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4. But I also, as yet, although I said and was firmly persuaded,
that Thou our Lord, the true God, who madest not only our souls but
our bodies, and not our souls and bodies alone, but all creatures and
all things, wert uncontaminable and inconvertible, and in no part
mutable: yet understood I not readily and clearly what was the cause
of evil. And yet, whatever it was, I perceived that it must be so
sought out as not to constrain me by it to believe that the immutable
God was mutable, lest I myself should become the thing that I was
seeking out. I sought, therefore, for it free from care, certain of
the untruthfulness of what these asserted, whom I shunned with my
whole heart; for I perceived that through seeking after the origin of
evil, they were filled with malice, in that they liked better to think
that Thy Substance did suffer evil than that their own did commit it.
5. And I directed my attention to discern what I now heard, that
free will was the cause of our doing evil, and Thy righteous judgment
of our suffering it. But I was unable clearly to discern it. So,
then, trying to draw the eye of my mind from that pit, I was plunged
again therein, and trying often, was as often plunged back again.
But this raised me towards Thy light, that I knew as well that I
had a will as that I had life: when, therefore, I was willing or
unwilling to do anything, I was most certain that it was none but
myself that was willing and unwilling; and immediately I perceived
that there was the cause of my sin. But what I did against my will I
saw that I suffered rather than did, and that judged I not to be my
fault, but my punishment; whereby, believing Thee to be most just,
I quickly confessed myself to be not unjustly punished. But again I
said: "Who made me? Was it not my God, who is not only good, but
goodness itself? Whence came I then to will to do evil, and to be
unwilling to do good, that there might be cause for my just
punishment? Who was it that put this in me, and implanted in me the
root of bitterness, seeing I was altogether made by my most sweet
God? If the devil were the author, whence is that devil? And if he
also, by his own perverse will, of a good angel became a devil,
whence also was the evil will in him whereby he became a devil, seeing
that the angel was made altogether good by that most Good Creator?"
By these reflections was I again cast down and stifled; yet not
plunged into that hell of error (where no man confesseth unto Thee),
to think that Thou dost suffer evil, rather than that man doth it.
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