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| Of the Blessings with Which the Creator Has Filled This Life, Obnoxious Though It Be to the Curse.
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Chapter 24.—Of the Blessings with
Which the Creator Has Filled This Life, Obnoxious Though It Be to
the Curse.
But we must now contemplate the
rich and countless blessings with which the goodness of God, who
cares for all He has created, has filled this very misery of the
human race, which reflects His retributive justice. That first
blessing which He pronounced before the fall, when He said,
“Increase, and multiply, and replenish the earth,”1658
He did
not inhibit after man had sinned, but the fecundity originally
bestowed remained in the condemned stock; and the vice of sin,
which has involved us in the necessity of dying, has yet not
deprived us of that wonderful power of seed, or rather of that
still more marvellous power by which seed is produced, and which
seems to be as it were inwrought and inwoven in the human body.
But in this river, as I may call it, or torrent of the human race,
both elements are carried along together,—both the evil which is
derived from him who begets, and the good which is bestowed by Him
who creates us. In the original evil there are two things, sin
and punishment; in the original good, there are two other things,
propagation and conformation. But of the evils, of which the one,
sin, arose from our audacity, and the other, punishment, from
God’s judgment, we have already said as much as suits our present
purpose. I mean now to speak of the blessings which God has
conferred or still confers upon our nature, vitiated and condemned
as it is. For in condemning it He did not withdraw all that He
had given it, else it had been annihilated; neither did He, in
penally subjecting it to the devil, remove it beyond His own power;
for not even the devil himself is outside of God’s government,
since the devil’s nature subsists only by the supreme Creator who
gives being to all that in any form exists.
Of these two blessings, then, which
we have said flow from God’s goodness, as from a fountain,
towards our nature, vitiated by sin and condemned to punishment,
the one, propagation, was conferred by God’s benediction when He
made those first works, from which He rested on the seventh day.
But the other, conformation, is conferred in that work of His
wherein “He worketh hitherto.”1659
For were He to withdraw His
efficacious power from things, they should neither be able to go on
and complete the periods assigned to their measured movements, nor
should they even continue in possession of that nature they were
created in. God, then, so created man that He gave him what we
may call fertility, whereby he might propagate other men, giving
them a congenital capacity to propagate their kind, but not
imposing on them any necessity to do so. This capacity God
withdraws at pleasure from individuals, making them barren; but
from the whole race He has not withdrawn the blessing of
propagation once conferred. But though not withdrawn on account
of sin, this power of propagation is not what it would have been
had there been no sin. For since “man placed in honor fell, he
has become like the beasts,”1660
and generates as they do, though
the little spark of reason, which was the image of God in him, has
not been quite quenched. But if conformation were not added to
propagation, there would be no reproduction of one’s kind. For
even though there were no such thing as copulation, and God wished
to fill the earth with human inhabitants, He might create all these
as He created one without the help of human generation. And,
indeed, even as it is, those who copulate can generate nothing save
by the creative energy of God. As, therefore, in respect of that
spiritual growth whereby a man is formed to piety and
righteousness, the apostle says, “Neither is he that planteth
anything, neither he that watereth, but God that giveth the
increase,”1661
so also it
must be said that it is not he that generates that is anything, but
God that giveth the essential form; that it is not the mother who
carries and nurses the fruit of her womb that is anything, but God
that giveth the increase. For He alone, by that energy wherewith
“He worketh hitherto,” causes the seed to develop, and to
evolve from certain secret and invisible folds into the visible
forms of beauty which we see. He alone, coupling and connecting
in some wonderful fashion the spiritual and corporeal natures, the
one to command, the other to obey, makes a living being. And this
work of His is so great and wonderful, that not only man, who is a
rational animal, and consequently more excellent than all other
animals of the earth, but even the most diminutive insect, cannot
be considered attentively without astonishment and without praising
the Creator.
It is He, then, who has given to
the human soul a mind, in which reason and understanding lie as it
were asleep during infancy, and as if they were not, destined,
however, to be awakened and exercised as years increase, so as to
become capable of knowledge and of receiving instruction, fit to
understand what is true and to love what is good. It is by this
capacity the soul drinks in wisdom, and
becomes endowed with
those virtues by which, in prudence, fortitude, temperance, and
righteousness, it makes war upon error and the other inborn vices,
and conquers them by fixing its desires upon no other object than
the supreme and unchangeable Good. And even though this be not
uniformly the result, yet who can competently utter or even
conceive the grandeur of this work of the Almighty, and the
unspeakable boon He has conferred upon our rational nature, by
giving us even the capacity of such attainment? For over and
above those arts which are called virtues, and which teach us how
we may spend our life well, and attain to endless happiness,—arts
which are given to the children of the promise and the kingdom by
the sole grace of God which is in Christ,—has not the genius of
man invented and applied countless astonishing arts, partly the
result of necessity, partly the result of exuberant invention, so
that this vigor of mind, which is so active in the discovery not
merely of superfluous but even of dangerous and destructive things,
betokens an inexhaustible wealth in the nature which can invent,
learn, or employ such arts? What wonderful—one might say
stupefying—advances has human industry made in the arts of
weaving and building, of agriculture and navigation! With what
endless variety are designs in pottery, painting, and sculpture
produced, and with what skill executed! What wonderful spectacles
are exhibited in the theatres, which those who have not seen them
cannot credit! How skillful the contrivances for catching,
killing, or taming wild beasts! And for the injury of men, also,
how many kinds of poisons, weapons, engines of destruction, have
been invented, while for the preservation or restoration of health
the appliances and remedies are infinite! To provoke appetite and
please the palate, what a variety of seasonings have been
concocted! To express and gain entrance for thoughts, what a
multitude and variety of signs there are, among which speaking and
writing hold the first place! what ornaments has eloquence at
command to delight the mind! what wealth of song is there to
captivate the ear! how many musical instruments and strains of
harmony have been devised! What skill has been attained in
measures and numbers! with what sagacity have the movements and
connections of the stars been discovered! Who could tell the
thought that has been spent upon nature, even though, despairing of
recounting it in detail, he endeavored only to give a general view
of it? In fine, even the defence of errors and misapprehensions,
which has illustrated the genius of heretics and philosophers,
cannot be sufficiently declared. For at present it is the nature
of the human mind which adorns this mortal life which we are
extolling, and not the faith and the way of truth which lead to
immortality. And since this great nature has certainly been
created by the true and supreme God, who administers all things He
has made with absolute power and justice, it could never have
fallen into these miseries, nor have gone out of them to miseries
eternal, —saving only those who are redeemed,—had not an
exceeding great sin been found in the first man from whom the rest
have sprung.
Moreover, even in the body, though
it dies like that of the beasts, and is in many ways weaker than
theirs, what goodness of God, what providence of the great Creator,
is apparent! The organs of sense and the rest of the members, are
not they so placed, the appearance, and form, and stature of the
body as a whole, is it not so fashioned, as to indicate that it was
made for the service of a reasonable soul? Man has not been
created stooping towards the earth, like the irrational animals;
but his bodily form, erect and looking heavenwards, admonishes him
to mind the things that are above. Then the marvellous nimbleness
which has been given to the tongue and the hands, fitting them to
speak, and write, and execute so many duties, and practise so many
arts, does it not prove the excellence of the soul for which such
an assistant was provided? And even apart from its adaptation to
the work required of it, there is such a symmetry in its various
parts, and so beautiful a proportion maintained, that one is at a
loss to decide whether, in creating the body, greater regard was
paid to utility or to beauty. Assuredly no part of the body has
been created for the sake of utility which does not also contribute
something to its beauty. And this would be all the more apparent,
if we knew more precisely how all its parts are connected and
adapted to one another, and were not limited in our observations to
what appears on the surface; for as to what is covered up and
hidden from our view, the intricate web of veins and nerves, the
vital parts of all that lies under the skin, no one can discover
it. For although, with a cruel zeal for science, some medical
men, who are called anatomists, have dissected the bodies of the
dead, and sometimes even of sick persons who died under their
knives, and have inhumanly pried into the secrets of the human body
to learn the nature of the disease and its exact seat, and how it
might be cured, yet those relations of which I speak, and which
form the concord,1662
| 1662 Coaptatio, a word coined by Augustin, and used by him again in
the De Trin. iv. 2. |
or, as the Greeks call it,
“harmony,” of the whole body outside and in, as of some
instrument, no one has been able to discover, because no one has
been audacious enough to seek for them. But if these could be
known, then even the inward parts, which seem to have no beauty,
would so delight us with their exquisite fitness, as to afford a
profounder satisfaction to the mind—and the eyes are but its
ministers—than the obvious beauty which gratifies the eye.
There are some things, too, which have such a place in the body,
that they obviously serve no useful purpose, but are solely for
beauty, as e.g. the teats on a man’s breast, or the beard
on his face; for that this is for ornament, and not for protection,
is proved by the bare faces of women, who ought rather, as the
weaker sex, to enjoy such a defence. If, therefore, of all those
members which are exposed to our view, there is certainly not one
in which beauty is sacrificed to utility, while there are some
which serve no purpose but only beauty, I think it can readily be
concluded that in the creation of the human body comeliness was
more regarded than necessity. In truth, necessity is a transitory
thing; and the time is coming when we shall enjoy one another’s
beauty without any lust,—a condition which will specially redound
to the praise of the Creator, who, as it is said in the psalm, has
“put on praise and comeliness.”1663
How can I tell of the rest of
creation, with all its beauty and utility, which the divine
goodness has given to man to please his eye and serve his purposes,
condemned though he is, and hurled into these labors and
miseries? Shall I speak of the manifold and various loveliness of
sky, and earth, and sea; of the plentiful supply and wonderful
qualities of the light; of sun, moon, and stars; of the shade of
trees; of the colors and perfume of flowers; of the multitude of
birds, all differing in plumage and in song; of the variety of
animals, of which the smallest in size are often the most
wonderful,—the works of ants and bees astonishing us more than
the huge bodies of whales? Shall I speak of the sea, which itself
is so grand a spectacle, when it arrays itself as it were in
vestures of various colors, now running through every shade of
green, and again becoming purple or blue? Is it not delightful to
look at it in storm, and experience the soothing complacency which
it inspires, by suggesting that we ourselves are not tossed and
shipwrecked?1664
| 1664 He apparently has in view the
celebrated passage in the opening of the second book of
Lucretius. The uses made of this passage are referred to by
Lecky, Hist. of European Morals, i. 74. | What
shall I say of the numberless kinds of food to alleviate hunger,
and the variety of seasonings to stimulate appetite which are
scattered everywhere by nature, and for which we are not indebted
to the art of cookery? How many natural appliances are there for
preserving and restoring health! How grateful is the alternation
of day and night! how pleasant the breezes that cool the air! how
abundant the supply of clothing furnished us by trees and
animals! Who can enumerate all the blessings we enjoy? If I
were to attempt to detail and unfold only these few which I have
indicated in the mass, such an enumeration would fill a volume.
And all these are but the solace of the wretched and condemned, not
the rewards of the blessed. What then shall these rewards be, if
such be the blessings of a condemned state? What will He give to
those whom He has predestined to life, who has given such things
even to those whom He has predestined to death? What blessings
will He in the blessed life shower upon those for whom, even in
this state of misery, He has been willing that His only-begotten
Son should endure such sufferings even to death? Thus the apostle
reasons concerning those who are predestined to that kingdom:
“He that spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all,
how shall He not with Him also give us all things?”1665
When
this promise is fulfilled, what shall we be? What blessings shall
we receive in that kingdom, since already we have received as the
pledge of them Christ’s dying? In what condition shall the
spirit of man be, when it has no longer any vice at all; when it
neither yields to any, nor is in bondage to any, nor has to make
war against any, but is perfected, and enjoys undisturbed peace
with itself? Shall it not then know all things with certainty,
and without any labor or error, when unhindered and joyfully it
drinks the wisdom of God at the fountain-head? What shall the
body be, when it is in every respect subject to the spirit, from
which it shall draw a life so sufficient, as to stand in need of no
other nutriment? For it shall no longer be animal, but spiritual,
having indeed the substance of flesh, but without any fleshly
corruption.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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