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| On the Vanity of Those Who Wished to Escape the Omnipotent God.
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Chapter II.—On the Vanity of
Those Who Wished to Escape the Omnipotent God.
2. Let the restless and the unjust depart and
flee from Thee. Thou both seest them and distinguishest the
shadows. And lo! all things with them are fair, yet are they
themselves foul.355
| 355 Augustin frequently recurs to the idea, that in
God’s overruling Providence, the foulness and sin of man does not
disturb the order and fairness of the universe. He illustrates the
idea by reference to music, painting, and oratory. “For as the
beauty of a picture is increased by well-managed shadows, so, to
the eye that has skill to discern it, the universe is beautified
even by sinners, though, considered by themselves, their deformity
is a sad blemish” (De Civ. Dei, xi. 23). So again, he
says, God would never have created angels or men whose future
wickedness he foreknew, unless He could turn them to the use of the
good, “thus embellishing the course of the ages as it were an
exquisite poem set off with antitheses” (ibid. xi. 18);
and further on, in the same section, “as the oppositions of
contraries lend beauty to language, so the beauty of the course of
this world is achieved by the opposition of contraries, arranged,
as it were, by an eloquence not of words, but of things.” These
reflections affected Augustin’s views as to the last things. They
seemed to him to render the idea entertained by Origen (De
Princ. i. 6) and other Fathers as to a general restoration
[ἀποκατάστασις] unnecessary. See Hagenbach’s Hist. of
Doct. etc. i. 383 (Clark). | And how have
they injured Thee?356
| 356 “In Scripture they are called God’s enemies who
oppose His rule not by nature but by vice, having no power to hurt
Him, but only themselves. For they are His enemies not through
their power to hurt, but by their will to oppose Him. For God is
unchangeable, and wholly proof against injury” (De Civ.
Dei, xii. 3). | Or in what have they disgraced Thy
government, which is just and perfect from heaven even to the
lowest parts of the earth. For whither fled they when they fled
from Thy presence?357
Or where dost Thou not find them?
But they fled that they might not see Thee seeing them, and blinded
might stumble against Thee;358
since Thou forsakest nothing that
Thou hast made359
—that the
unjust might stumble against Thee, and justly be hurt,360
| 360 He also refers to the injury man does himself by
sin in ii. sec. 13, above; and elsewhere he suggests the law which
underlies it: “The vice which makes those who are called God’s
enemies resist Him, is an evil not to God but to themselves. And to
them it is an evil solely because it corrupts the good of their
nature.” And when we suffer for our sins we should thank God that
we are not unpunished (De Civ. Dei, xii. 3). But if, when
God punishes us, we still continue in our sin, we shall be more
confirmed in habits of sin, and then, as Augustin in another place
(in Ps. vii. 15) warns us, “our facility in sinning will
be the punishment of God for our former yieldings to sin.” See
also Butler’s Analogy, Pt. i. ch. 5, “On a state of
probation as intended for moral discipline and improvement.” | withdrawing
themselves from Thy gentleness, and stumbling against Thine
uprightness, and falling upon their own roughness. Forsooth, they
know not that Thou art everywhere whom no place encompasseth, and
that Thou alone art near even to those that remove far from Thee.361
Let them,
then, be converted and seek Thee; because not as they have
forsaken their Creator hast Thou forsaken Thy creature. Let them be
converted and seek Thee; and behold, Thou art there in their
hearts, in the hearts of those who confess to Thee, and cast
themselves upon Thee, and weep on Thy bosom after their obdurate
ways, even Thou gently wiping away their tears. And they weep the
more, and rejoice in weeping, since Thou, O Lord, not man, flesh
and blood, but Thou, Lord, who didst make, remakest and comfortest
them. And where was I when I was seeking Thee? And Thou wert before
me, but I had gone away even from myself; nor did I find myself,
much less Thee!
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