Quote 827
How foolish are they who know not God! So many good things before their eyes, yet Him Who Is they fail to see.
Augustine
Confessions (Ch. Conversion)Other Quotes from the Author & Topic
If you believe what you like in the gospels, and reject what you don't like, it is not the gospel you believe, but yourself.
God does not have mercy on someone because that person has willed and run, but he willed and ran because God has had mercy on him.Contra Julianum opus imperfectrum, bk1, c141.
Every good work in us is performed only by grace.Epist. 105 ad Bonifac.
It is not the distance of the earth from the sun, nor the sun's withdrawing itself, that makes a dark and gloomy day; but the interposition of clouds and vaporous exhalations. Neither is thy soul beyond the reach of the promise, nor does God withdraw Himself; but the vapours of thy carnal, unbelieving heart do cloud thee.
God had one son on earth without sin, but never one without suffering.
Maybe the atheist cannot find God for the same reason a thief cannot find a policeman.
In answering this question I have tried hard to maintain the free choice of the human will. But the grace of God prevailed. Augustine: earlier writings, Volume 1953, Part 2 (Page 370)
But, during all those years, where was my free will? What was the hidden, secret place from which it was summoned in a moment, so that I might bend my neck to your easy yoke and take your light burden on my shoulders, Christ Jesus, my Helper and my Redeemer? How sweet all at once it was for me to be rid of those fruitless joys which I had once feared to lose and was now glad to reject! You drove them from me, you who are the true, the sovereign joy. You drove them from me and took their place, you who are sweeter than all pleasure, though not to flesh and blood, you who outshine all light yet are hidden deeper than any secret in our hearts, you who surpass all honour though not in the eyes of men who see all honour in themselves. At last my mind was free from the gnawing anxieties of ambition and gain, from wallowing in filth and scratching the itching sore of lust. I began to talk to you freely, O Lord my God, my Light, my Wealth, and my Salvation. Confessions Book IX Chapter I
Years are slipping away and time is flying. Graveyards are filling up and families are thinning. Death and judgement are getting nearer to us all. And yet you live like one asleep about your soul! What madness! What folly! What suicide can be worse than this? Awake before it is too late; awake, and arise from the dead, and live to God. Turn to Him who is sitting at the right hand of God, to be your Saviour and Friend. Turn to Christ, and cry mightily to Him about your soul. Holiness (Chapter 6)
If the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of the Son, why should we not believe that he proceeds from the Son? Indeed, if he did not proceed from the Son, Christ would not have breathed on his disciples after the resurrection and said, "Receive the Holy Spirit." What else did such breathing mean than that the Holy Spirit also proceeds from the Son?Tractatus in Iohannis Evangelium 99.6
yet they preach that our visible sun spreads its rays over all manner of offal, but keeps them clean and pure. Therefore, if pure things which are visible can be touched by visible things which are unclean and not share their pollution how much more did the unchangeable and invisible Truth, receiving a soul through the spirit and a body through the soul, take on the whole man without contamination to itself and free him from all infirmities?De agone christiano, c18 n20
sin is every word or deed or desire which happens against the law of GodContra Faustum bk22 c27
the sin of the first man harmed not only him, but the whole human race, because from it we received condemnation and fault together.Hypognosticon, bk2 c4 n4
some heretics, who are called Pelagians, said that the sin of the first transgression passed into other men not by propagation, but by imitationDe Peccatorum b1 c9 m9-10
Since God is an incorporeal and unchangeable living nature, remaining in eternal stability in his own self, he is entirely present in all things, and entirely in each of them. But those in whom he dwells receive him according to the diversity of their capacity, some more, some less, whom he builds into a temple most beloved to himself by the grace of his goodness.Epistola 187, c6 n19
He loves Thee too little who loves anything together with Thee, which he loves not for Thy sake.
When a Russian cosmonaut returned from space and reported that he had not found God, C.S. Lewis responded that this was like Hamlet going into the attic of his castle looking for Shakespeare. If there is a God, he wouldn't be another object in the universe that could be put in a lab and analyzed with empirical methods. He would relate to us the way a playwright relates to the characters in his play. We (characters) might be able to know quite a lot about the playwright, but only to the degree the author chooses to put information about himself in the play. The Reason for God (122)
We see the main cause of unbelief and despair. It is ignorance of the Father's interest in redemption; the ignorance of the transaction between the Father and the Son is the cause of this, 'because they know not him who sent me.'
To openly defy Him who is clothed with omnipotence, who can rend us in pieces or cast us into Hell any moment He pleases, is the very height of insanity.
This we now say, that, according to this condition of being born and dying, which we know, and in which we have been created, the marriage of male and female is some good; the compact whereof divine Scripture so commends, as that neither is it allowed one put away by her husband to marry, so long as her husband lives: nor is it allowed one put away by his wife to marry another, unless she who have separated from him be dead. Therefore, concerning the good of marriage, which the Lord also confirmed in the Gospel, not only in that He forbade to put away a wife, save because of fornication, but also in that He came by invitation to a marriagehttps://www.newadvent.org/fathers/1309.htm#:~:text=This%20we%20now%20say%2C%20that,long%20as%20her%20husband%20lives%3A
I have been concerned that such accounts should be published because I saw that signs of divine power like those of older days were frequently occuring in modern times too
That men sin, is attributable to themselves: that in sinning they produce this or that result, is owing to the mighty power of God, who divides the darkness as he pleasesDe praedest. sanct.
That the will is indeed free, but not freed--free of righteousness, but enslaved to sin.Contra Julianum
true religion looks upon those wars that are waged, not for motives of aggrandizement or cruelty, but with the object of securing peace, of punishing evil-doers, and of uplifting the good.
Wherever the soul of man turns, unless towards God, it cleaves to sorrow, even though the things outside God and outside itself to which it cleaves may be things of beauty.Confessions 4.10.15
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