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| We are Made Perfect by Acknowledgement of Our Own Weakness. The Incarnate Word Dispels Our Darkness.
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Chapter 1.—We are Made Perfect by Acknowledgement of
Our Own Weakness. The Incarnate Word Dispels Our
Darkness.
2. But since we are exiled from the
unchangeable joy, yet neither cut off nor torn away from it so that
we should not seek eternity, truth, blessedness, even in those
changeable and temporal things (for we wish neither to die, nor to
be deceived, nor to be troubled); visions have been sent to us from
heaven suitable to our state of pilgrimage, in order to remind us
that what we seek is not here, but that from this pilgrimage we
must return thither, whence unless we originated we should not here
seek these things. And first we have had to be persuaded how much
God loved us, lest from despair we should not dare to look up to
Him. And we needed to be shown also what manner of men we are whom
He loved, lest being proud, as if of our own merits, we should
recede the more from Him, and fail the more in our own strength.
And hence He so dealt with us, that we might the rather profit by
His strength, and that so in the weakness of humility the virtue of
charity might be perfected. And this is intimated in the Psalm,
where it is said, “Thou, O God, didst send a spontaneous rain,
whereby Thou didst make Thine inheritance perfect, when it was
weary.”442
For by
“spontaneous rain” nothing else is meant than grace, not
rendered to merit, but given freely,443
whence also it is called grace; for
He gave it, not because we were worthy, but because He willed. And
knowing this, we shall not trust in ourselves; and this is to be
made “weak.” But He Himself makes us perfect, who says also to
the Apostle Paul, “My grace is sufficient for thee, for my
strength is made perfect in weakness.”444
Man, then, was to be persuaded how
much God loved us, and what manner of men we were whom He loved;
the former, lest we should despair; the latter, lest we should be
proud. And this most necessary topic the apostle thus explains:
“But God commendeth,” he says, “His love towards us, in that,
while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then,
being now justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath
through Him. For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to
God by the death of His Son; much more, being reconciled, we shall
be saved by His life.”445
Also in another place: “What,”
he says, “shall we then say to these things? If God be for us,
who can be against us? He that spared not His own Son, but
delivered Him up for us all, how has He not with Him also freely
given us all things?”446
Now that which is declared to us as
already done, was shown also to the ancient righteous as about to
be done; that through the same faith they themselves also might be
humbled, and so made weak; and might be made weak, and so
perfected.
3. Because therefore the Word of
God is One, by which all things were made, which is the
unchangeable truth, all things are simultaneously therein,
potentially and unchangeably; not only those things which are now
in this whole creation, but also those which have been and those
which shall be. And therein they neither have been, nor shall be,
but only are; and all things are life, and all things are
one; or rather it is one being and one life. For all things were so
made by Him, that whatsoever was made in them was not made in Him,
but was life in Him. Since, “in the beginning,” the Word was
not made, but “the Word was with God, and the Word was God, and
all things were made by Him;” neither had all things been made by
Him, unless He had Himself been before all things and not made. But
in those things which were made by Him, even body, which is not
life, would not have been made by Him, except it had been life in
Him before it was made. For “that which was made was already life
in Him;” and not life of any kind soever: for the soul also is
the life of the body, but this too is made, for it is changeable;
and by what was it made, except by the unchangeable Word of God?
For “all things were made by Him; and without Him was not
anything made that was made.” “What, therefore, was made was
already life in Him;” and not any kind of life, but “the life
[which] was the light of men;” the light certainly of rational
minds, by which men differ from beasts, and therefore are men.
Therefore not corporeal light, which is the light of the flesh,
whether it shine from heaven, or whether it be lighted by earthly
fires; nor that of human flesh only, but also that of beasts, and
down even to the minutest of worms. For all these things see that
light: but that life was the light of men; nor is it far from any
one of us, for in it “we live, and move, and have our being.”447
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