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| The Mind Loves God in Rightly Loving Itself; And If It Love Not God, It Must Be Said to Hate Itself. Even a Weak and Erring Mind is Always Strong in Remembering, Understanding, and Loving Itself. Let It Be Turned to God, that It May Be Blessed by Remembering, Understanding, and Loving Him.
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Chapter 14.—The Mind Loves God in Rightly Loving
Itself; And If It Love Not God, It Must Be Said to Hate Itself.
Even a Weak and Erring Mind is Always Strong in Remembering,
Understanding, and Loving Itself. Let It Be Turned to God, that It
May Be Blessed by Remembering, Understanding, and Loving
Him.
18. But there are yet more
testimonies in the divine Scriptures concerning the love of God.
For in it, those other two [namely, memory and understanding] are
understood by consequence, inasmuch as no one loves that which he
does not remember, or of which he is wholly ignorant. And hence is
that well known and primary commandment, “Thou shalt love the
Lord thy God.”891
The human
mind, then, is so constituted, that at no time does it not
remember, and understand, and love itself. But since he who hates
any one is anxious to injure him, not undeservedly is the mind of
man also said to hate itself when it injures itself. For it wills
ill to itself through ignorance, in that it does not think that
what it wills is prejudicial to it; but it none the less does will
ill to itself, when it wills what would be prejudicial to it. And
hence it is written, “He that loveth iniquity, hateth his own
soul.”892
He,
therefore, who knows how to love himself, loves God; but
he who
does not love God, even if he does love himself,—a thing
implanted in him by nature,—yet is not unsuitably said to hate
himself, inasmuch as he does that which is adverse to himself, and
assails himself as though he were his own enemy. And this is no
doubt a terrible delusion, that whereas all will to profit
themselves, many do nothing but that which is most pernicious to
themselves. When the poet was describing a like disease of dumb
animals, “May the gods,” says he, “grant better things to the
pious, and assign that delusion to enemies. They were rending with
bare teeth their own torn limbs.”893
| 893 Virg. Georg. iii.
513–514. | Since it was a disease of the body
he was speaking of, why has he called it a delusion, unless
because, while nature inclines every animal to take all the care it
can of itself, that disease was such that those animals rent those
very limbs of theirs which they desired should be safe and sound?
But when the mind loves God, and by consequence, as has been said
remembers and understands Him, then it is rightly enjoined also to
love its neighbor as itself; for it has now come to love itself
rightly and not perversely when it loves God, by partaking of whom
that image not only exists, but is also renewed so as to be no
longer old, and restored so as to be no longer defaced, and
beatified so as to be no longer unhappy. For although it so love
itself, that, supposing the alternative to be proposed to it, it
would lose all things which it loves less than itself rather than
perish; still, by abandoning Him who is above it, in dependence
upon whom alone it could guard its own strength, and enjoy Him as
its light, to whom it is sung in the Psalm, “I will guard my
strength in dependence upon Thee,”894
and again, “Draw near to Him, and
be enlightened,”895
—it has been made so weak and so
dark, that it has fallen away unhappily from itself too, to those
things that are not what itself is, and which are beneath itself,
by affections that it cannot conquer, and delusions from which it
sees no way to return. And hence, when by God’s mercy now
penitent, it cries out in the Psalms, “My strength faileth me; as
for the light of mine eyes, it also is gone from me.”896
19. Yet, in the midst of these
evils of weakness and delusion, great as they are, it could not
lose its natural memory, understanding and love of itself. And
therefore what I quoted above897
can be rightly said, “Although
man walketh in an image, surely he is disquieted in vain: he
heapeth up treasures, and knoweth not who shall gather them.”898
For why does
he heap up treasures, unless because his strength has deserted him,
through which he would have God, and so lack nothing? And why
cannot he tell for whom he shall gather them, unless because the
light of his eyes is taken from him? And so he does not see what
the Truth saith, “Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be
required of thee. Then whose shall those things be which thou hast
provided?”899
Yet because
even such a man walketh in an image, and the man’s mind has
remembrance, understanding, and love of itself; if it were made
plain to it that it could not have both, while it was permitted to
choose one and lose the other, viz. either the treasures it
has heaped up, or the mind; who is so utterly without mind, as to
prefer to have the treasures rather than the mind? For treasures
commonly are able to subvert the mind, but the mind that is not
subverted by treasures can live more easily and unencumberedly
without any treasures. But who will be able to possess treasures
unless it be by means of the mind? For if an infant, born as rich
as you please, although lord of everything that is rightfully his,
yet possesses nothing if his mind be unconscious, how can any one
possibly possess anything whose mind is wholly lost? But why say of
treasures, that anybody, if the choice be given him, prefers going
without them to going without a mind; when there is no one that
prefers, nay, no one that compares them, to those lights of the
body, by which not one man only here and there, as in the case of
gold, but every man, possesses the very heaven? For every one
possesses by the eyes of the body whatever he gladly sees. Who then
is there, who, if he could not keep both, but must lose one, would
not rather lose his treasures than his eyes? And yet if it were put
to him on the same condition, whether he would rather lose eyes
than mind, who is there with a mind that does not see that he would
rather lose the former than the latter? For a mind without the eyes
of the flesh is still human, but the eyes of the flesh without a
mind are bestial. And who would not rather be a man, even though
blind in fleshly sight, than a beast that can see?
20. I have said thus much, that
even those who are slower of understanding, to whose eyes or ears
this book may come, might be admonished, however briefly, how
greatly even a weak and erring mind loves itself, in wrongly loving
and pursuing things beneath itself. Now it could not love itself if
it were altogether ignorant of itself, i.e. if it
did not remember itself, nor understand itself by which image of
God within itself it has such power as to be able to cleave to Him
whose image it is. For it is so reckoned in the order, not of
place, but of natures, as that there is none above it save Him.
When, finally, it shall altogether cleave to Him, then it will be
one spirit, as the apostle testifies, saying, “But he who cleaves
to the Lord is one spirit.”900
And this by its drawing near to
partake of His nature, truth, and blessedness, yet not by His
increasing in His own nature, truth and blessedness. In that
nature, then, when it happily has cleaved to it, it will live
unchangeably, and will see as unchangeable all that it does see.
Then, as divine Scripture promises, “His desire will be satisfied
with good things,”901
good things unchangeable,—the
very Trinity itself, its own God, whose image it is. And that it
may not ever thenceforward suffer wrong, it will be in the hidden
place of His presence,902
filled with so great fullness of
Him, that sin thenceforth will never delight it. But now, when it
sees itself, it sees something not unchangeable.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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