Chapter 18 [XI.]—Piety is Wisdom; That is Called the Righteousness of God, Which He Produces.

Now, this meditation makes a man godly, and this godliness is true wisdom. By godliness I mean that which the Greeks designate θεοσέβεια,—that very virtue which is commended to man in the passage of Job, where it is said to him, “Behold, godliness is wisdom.”68    Job xxviii. 28. Now if the word θεοσέβεια be interpreted according to its derivation, it might be called “the worship of God;”69    Cultus Dei is Augustin’s Latin expression for the synonym. and in this worship the essential point is, that the soul be not ungrateful to Him. Whence it is that in the most true and excellent sacrifice we are admonished to “give thanks unto our Lord God.”70    One of the suffrages of the Sursum Corda in the Communion Service [preserved also in the English service, which reads as follows: “Priest. Lift up your hearts. Answer. We lift them up to the Lord. Priest. Let us give thanks unto our Lord God. Answer. It is meet and right so to do.”—W.] Ungrateful however, our soul would be, were it to attribute to itself that which it received from God, especially the righteousness, with the works of which (the especial property, as it were, of itself, and produced, so to speak, by the soul itself for itself) it is not puffed up in a vulgar pride, as it might be with riches, or beauty of limb, or eloquence, or those other accomplishments, external or internal, bodily or mental, which wicked men too are in the habit of possessing, but, if I may say so, in a wise complacency, as of things which constitute in an especial manner the good works of the good. It is owing to this sin of vulgar pride that even some great men have drifted from the sure anchorage of the divine nature, and have floated down into the shame of idolatry. Whence the apostle again in the same epistle, wherein he so firmly maintains the principle of grace, after saying that he was a debtor both to the Greeks and to the Barbarians, to the wise and to the unwise, and professing himself ready, so far as to him pertained, to preach the gospel even to those who lived in Rome, adds: “I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek. For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith: as it is written, The just shall live by faith.”71    Rom. i. 14–17. This is the righteousness of God, which was veiled in the Old Testament, and is revealed in the New; and it is called the righteousness of God, because by His bestowal of it He makes us righteous, just as we read that “salvation is the Lord’s,”72    Ps. iii. 8. because He makes us safe. And this is the faith “from which” and “to which” it is revealed,—from the faith of them who preach it, to the faith of those who obey it. By this faith of Jesus Christ—that is, the faith which Christ has given to us—we believe it is from God that we now have, and shall have more and more, the ability of living righteously; wherefore we give Him thanks with that dutiful worship with which He only is to be worshipped.

CAPUT XI.

18. Pietatem esse sapientiam. Justitia Dei dicta quam Deus facit. Quae cogitatio pium facit, quia pietas est vera sapientia: pietatem dico quam Graeci Θεοσέβειαν vocant: ipsa quippe commendata est, cum dictum est homini, quod in libro Job legitur, Ecce pietas est sapientia (Job XXVIII, 28). Θεοσέβεια porro si ad verbi originem latine expressam interpretaretur, Dei cultus dici poterat, qui in hoc maxime constitutus est, ut anima ei non sit ingrata. Unde et in ipso verissimo et singulari sacrificio, Domino Deo nostro agere gratias admonemur. Erit autem ingrata, si quod illi ex Deo est, sibi tribuerit, praecipueque justitiam, cujus operibus velut propriis et velut a semetipsa sibimet partis, non vulgariter tanquam ex divitiis aut membrorum forma aut eloquentia, caeterisque, sive externis sive internis, sive corporis sive animi bonis, quae habere etiam scelerati solent, sed tanquam de iis quae proprie sunt bona bonorum quasi sapienter inflatur. Quo vitio repulsi a divinae stabilitate substantiae, etiam magni quidam viri ad idololatriae dedecus defluxerunt. Unde idem apostolus in eadem Epistola, in qua vehemens defensor est gratiae, cum se dixisset esse Graecis ac Barbaris, sapientibus et insipientibus debitorem, et ideo quod ad ipsum pertineret, promptum esse et his qui Romae essent evangelizare: Non enim confundor, inquit, de Evangelio; virtus enim Dei est in salutem omni credenti, Judaeo primum et Graeco. Justitia enim Dei in eo revelatur ex fide in fidem, sicut scriptum est, Justus autem ex fide vivit. Haec est justitia Dei, quae in Testamento Veteri velata, in Novo revelatur: quae ideo justitia Dei dicitur, quod impertiendo eam justos facit; sicut Domini est salus (Psal. III, 9), qua salvos facit. Et haec est fides, ex qua et in quam revelatur, ex fide scilicet annuntiantium, in fidem obedientium: qua fide Jesu Christi, id est, quam nobis contulit Christus, credimus ex Deo nobis esse, pleniusque futurum esse quod juste vivimus; unde illi ea pietate, qua solus colendus est, gratias agimus.