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| Being Attacked by Fever, He is in Great Danger.
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Chapter IX.—Being Attacked by
Fever, He is in Great Danger.
16. And behold, there was I received by the
scourge of bodily sickness, and I was descending into hell burdened
with all the sins that I had committed, both against Thee, myself,
and others, many and grievous, over and above that bond of original
sin whereby we all die in Adam.398
For none of these things hadst
Thou forgiven me in Christ, neither had He
“abolished” by His cross “the enmity”399
which, by my sins, I had incurred
with Thee. For how could He, by the crucifixion of a phantasm,400
| 400 The Manichæan belief in regard to the unreal
nature of Christ’s body may be gathered from Augustin’s
Reply to Faustus: “You ask,” argues Faustus (xxvi. i.),
“if Jesus was not born, how did He die?…In return I ask you,
how did Elias not die, though he was a man? Could a mortal encroach
upon the limits of immortality, and could not Christ add to His
immortality whatever experience of death was
required?…Accordingly, if it is a good argument that Jesus was a
man because He died, it is an equally good argument that Elias was
not a man because he did not die.…As, from the outset of His
taking the likeness of man, He underwent in appearance all the
experiences of humanity, it was quite consistent that He should
complete the system by appearing to die.” So that with him the
whole life of Jesus was a “phantasm.” His birth, circumcision,
crucifixion, baptism, and temptation were (ibid. xxxii. 7)
the mere result of the interpolation of crafty men, or sprung from
the ignorance of the apostles, when as yet they had not reached
perfection in knowledge. It is noticeable that Augustin, referring
to Eph. ii. 15, substitutes His cross for His
flesh, he, as a Manichæan, not believing in the real humanity of
the Son of God. See iii. sec. 9, note, above. | which I
supposed Him to be? As true, then, was the death of my soul, as
that of His flesh appeared to me to be untrue; and as true the
death of His flesh as the life of my soul, which believed it not,
was false. The fever increasing, I was now passing away and
perishing. For had I then gone hence, whither should I have gone
but into the fiery torments meet for my misdeeds, in the truth of
Thy ordinance? She was ignorant of this, yet, while absent, prayed
for me. But Thou, everywhere present, hearkened to her where she
was, and hadst pity upon me where I was, that I should regain my
bodily health, although still frenzied in my sacrilegious heart.
For all that peril did not make me wish to be baptized, and I was
better when, as a lad, I entreated it of my mother’s piety, as I
have already related and confessed.401
| 401 See i. sec. 10, above. | But I had grown up to my own
dishonour, and all the purposes of Thy medicine I madly derided,402
who wouldst
not suffer me, though such a one, to die a double death. Had my
mother’s heart been smitten with this wound, it never could have
been cured. For I cannot sufficiently express the love she had for
me, nor how she now travailed for me in the spirit with a far
keener anguish than when she bore me in the flesh.
17. I cannot conceive, therefore, how she
could have been healed if such a death of mine had transfixed the
bowels of her love. Where then would have been her so earnest,
frequent, and unintermitted prayers to Thee alone? But couldst
Thou, most merciful God, despise the “contrite and humble
heart”403
of that pure
and prudent widow, so constant in alms-deeds, so gracious and
attentive to Thy saints, not permitting one day to pass without
oblation at Thy altar, twice a day, at morning and even-tide,
coming to Thy church without intermission—not for vain gossiping,
nor old wives’ “fables,”404
but in order that she might listen
to Thee in Thy sermons, and Thou to her in her prayers?405
| 405 Watts gives the following note here:—“Oblations
were those offerings of bread, meal, or wine, for making of the
Eucharist, or of alms besides for the poor, which the primitive
Christians every time they communicated brought to the church,
where it was received by the deacons, who presented them to the
priest or bishop. Here note: (1) They communicated daily; (2) they
had service morning and evening, and two sermons a day many
times,” etc. An interesting trace of an old use in this matter of
oblations is found in the Queen’s Coronation Service. After other
oblations had been offered, the Queen knelt before the Archbishop
and presented to him “oblations” of bread and wine for
the Holy Communion. See also Palmer’s Origines Liturgicæ,
iv. 8, who demonstrates by reference to patristic writers that the
custom was universal in the primitive Church:—“But though all
the churches of the East and West agreed in this respect, they
differed in appointing the time and place at which the oblations of
the people were received.” It would appear from the following
account of early Christian worship, that in the time of Justin
Martyr the oblations were collected after the reception of the
Lord’s Supper. In his First Apology we read (c. lxvii.):
“On the day called Sunday
[τοῦ ἡλίου λεγομένῃ
ἡμέρᾳ] all who live in
cities or in the country gather together to one place, and the
memoirs of the apostles or the writings of the prophets are read,
as long as time permits them. When the reader has ceased, the
president [ὁ
προεστὼς] verbally
instructs, and exhorts to the imitation of these good things. Then
we all rise together and pray [εὐχὰς πέμπομεν], and, as we before said, when our
prayer is ended, bread and wine and water are brought, and the
president in like manner offers prayers and thanksgivings according
to his ability [Kaye renders (p. 89)
εὐχὰς ὁμοίως καὶ εὐχαριστίας, ὅση δύναμις αὐτῷ,
ἀναπέμπει, “with his utmost power”], and the people
assent, saying Amen; and there is a distribution to each, and a
participation of that over which thanks had been given, and to
those who are absent a portion is sent by the deacons. And they who
are well-to-do, and willing, give what each thinks fit; and what is
collected [τὸ συλλεγόμενον] is deposited with the
president, who succours the orphans and widows, and those who,
through sickness or any other cause, are in want, and those who are
in bonds, and the stranger sojourning among us, and, in a word,
takes care of all who are in need.” The whole passage is given,
as portions of it will be found to have a bearing on other parts of
the Confessions. Bishop Kaye’s Justin Martyr, c.
iv., may be referred to for his view of the controverted points in
the passage. See also Bingham’s Antiquities, ii. 2–9;
and notes to vi. sec. 2, and ix. secs. 6 and 27, below. | Couldst
Thou—Thou by whose gift she was such—despise and disregard
without succouring the tears of such a one, wherewith she entreated
Thee not for gold or silver, nor for any changing or fleeting good,
but for the salvation of the soul of her son? By no means, Lord.
Assuredly Thou wert near, and wert hearing and doing in that method
in which Thou hadst predetermined that it should be done. Far be it
from Thee that Thou shouldst delude her in those visions and the
answers she had from Thee,—some of which I have spoken of,406
| 406 See above, iii. 11, 12. | and others
not,407
—which she
kept408
in her
faithful breast, and, always petitioning, pressed upon Thee as
Thine autograph. For Thou, “because Thy mercy endureth for
ever,”409
condescendest to those whose debts Thou hast pardoned, to become
likewise a debtor by Thy promises.
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