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| What Has Been Treated of in This Book. How We Have Reached by Steps to a Certain Trinity, Which is Found in Practical Knowledge and True Faith.
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Chapter 20.—What Has Been Treated of in This Book. How
We Have Reached by Steps to a Certain Trinity, Which is Found in
Practical Knowledge and True Faith.
25. Now, therefore, let us see what
this prolix discourse has effected, what it has gathered, whereto
it has reached. It belongs to all men to will to be blessed; yet
all men have not faith, whereby the heart is cleansed, and so
blessedness is reached. And thus it comes to pass, that by means of
the faith which not all men will, we have to reach on to the
blessedness which every one wills. All see in their own heart that
they will to be blessed; and so great is the agreement of human
nature on this subject, that the man is not deceived who
conjectures this concerning another’s mind, out of his own: in
short, we know ourselves that all will this. But many despair of
being immortal, although no otherwise can any one be that which all
will, that is, blessed. Yet they will also to be immortal if they
could; but through not believing that they can, they do not so live
that they can. Therefore faith is necessary, that we may attain
blessedness in all the good things of human nature, that is, of
both soul and body. But that same faith requires that this faith
be limited in Christ, who rose in the flesh from the dead, not to
die any more; and that no one is freed from the dominion of the
devil, through the forgiveness of sins, save by Him; and that in
the abiding place of the devil, life must needs be at once
miserable and never-ending, which ought rather to be called death
than life. All which I have also argued, so far as space permitted,
in this book, while I have already said much on the subject in the
fourth book of this work as well;848
but in that place for one purpose,
here for another,—namely, there, that I might show why and how
Christ was sent in the fullness of time by the Father,849
on account
of those who say that He who sent and He who was sent cannot be
equal in nature; but here, in order to distinguish practical
knowlege from contemplative wisdom.
26. For we wished to ascend, as it
were, by steps, and to seek in the inner man, both in knowledge and
in wisdom, a sort of trinity of its own special kind, such as we
sought before in the outer man; in order that we may come, with a
mind more practised in these lower things, to the contemplation of
that Trinity which is God, according to our little measure, if
indeed, we can even do this, at least in a riddle and as through a
glass.850
If, then,
any one have committed to memory the words of this faith in their
sounds alone, not knowing what they mean, as they commonly who do
not know Greek hold in memory Greek words, or similarly Latin ones,
or those of any other language of which they are ignorant, has not
he a sort of trinity in his mind? because, first, those sounds of
words are in his memory, even when he does not think thereupon; and
next, the mental vision (acies) of his act of recollection
is formed thence when he conceives of them; and next, the will of
him who remembers and thinks unites both. Yet we should by no means
say that the man in so doing busies himself with a trinity of the
interior man, but rather of the exterior; because he remembers, and
when he wills, contemplates as much as he wills, that alone which
belongs to the sense of the body, which is called hearing. Nor in
such an act of thought does he do anything else than deal with
images of corporeal things, that is, of sounds. But if he holds and
recollects what those words signify, now indeed something of the
inner man is brought into action; not yet, however, ought he to be
said or thought to live according to a trinity of the inner man, if
he does not love those things which are there declared, enjoined,
promised. For it is possible for him also to hold and conceive
these things, supposing them to be false, in order that he may
endeavor to disprove them. Therefore that will, which in this case
unites those things which are held in the memory with those things
which are thence impressed on the mind’s eye in conception,
completes, indeed, some kind of trinity, since itself is a third
added to two others; but the man does not live according to this,
when those things which are conceived are taken to be false, and
are not accepted. But when those things are believed to be true,
and those things which therein ought to be loved, are loved, then
at last the man does live according to a trinity of the inner man;
for every one lives according to that which he loves. But how can
things be loved which are not known, but only believed? This
question has been already treated of in former books;851
| 851 Bk. viii. cc. 8 seqq., and Bk. x.
c. 1, etc. | and we
found, that no one loves what he is wholly ignorant of, but that
when things not known are said to be loved, they are loved from
those things which are known. And now we so conclude this book,
that we admonish the just to live by faith,852
which faith worketh by love,853
so that the
virtues also themselves, by which one lives prudently, boldly,
temperately, and justly, be all referred to the same faith; for not
otherwise can they be true virtues. And yet these in this life are
not of so great worth, as that the remission of sins, of some kind
or other, is not sometimes necessary here; and this remission comes
not to pass, except through Him, who by His own blood conquered the
prince of sinners. Whatsoever ideas are in the mind of the faithful
man from this faith, and from such a life, when they are contained
in the memory, and are looked at by recollection, and please the
will, set forth a kind of trinity of its own sort.854
| 854 [The ternary is this: 1. The idea
of a truth or fact held in the memory. 2. The contemplation of it
as thus recollected. 3. The love of it. This last is the “will”
that “unites” the first two.—W.G.T.S.] | But the
image of God, of which by His help we shall afterwards speak, is
not yet in that trinity; a thing which will then be more apparent,
when it shall have been shown where it is, which the reader may
expect in a succeeding book.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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