For other than this, that which really is I knew not; and was,
as it were through sharpness of wit, persuaded to assent to foolish
deceivers, when they asked me, "whence is evil?" "Is
God bounded by a bodily shape, and has hairs and nails?"
"Are they to be esteemed righteous who had many wives at
once, and did kill men, and sacrificed living creatures?"
At which I, in my ignorance, was much troubled, and departing
from the truth, seemed to myself to be making towards it; because
as yet I knew not that evil was nothing but a privation of good,
until at last a thing ceases altogether to be; which how should
I see, the sight of whose eyes reached only to bodies, and of
my mind to a phantasm? And I knew not God to be a Spirit, not
one who hath parts extended in length and breadth, or whose being
was bulk; for every bulk is less in a part than in the whole:
and if it be infinite, it must be less in such part as is defined
by a certain space, than in its infinitude; and so is not wholly
every where, as Spirit, as God. And what that should be in us,
by which we were like to God, and might in Scripture be rightly
said to be after the image of God, I was altogether ignorant.
Nor knew I that true inward righteousness which judgeth not according
to custom, but out of the most rightful law of God Almighty, whereby
the ways of places and times were disposed according to those
times and places; itself meantime being the same always and every
where, not one thing in one place, and another in another; according
to which Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, and Moses, and David,
were righteous, and all those commended by the mouth of God; but
were judged unrighteous by silly men, judging out of man's judgment,
and measuring by their own petty habits, the moral habits of the
whole human race. As if in an armory, one ignorant what were adapted
to each part should cover his head with greaves, or seek to be
shod with a helmet, and complain that they fitted not: or as if
on a day when business is publicly stopped in the afternoon, one
were angered at not being allowed to keep open shop, because he
had been in the forenoon; or when in one house he observeth some
servant take a thing in his hand, which the butler is not suffered
to meddle with; or something permitted out of doors, which is
forbidden in the dining-room; and should be angry, that in one
house, and one family, the same thing is not allotted every where,
and to all. Even such are they who are fretted to hear something
to have been lawful for righteous men formerly, which now is not;
or that God, for certain temporal respects, commanded them one
thing, and these another, obeying both the same righteousness:
whereas they see, in one man, and one day, and one house, different
things to be fit for different members, and a thing formerly lawful,
after a certain time not so; in one corner permitted or commanded,
but in another rightly forbidden and punished. Is justice therefore
various or mutable? No, but the times, over which it presides,
flow not evenly, because they are times. But men whose days are
few upon the earth, for that by their senses they cannot harmonise
the causes of things in former ages and other nations, which they
had not experience of, with these which they have experience of,
whereas in one and the same body, day, or family, they easily
see what is fitting for each member, and season, part, and person;
to the one they take exceptions, to the other they submit.
These things I then knew not, nor observed; they struck my sight
on all sides, and I saw them not. I indited verses, in which I
might not place every foot every where, but differently in different
metres; nor even in any one metre the self-same foot in all places.
Yet the art itself, by which I indited, had not different principles
for these different cases, but comprised all in one. Still I saw
not how that righteousness, which good and holy men obeyed, did
far more excellently and sublimely contain in one all those things
which God commanded, and in no part varied; although in varying
times it prescribed not every thing at once, but apportioned and
enjoined what was fit for each. And I, in my blindness, censured
the holy Fathers, not only wherein they made use of things present
as God commanded and inspired them, but also wherein they were
foretelling things to come, as God was revealing in them.