{"collection":"chr","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/chr/ecf/101/1010062.htm","path":"chr/ecf/101/1010062.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/chr/ecf/101/1010062.htm","text":"Chapter III.\u2014Not Even the Most Experienced Men Could Persuade Him of the Vanity of Astrology to Which He Was Devoted.\n4. Those impostors, then, whom they designate Mathematicians, I consulted without hesitation, because they used no sacrifices, and invoked the aid of no spirit for their divinations, which art Christian and true piety fitly rejects and condemns. 277 For good it is to confess unto Thee, and to say, \u201cBe merciful unto me, heal my soul, for I have sinned against Thee;\u201d 278 and not to abuse Thy goodness for a license to sin, but to remember the words of the Lord, \u201cBehold, thou art made whole; sin no more, lest a worse thing come unto thee.\u201d 279 All of which salutary advice they endeavour to destroy when they say, \u201cThe cause of thy sin is inevitably determined in heaven;\u201d and, \u201cThis did Venus, or Saturn, or Mars;\u201d in order that man, forsooth, flesh and blood, and proud corruption, may be blameless, while the Creator and Ordainer of heaven and stars is to bear the blame. And who is this but Thee, our God, the sweetness and well-spring of righteousness, who renderest \u201cto every man according to his deeds,\u201d 280 and despisest not \u201ca broken and a contrite heart!\u201d 281\n5. There was in those days a wise man, very skilful in medicine, and much renowned therein, who had with his own proconsular hand put the Agonistic garland upon my distempered head, not, though, as a physician; 282 for this disease Thou alone healest, who resistest the proud, and givest grace to the humble. 283 But didst Thou fail me even by that old man, or forbear from healing my soul? For when I had become more familiar with him, and hung assiduously and fixedly on his conversation (for though couched in simple language, it was replete with vivacity, life, and earnestness), when he had perceived from my discourse that I was given to books of the horoscope-casters, he, in a kind and fatherly manner, advised me to throw them away, and not vainly bestow the care and labour necessary for useful things upon these vanities; saying that he himself in his earlier years had studied that art with a view to gaining his living p. 70 by following it as a profession, and that, as he had understood Hippocrates, he would soon have understood this, and yet he had given it up, and followed medicine, for no other reason than that he discovered it to be utterly false, and he, being a man of character, would not gain his living by beguiling people. \u201cBut thou,\u201d saith he, \u201cwho hast rhetoric to support thyself by, so that thou followest this of free will, not of necessity\u2014all the more, then, oughtest thou to give me credit herein, who laboured to attain it so perfectly, as I wished to gain my living by it alone.\u201d When I asked him to account for so many true things being foretold by it, he answered me (as he could) \u201cthat the force of chance, diffused throughout the whole order of nature, brought this about. For if when a man by accident opens the leaves of some poet, who sang and intended something far different, a verse oftentimes fell out wondrously apposite to the present business, it were not to be wondered at,\u201d he continued, \u201cif out of the soul of man, by some higher instinct, not knowing what goes on within itself, an answer should be given by chance, not art, which should coincide with the business and actions of the questioner.\u201d\n6. And thus truly, either by or through him, Thou didst look after me. And Thou didst delineate in my memory what I might afterwards search out for myself. But at that time neither he, nor my most dear Nebridius, a youth most good and most circumspect, who scoffed at that whole stock of divination, could persuade me to forsake it, the authority of the authors influencing me still more; and as yet I had lighted upon no certain proof\u2014such as I sought\u2014whereby it might without doubt appear that what had been truly foretold by those consulted was by accident or chance, not by the art of the star-gazers.\nAugustin classes the votaries of both wizards and astrologers (De Doctr. Christ. ii. 23; and De Civ. Dei, x. 9; compare also Justin Martyr, Apol. ii. c. 5) as alike \u201cdeluded and imposed on by the false angels, to whom the lowest part of the world has been put in subjection by the law of God\u2019s providence;\u201d and he says, \u201cAll arts of this sort are either nullities, or are part of a guilty superstition springing out of a baleful fellowship between men and devils, and are to be utterly repudiated and avoided by the Christian, as the covenants of a false and treacherous friendship.\u201d It is remarkable that though these arts were strongly denounced in the Pentateuch, the Jews\u2014acquiring them from the surrounding Gentile nations\u2014have embedded them deeply in their oral law, said also to be given by Moses (e.g. in Moed Katon 28, and Shabbath 156, prosperity comes from the influence of the stars; in Shabbath 61 it is a question whether the influence of the stars or a charm has been effective; and in Sanhedrin 17 magic is one of the qualifications for the Sanhedrim). It might have been expected that the Christians, if only from that reaction against Judaism which shows itself in Origen\u2019s disparagement of the letter of the Old Testament Scriptures (see De Princip. iv. 15, 16), would have shrunk from such strange arts. But the influx of pagans, who had practiced them, into the Christian Church appears gradually to have leavened it in no slight degree. This is not only true of the Valentinians (see Kaye\u2019s Clement of Alex. vi.) and other heretics, but the influence of these contacts is seen even in the writings of the \u201corthodox.\u201d Those who can read between the lines will find no slight trace of this (after separating what they would conceive to be true from what is manifestly false) in the story told by Zonaras, in his Annals, of the controversy between the Rabbis and Sylvester, Bishop of Rome, before Constantine. The Jews were worsted in argument, and evidently thought an appeal to miracles might, from the Emperor\u2019s education, bring him over to their side. An ox is brought forth. The Jewish wonder-worker whispers a mystic name into its ear, and it falls dead; but Sylvester, according to the story, is quite equal to the occasion, and restores the animal to life again by uttering the name of the Redeemer. It may have been that the cessation of miracles may have gradually led unstable professors of Christianity to invent miracles; and, as Bishop Kaye observes (Tertullian, p. 95), \u201cthe success of the first attempts naturally encouraged others to practice similar impositions on the credulity of mankind.\u201d As to the time of the cessation of miracles, comparison may be profitably made of the views of Kaye, in the early part of c. ii. of his Tertullian, and of Blunt, in his Right Use of the Early Fathers, series ii. lecture 6.\n69:278 69:279 69:280\nRom. 2.6, and Matt. 16.27.\n69:281 69:282\nThis physician was Vindicianus, the \u201cacute old man\u201d mentioned in vii. sec. 8, below, and again in Ep. 138, as \u201cthe most eminent physician of his day.\u201d Augustin\u2019s disease, however, could not be reached by his remedies. We are irresistibly reminded of the words of our great poet:\u2014\n\u201cCanst thou minister to a mind diseased;\nPluck from the memory a rooted sorrow;\nRaze out the written troubles of the brain;\nAnd, with some sweet oblivious antidote,\nCleanse the stuff\u2019d bosom of that perilous stuff\nWhich weighs upon the heart!\u201d \u2014Macbeth, act. v. scene 3.\n69:283\n1 Pet. 5.5, and Jas. 4.6.","title":"Nicene and Post Nicene-Fathers, Vol. I: The Confessions: ...","type":"page"}