Contents – Book XIII Book XIII Chapter I He calls upon God, and proposes to himself to worship him. Chapter II All creatures subsist from...
BOOK THIRTEEN The mysteries and allegories of the days of creation. Augustine undertakes to interpret Gen. 1:2-31 in a mystical and allegorical fashion so as to exhibit...
BOOK THIRTEEN CHAPTER II 2. Indeed, it is from the fullness of thy goodness that thy creation exists at all: to the end that the...
BOOK THIRTEEN CHAPTER III 4. Now what thou saidst in the beginning of the creation–“Let there be light: and there was light”–I interpret, not unfitly,...
BOOK THIRTEEN CHAPTER IV 5. What, therefore, would there have been lacking in thy good, which thou thyself art, even if these things had never...
BOOK THIRTEEN CHAPTER V 6. See now,[513] how the Trinity appears to me in an enigma. And thou art the Trinity, O my God, since thou,...
BOOK THIRTEEN CHAPTER VI 7. But why, O truth-speaking Light? To thee I lift up my heart–let it not teach me vain notions. Disperse its...
BOOK THIRTEEN CHAPTER VII 8. Now let him who is able follow thy apostle with his understanding when he says, “Thy love is shed abroad...
BOOK THIRTEEN CHAPTER VIII 9. The angels fell, and the soul of man fell; thus they indicate to us the deep darkness of the abyss,...
BOOK THIRTEEN CHAPTER IX 10. But was neither the Father nor the Son “moving over the waters”? If we understand this as a motion in...
BOOK THIRTEEN CHAPTER X 11. Happy would be that creature who, though it was in itself other than thou, still had known no other state...
BOOK THIRTEEN CHAPTER XI 12. Who can understand the omnipotent Trinity? And yet who does not speak about it, if indeed it is of it...
BOOK THIRTEEN CHAPTER XII 13. Go forward in your confession, O my faith; say to the Lord your God, “Holy, holy, holy, O Lord my...
BOOK THIRTEEN CHAPTER XIII 14. But even so, we still live by faith and not by sight, for we are saved by hope; but hope...
BOOK THIRTEEN CHAPTER XIV 15. And I myself say: “O my God, where art thou? See now, where art thou?” In thee I take my...
BOOK THIRTEEN CHAPTER XV 16. Now who but thee, our God, didst make for us that firmament of the authority of thy divine Scripture to...
BOOK THIRTEEN CHAPTER XVI 19. For just as thou art the utterly Real, thou alone dost fully know, since thou art immutably, and thou knowest...
BOOK THIRTEEN CHAPTER XVII 20. Who has gathered the “embittered ones”[579] into a single society? For they all have the same end, which is temporal and...
BOOK THIRTEEN CHAPTER XVIII 22. Thus, O Lord, thus I beseech thee: let it happen as thou hast prepared it, as thou givest joy and...
BOOK THIRTEEN CHAPTER XIX 24. But, first, “wash yourselves and make you clean; put away iniquity from your souls and from before my eyes”[595]–so that...
BOOK THIRTEEN CHAPTER XX 26. Also let the sea conceive and bring forth your works, and let the waters bear the moving creatures that have...
BOOK THIRTEEN CHAPTER XXI 29. And thus, in thy Word, it was not the depth of the sea but “the earth,”[611] separated from the brackishness of...
BOOK THIRTEEN CHAPTER XXII 32. Thus, O Lord, our God, our Creator, when our affections have been turned from the love of the world, in...
BOOK THIRTEEN CHAPTER XXIII 33. Now this phrase, “he judges all things,” means that man has dominion over the fish of the sea, and over...
BOOK THIRTEEN CHAPTER XXIV 35. But what is this; what kind of mystery is this? Behold, O Lord, thou dost bless men in order that...
BOOK THIRTEEN CHAPTER XXV 38. I also desire to say, O my Lord God, what the following Scripture suggests to me. Indeed, I will speak...
BOOK THIRTEEN CHAPTER XXVI 39. Those who find their joy in it are fed by these “fruits”; but those whose god is their belly find...
BOOK THIRTEEN CHAPTER XXVII 42. Therefore I will speak before thee, O Lord, what is true, in order that the uninstructed[645] and the infidels, who require...
BOOK THIRTEEN CHAPTER XXVIII 43. And thou, O God, didst see everything that thou hadst made and, behold, it was very good.[646] We also see the...
BOOK THIRTEEN CHAPTER XXIX 44. And I looked attentively to find whether it was seven or eight times that thou didst see thy works were...
BOOK THIRTEEN CHAPTER XXX 45. And I heard this, O Lord my God, and drank up a drop of sweetness from thy truth, and understood...
BOOK THIRTEEN CHAPTER XXXI 46. But for those who see these things through thy Spirit, it is thou who seest them in them. When, therefore,...
BOOK THIRTEEN CHAPTER XXXII 47. Thanks be to thee, O Lord! We see the heaven and the earth, either the corporeal part–higher and lower–or the...
BOOK THIRTEEN CHAPTER XXXIII 48. Let thy works praise thee, that we may love thee; and let us love thee that thy works may praise...
BOOK THIRTEEN CHAPTER XXXIV 49. We have also explored the question of what thou didst desire to figure forth, both in the creation and in...
BOOK THIRTEEN CHAPTER XXXV 50. O Lord God, grant us thy peace–for thou hast given us all things. Grant us the peace of quietness, the...
BOOK THIRTEEN CHAPTER XXXVI 51. But the seventh day is without an evening, and it has no setting, for thou hast sanctified it with an...
BOOK THIRTEEN CHAPTER XXXVII 52. For then also thou shalt so rest in us as now thou workest in us; and, thus, that will be...
BOOK THIRTEEN CHAPTER XXXVIII 53. We can see all those things which thou hast made because they are–but they are because thou seest them.[654] And we...
BOOK THIRTEEN The mysteries and allegories of the days of creation. Augustine undertakes to interpret Gen. 1:2-31 in a mystical and allegorical fashion so as to exhibit...
