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For knowledge also has its own good measure, if that in it which puffs
up, or is wont to puff up, is conquered by love of eternal things,
which does not puff up, but, as we know, edifieth. Certainly
without knowledge the virtues themselves, by which one lives rightly,
cannot be possessed, by which this miserable life may be so governed,
that we may attain to that eternal life which is truly blessed.
22. Yet action, by which we use temporal things well, differs from
contemplation of eternal things; and the latter is reckoned to wisdom,
the former to knowledge. For although that which is wisdom can also be
called knowledge, as the apostle too speaks, where he says, "Now I
know in part, but then shall I know even as also I am known;" when
doubtless he meant his words to be understood of the knowledge of the
contemplation of God, which will be the highest reward of the saints;
yet where he says, "For to one is given by the Spirit the word of
wisdom, to another the word of knowledge by the same Spirit,"
certainly he distinguishes without doubt these two things, although he
does not there explain the difference, nor in what way one may be
discerned from the other. But having examined a great number of
passages from the Holy Scriptures, I find it written in the Book of
Job, that holy man being the speaker, "Behold, piety, that is
wisdom; but to depart from evil is knowledge." In thus
distinguishing, it must be understood that wisdom belongs to
contemplation, knowledge to action. For in this place he meant by
piety the worship of God, which in Greek is called qeosbeia. For
the sentence in the Greek MSS. has that word. And what is there
in eternal things more excellent than God, of whom alone the nature is
unchangeable? And what is the worship of Him except the love of
Him, by which we now desire to see Him, and we believe and hope that
we shall see Him; and in proportion as we make progress, see now
through a glass in an enigma, but then in clearness? For this is what
the Apostle Paul means by "face to face." This is also what John
says, "Beloved, now we are the sons of God, and it doth not yet
appear what we shall be; but we know that, when He shall appear, we
shall be like Him; for we shall see Him as He is." Discourse
about these and the like subjects seems to me to be the discourse itself
of wisdom. But to depart from evil, which Job says is knowledge, is
without doubt of temporal things. Since it is in reference to time
[and this world] that we are in evil, from which we ought to abstain
that we may come to those good eternal things. And therefore,
whatsoever we do prudently, boldly, temperately, and justly, belongs
to that knowledge or discipline wherewith our action is conversant in
avoiding evil and desiring good; and so also, whatsoever we gather by
the knowledge that comes from inquiry, in the way of examples either to
be guarded against or to be imitated, and in the way of necessary
proofs respecting any subject, accommodated to our use.
23. When a discourse then relates to these things, I hold it to be
a discourse belonging to knowledge, and to be distinguished from a
discourse belonging to wisdom, to which those things belong, which
neither have been, nor shall be, but are; and on account of that
eternity in which they are, are said to have been, and to be, and to
be about to be, without any changeableness of times. For neither have
they been in such way as that they should cease to be, nor are they
about to be in such way as if they were not now; but they have always
had and always will have that very absolute being. And they abide,
but not as if fixed in some place as are bodies; but as intelligible
things in incorporeal nature, they are so at hand to the glance of the
mind, as things visible or tangible in place are to the sense of the
body. And not only in the case of sensible things posited in place,
there abide also intelligible and incorporeal reasons of them apart from
local space; but also of motions that pass by in successive times,
apart from any transit in time, there stand also like reasons,
themselves certainly intelligible, and not sensible. And to attain to
these with the eye of the mind is the lot of few; and when they are
attained as much as they can be, he himself who attains to them does
not abide in them, but is as it were repelled by the rebounding of the
eye itself of the mind, and so there comes to be a transitory thought
of a thing not transitory. And yet this transient thought is committed
to the memory through the instructions by which the mind is taught;
that the mind which is compelled to pass from thence, may be able to
return thither again; although, if the thought should not return to
the memory and find there what it had committed to it, it would be led
thereto like an uninstructed person, as it had been led before, and
would find it where it had first found it, that is to say, in that
incorporeal truth, whence yet once more it may be as it were written
down and fixed in the mind. For the thought of man, for example,
does not so abide in that incorporeal and unchangeable reason of a
square body, as that reason itself abides: if, to be sure, it could
attain to it at all without the phantasy of local space. Or if one
were to apprehend the rhythm of any artificial or musical sound,
passing through certain intervals of time, as it rested without time in
some secret and deep silence, it could at least be thought as long as
that song could be heard; yet what the glance of the mind, transient
though it was, caught from thence. and, absorbing as it were into a
belly, so laid up in the memory, over this it will be able to rumiuate
in some measure by recollection, and to transfer what it has thus
learned into systematic knowledge. But if this has been blotted out by
absolute forgetfulness, yet once again, Under the guidance of
teaching, one wilt come to that which had altogether dropped away, and
it will be found such as it was.
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