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But because God foresaw all things, and was therefore not ignorant
that man also would fall, we ought to consider this holy city m
connection with what God foresaw and ordained, and not according to
our own ideas, which do not embrace God's ordination. For man, by
his sin, could not disturb the divine counsel, nor compel God to
change what He had decreed; for God's foreknowledge had anticipated
both, that is to say, both how evil the man whom He had created good
should become, and what good He Himself should even thus derive from
him. For though God is said to change His determinations (so that
in a tropical sense the Holy Scripture says even that God
repented), this is said with reference to man's expectation, or the
order of natural causes, and not with reference to that which the
Almighty had foreknown that He would do. Accordingly God, as it is
written, made man upright, and consequently with a good will. For if
he had not had a good will, he could not have been upright. The good
will, then, is the work of God; for God created him with it. But
the first evil will, which preceded all man's evil acts, was rather a
kind of falling away from the work of God to its own works than any
positive work. And therefore the acts resulting were evil, not having
God, but the will itself for their end; so that the will or the man
himself, so far as his will is bad, was as it were the evil tree
bringing forth evil fruit. Moreover, the bad will, though it be not
in harmony with, but opposed to nature, inasmuch as it is a vice or
blemish, yet it is true of it as of all vice, that it cannot exist
except in a nature, and only in a nature created out of nothing, and
not in that which the Creator has begotten of Himself, as He begot
the Word, by whom all things were made. For though God formed man
of the dust of the earth, yet the earth itself, and every earthly
material, is absolutely created out of nothing; and man's soul,
too, God created out of nothing, and joined to the body, when He
made man. But evils are so thoroughly overcome by good, that though
they are permitted to exist, for the sake of demonstrating how the most
righteous foresight of God can make a good use even of them, yet good
can exist without evil, as in the true and supreme God Himself, and
as in every invisible and visible celestial creature that exists above
this murky atmosphere; but evil cannot exist without good, because the
natures in which evil exists, in so far as they are natures, are
good. And evil is removed, not by removing any nature, or part of a
nature, which had been introduced by the evil, but by healing and
correcting that which had been vitiated and depraved. The will,
therefore, is then truly free, when it is not the slave of vices and
sins. Such was it given us by God; and this being lost by its own
fault, can only be restored by Him who was able at first to give it.
And therefore the truth says, "If the Son shall make you free, ye
shall be free indeed;" which is equivalent to saying, If the Son
shall save you, ye shall be saved indeed. For He is our Liberator,
inasmuch as He is our Saviour.
Man then lived with God for his rule in a paradise at once physical
and spiritual. For neither was it a paradise only physical for the
advantage of the body, and not also spiritual for the advantage of the
mind; nor was it only spiritual to afford enjoyment to man by his
internal sensations, and not also physical to afford him enjoyment
through his external senses. But obviously it was both for both ends.
But after that proud and therefore envious angel (of whose fall I
have said as much as I was able in the eleventh and twelfth books of
this work, as well as that of his fellows, who, from being God's
angels, became his angels), preferring to rule with a kind of pomp of
empire rather than to be another's subject, fell from the spiritual
Paradise, and essaying to insinuate his persuasive guile into the mind
of man, whose unfallen condition provoked him to envy now that himself
was fallen, he chose the serpent as his mouthpiece in that bodily
Paradise in which it and all the other earthly animals were living with
those two human beings, the man and his wife, subject to them, and
harmless; and he chose the serpent because, being slippery, and
moving in tortuous windings, it was suitable for his purpose. And
this animal being subdued to his wicked ends by the presence and
superior force of his angelic nature, he abused as his instrument, and
first tried his deceit upon the woman, making his assault upon the
weaker part of that human alliance, that he might gradually gain the
whole, and not supposing ,that the man would readily give ear to him,
or be deceived, but that he might yield to the error of the woman.
For as Aaron was not induced to agree with the people when they
blindly wished him to make an idol, and yet yielded to constraint; and
as it is not credible that Solomon was so blind as to suppose that
idols should be worshipped, but was drawn over to such sacrilege by the
blandishments of women; so we cannot believe that Adam was deceived,
and supposed the devil's word to be truth, and therefore transgressed
God's law, but that he by the drawings of kindred yielded to the
woman, the husband to the wife, the one human being to the only other
human being. For not without significance did the apostle say, "And
Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the
transgression;" but he speaks thus, because the woman accepted as
true what the serpent told her, but the man could not bear to be
severed from his only companion, even though this involved a
partnership in sin. He was not on this account less culpable, but
sinned with his eyes open. And so the apostle does not say, "He did
not sin," but "He was not deceived." For he shows that he sinned
when he says, "By one man sin entered into the world," and
immediately after more distinctly, "In the likeness of Adam's
transgression." But he meant that those are deceived who do not judge
that which they do to be sin; but he knew. Otherwise how were it true
"Adam was not deceived?" But having as yet no experience of the
divine severity, he was possibly deceived in so far as he thought his
sin venial. And consequently he was not deceived as the woman was
deceived, but he was deceived as to the judgment which would be passed
on his apology: "The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave
me, and I did eat." What need of saying more? Although they were
not both deceived by credulity, yet both were entangled in the snares
of the devil, and taken by sin.
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