Confessions of St. Augustine · of Hippo Augustine
BOOK VII
2. I then being thus gross-hearted, nor clear even to myself, whatsoever was not extended over certain space, nor diffused, nor condensed, nor swelled out, or did not or could not receive some of these dimensions, I thought to be altogether nothing. For over such forms as my eyes are wont to range did my heart then range: nor yet did I see that this same notion of the mind, whereby I formed those very images, was not of this sort, and yet it could not have formed them, had not itself been some great thing. So also did I endeavor to conceive of Thee, Life of my life, as vast, through infinite spaces, on every side penetrating the whole mass of the universe, and beyond it, every way, through immeasurable boundless spaces; so that the earth should have Thee, the heaven have Thee, all things have Thee, and they be bounded in Thee, and Thou bounded nowhere. For that as the body of this air which is above the earth hindereth not the light of the sun from passing through it, penetrating it, not by bursting or by cutting, but by filling it wholly: so I thought the body not of heaven, air, and sea only, but of the earth too, previous to Thee, so that in all its parts, the greatest as the smallest, it should admit Thy presence by a secret inspiration, within and without, directing all things which Thou hast created. So I guessed, only as unable to conceive aught else, for it was false. For thus should a greater part of the earth contain a greater portion of Thee, and a less, a lesser: and all things should in such sort be full of Thee, that the body of an elephant should contain more of Thee than that of a sparrow, by how much larger it is, and takes up more room; and thus shouldst Thou make the several portions of Thyself present unto the several portions of the world, in fragments, large to the large, petty to the petty. But such art not Thou. But not as yet hadst Thou enlightened my darkness.
(He “sees that the cause of sin lies in free-will, rejects the Manichean heresy, but cannot altogether embrace the doctrine of the Church; recovered from the belief in Astrology, but miserably perplexed about the origin of evil; is led to find in the Platonists the seeds of the doctrine of the Divinity of the WORD, but not of His humiliation; hence he obtains clearer notions of God’s majesty, but, not knowing Christ to be the Mediator, remains estranged from Him; all his doubts removed by the study of Holy Scripture, especially St. Paul.” This Book completes Augustine’s thirty-first year.) (Dealing with his abandonment of astrology, a naively elaborate proof of the falsity of that science is brought forward, to-wit: By careful planning, two children of widely different parents were observed, who were born at approximately the same time. According to astrology, their horoscopes should be the same, for the stars would obviously be in the same positions at their simultaneous birth. But one was a slave, the other a successful freeman. In addition, the common phenomenon of twins, born at the same hour or so nearly at the same moment that the stars could not vary enough to be noted, is cited. The twins, according to their horoscopes, should be similarly endowed with abilities, and similarly favored by fortune. Yet this has seldom proved the case.)
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.