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| In What Manner Many Sought the Mediator.
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Chapter XLII.—In What Manner Many
Sought the Mediator.
67. Whom could I find to reconcile me to Thee?
Was I to solicit the angels? By what prayer? By what sacraments?
Many striving to return unto Thee, and not able of themselves,
have, as I am told, tried this, and have fallen into a longing for
curious visions,971
| 971 It would be easy so to do, since even amongst
believers, as we find from Evodius’ letter to Augustin
(Ep. clvi.), there was a prevalent belief that the blessed
dead visited the earth, and that visions had an important bearing
on human affairs. See also Augustin’s answer to Evodius, in
Ep. clix.; Chrysostom, De Sacer. vi. 4; and on Visions,
see sec. 41, note, above. | and were
held worthy to be deceived. For they, being exalted, sought Thee by
the pride of learning, thrusting themselves forward rather than
beating their breasts, and so by correspondence of heart drew unto
themselves the princes of the air,972
the conspirators and companions in
pride, by whom, through the power of magic,973
| 973 See note 5, p. 69, above. | they were deceived, seeking a
mediator by whom they might be cleansed; but none was there. For
the devil it was, transforming himself into an angel of light.974
And he much
allured proud flesh, in that he had no fleshly body. For they were
mortal, and sinful; but Thou, O Lord, to whom they arrogantly
sought to be reconciled, art immortal, and sinless. But a mediator
between God and man ought to have something like unto God, and
something like unto man; lest being in both like unto man, he
should be far from God; or if in both like unto God, he should be
far from man, and so should not be a mediator. That deceitful
mediator, then, by whom in Thy secret judgments pride deserved to
be deceived, hath one thing in common with man, that is, sin;
another he would appear to have with God, and, not being clothed
with mortality of flesh, would boast that he was immortal.975
| 975 In his De Civ. Dei, x. 24, in speaking of
the Incarnation of Christ as a mystery unintelligible to
Porphyry’s pride, he has a similar passage, in which he speaks of
the “true and benignant Mediator,” and the “malignant and
deceitful mediators.” See vii. sec. 24, above. | But since
“the wages of sin is death,”976
this hath he in common with men,
that together with them he should be condemned to
death.
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