unchangeable counsel and will, against the reasonings of those
who hold that the works of God are eternally repeated in
revolving cycles that restore all things as they were._
Of this, too, I have no doubt, that before the first man was created,
there never had been a man at all, neither this same man himself
recurring by I know not what cycles, and having made I know not
how many revolutions, nor any other of similar nature. From this
belief I am not frightened by philosophical arguments, among which
that is reckoned the most acute which is founded on the assertion
that the infinite cannot be comprehended by any mode of knowledge.
Consequently, they argue, God has in His own mind finite conceptions
of all finite things which He makes. Now it cannot be supposed that
His goodness was ever idle; for if it were, there should be ascribed
to Him an awakening to activity in time, from a past eternity of
inactivity, as if He repented of an idleness that had no beginning,
and proceeded, therefore, to make a beginning of work. This being the
case, they say it must be that the same things are always repeated,
and that as they pass, so they are destined always to return, whether
amidst all these changes the world remains the same,--the world which
has always been, and yet was created,--or that the world in these
revolutions is perpetually dying out and being renewed; otherwise,
if we point to a time when the works of God were begun, it would be
believed that He considered His past eternal leisure to be inert and
indolent, and therefore condemned and altered it as displeasing to
Himself. Now if God is supposed to have been indeed always making
temporal things, but different from one another, and one after the
other, so that He thus came at last to make man, whom He had never
made before, then it may seem that He made man not with knowledge
(for they suppose no knowledge can comprehend the infinite succession
of creatures), but at the dictate of the hour, as it struck Him at
the moment, with a sudden and accidental change of mind. On the
other hand, say they, if those cycles be admitted, and if we suppose
that the same temporal things are repeated, while the world either
remains identical through all these rotations, or else dies away and
is renewed, then there is ascribed to God neither the slothful ease
of a past eternity, nor a rash and unforeseen creation. And if the
same things be not thus repeated in cycles, then they cannot by any
science or prescience be comprehended in their endless diversity.
Even though reason could not refute, faith would smile at these
argumentations, with which the godless endeavour to turn our simple
piety from the right way, that we may walk with them "in a circle."
But by the help of the Lord our God, even reason, and that readily
enough, shatters these revolving circles which conjecture frames.
For that which specially leads these men astray to prefer their own
circles to the straight path of truth, is, that they measure by
their own human, changeable, and narrow intellect the divine mind,
which is absolutely unchangeable, infinitely capacious, and, without
succession of thought, counting all things without number. So that
saying of the apostle comes true of them, for, "comparing themselves
with themselves, they do not understand."[549] For because they do,
in virtue of a new purpose, whatever new thing has occurred to them
to be done (their minds being changeable), they conclude it is so
with God; and thus compare, not God,--for they cannot conceive God,
but think of one like themselves when they think of Him,--not God,
but themselves, and not with Him, but with themselves. For our part,
we dare not believe that God is affected in one way when He works,
in another when He rests. Indeed, to say that He is affected at all,
is an abuse of language, since it implies that there comes to be
something in His nature which was not there before. For he who is
affected is acted upon, and whatever is acted upon is changeable. In
His leisure, therefore, is no laziness, indolence, inactivity; as in
His work is no labour, effort, industry. He can act while He reposes,
and repose while He acts. He can begin a new work with (not a new,
but) an eternal design; and what He has not made before, He does
not now begin to make because He repents of His former repose. But
when one speaks of His former repose and subsequent operation (and
I know not how men can understand these things), this "former" and
"subsequent" are applied only to the things created, which formerly
did not exist, and subsequently came into existence. But in God the
former purpose is not altered and obliterated by the subsequent and
different purpose, but by one and the same eternal and unchangeable
will He effected regarding the things He created, both that formerly,
so long as they were not, they should not be, and that subsequently,
when they began to be, they should come into existence. And thus,
perhaps, He would show in a very striking way, to those who have eyes
for such things, how independent He is of what He makes, and how it
is of His own gratuitous goodness He creates, since from eternity He
dwelt without creatures in no less perfect a blessedness.