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Augustine of Hippo, On the Trinity
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Fifteen Books of Aurelius Augustinus,
Chapter 2.—In What Manner This Work Proposes to Discourse Concerning the Trinity.
Chapter 4.—What the Doctrine of the Catholic Faith is Concerning the Trinity.
Chapter 7.—In What Manner the Son is Less Than the Father, and Than Himself.
Chapter 9.—All are Sometimes Understood in One Person.
Chapter 11.—By What Rule in the Scriptures It is Understood that the Son is Now Equal and Now Less.
Chapter 4.—The Glorification of the Son by the Father Does Not Prove Inequality.
Chapter 6.—The Creature is Not So Taken by the Holy Spirit as Flesh is by the Word.
Chapter 7.—A Doubt Raised About Divine Appearances.
Chapter 8.—The Entire Trinity Invisible.
Chapter 11.—Of the Same Appearance.
Chapter 12.—The Appearance to Lot is Examined.
Chapter 13.—The Appearance in the Bush.
Chapter 14.—Of the Appearance in the Pillar of Cloud and of Fire.
Chapter 16.—In What Manner Moses Saw God.
Chapter 18.—The Vision of Daniel.
Chapter 1.—What is to Be Said Thereupon.
Chapter 2.—The Will of God is the Higher Cause of All Corporeal Change. This is Shown by an Example.
Chapter 3.—Of the Same Argument.
Chapter 5.—Why Miracles are Not Usual Works.
Chapter 6.—Diversity Alone Makes a Miracle.
Chapter 7.—Great Miracles Wrought by Magic Arts.
Chapter 8.—God Alone Creates Those Things Which are Changed by Magic Art.
Chapter 9.—The Original Cause of All Things is from God.
Chapter 10.—In How Many Ways the Creature is to Be Taken by Way of Sign. The Eucharist.
Preface.—The Knowledge of God is to Be Sought from God.
Chapter 2.—How We are Rendered Apt for the Perception of Truth Through the Incarnate Word.
Chapter 7.—In What Manner We are Gathered from Many into One Through One Mediator.
Chapter 8.—In What Manner Christ Wills that All Shall Be One in Himself.
Chapter 9.—The Same Argument Continued.
Chapter 10.—As Christ is the Mediator of Life, So the Devil is the Mediator of Death.
Chapter 11.—Miracles Which are Done by Demons are to Be Spurned.
Chapter 12.—The Devil the Mediator of Death, Christ of Life.
Chapter 2.—God the Only Unchangeable Essence.
Chapter 4.—The Accidental Always Implies Some Change in the Thing.
Chapter 7.—The Addition of a Negative Does Not Change the Predicament.
Chapter 9.—The Three Persons Not Properly So Called [in a Human Sense].
Chapter 11.—What is Said Relatively in the Trinity.
Chapter 12.—In Relative Things that are Reciprocal, Names are Sometimes Wanting.
Chapter 13.—How the Word Beginning (Principium) is Spoken Relatively in the Trinity.
Chapter 14.—The Father and the Son the Only Beginning (Principium) of the Holy Spirit.
Chapter 15.—Whether the Holy Spirit Was a Gift Before as Well as After He Was Given.
Chapter 16.—What is Said of God in Time, is Said Relatively, Not Accidentally.
Chapter 2 .—What is Said of the Father and Son Together, and What Not.
Chapter 4.—The Same Argument Continued.
Chapter 5.—The Holy Spirit Also is Equal to the Father and the Son in All Things.
Chapter 6.—How God is a Substance Both Simple and Manifold.
Chapter 7.—God is a Trinity, But Not Triple (Triplex).
Chapter 8.—No Addition Can Be Made to the Nature of God.
Chapter 9.—Whether One or the Three Persons Together are Called the Only God.
Chapter 5.—In God, Substance is Spoken Improperly, Essence Properly.
Chapter 1.—It is Shown by Reason that in God Three are Not Anything Greater Than One Person.
Chapter 4.—God Must First Be Known by an Unerring Faith, that He May Be Loved.
Chapter 5.—How the Trinity May Be Loved Though Unknown.
Chapter 6.—How the Man Not Yet Righteous Can Know the Righteous Man Whom He Loves.
Chapter 10.—There are Three Things in Love, as It Were a Trace of the Trinity.
Chapter 1.—In What Way We Must Inquire Concerning the Trinity.
Chapter 5.—That These Three are Several in Themselves, and Mutually All in All.
Chapter 8.—In What Desire and Love Differ.
Chapter 10.—Whether Only Knowledge that is Loved is the Word of the Mind.
Chapter 2.—No One at All Loves Things Unknown.
Chapter 3.—That When the Mind Loves Itself, It is Not Unknown to Itself.
Chapter 4.—How the Mind Knows Itself, Not in Part, But as a Whole.
Chapter 6.—The Opinion Which the Mind Has of Itself is Deceitful.
Chapter 8.—How the Soul Inquires into Itself. Whence Comes the Error of the Soul Concerning Itself.
Chapter 9.—The Mind Knows Itself, by the Very Act of Understanding the Precept to Know Itself.
Chapter 12.—The Mind is an Image of the Trinity in Its Own Memory, and Understanding, and Will.
Chapter 1.—A Trace of the Trinity Also In the Outer Man.
Chapter 4.—How This Unity Comes to Pass.
Chapter 6.—Of What Kind We are to Reckon the Rest (Requies), and End (Finis), of the Will in Vision.
Chapter 7.—There is Another Trinity in the Memory of Him Who Thinks Over Again What He Has Seen.
Chapter 8.—Different Modes of Conceiving.
Chapter 9.—Species is Produced by Species in Succession.
Chapter 11.—Number, Weight, Measure.
Chapter 1.—Of What Kind are the Outer and the Inner Man.
Chapter 6. —Why This Opinion is to Be Rejected.
Chapter 8.—Turning Aside from the Image of God.
Chapter 9.—The Same Argument is Continued.
Chapter 10.—The Lowest Degradation Reached by Degrees.
Chapter 11.—The Image of the Beast in Man.
Chapter 12.—There is a Kind of Hidden Wedlock in the Inner Man. Unlawful Pleasures of the Thoughts.
Chapter 3.—Some Desires Being the Same in All, are Known to Each. The Poet Ennius.
Chapter 8.—Blessedness Cannot Exist Without Immortality.
Chapter 11.—A Difficulty, How We are Justified in the Blood of the Son of God.
Chapter 12.—All, on Account of the Sin of Adam, Were Delivered into the Power of the Devil.
Chapter 13.—Man Was to Be Rescued from the Power of the Devil, Not by Power, But by Righteousness.
Chapter 14.—The Unobligated Death of Christ Has Freed Those Who Were Liable to Death.
Chapter 15.—Of the Same Subject.
Chapter 17.—Other Advantages of the Incarnation.
Chapter 18.—Why the Son of God Took Man Upon Himself from the Race of Adam, and from a Virgin.
Chapter 19.—What in the Incarnate Word Belongs to Knowledge, What to Wisdom.
Chapter 3.—A Difficulty Removed, Which Lies in the Way of What Has Just Been Said.
Chapter 5.—Whether the Mind of Infants Knows Itself.
Chapter 9.—Whether Justice and the Other Virtues Cease to Exist in the Future Life.
Chapter 10.—How a Trinity is Produced by the Mind Remembering, Understanding, and Loving Itself.
Chapter 11.—Whether Memory is Also of Things Present.
Chapter 13.—How Any One Can Forget and Remember God.
Chapter 16.—How the Image of God is Formed Anew in Man.
Chapter 1.—God is Above the Mind.
Chapter 3.—A Brief Recapitulation of All the Previous Books.
Chapter 4.—What Universal Nature Teaches Us Concerning God.
Chapter 5.—How Difficult It is to Demonstrate the Trinity by Natural Reason.
Chapter 8.—How the Apostle Says that God is Now Seen by Us Through a Glass.
Chapter 9.—Of the Term “Enigma,” And of Tropical Modes of Speech.
Chapter 12.—The Academic Philosophy.
Chapter 14.—The Word of God is in All Things Equal to the Father, from Whom It is.
Chapter 16.—Our Word is Never to Be Equalled to the Divine Word, Not Even When We Shall Be Like God.
Chapter 18.—No Gift of God is More Excellent Than Love.
Chapter 24.—The Infirmity of the Human Mind.
Chapter 28.—The Conclusion of the Book with a Prayer, and an Apology for Multitude of Words.
Chapter 5.—Why Miracles are Not Usual Works.
11. For since the divine power administers the whole spiritual and corporeal creature, the waters of the sea are summoned and poured out upon the face of the earth on certain days of every year. But when this was done at the prayer of the holy Elijah; because so continued and long a course of fair weather had gone before, that men were famished; and because at that very hour, in which the servant of God prayed, the air itself had not, by any moist aspect, put forth signs of the coming rain; the divine power was apparent in the great and rapid showers that followed, and by which that miracle was granted and dispensed.364 1 Kings xviii. 45 In like manner, God works ordinarily through thunders and lightnings: but because these were wrought in an unusual manner on Mount Sinai, and those sounds were not uttered with a confused noise, but so that it appeared by most sure proofs that certain intimations were given by them, they were miracles.365 Ex. xix. 6 Who draws up the sap through the root of the vine to the bunch of grapes, and makes the wine, except God; who, while man plants and waters, Himself giveth the increase?366 1 Cor. iii. 7 But when, at the command of the Lord, the water was turned into wine with an extraordinary quickness, the divine power was made manifest, by the confession even of the foolish.367 John ii. 9 Who ordinarily clothes the trees with leaves and flowers except God? Yet, when the rod of Aaron the priest blossomed, the Godhead in some way conversed with doubting humanity.368 Num. xvii. 8 Again, the earthy matter certainly serves in common to the production and formation both of all kinds of wood and of the flesh of all animals: and who makes these things, but He who said, Let the earth bring them forth;369 Gen. i. 24 and who governs and guides by the same word of His, those things which He has created? Yet, when He changed the same matter out of the rod of Moses into the flesh of a serpent, immediately and quickly, that change, which was unusual, although of a thing which was changeable, was a miracle.370 Ex. iv. 3 But who is it that gives life to every living thing at its birth, unless He who gave life to that serpent also for the moment, as there was need.371 [One chief reason why a miracle is incredible for the skeptic, is the difficulty of working it. If the miracle were easy of execution for man—who for the skeptic is the measure of power—his disbelief of it would disappear. In reference to this objection, Augustin calls attention to the fact, that so far as difficulty of performance is concerned, the products of nature are as impossible to man as supernatural products. Aaron could no more have made an almond rod blossom and fructuate on an almond tree, than off it. That a miracle is difficult to be wrought is, consequently, no good reason for disbelieving its reality.—W.G.T.S.]
CAPUT V.
11. Miracula cur non consueta opera. Vi enim divina totam spiritualem corporalemque administrante creaturam, omnium annorum certis diebus advocantur aquae maris, et effunduntur super faciem terrae. Sed cum hoc orante sancto Elia factum est, quia praecesserat tam continua et tam longa serenitas, ut deficerent fame homines, nec ea hora qua ille Dei servus oravit, aer ipse aliqua humida facie mox futurae pluviae signa praetulerat, consecutis tantis et tam velociter imbribus apparuit vis divina, quibus illud dabatur dispensabaturque miraculum (III Reg. XVIII, 45). Ita Deus operatur solemnia fulgura atque tonitrua: sed quia in monte Sina inusitato modo fiebant, vocesque illae non strepitu confuso edebantur, sed eis quaedam signa dari certissimis indiciis apparebat, miracula erant (Exod. XIX, 16). Quis attrahit humorem per radicem vitis ad botrum, et vinum facit, nisi Deus, qui et homine plantante et rigante incrementum dat (I Cor. III, 7)? Sed cum ad nutum Domini aqua in vinum inusitata celeritate conversa est, etiam stultis fatentibus vis divina declarata est (Joan. II, 9). Quis arbusta fronde ac flore vestit solemniter, nisi Deus? Verum cum floruit virga sacerdotis Aaron, collocuta est quodam modo cum dubitante humanitate divinitas (Num. XVII, 8). Et lignis certe omnibus et omnium animalium carnibus gignendis atque formandis communis est terrena materies: et quis ea facit, nisi qui dixit ut haec terra produceret (Gen. 1, 24), et in eodem verbo suo quae creavit, regit atque agit? Sed cum eamdem materiam ex virga Moysi in carnem serpentis proxime ac velociter vertit, miraculum fuit (Exod. IV, 3), rei quidem mutabilis, sed tamen inusitata mutatio. Quis autem animat quaeque viva nascentia, nisi qui et illum serpentem ad horam, sicut opus fuerat, animavit?