolent, and therefore condemned and altered it as
displeasing to Himself. Now if God is supposed to have been indeed
always making temporal things, but different from one another, and one
after the other, so, that He thus came at last to make man, whom He
had never made before, then it may seem that He made man not with
knowledge (for they suppose no knowledge can comprehend the infinite
succession of creatures), but at the dictate of the hour, as it
struck him at the moment, with a sudden and accidental change of mind.
On the other hand, say they, if those cycles be admitted, and if we
suppose that the same temporal things are repeated, while the world
either remains identical through all these rotations, or else dies away
and is renewed, then there is ascribed to God neither the slothful
ease of a past eternity, nor a rash and unforeseen creation. And if
the same things be not thus repeated in cycles, then they cannot by any
science or prescience be comprehended in their endless diversity. Even
though reason could not refute, faith would smile at these
argumentations, with which the godless endeavor to turn our simple
piety from the right way, that we may walk with them "in a circle."
But by the help of the Lord our God, even reason, and that readily
enough, shatters these revolving circles which conjecture frames. For
that which specially leads these men astray to refer their own circles
to the straight path of truth, is, that they measure by their own
human, changeable, and narrow intellect the divine mind, which is
absolutely unchangeable, infinitely capacious, and without succession
of thought, counting all things without number. So that saying of the
apostle comes true of them, for, "comparing themselves with
themselves, they do not understand." For because they do, in virtue
of a new purpose, whatever new thing has occurred to them to be done
(their minds being changeable), they conclude it is so with God;
and thus compare, not God, for they cannot conceive God, but think
of one like themselves when they think of Him, not God, but
themselves, and not with Him, but with themselves. For our part,
we dare not believe that God is affected in one way when He works, in
another when He rests. Indeed, to say that He is affected at all,
is an abuse of language, since it implies that there comes to be
something in His nature which was not there before. For he who is
affected is acted upon, and whatever is acted upon is changeable. His
leisure, therefore, is no laziness, indolence, inactivity; as in
His work is no labor, effort, industry. He can act while He
reposes, and repose while He acts. He can begin a new work with
(not a new, but) an eternal design; and what He has not made
before, He does not now begin to make because He repents of His
former repose. But when one speaks of His former repose and
subsequent operation (and I know not how men can understand these
things), this "former" and "subsequent" are applied only to the
things created, which formerly did not exist, and subsequently came
into existence. But in God the former purpose is not altered and
obliterated by the subsequent and different purpose, but by one and the
same eternal and unchangeable will He effected regarding the things He
created, both that formerly, so long as they were not, they should
not be, and that subsequently, when they began to be, they should
come into existence. And thus, perhaps, He would show, in a very
striking way, to those who have eyes for such things, how independent
He is of what He makes, and how it is of His own gratuitous goodness
He creates, since from eternity He dwelt without creatures in no less
perfect a blessedness.
|
|