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| The Trinity of the Outer Man, or of External Vision, is Not an Image of God. The Likeness of God is Desired Even in Sins. In External Vision the Form of the Corporeal Thing is as It Were the Parent, Vision the Offspring; But the Will that Unites These Suggests the Holy Spirit.
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Chapter 5.—The
Trinity of the Outer Man, or of External Vision, is Not an Image of
God. The Likeness of God is Desired Even in Sins. In External
Vision the Form of the Corporeal Thing is as It Were the Parent,
Vision the Offspring; But the Will that Unites These Suggests the
Holy Spirit.
8. But as, when [both] the form and
species of a body have perished, the will cannot recall to it the
sense of perceiving; so, when the image which memory bears is
blotted out by forgetfulness, the will will be unable to
force back the eye of the mind by recollection, so as to be
formed thereby. But because the mind has great power to imagine not
only things forgotten, but also things that it never saw, or
experienced, either by increasing, or diminishing, or changing, or
compounding, after its pleasure, those which have not dropped out
of its remembrance, it often imagines things to be such as either
it knows they are not, or does not know that they are. And in this
case we have to take care, lest it either speak falsely that it may
deceive, or hold an opinion so as to be deceived. And if it avoid
these two evils, then imagined phantasms do not hinder it: just as
sensible things experienced or retained by memory do not hinder it,
if they are neither passionately sought for when pleasant, nor
basely shunned when unpleasant. But when the will leaves better
things, and greedily wallows in these, then it becomes unclean; and
they are so thought of hurtfully, when they are present, and also
more hurtfully when they are absent. And he therefore lives badly
and degenerately who lives according to the trinity of the
outer man; because it is the purpose of using things sensible
and corporeal, that has begotten also that trinity, which although
it imagines within, yet imagines things without. For no one could
use those things even well, unless the images of things perceived
by the senses were retained in the memory. And unless the will for
the greatest part dwells in the higher and interior things, and
unless that will itself, which is accommodated either to bodies
without, or to the images of them within, refers whatever it
receives in them to a better and truer life, and rests in that end
by gazing at which it judges that those things ought to be done;
what else do we do, but that which the apostle prohibits us from
doing, when he says, “Be not conformed to this world”?734
And
therefore that trinity is not an image of God since it is produced
in the mind itself through the bodily sense, from the lowest, that
is, the corporeal creature, than which the mind is higher. Yet
neither is it altogether dissimilar: for what is there that has not
a likeness of God, in proportion to its kind and measure, seeing
that God made all things very good,735
and for no other reason except that
He Himself is supremely good? In so far, therefore, as anything
that is, is good, in so far plainly it has still some likeness of
the supreme good, at however great a distance; and if a natural
likeness, then certainly a right and well-ordered one; but if a
faulty likeness, then certainly a debased and perverse one. For
even souls in their very sins strive after nothing else but some
kind of likeness of God, in a proud and preposterous, and, so to
say, slavish liberty. So neither could our first parents have been
persuaded to sin unless it had been said, “Ye shall be as
gods.”736
No doubt
every thing in the creatures which is in any way like God, is not
also to be called His image; but that alone than which He Himself
alone is higher. For that only is in all points copied from Him,
between which and Himself no nature is interposed.
9. Of that vision then; that is, of
the form which is wrought in the sense of him who sees; the form of
the bodily thing from which it is wrought, is, as it were, the
parent. But it is not a true parent; whence neither is that a true
offspring; for it is not altogether born therefrom, since something
else is applied to the bodily thing in order that it may be formed
from it, namely, the sense of him who sees. And for this reason, to
love this is to be estranged.737
| 737 Vid. Retract. Bk. II. c. 15, where Augustin adds that it is possible
to love the bodily species to the praise of the Creator, in which
case there is no “estrangement.” | Therefore the will which unites
both, viz. the quasi-parent and the quasi-child, is more
spiritual than either of them. For that bodily thing which is
discerned, is not spiritual at all. But the vision which comes into
existence in the sense, has something spiritual mingled with it,
since it cannot come into existence without the soul. But it is not
wholly spiritual; since that which is formed is a sense of the
body. Therefore the will which unites both is confessedly more
spiritual, as I have said; and so it begins to suggest
(insinuare), as it were, the person of the Spirit in the
Trinity. But it belongs more to the sense that is formed, than to
the bodily thing whence it is formed. For the sense and will of an
animate being belongs to the soul, not to the stone or other bodily
thing that is seen. It does not therefore proceed from that bodily
thing as from a parent; yet neither does it proceed from that other
as it were offspring, namely, the vision and form that is in the
sense. For the will existed before the vision came to pass, which
will applied the sense that was to be formed to the bodily thing
that was to be discerned; but it was not yet satisfied. For how
could that which was not yet seen satisfy? And satisfaction means a
will that rests content. And, therefore, we can neither call the
will the quasi-offspring of vision, since it existed before vision;
nor the quasi-parent, since that vision was not formed and
expressed from the will, but from the bodily thing that was
seen.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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