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12. For I was ignorant as to that which really is, and was, as it
were, violently moved to give my support to foolish deceivers, when
they asked me, "Whence is evil?" and, "Is God limited by a
bodily shape, and has He hairs and nails?" and, "Are they to
be esteemed righteous who had many wives at once and did kill men, and
sacrificed living creatures?" At which things I, in my ignorance,
was much disturbed, and, retreating from the truth, I appeared to
myself to be going towards it; because as yet I knew not that evil was
naught but a privation of good, until in the end it ceases altogether
to be; which how should I see, the sight of whose eyes saw no further
than bodies, and of my mind no further than a phantasm? And I knew
not God to be a Spirit,a not one who hath parts extended in length
and breadth, nor whose being was bulk; for every bulk is less in a
part than in the whole, and, if it be infinite, it must be less in
such part as is limited by a certain space than in its infinity; and
cannot be wholly everywhere, as Spirit, as God is. And what that
should be in us, by which we were like unto God, and might rightly in
Scripture be said to be after "the image of God,"' I was entirely
ignorant.
13. Nor had I knowledge of that true inner righteousness, which
doth not judge according to custom, but out of the most perfect law of
God Almighty, by which the manners of places and times were adapted
to those places and times being itself the while the same always and
everywhere, not one thing in one place, and another in another;
according to which Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, and Moses, and
David, and all those commended by the mouth of God were righteous,
but were judged unrighteous by foolish men, judging out of man's
judgment,s and gauging by the petty standard of their own manners the
manners of the whole human race. Like as if in an armoury, one
knowing not what were adapted to the several members should put greaves
on his head, or boot himself with a helmet, and then complain because
they would not fit. Or as if, on some day when in the afternoon
business was forbidden, one were to fume at not being allowed to sell
as it was lawful to him in the forenoon. Or when in some house he sees
a servant take something in his hand which the butler is not permitted
to touch, or something done behind a stable which would be prohibited
in the dining-room, and should be indignant that in one house, and
one family, the same!thing is not distributed everywhere to all.
Such are they who cannot endure to hear something to have been lawful
for righteous men in former times which is not so now; or that God,
for certain temporal reasons, commanded them one thing, and these
another, but both obeying the same righteousness; though they see, in
one man, one day, and one house, different things to be fit for
different members, and a thing which was formerly lawful after a time
unlawful that permitted or commanded in one corner, which done in
another is justly prohibited and punished. Is justice, then, various
and changeable? Nay, but the times over which she presides are not
all alike, because they are times?
But men, whose days upon the earth are few,s because by their own
perception they cannot harmonize the causes of former ages and other
nations, of which they had no experience, with these of which they
have experience, though in one and the same body, day, or family,
they can readily see what is suitable for each member, season, part,
and person to the one they take exception, to the other they
submit.
14. These things I then knew not, nor observed. They met my eyes
on every side, and I saw them not. I composed poems, in which it
was not permitted me to place every foot everywhere, but in one metre
one way, and in another, nor even in any one verse the same foot in
all places. Yet the art itself by which I composed had not different
principles for these different cases, but comprised all in one. Still
I saw not how that righteousness, which good and holy men submitted
to, far more excellently and sublimely comprehended in one all those
things which God commanded, and in no part varied, though in varying
times it did not prescribe all things at once, but distributed and
enjoined what was proper for each. And I, being blind, blamed those
pious fathers, not only for making use of present things as God
commanded and inspired them to do, but also for foreshowing things to
come as God was revealing them.
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