Confessions

¹⁸ “Will you say that these things are false, which, with a strong voice, Truth tells me in my inner ear, concerning the very eternity of the Creator, that His substance is in no wise changed by time, nor that His will is separate from His substance? Wherefore, He wills not one thing now, another anon, but once and for ever He wills all things that He wills; not again and again, nor now this, now that; nor wills afterwards what He wills not before, nor wills not what before He willed. Because such a will is mutable and no mutable thing is eternal; but our God is eternal. Likewise He tells me, tells me in my inner ear, that the expectation of future things is turned to sight when they have come; and this same sight is turned to memory when they have passed. Moreover, all thought which is thus varied is mutable, and nothing mutable is eternal; but our God is eternal.” These things I sum up and put together, and I find that my God, the eternal God, has not made any creature by any new will, nor that His knowledge suffers anything transitory.

19. What, therefore, will you say, you objectors? Are these things false? “No,” they say. “What is this? Is it false, then, that every nature already formed, or matter formable, is only from Him who is supremely good, because He is supreme?.... Neither do we deny this,” say they. “What then? Do you deny this, that there is a certain sublime creature, clinging with so chaste a love with the true and truly eternal God, that although it be not co-eternal with Him, yet it separates itself not from Him, nor flows into any variety and vicissitude of times, but rests in the truest contemplation of Him only?” Since Thou, O God, showest Yourself unto him, and sufficest him, who loves You as much as You command, and, therefore, he declines not from You, nor toward himself. This is the house of God, not earthly, nor of any celestial bulk corporeal, but a spiritual house and a partaker of Your eternity, because without blemish for ever. For You have made it fast for ever and ever; You have given it a law, which it shall not pass. Nor yet is it co-eternal with You, O God, because not without beginning, for it was made.

20. For although we find no time before it, for wisdom was created before all things, — not certainly that Wisdom manifestly co-eternal and equal unto You, our God, His Father, and by Whom all things were created, and in Whom, as the Beginning, You created heaven and earth; but truly that wisdom which has been created, namely, the intellectual nature, which, in the contemplation of light, is light. For this, although created, is also called wisdom. But as great as is the difference between the Light which enlightens and that which is enlightened, so great is the difference between the Wisdom that creates and that which has been created; as between the Righteousness which justifies, and the righteousness which has been made by justification. For we also are called Your righteousness; for thus says a certain servant of Yours: “That we might be made the righteousness of God in Him.” Therefore, since a certain created wisdom was created before all things, the rational and intellectual mind of that chaste city of Yours, our mother which is above, and is free, and “eternal in the heavens” (in what heavens, unless in those that praise You, the “heaven of heavens,” because this also is the “heaven of heavens,” which is the Lord's)— although we find not time before it, because that which has been created before all things also precedes the creature of time, yet is the Eternity of the Creator Himself before it, from Whom, having been created, it took the beginning, although not of time,— for time as yet was not—yet of its own very nature.

21. Hence comes it so to be of You, our God, as to be manifestly another than You, and not the Self-same. Since, although we find time not only not before it, but not in it (it being proper ever to behold Your face, nor is ever turned aside from it, wherefore it happens that it is varied by no change), yet is there in it that mutability itself whence it would become dark and cold, but that, clinging unto You with sublime love, it shines and glows from You like a perpetual noon. O house, full of light and splendour! I have loved your beauty, and the place of the habitation of the glory of my Lord, your builder and owner. Let my wandering sigh after you; and I speak unto Him that made you, that He may possess me also in you, seeing He has made me likewise. “I have gone astray, like a lost sheep;” yet upon the shoulders of my Sheperd, your builder, I hope that I may be brought back to you.

22. “What do you say to me, O you objectors whom I was addressing, and who yet believe that Moses was the holy servant of God, and that his books were the oracles of the Holy Ghost? Is not this house of God, not indeed co-eternal with God, yet, according to its measure, eternal in the heavens, where in vain you seek for changes of times, because you will not find them? For that surpasses all extension, and every revolving space of time, to which it is ever good to cleave fast to God.” “It is,” say they. “What, therefore, of those things which my heart cried out unto my God, when within it heard the voice of His praise, what then do you contend is false? Or is it because the matter was formless, wherein, as there was no form, there was no order? But where there was no order there could not be any change of times; and yet this 'almost nothing,' inasmuch as it was not altogether nothing, was verily from Him, from Whom is whatever is, in what state soever anything is.” “This also,” say they, “we do not deny.”