Chapter 9.—The Same Argument Continued.

He did not say, I and they are one thing;489    Gen. i. 20–25    Unum although, in that He is the head of the church which is His body,490    [Augustin is not alone in his belief that the bee is an exception to the dictum; omne animal ex ovo. As late as 1744, Thorley, an English “scientist,” said that “the manner in which bees propagate their species is entirely hid from the eyes of all men; and the most strict, diligent, and curious observers and inquisitors have not been able to discover it. It is a secret, and will remain a mystery. Dr. Butler says that they do not copulate as other living creatures do.” (Thorley: Melisselogia. Section viii.) The observations of Huber and others have disproved this opinion. Some infer that ignorance of physics proves ignorance of philosophy and theology. The difference between matter and mind is so great, that erroneous opinions in one province are compatible with correct ones in the other. It does not follow that because Augustin had wrong notions about bees, and no knowledge at all of the steam engine and telegraph, his knowledge of God and the soul was inferior to that of a modern materialist.—W.G.T.S.]    Eph. i. 22, 23 He might have said, and they are, not one thing,491    [The English translator renders “virtus” in its secondary sense of “goodness.” Augustin employs it here, in its primary sense of “energy,” “force.”—W.G.T.S.]    Unum but one person,492    1 Cor. iii. 6    Unus because the head and the body is one Christ; but in order to show His own Godhead consubstantial with the Father (for which reason He says in another place, “I and my Father are one”493    Phil. i. 18    John x. 30; unum.), in His own kind, that is, in the consubstantial parity of the same nature, He wills His own to be one,494    Gen. xxx. 41    Unum but in Himself; since they could not be so in themselves, separated as they are one from another by divers pleasures and desires and uncleannesses of sin; whence they are cleansed through the Mediator, that they may be one495    Unum in Him, not only through the same nature in which all become from mortal men equal to the angels, but also through the same will most harmoniously conspiring to the same blessedness, and fused in some way by the fire of charity into one spirit. For to this His words come, “That they may be one, even as we are one;” namely, that as the Father and Son are one, not only in equality of substance, but also in will, so those also may be one, between whom and God the Son is mediator, not only in that they are of the same nature, but also through the same union of love. And then He goes on thus to intimate the truth itself, that He is the Mediator, through whom we are reconciled to God, by saying, “I in them, and Thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one.”496    John xvii. 23

CAPUT IX.

Sequitur de eodem argumento. Non dixit, Ego et ipsi unum; quamvis per id quod Ecclesiae caput est et corpus ejus Ecclesia (Ephes. I, 22, 23), posset dicere, Ego et ipsi, non unum, sed unus, quia caput et corpus unus est Christus: sed divinitatem suam consubstantialem Patri ostendens (propter quod et alio loco dicit, Ego et Pater unum sumus [Joan. X, 30]), in suo genere, hoc est, in ejusdem naturae consubstantiali parilitate, vult esse suos unum, sed in ipso; quia in se ipsis non possent, dissociati ab invicem per diversas voluptates et cupiditates et immunditias peccatorum: unde mundantur per Mediatorem, ut sint in illo unum; non tantum per eamdem naturam qua omnes ex hominibus mortalibus aequales Angelis fiunt, sed etiam per eamdem in eamdem beatitudinem conspirantem concordissimam voluntatem , in unum spiritum quodam modo igne charitatis conflatam . Ad hoc enim valet quod ait, Ut sint unum, sicut et nos unum sumus: ut quemadmodum Pater et Filius, non tantum aequalitate substantiae, sed etiam voluntate unum sunt; ita et ii inter quos et Deum mediator est Filius, non tantum per id quod ejusdem naturae sunt, sed etiam per eamdem dilectionis societatem unum sint. Deinde idipsum quod Mediator est, per quem reconciliamur Deo, sic indicat, Ego, inquit, in eis, et tu in me, ut sint consummati in unum (Id. XVII, 23).