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| All Creatures Subsist from the Plenitude of Divine Goodness.
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Chapter II.—All Creatures Subsist
from the Plenitude of Divine Goodness.
2. For of the plenitude of Thy goodness Thy creature
subsists, that a good, which could profit Thee nothing, nor though
of Thee was equal to Thee, might yet be, since it could be made of
Thee. For what did heaven and earth, which Thou madest in the
beginning, deserve of Thee? Let those spiritual and corporeal
natures, which Thou in Thy wisdom madest, declare what they deserve
of Thee to depend thereon,—even the inchoate and formless, each
in its own kind, either spiritual or corporeal, going into excess,
and into remote unlikeness unto Thee (the spiritual, though
formless, more excellent than if it were a formed body; and the
corporeal, though formless, more excellent than if it were
altogether nothing), and thus they as formless would depend upon
Thy Word, unless by the same Word they were recalled to Thy Unity,
and endued with form, and from Thee, the one sovereign Good, were
all made very good. How have they deserved of Thee, that they
should be even formless, since they would not be even this except
from Thee?
3. How has corporeal matter deserved of Thee,
to be even invisible and formless,1170
since it were not even this hadst
Thou not made it; and therefore since it was not, it could not
deserve of Thee that it should be made? Or how could the inchoate
spiritual creature1171
deserve of Thee, that even it
should flow darksomely like the deep,—unlike Thee, had it not
been by the same Word turned to that by Whom it was created, and by
Him so enlightened become light, although not equally, yet
conformably to that Form which is equal unto Thee? For as to a
body, to be is not all one with being beautiful, for then it could
not be deformed; so also to a created spirit, to live is not all
one with living wisely, for then it would be wise unchangeably. But
it is good1172
for it
always to hold fast unto Thee,1173
| 1173 Similarly, in his De Civ. Dei, xii. 1, he
argues that true blessedness is to be attained “by adhering to
the Immutable Good, the Supreme God.” This, indeed, imparts the
only true life (see note, p. 133, above); for, as Origen says
(in S. Joh. ii. 7), “the good man is he who truly
exists,” and “to be evil and to be wicked are the same as not
to be.” See notes, pp. 75 and 151, above. | lest, in turning from Thee, it
lose that light which it hath obtained in turning to Thee,
and relapse into
a light resembling the darksome deep. For even we ourselves, who in
respect of the soul are a spiritual creature, having turned away
from Thee, our light, were in that life “sometimes darkness;”1174
and do
labour amidst the remains of our darkness, until in Thy Only One we
become Thy righteousness, like the mountains of God. For we have
been Thy judgments, which are like the great deep.1175
| 1175 Ps. xxxvi. 6, as in the Vulgate, which
renders the Hebrew more correctly than the Authorized Version. This
passage has been variously interpreted. Augustin makes “the
mountains of God” to mean the saints, prophets, and apostles,
while “the great deep” he interprets of the wicked and sinful.
Compare in Ev. Joh. Tract. i. 2; and in Ps. xxxv. 7,
sec. 10. |
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