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| That the Cause of Evil is the Free Judgment of the Will.
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Chapter III.—That the Cause of
Evil is the Free Judgment of the Will.
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.485
| 485 See iv. sec. 26, note, above. |
5. And I directed my attention to discern what
I now heard, that free will486
| 486 See iii. sec. 12, note, and iv. sec. 26, note,
above. | 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),487
to think that Thou dost suffer
evil, rather than that man doth it.
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