our existence and our knowledge of it, that so we may more
nearly resemble the image of the divine Trinity._
We have said as much as the scope of this work demands regarding
these two things, to wit, our existence, and our knowledge of it, and
how much they are loved by us, and how there is found even in the
lower creatures a kind of likeness of these things, and yet with a
difference. We have yet to speak of the love wherewith they are loved,
to determine whether this love itself is loved. And doubtless it is;
and this is the proof. Because in men who are justly loved, it is
rather love itself that is loved; for he is not justly called a good
man who knows what is good, but who loves it. Is it not then obvious
that we love in ourselves the very love wherewith we love whatever
good we love? For there is also a love wherewith we love that which
we ought not to love; and this love is hated by him who loves that
wherewith he loves what ought to be loved. For it is quite possible
for both to exist in one man. And this co-existence is good for a man,
to the end that this love which conduces to our living well may grow,
and the other, which leads us to evil may decrease, until our whole
life be perfectly healed and transmuted into good. For if we were
beasts, we should love the fleshly and sensual life, and this would
be our sufficient good; and when it was well with us in respect of
it, we should seek nothing beyond. In like manner, if we were trees,
we could not, indeed, in the strict sense of the word, love anything;
nevertheless we should seem, as it were, to long for that by which
we might become more abundantly and luxuriantly fruitful. If we were
stones, or waves, or wind, or flame, or anything of that kind, we
should want, indeed, both sensation and life, yet should possess a kind
of attraction towards our own proper position and natural order. For
the specific gravity of bodies is, as it were, their love, whether they
are carried downwards by their weight, or upwards by their levity. For
the body is borne by its gravity, as the spirit by love, whithersoever
it is borne.[494] But we are men, created in the image of our Creator,
whose eternity is true, and whose truth is eternal, whose love is
eternal and true, and who Himself is the eternal, true, and adorable
Trinity, without confusion, without separation; and, therefore, while,
as we run over all the works which He has established, we may detect,
as it were, His footprints, now more and now less distinct even in
those things that are beneath us, since they could not so much as
exist, or be bodied forth in any shape, or follow and observe any law,
had they not been made by Him who supremely is, and is supremely good
and supremely wise; yet in ourselves beholding His image, let us, like
that younger son of the gospel, come to ourselves, and arise and return
to Him from whom by our sin we had departed. There our being will have
no death, our knowledge no error, our love no mishap. But now, though
we are assured of our possession of these three things, not on the
testimony of others, but by our own consciousness of their presence,
and because we see them with our own most truthful interior vision,
yet, as we cannot of ourselves know how long they are to continue, and
whether they shall never cease to be, and what issue their good or
bad use will lead to, we seek for others who can acquaint us of these
things, if we have not already found them. Of the trustworthiness
of these witnesses, there will, not now, but subsequently, be an
opportunity of speaking. But in this book let us go on as we have
begun, with God's help, to speak of the city of God, not in its state
of pilgrimage and mortality, but as it exists ever immortal in the
heavens,--that is, let us speak of the holy angels who maintain their
allegiance to God, who never were, nor ever shall be, apostate, between
whom and those who forsook light eternal and became darkness, God, as
we have already said, made at the first a separation.