Augustine, Sermones 164-170 (Classis I, de Scripturis)

good or evil. But if you reject this testimony, go off rather to those wanderings of yours, and say: Because they sinned in heaven, and from there they are cast down into bodies. I do not say that, he says. Why do you not say it? Because the Apostle says, To those not yet born, nor doing anything good or evil. If then you do not accuse them in heaven, why do you accuse them in the womb? The Apostle answers both, and he answers those who say, They sinned in heaven; and he answers those who say, They sinned in the womb, because those words which say that before they were born they had done nothing either good or evil hold good against both. Why then do they die? Am I to listen to you on this too, and not rather to the Teacher of the Gentiles?

Chapter VII. — 9 Grace coming to the aid of little ones and of grown-ups. The inscrutable mystery of grace. Tell me, Paul the apostle, why do they die? Through one man sin entered into the world, and through sin death; and so it passed through into all men, in whom all sinned. See, the first man made the whole mass damnable: let Him come, let our Lord come, the second man; let Him come, let Him come; let Him come by another path, let Him come through a virgin; let Him come living, let Him find the dead: let Him die, that He may come to the aid of the dying, transfer the dead to life, redeem the dead from death, keep life in death, kill death by death. This grace alone belongs to the little ones, it alone to the grown-ups: it alone sets free the small together with the great. Why this one, and why that one; why not this one and that one: I do not want you to ask of me. I am a man: the depth of the cross I perceive, I do not penetrate; I tremble before it, I do not search it out. Unsearchable are His judgements, untraceable are His ways (Rom. 11:33). I am a man, you are a man: it was a man who said, O man, who are you that you answer back to God (ibid. 9:20)? A man was saying it, to a man he was saying it. Let man hear, lest man perish, for whose sake God became man. In this depth of the cross, then, in so great an obscurity of things, let us hold fast what we have sung: let us not presume upon our own strength, let us not claim anything by the powers of our poor little wit in this question: let us say the Psalm, with the Psalm let us say, Have mercy on me, O God, have mercy on me. Why? Because I have strength by which I might merit Thee? No. Why? Because I exercise the choice of the will, so that my merit might precede Thy grace? No. But why? For in Thee my soul trusts (Ps. 56:2). Great knowledge is this trust. Turning to the Lord, etc.

Sermon 166. Sermon on the words of the Apostle, Eph. 4:25, Putting away lying, speak the truth: and of Psalm 115:11, Every man is a liar.

Chapter One. — 1. Lying forbidden to man. That this saying which the Apostle spoke, Putting away lying, speak the truth, is not contrary to that saying which was spoken in the Psalm, Every man is a liar, if the Lord gives understanding,

we shall briefly expound. What, then, is [meant by] "Putting away lying, speak the truth", and "Every man is a liar"? Does God through the Apostle command impossible things? No. What then does He command? I dare to say it, but take what is said without offence, for I say it against myself too: God commands this, that we should not be men. For if I were to say, "God commands that you should not be men", you would perhaps take it bitterly; and so I have joined myself in, so that no one may be angry.

Chapter II. — 2. Why men are rebuked for being men. In the old man lying, in the new truth. For I say more to your Holiness: we find that the Apostle reproached men, as though it were a crime, with being men; for he said this in rebuking them. Just as we, when angry, say to someone, "You are a beast", so he, correcting them with the scourge of the Lord's discipline, reproached men because they were men. What did he want them to become, whose crime was that they were men? "For since there is among you", he says, "envy and strife, are you not carnal, and do you not walk according to man? For when someone says, I indeed am of Paul, and another, I of Apollos, are you not men?" (1 Cor. 3:3–4). Reproaching and rebuking, he says, "Are you not men?" What, then, did he want them to become, if not what is said in the Psalm, "I said, You are gods, and sons of the Most High"? This indeed God said, for to this He calls. But what does He add? "But you shall die like men, and shall fall like one of the princes" (Ps. 81:6–7). There too a reproach is cast, when it is said, "But you shall die like men." For Adam was man, and not son of man; but Christ is son of man, and God. To lying belongs the old man, that is, Adam; to truth the new man, the son of man, that is, Christ God. If you put away lying, put off Adam; if you speak truth, put on Christ; and the things that are set down in the Scriptures will no longer be contrary for you. For the Apostle too, admonishing that the old man is to be put off and the new put on, says, "Putting away lying, speak the truth"; and the Psalm was admonishing and lamenting those who, unwilling to put off Adam and put on Christ, desired to be not new men, but only men; to such it is said, "Are you not men?" And upon you falls what was said, "Every man is a liar."

Chapter III. — 3. How the things that are God's become ours. If you wish to be a man, you will be a liar. Do not wish to be a man, and you will not be a liar. Put on Christ, and you will be truthful, so that the things you speak may not be yours as though your own and originated by you, but belong to the truth that enlightens and illuminates you. For if you are stripped of the light, you will remain in your own darkness, and will be able to speak nothing but lies. For the Lord Himself says, "He who speaks a lie speaks of his own" (John 8:44), because every man is a liar. He, then, who speaks truth speaks not of his own, but of God's. Not indeed in such a way that, when he speaks, we say that the things are another's: for they become his own when he loves what he receives and gives thanks to Him who gave. For if the illumination of truth is taken away from a man, he will remain as one stripped of the garment of light, and will be able to speak nothing but lies. For there will remain in him what is written in the Psalm, "Every man is a liar."

Chapter IV. — 4. You have been called so that you may not be a man, but a son of God. There is therefore no ground on which anyone may raise a false objection and say to me: I shall lie, because I am a man. For I too shall say most confidently: Do not be a man, so that you may not lie. So, he says, shall I not be a man? Certainly not. For it is to this end that you have been called, that you may not be a man, by Him Who for your sake was made man. Do not be angry. For it is not said to you that you should not be a man in such a way that you should be a beast, but that you should be among those to whom He gave power to become sons of God (John 1:12). For God wills to make you a god: not by nature, as He is Whom He begot, but by His gift and by adoption. For just as He through His humanity was made partaker of your mortality, so through exaltation He makes you partaker of His immortality. Give thanks, then, and embrace what has been given, so that you may deserve to enjoy fully that to which you have been called. Do not be Adam, and you will not be a man. If not a man, then certainly not a liar: because every man is a liar. And when you have begun not to lie, do not attribute it to yourself and be lifted up, as if it came from your own resources, lest by the wind of pride, like a lamp that is lit from elsewhere, you be extinguished and remain once more in your lie. Do not lie, then, brothers. For you were once old men: you have come to the grace of God, you have been made new men. Lying belongs to Adam, truth to Christ. Putting away lying, therefore, speak truth, so that this mortal flesh too, which you still have from Adam, with newness of spirit going before, may itself merit renewal and transformation at the time of its resurrection; as if the whole man, deified, were to cleave to perpetual and unchangeable truth.

Sermon 167. On the words of the Apostle, See how you walk circumspectly; not as unwise, but as wise; redeeming the time, because the days are evil. Eph. 5:15-16.

Chapter One. — 1. Whence the days are evil. You heard the Apostle when he was read; indeed we all heard him, saying to us: See how you walk circumspectly; not as unwise, but as wise; redeeming the time, because the days are evil. Two things, brothers, make days evil: wickedness and misery. Through the wickedness of men and the misery of men evil days are spent. Otherwise these days, as far as concerns the spans of the hours, are well ordered: they take their turns, they mark the times; the sun rises, the sun sets, the times pass by. To whom are the times troublesome, if men are not troublesome to themselves? So, as I said, two things make days evil: the misery of men and the wickedness of men. But the misery of men is common to all; wickedness ought not to be common to all. For ever since Adam fell and was expelled from paradise, there have never been any days but evil ones. Let us ask these children who are born why they begin with crying, when they can also laugh. A child is born, and at once it cries; after I know not how many days it laughs. When it was crying at its birth, it was a prophet

of its own calamity: for tears are witnesses of misery. He does not yet speak, and already he prophesies. What does he prophesy? That he will be in toil, or in fear. And even if he lives well and is just, certainly, placed in the midst of temptations, he will always fear.

Chapter II. — 2. The just here are never without persecution. What does the Apostle say? All who wish to live piously in Christ will suffer persecution (2 Tim. 3:12). See, because the days are evil, the just cannot live here without persecution. Those who live among the wicked suffer persecution. All the wicked persecute the good, not with sword and stones, but by their life and conduct. Did anyone persecute holy Lot in Sodom? No one was troublesome to him: and yet he lived among the impious, and among the unclean, the proud, the blasphemers he suffered persecution, not by being beaten, but by seeing the wicked. Whoever you are who hear me and do not yet live piously in Christ, begin to live piously in Christ, and you prove what I say. Indeed the Apostle, when he was recounting his dangers: In dangers, he says, at sea, in dangers in rivers, in dangers in the desert, in dangers among robbers, in dangers among false brethren (2 Cor. 11:26). The other dangers can cease; the dangers from false brethren do not know how to cease until the end of the age.

3. To redeem the time. Let us redeem the time, since the days are evil. You perhaps expect to learn from me what it is to redeem the time. I am going to say what few hear, few bear, few undertake, few do: yet I will say it, since those very few who will hear me live among the wicked. To redeem the time is this: when someone brings a lawsuit against you, lose something, so that you may be free for God, not for lawsuits. Lose, then: what you lose is the price of time. Surely when for your needs you go out into the marketplace, you give coins and buy yourself bread, or wine, or oil, or wood, or some piece of furniture: you give and you receive, you lose something, you acquire something; this is buying. For if you lose nothing and have what you did not have, either you have found it, or you have received it as a gift, or you have acquired it by inheritance. But when you lose something so as to have something, then you buy: what you have is bought; what you lose is the price. So, just as you lose coins in order to buy yourself something, so lose coins in order to buy yourself quiet. See, this is to redeem the time.

Chapter III. — 4. A Punic proverb agreeing with Christ's precept. There is a well-known Punic proverb, which I shall indeed tell you in Latin, since not all of you know Punic. For the Punic proverb is an ancient one: The plague asks for one coin; give it two, and let it take itself off. Does this proverb not seem to have been born of the Gospel? For what else did the Lord say but, Redeeming the time, when He says, If anyone wishes to contend with you in judgement and take away your tunic, let him have your cloak as well (Matt. 5:40)? He wishes to contend with you in judgement and take away your tunic, he wishes to call you away by lawsuits from your God: you will not have a quiet heart, you will not have a tranquil mind, you will be overthrown by your thoughts,