Ad Simplicianum, Book II

First, then, what you directed me to explain out of the First Book of Kingdoms: how it can be said, “And the spirit of the Lord leapt upon Saul,” when elsewhere it says, “And the evil spirit of the Lord was upon Saul.” It is written thus: “And it came to pass, when he turned his shoulder to go from Samuel, that God turned another heart in Saul, and all those signs came on that day. And he came from there to the hill, and behold, a company of prophets to meet him; and the spirit of God leapt upon him, and he prophesied in their midst.” For Samuel had foretold him these things when, at God's command, he had anointed him.

And this, I think, holds no real question. For the Spirit breathes where he wills, and no contact with any soul can stain the spirit of prophecy: it touches everything precisely because it is pure.

But it does not affect everyone in the same way. Some it affects by an informing of their own spirit, where images of things are shown them; some by a fruit of the mind reaching understanding; some by both together; and some without their knowing at all.

The informing of the spirit happens in two ways. Either through dreams — as not only very many holy men but also Pharaoh and King Nebuchadnezzar saw what neither of them was able to understand, though both were able to see. Or through a showing in ecstasy, which some Latin writers render as dread — surprising if it is exact, but near enough — when there comes an estrangement of the mind from the senses of the body, so that a man's spirit, taken up by the divine Spirit, is free to receive and gaze at images. So it was shown to Daniel what he did not understand, and to Peter that vessel let down from heaven by four cords; for he too afterwards learned what the showing was picturing.

By the fruit of the mind reaching understanding there is only one way: when it is revealed what these very things shown in images signify and what they bear upon. That is the surer prophecy — indeed the Apostle rather gives this the name of prophecy. So Joseph was granted to understand what Pharaoh could only see, and Daniel expounds to the king what the king perceives and does not know.

But when the mind is so affected that it does not work out the images of things by conjecture but gazes on the things themselves — as wisdom and justice and every unchangeable and divine form are understood — that does not belong to the prophecy we are now discussing.

Those, however, receive both gifts of prophecy who both see the images of things in their spirit and at the same time understand what they mean, or at least are instructed by plain speech within the showing itself, as certain things are explained in the Apocalypse.

And the spirit of prophecy affects some without their knowing — as Caiaphas, being high priest, prophesied concerning the Lord that it was expedient for one to die for the whole nation, while he had something quite different in mind in the words he was saying: words he did not know he was not saying from himself.

Examples abound in the holy books, and I am telling your good sense what it knows perfectly well. You are not learning these things from me; you are testing me by asking about them, wanting to recognise a man who is making progress and ready to correct one who is going wrong.

Now the phrase that is used — the Spirit leapt upon him — signifies a sudden breathing, as if out of the hidden secret of the godhead. And which of these modes we should understand Saul to have been affected by is clear enough from what is written there: “God turned another heart in Saul.” For that signifies a different disposition of heart, which God made by turning it, so that he became capable of the images that signify and prefigure — capable, that is, of prophetic divination.

There is as much distance between the prophecy of the prophets — Isaiah, Jeremiah and the rest of that kind — and this passing thing that appeared in Saul, as there is between human speech when men speak, and that same human speech when, for the sake of a necessary portent, the donkey spoke that the prophet Balaam was sitting on. That beast received this for the moment, so that God might display what he had determined, not so that a brute should hold conversation among men as a settled condition.

Or if that example is too far removed by the greatness of the difference, then it is far less astonishing that prophecy was given for a moment of time, as a passing state, to a reprobate man — given by the one who also made a donkey speak when he wished. For a beast is further from a man than a reprobate man is from the elect, who are men all the same.

For if somebody says something that belongs to wisdom, he is not on that account to be reckoned wise. And in the same way, if somebody has prophesied once, he will not therefore be numbered among the prophets — since the Lord himself says in the Gospel that some receive the word with joy and have no depth of root, but are temporary. And so, as the passage that follows shows, it turned into a proverb: “Is Saul too among the prophets?”

Let us stop being astonished, then, when something divine appears in people beyond what their merit or their condition would warrant — when God happens to want something of the kind displayed for the sake of signifying something.

If what troubles you is that Saul, who had earlier received the spirit of prophecy, was afterwards choked by the onset of an evil spirit — that is not astonishing either. The one happened by a dispensation, to signify something; the other by desert, to punish.

Nor ought these alternations in a human mind to disturb us — that is, in a changeable creature, and especially at a time when corruptible and mortal flesh is being carried about. Do we not see in Peter himself, so far as the Gospel shows, that there arose so great a confession that he deserved to hear “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed it to you, but my Father who is in heaven” — and a little later that he thought so carnally about the Lord's passion that he immediately heard “Get behind me, Satan; you are a stumbling-block to me, for you are not thinking the things of God but the things of men”?

And perhaps, to those who understand somewhat more inwardly, the difference between Peter first understanding by the Father's revelation that Christ was the Son of God, and afterwards being terrified that he might die, is worth as much for distinguishing the visions of the mind as the difference is worth — for distinguishing what appears in a man's spirit in images while his mind is estranged from his senses — between the revelation of prophecy by which Saul was first breathed upon, and the mingling with an evil spirit by which he was afterwards pressed.

As for its being called an evil spirit of the Lord, this is to be understood in the way it is said that “the earth is the Lord's” — a creature set within his power. Or if that example of speech does not fit, because the earth is not evil (for every creature of God is good), then let this one fit: that Saul, already reprobate and criminal and ungrateful to holy David, and his persecutor besides, driven along by the most savage torches of envy, was nevertheless still called the Lord's anointed — as David himself called him when he avenged his death.

But I rather think that the malignant spirit by which Saul was harassed was called a spirit of the Lord because it harassed Saul by the Lord's hidden judgement. For God makes use even of evil spirits as servants, for the punishing of the wicked or for the testing of the good — in one way for the one purpose, in another for the other.

For although any malignant spirit is malignant from itself, in that it desires with an evil will to do harm, it nevertheless does not receive the power to harm except from him under whom all things are ordered in fixed and just degrees of desert. Just as an evil will is not from God, so there is no power except from God. For although what a man wills is in his own power, what he can do — either do to anyone or suffer from anyone — is not in his own power.

For the only Son of God himself, when he was about to suffer, said humbly for the moment to a man speaking proudly and claiming that he had power to kill him or to let him go: “You would have no power over me unless it had been given you from above.”

The devil too, wanting to harm the righteous man Job, was the devil in the will to harm; and yet he asked power of the Lord God, saying, “Put out your hand and touch his flesh” — though he himself was going to do it, if it were permitted. For it was permission itself he was asking for in that way, and he called the Lord's hand what was really his own hand once the Lord permitted it: that is, the very power he wanted to receive. With which agrees what the Lord says to the disciples in the Gospel: “This night Satan has asked to harass you like wheat.”

So it was called an evil spirit of God — that is, God's agent for doing to Saul what the almighty judge judged him fit to suffer. For that spirit, in the will by which it was evil, was not God's; but in the creaturely being by which it was made, and in the power which it had received not from itself but from the justice of the Lord of all, it was God's.

The words of Scripture themselves run thus: “And Samuel went, and departed to Armathem; and the spirit of the Lord withdrew from Saul, and a malignant spirit from the Lord seized him and choked him. And Saul's attendants said to him: Behold, an evil spirit of the Lord is choking you.” How the phrase evil spirit of the Lord is to be taken on the servants' lips is shown by the earlier words, where the narrating Scripture says a malignant spirit from the Lord. For it is of the Lord in the sense of from the Lord: because it had of itself the will to harm — that is, to seize Saul — but did not have the power unless the highest justice allowed it.

For if God punishes justly when, as the Apostle himself says, he hands men over to the desires of their own hearts, it is no wonder that he punishes just as justly when he hands them over to the desires of others who want to do them harm — his own unchangeable fairness being preserved throughout.

It should be carefully noticed that it is with an addition that the phrase evil spirit of God is used. When the words are simply the Spirit of God, then even if good is not added, good is understood. From which it appears that a good spirit is called the Spirit of God according to substance, but an evil one according to service.

Though it can still be asked whether, when the Spirit of God is said and by that very phrase a good spirit is understood even with nothing added, the one understood is that Holy Spirit who in the Trinity is of one substance with the Father and the Son — of whom it is said, “Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty”; and again, “But God has revealed it to us through his Spirit”; and, “So too no one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God.”

In many places it is put this way and the Holy Spirit is understood, even without the addition, because the surrounding words show well enough who is meant — so that sometimes not even of God is added and yet that Spirit of God who is chiefly the Holy One is understood. For who else is he speaking of where he says, “The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are the children of God”; and, “The Spirit himself helps our weakness”; and, “All these things one and the same Spirit works, distributing to each one individually as he wills”; and, “There are distributions of gifts, but the same Spirit”? In all these sentences neither of God nor holy is added, and yet he himself is understood.

But I do not know whether it can be proved by any clear instance that the Spirit of God is anywhere said without an addition where that Holy Spirit is not meant, but some other spirit — good, but still created and made. The instances brought forward are doubtful and need plainer evidence: for example, what is written, “The Spirit of God was borne above the water.” For there too I cannot find what prevents us from taking it as the Holy Spirit.

Since by the name of waters that formless matter was being indicated which was made out of nothing and out of which all things were to be made, what forbids us to understand the Holy Spirit of the Creator, who was borne above this matter — not by degrees of place or intervals of space, which can never rightly be said of anything incorporeal, but by the excellence and eminence of a will ruling over all things, so that all things might be founded? — especially as that phrase, in the manner of those Scriptures, also has a prophetic ring, and prefigures the mystery of the coming baptism, of a people to be born of water and the Holy Spirit.

So the words “And the Spirit of God was borne above the water” do not compel us to understand, as some would have it, that spirit by which this whole bodily mass of the world is as it were animated for the service of things that come to be and for holding bodily creatures in their own kind. For anything of that sort is a creature.

There are people, too, who want the same spirit understood in what is written, “For the Spirit of the Lord has filled the world” — an invisible creature, that is, quickening and holding together all visible things by a kind of universal breathing-together. But here again I do not see what prevents understanding the Holy Spirit, since God himself says in the Prophet, “I fill heaven and earth.” For God does not fill heaven and earth without his Holy Spirit. What wonder, then, if it is said of his Holy Spirit that he has filled the world? He fills in one way by sanctifying — as it is said of Stephen, “He was filled with the Holy Spirit,” and of others like him. So he fills in one way by sanctifying grace, as he fills certain holy people; and in another way by an attesting and ordering presence, as he fills all things.

Therefore I do not know whether it can be shown by any certain evidence of the Scriptures that when the spirit of God or the spirit of the Lord is said without any addition, anything else is meant than the Holy Spirit. But even if there happens to be such a case that does not come to mind at present, this at least I think is not rashly said: as often as the spirit of God is mentioned in the holy words with nothing added — whether the Holy Spirit of one substance with the Father and the Son is understood, or some invisible creature — an evil one cannot be understood unless evil is added as well. For because God uses an evil spirit well, for the service of his judgement, that spirit too is called a spirit of God, for the punishing of the wicked and the training or testing of the good.

Nor need it disturb us that it is written afterwards that this same Saul prophesied when the spirit of God had come upon him — how there should be an evil spirit after a good one, and again a good one after an evil. For this happens not by any changeableness in the Holy Spirit, who is unchangeable with the Father and the Son, but by the changeableness of the human mind, God distributing all things: to the wicked according to what they deserve, whether for damnation or for amendment, and to the good out of the bounty of his grace.

It might seem, admittedly, that it was one and the same Spirit of God who was always in Saul, and that it was evil to him because he was not holily able to hold it. But that seems to me wrong. The safer and truer sense is that, according to the changeableness of human disposition, a good spirit of God affects a man well — whether for prophecy or for any other work in a divine gift — while an evil spirit affects him badly, and that this one too, because of its service to the divine fairness which distributes all things and uses all things rightly, is called a spirit of God. Especially since it was said, “The Spirit of God withdrew from him, and a malignant spirit from the Lord seized him.” There is no way the same thing can be thought both to have withdrawn and to have seized.

Moreover, in a number of copies — particularly those that seem to be rendered word for word out of the Hebrew — the spirit of God is found set down without any addition, and it is understood to be evil from the fact that it was snatching at Saul while David revived him by touching the harp. It is plain, though, that evil was not added because it had already been said a little earlier and could be supplied and understood from the neighbouring text. For in copies of that sort one reads: “So whenever the spirit of God snatched at Saul, David would take the harp and strike it with his hand, and Saul was refreshed and was easier; for the evil spirit withdrew from him.”

So either what was left unsaid there appears to be made good here — since here it does not say the spirit of God but only the evil spirit — or else, because it had been put earlier in this form: “And Saul's servants said to him: Behold, an evil spirit of God is driving you; let our lord command, and your servants who are before you will look for a man who knows how to play the harp, so that when the evil spirit of God snatches at you he may play with his hand and you may bear it more easily” — there was no need, when it was said again “whenever the spirit of God snatched at Saul,” to add evil, because it was already known which was being spoken of.

All the same, that other question is a bigger one, and not to be probed with a passing attention of mind: that while Saul was pursuing the innocent David, full of envy and mad with spite, “the spirit of God came upon him, and he went along walking and prophesying.”

Here only a good spirit can be understood — the one by which the holy prophets perceived the images and visions of things to come. And not merely because it says “and he prophesied”: for in the copies made from the Hebrew this too is found said of an evil spirit: “But on the next day an evil spirit of God rushed upon Saul, and he prophesied in the midst of his house”; and in other places of the divine Scriptures it is often found that prophecy is spoken of not only as good but as evil; and there were prophets called prophets of the Baals, and some were reproached who prophesied by Baal.

So it is not on that account necessary to understand the spirit which afterwards came upon Saul as good, because it says “and he went along walking and prophesying.” It is rather because it is set down without any addition: “And the spirit of God came upon him too.” For it had not been said above in that place, as it had elsewhere, an evil spirit of God, so that it might be supplied in what follows. On the contrary, what goes before testifies more and more strongly that this spirit of God was good and truly prophetic.

For David was with Samuel, and Saul sent messengers to arrest David. And since Samuel was among the prophets, and among the company of prophets who were prophesying at that time, the messengers who were sent received that same spirit and prophesied; and when others were sent it happened to them, and to a third party no less. Afterwards, when Saul himself had come, “the spirit of God came upon him too, and he went along walking and prophesying.” For when it says, “The Spirit of God came upon them too, and they also prophesied,” it was certainly the same Spirit who was in the prophets, among whom Samuel was found. From which it follows necessarily that this spirit is to be understood as good.

And therefore the question is to be examined carefully: how it was that those men, when they had been sent to seize a man and lead him to his death, deserved to be affected by such a spirit; and how Saul himself, who had sent them, coming in person and seeking to spill innocent blood, deserved to receive that spirit and to prophesy.

Here of course what comes to mind is what the apostle Paul sets out with complete clarity when he shows the way that surpasses all others. “If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels,” he says, “but have not love, I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophecy and know all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith so that I move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. And if I give away everything I own, and if I hand over my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing.”

In this passage it is plain that he was listing those gifts which are given in the Spirit's distributions, as he says above: “To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for profit. To one is given by the Spirit the word of wisdom, to another the word of knowledge according to the same Spirit, to another faith in the same Spirit, to another gifts of healings in the one Spirit, to another workings of powers, to another prophecy, to another the discerning of spirits, to another kinds of tongues. But all these one and the same Spirit works, distributing his own to each as he wills.”

It is clear enough, then, that prophecy is among the gifts of the Holy Spirit. And yet if a man has it and has not love, he is nothing. From which it is understood that it can happen that some, even unworthy of eternal life and of the kingdom of heaven, are nevertheless sprinkled with certain gifts of the Holy Spirit while not having love — without which those gifts are not nothing, but are of no profit to them.

Prophecy without love, as has already been shown, does not bring a man through to the kingdom of God; love without prophecy certainly does. For when, speaking of the members of Christ, he says, “Are all apostles? Are all prophets?” he shows beyond doubt that even a man who does not have prophecy can be numbered among the members of Christ. And what place would such a man have there, if he did not have love, without which a man is nothing?

But there is no way he would say, when he was dealing with the members that make up the body of Christ, “Do all have love?” — in the way that he did say, “Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all workers of miracles? Do all have gifts of healings?” and the rest of that kind.

But somebody will say that it can indeed happen that a man does not have prophecy and yet has love, and so is counted among the members of Christ and holds fast to them — but that it cannot happen that he has prophecy and does not have love, since a man having prophecy without love is nothing.

Perhaps in the way we can say that a man having a soul without a mind is nothing: not because a man can be found who has a soul and no mind, but because he would be nothing if such a man could be found. Or as one might say: if a body has shape but has no colour, it cannot be seen — not because there is a body lacking colour, but because if there were, it could not be made out. Perhaps, then, it was said in that way — that if anyone has prophecy and does not have love he is nothing — not because prophecy can exist in anyone without love, but because if it did it could do him no good.

So to settle this question we must show that some reprobate person has had this gift of prophecy. And if we could find no one else, Saul here would show it well enough. But Balaam too appears reprobate — for Scripture does not keep quiet about his having been condemned by the divine judgement — and yet he had prophecy. And because love was lacking in him, there was in him the will to curse the people of Israel, a will their enemy had bought with a price, having hired him for money to curse; and yet by that gift of prophesying which was sprinkled on him, he blessed against his will.

Nor do those words testify weakly to this view which are written in the Gospel, that many will say on that day, “Lord, Lord, in your name we ate and drank, and in your name we prophesied, and in your name we did many mighty works” — to whom he is nevertheless going to say, “I do not know you; depart from me, workers of iniquity.” For we do not suppose they will be lying when they say these things at that judgement, where there will be no room for deceiving; nor do we read any word of such people saying, “We loved you.”

They will be able, then, to say “In your name we prophesied” though they are wicked and reprobate; but they will not be able to say, “We kept the love you commanded.” For if they say it, they will not be answered “I do not know you.” “By this,” he says, “it is known that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”

The example of this Saul therefore stands against certain proud heretics who deny that anything good from the gifts of the Holy Spirit can be given to people who do not belong to the lot of the saints — when we tell them that such people can have the sacrament of baptism; which, when they come to the Catholic Church, is on no account to be violated in them or handed over as though they did not have it. And yet they ought not on that account to be confident of salvation, merely because we do not disapprove of what we grant they received. They ought rather to recognise that the fellowship of unity is to be entered by the bond of love, without which, whatever they may have been able to have — holy and venerable though it is in itself — they themselves are nothing; and are made so much the more unworthy of the reward of eternal life, the worse the use they have made of those gifts which they received in this life that is going to pass away.

And no one uses them well but love; and love bears all things, and therefore does not tear unity, of which love is itself the strongest bond.

For that servant too did receive his talent — nor is anything else understood by the talent than some gift, and a divine one at that. But “to him who has it shall be given, and from him who has not, even what he has shall be taken away.” What he does not have cannot be taken away; but he does not have something else, so that what he has is deservedly taken from him. He does not have the love to use it with — so that whatever else he has is taken away, since without love it does him no good.

It is no wonder, then, that King Saul received the spirit of prophesying at the time when he was first anointed; and afterwards, when he had been rejected for his disobedience, that with the spirit of the Lord withdrawing from him he was seized by a malignant spirit from the Lord — which was itself also called a spirit of the Lord because of its service, since the Lord makes good use of all spirits, even evil ones, whether for the damnation of some or for amendment or for testing. And although malignity is not from God, still there is no power except from God.

The deep sleep, too, that had taken hold of Saul's soldiers when David carried off the spear and the cup from the head of the sleeping man was called a sleep of the Lord — not because there was sleep in the Lord then, so that he himself was sleeping, but because that sleep which had then taken hold of the men was poured out at God's nod, so that the presence of David his servant should not be noticed in that place.

Nor is it a wonder that this same Saul received the spirit of prophecy again, when he was persecuting a righteous man and had come, meaning to seize and kill him, to the place where the assembly of the prophets was. For in this way it has been sufficiently shown that nobody ought to feel secure on the strength of such a gift, as if he were most acceptable to God, if he does not have love — seeing that this gift could be given even to Saul, for the sake of some hidden significance, but still given: to a man rejected and envious and ungrateful, repaying evil for good, and not corrected or changed for the better even after receiving the spirit itself.

Come now, let us see how it can be said, “It repents me that I appointed Saul king.” For you ask — certainly not as one untrained in the understanding of such words, but testing my beginnings with a father's care and kindness — how anything can be a matter of repentance to God, in whom is all foreknowledge.

For my part, when this is said of God, I would think something unworthy was being said, if anything worthy could be found to say about him at all. But since his eternal power and godhead wonderfully and unhesitatingly surpasses all the words with which human conversation is woven, then whenever something is said about him in a human way which even to men seems contemptible, human weakness is being warned of this: that even the things it reckons are said fittingly about God in the holy Scriptures are better suited to human capacity than to the divine height; and that these too must therefore be transcended by a clearer understanding, just as those cruder ones have been transcended.

For which of us does not immediately see that, in a God who foreknows all things, there cannot be repentance? And yet these are two words — repentance and foreknowledge — and because we believe that one of them, foreknowledge, fits God, we deny that repentance is in him. But when somebody else, handling these matters with a clearer consideration, asks how even foreknowledge itself fits God, and finds that the notion carried by this word too is far and deeply surpassed by that unspeakable divinity, he is not surprised that both could be said of him on our account, of whom on his own account both would be said unfittingly.

For what is foreknowledge but knowledge of things future? And what is future to God, who goes beyond all times? If God's knowledge has the things themselves, they are not future to him but present; and so it can no longer be called foreknowledge but simply knowledge. But if, as in the order of temporal creatures, so also with him, the things that are to be are not yet, and he anticipates them by knowing, then he perceives them twice: once by the foreknowledge of things future, and again by the knowledge of things present. So something would happen to God's knowledge in time — which is utterly absurd and utterly false.

For he cannot know things when they arrive which he foreknew as coming, unless they become known to him twice: by foreknowing before they exist, and by knowing when they already are. And so it turns out — a thing far shut off from the truth — that something happens to God's knowledge in time, when temporal things which are foreknown are also perceived as present, which were not perceived before they came to be but only foreknown.

But if, when the things foreknown as coming have in fact come, nothing new happens to God's knowledge, and that foreknowledge remains just as it was even before the things foreknown arrived — then how will it still be called foreknowledge, when it is not of things future? For the things he saw as future are now present, and a little later will be past. And of past things, as of present ones, there can be no foreknowledge at all.

So we come back to this: that knowledge comes to be of things now present which was foreknowledge of those same things when they were future. And since what was first foreknowledge afterwards becomes knowledge in God, he admits changeableness and is temporal — whereas God, who truly and supremely is, is not changeable in any respect nor temporal by any new motion. Let this be our position, then: that we should not speak of God's foreknowledge but only of his knowledge.

And let us ask how even that is so. For we are not accustomed to speak of knowledge in ourselves except when we hold in memory what we have sensed and understood, when we remember that we sensed or understood something, so that we can call it back when we wish. But if it is like that in God, so that it can properly be said of him he understands and he understood, he perceives and he perceived, then time is admitted, and that changeableness creeps in nonetheless which must be put far away from God's substance.

And yet God does know, and God does foreknow, in an unspeakable way. And in that same unspeakable way it repents him. For although God's knowledge is so far distant from human knowledge that the comparison deserves to be laughed at, both are still called knowledge. And human knowledge is such that the Apostle says even of it, “Knowledge will be destroyed” — which can in no way rightly be said of God's knowledge.

So too the anger of a man is turbulent and not without torment of soul; but the anger of God, of which it is said in the Gospel, “But the anger of God remains upon him,” and by the Apostle, “For the anger of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness” — he, remaining continually in tranquillity, exercises punishment in the creature subject to him with an admirable fairness.

Human mercy, too, has a certain misery of heart in it, from which it even takes its name in the Latin tongue. That is why the Apostle urges us not only to rejoice with those who rejoice but also to weep with those who weep. But who in his right mind would say that God is touched by any misery, whom Scripture everywhere testifies to be merciful? So too we understand human jealousy as not without the plague of spite; but God's jealousy is not like that — the same word, but not the same way.

It would take long to run through the rest, and there are countless cases in which it is shown that many divine things are called by the same names as human things, though they are separated by an incomparable difference. And yet the same words are not given to both sorts of thing for nothing: it is because these known things, which we deal with in daily habit and which become familiar through commoner experience, offer some road toward understanding those lofty ones.

For when I have taken away from human knowledge its changeableness and those passages from thought to thought — when we call something back so as to see with the mind what a moment ago was not in its gaze, and so leap from part to part by repeated recollections, which is why the Apostle says our knowledge is in part — when, then, I have subtracted all these things and left only the living force of a certain and unshaken truth surveying all things in one eternal contemplation (or rather have not left it, for human knowledge does not have this, but have thought of it as well as I can) — then in some fashion God's knowledge is conveyed to me. Which name could belong to both, from the fact that by knowing, something does not lie hidden from a person.

Although even among men knowledge is usually distinguished from wisdom, as the Apostle also says: “To one is given by the Spirit the word of wisdom, to another the word of knowledge according to the same Spirit.” In God, of course, these two are not two but one. And among men they are usually distinguished, plausibly enough, so that wisdom belongs to the understanding of eternal things and knowledge to the things we experience by the senses of the body. But even if somebody proposes a different distinction, unless they were different they would not have been distinguished by the Apostle in that way.

And if it is really so, that the name of knowledge is to be assigned to the things we experience through bodily sense, then there is no knowledge of God at all; for God is not, in himself, made up of body and soul as a man is. But it is better said that God's knowledge is another thing, and not of the same kind as this which is called men's — just as the very fact of being called God is a far different thing from the sense in which it was said that “he stood in the assembly of the gods.” All the same, the sharing of the word itself has to do, in some way, with not lying hidden.

So too from human anger I subtract the turbulent motion, so that the vigour of punishment remains; and in that way I rise, as best I can, to some notion of what is called the anger of God. Again, if from mercy you take away the shared misery of feeling-with the one you pity, and there remains a tranquil goodness of coming to help and setting free from misery, then some sort of knowledge of the divine mercy is conveyed. Let us not reject and despise God's jealousy either, when we find it written; but let us take away from human jealousy the pale wasting of grief and the sickly disturbance of mind, and let there remain only that judgement by which the corrupting of chastity is not allowed to go unpunished — and we rise so as to begin, in some fashion, to grasp the jealousy of God.

And therefore when we read God also saying “It repents me,” let us consider what the work of repenting usually is in human beings. Beyond doubt what is found is a will to change — but in a man it comes with grief of mind, for he blames in himself what he had done rashly.

Let us take away, then, these things which come from human weakness and ignorance, and let there remain only the willing that something should not be as it was. In this way it can be conveyed to our minds, to some degree, by what rule we are to understand that it repents God. For when he is said to repent, he wills that something should not be, which he had made to be.

And yet when it was so, so it ought to have been; and when it is no longer allowed to be so, then it ought no longer to be so — by a certain perpetual and tranquil judgement of fairness, by which God disposes all changeable things with an unchangeable will.

But since we are accustomed to use the words foreknowledge and knowledge of men as a compliment, and since the human race is accustomed to tremble at anger in great powers rather than to blame it, we think such things are fittingly said of God. Whereas a man who is jealous, or a man who repents of something, is usually either blamed or is correcting a fault in himself — and so these things are said of men with reproach. That is why it troubles us when we read that there is something of this kind in God.

But that Scripture, taking thought for everyone, sets these things down precisely so that the ones which please us may not be understood in God the way they are usually understood in men. For through the things that displease us — since we do not dare to understand them in God as they are found in a man — we learn to enquire in the same way about the ones we had supposed were apt and fitting.

For if a thing is not to be said of God because it is displeasing in a man, then let us not call God unchangeable, since it was said of men with reproach that “there is no change in them.”

Again, there are certain things praiseworthy in a man which cannot be in God — such as modesty, which is a great ornament of the greener years; and such as the fear of God, which is not only praised in the older books, but the Apostle also says, “perfecting holiness in the fear of God” — and there is certainly none of that in God.

So then, just as certain praiseworthy things in men are not rightly said of God, so certain blameable things in men are rightly understood of God — not as they are in men, but by words merely held in common, in a far different manner and mode. For a little later the same Samuel, to whom the Lord had said “It repents me that I appointed Saul king,” says to Saul himself about God: “For he is not like a man, that it should repent him.” By which he shows plainly enough that even when God says “It repents me,” it is not to be taken in the human way — as we have now argued, so far as we were able.

You ask further whether the unclean spirit that was in the pythoness could have brought it about that Samuel was seen by Saul and spoke with him. But it is a far greater marvel that Satan himself, the prince of all unclean spirits, was able to speak with God and to ask that Job, a most righteous man, be tested — the same Satan who also asks that the apostles be tested.

Or if this raises no difficult question — because the Truth, present everywhere, speaks through whatever creature it wills to whatever creature it wills, and it is no great merit to be one to whom God speaks, since what matters is what he says (an emperor likewise does not speak with many innocent people for whose welfare he nonetheless provides most carefully, and does speak with many guilty ones whom he orders to be executed) — if, then, there is no question here, let there be no question either about how an unclean spirit could speak with the soul of a holy man. For God, the creator and sanctifier, is by far greater than all the saints.

But if what troubles you is that an evil spirit was permitted to rouse the soul of a righteous man and call it up, as it were, out of the hidden dwelling-places of the dead — is it not more astonishing that Satan took up the Lord himself and set him on the pinnacle of the temple? For however he did it, the manner in which Samuel was roused is hidden in just the same way — unless someone should say the devil had freer licence to take the living Lord from where he wished and set him where he wished than to rouse the spirit of the dead Samuel from its own seat.

And if that Gospel episode does not disturb us, because the Lord willed and permitted it to happen with no diminishing of his power and divinity — just as he suffered himself to be seized and bound and mocked and crucified and killed by the Jews themselves, perverse and unclean though they were, and doing the devil's work — then it is not absurd to believe that by some dispensation of the divine will it was permitted that the spirit of the holy prophet consented to be shown to the king's sight: not unwillingly, and not with magical power mastering and subduing him, but willingly and in obedience to a hidden ordinance of God, which was concealed from that pythoness and from Saul — and this in order to strike Saul with a divine sentence.

For why should the soul of a good man, if it comes when summoned by evil men who are alive, be thought to lose its dignity? Living good men are often summoned to the wicked and do come, and deal with them as the duty of fairness requires, the honour of their own virtue kept whole and unshaken, while they handle those men's vices as the use or necessity of present circumstances demands.

And yet in this matter there can be another and easier way out, a readier understanding: that we should believe not that Samuel's spirit was truly roused from its rest, but that it was some phantom, an imaginary illusion produced by the devil's contrivances — which Scripture calls by the name of Samuel for this reason, that images are customarily called by the names of the things they are images of.

So it is with everything painted or moulded out of some material, metal or wood or whatever suits such work, and with the things seen in dreams; nearly all images are habitually called by the names of the things they are images of. For who hesitates to call a painted man a man? Indeed, when we look at a picture of some particular person we apply proper names without hesitation — as when, gazing at a panel or a wall, we say: that is Cicero, that is Sallust, that is Achilles, that is Hector, this river is the Simois, that is Rome — though they are nothing but painted images.

Hence, although the Cherubim are heavenly powers, the figures fashioned of metal at God's command above the ark of the covenant, for the sake of signifying a great reality, are themselves also called nothing other than Cherubim.

Likewise anyone who sees a dream does not say “I saw an image of Augustine or of Simplicianus,” but “I saw Augustine,” “I saw Simplicianus” — although at the time he saw such a thing we knew nothing of it; so plain is it that it is not the men themselves but their images that are seen. And Pharaoh said he had seen ears of grain and cattle in his dreams, not images of ears of grain or of cattle.

If, therefore, it is perfectly clear that images are called by the names of the things they are images of, it is no wonder that Scripture says Samuel was seen, even if what appeared was perhaps an image of Samuel, contrived by him who transforms himself into an angel of light and his ministers into ministers of righteousness.

Now if what troubles you is how true things came to be foretold to Saul even by an evil spirit, this too may seem astonishing: how the demons recognized Christ, whom the Jews did not recognize.

For when God wills that someone should learn true things — merely temporal ones, belonging to this mortal life — even through the lowest and infernal spirits, it is easy and not unfitting that the Almighty and Just One should impart some measure of divination even to spirits of that kind, by the hidden apparatus of his own ministries, so that what they hear from the angels they may announce to human beings. And this for the punishment of those to whom such things are foretold, so that they may suffer the evil hanging over them by knowing it before it comes. But they hear only so much as the Lord and Governor of all either commands or allows.

Hence in the Acts of the Apostles the pythonic spirit likewise bears witness to the apostle Paul and attempts to be an evangelist. Yet these spirits mix in deceits, and the truth they have managed to learn they announce beforehand with the aim not so much of teaching as of deceiving.

And perhaps this is why, when that image of Samuel foretold that Saul would die, it also said that he would be with him — which is certainly false. For we read in the Gospel that after death the good are separated from the wicked by a great distance, since the Lord testifies that a great chasm was set between that proud rich man, already suffering torments in the underworld, and the man who had lain covered with sores at his gate and was now established in rest. Or else Samuel said to Saul “you shall be with me” in a sense referring not to an equality of happiness but to a like condition of death — that both were men and both could die — and one already dead was foretelling death to one still living.

Your good sense sees, I think, that on either understanding that passage has an outcome which is not contrary to the faith — unless perhaps by a deeper and more intricate inquiry, one exceeding the narrow limits of my strength or my time, it should be settled cleanly whether or not a human soul, once it has departed this life, can be called up by magical incantations and appear to the sight of the living, even bearing the lineaments of a body, so as to be not only seen but recognized; and if it can, whether the soul of a righteous man is not indeed compelled by magic rites, but rather deigns to show itself in obedience to the more hidden commands of the highest law. So that if it should become clear that this cannot happen, then the two senses are not both to be admitted in handling and expounding this Scripture, but, that one being excluded, we should understand an imaginary simulation of Samuel produced by a diabolical rite.

But since — whether that can happen or not — the deceit of Satan and his cunning work of simulating images is manifold and ever watchful to deceive the human senses, let us rather suppose — step by step, indeed [pedetentim], so as not to foreclose more careful inquiries, but nevertheless suppose — that something of this sort was done by the evil ministry of that pythoness, so long as it is not granted us to think out and explain anything further.

As for your asking what it means that it is written, “King David went in and sat before the Lord” — what else is to be understood but that he sat in the sight of the Lord? Either where the ark of the covenant was, by which a certain more consecrated and more commended presence of the Lord can be understood; or because he sat down meaning to pray, which is never rightly done except in the sight of God, that is, in the inmost parts of the heart. For what is said — before the Lord — can also be taken this way: where there was nobody to hear him praying.

So whether it was because of the ark of the covenant, or because of a hidden place (being away from onlookers), or because of the inmost part of the heart, where the disposition of the man praying was, it was fittingly said, “He sat before the Lord” — unless perhaps it troubles you that he prayed sitting, when holy Elijah did this too, when by praying he obtained rain.

By which examples we are reminded that nothing has been laid down about how the body is to be placed for praying, so long as the mind, present to God, carries through what it intends. For we pray standing, as it is written, “But the tax-collector stood far off”; and on bended knees, as we read in the Acts of the Apostles; and sitting, as here David and Elijah. And unless we also prayed lying down, it would not have been written in the Psalms, “Every night I will wash my bed; I will water my couch with my tears.”

For when anyone is seeking prayer, he arranges his limbs in whatever position of the body occurs to him as suited, for the time being, to moving his mind. But when the desire to pray is not sought but comes upon him — when something suddenly enters the mind by which the feeling of supplication is stirred with unutterable groanings — then in whatever way it finds a man, prayer is certainly not to be put off while we look for somewhere to withdraw to, or somewhere to stand, or somewhere to prostrate ourselves. For the intensity of the mind makes its own solitude, and often even forgets what quarter of the sky, or what position of the body, that moment found its limbs in.

As for the words of blessed Elijah, in which he says, “O Lord, witness of this widow with whom I am living in her house, you have done evil, to kill her son” — nothing would trouble us here if the true delivery were kept.

For it is the voice of a man who does not believe that God would do such an evil to that widow who had received the prophet so devoutly — and especially at the very time when the man was there to whom she had brought out her whole store of food, so tiny a store, in so great and utter want. So it was said as if he had said: “O Lord, witness of this widow with whom I am living in her house — is it you who have done evil, to kill her son?” — so that it is understood that the Lord, being witness of that woman's heart, where he saw how great her devotion was (which is why he had sent Elijah to her himself), had not put her son to death in order to do her harm, but in order to display a miracle to the glory of his own name, by which he might commend so great a prophet both to those then living and to those who came after. Just as the Lord says that Lazarus was dead not unto death, but so that God might be glorified in his Son.

And the sequel proves it. For out of that very confidence, by which Elijah believed that this had not happened so that his hostess should be afflicted with bitter grief, but rather so that God might more magnificently show the widow what kind of servant of God she had taken in — out of that confidence the Scripture goes on and says: “And he breathed on the boy three times and called upon the Lord and said: Lord my God, let the soul of this boy return into him now. And it was so.”

This prayer, then, in which Elijah asks so briefly and so confidently that the boy should rise, shows well enough in what spirit the earlier words were said. And the woman herself shows that her son had been put to death for the very purpose Elijah had assumed — when he uttered those words not as an assertion but as a denial. For when she had received her son back alive she said: “See, I have come to know that you are a man of God, and the word of the Lord in your mouth is most certain.”

There are many things in the Scriptures which, unless they are delivered in that manner, fall back into the opposite meaning — such as this: “Who shall bring a charge against God's elect? God who justifies.” If you answer it as though it were an assertion, you see how great a perversity arises. It must therefore be delivered as if it were said: Is it God who justifies? — so that one supplies: certainly not. And by this I think that saying of Elijah is made plain, which a delivery not properly observed was making obscure.

As for the lying spirit by which Ahab was deceived, we understand this in the way I think has already been treated well and plainly enough above: namely, that God, almighty and the just distributor of punishments and rewards according to desert, uses not only good and holy servants for works that suit them, but also evil ones for works that befit them — since those, out of their own perverse craving, desire to do harm, but are permitted only so far as he judges who disposes all things in measure and number and weight.

And the prophet Micaiah said this in the way it had been shown to him. For a hidden matter, and one too deeply secret, is shown to the prophets in the way human sense can take it in, when it is instructed by the images of things in a revelation as though by words.

For how God does these things — present everywhere and everywhere whole and always present; and how the holy angels and all the lofty and most pure spirits created by him consult his simple and unchangeable and eternal truth, and carry out in time, according to the fitness of lower things, that which they see to be eternally just in him; and how also the fallen spirits, who did not stand in the truth, unable because of the uncleanness and weakness of their cravings and their punishments to look inwardly upon the present truth and consult it, wait for signs outwardly through the creation and are moved by them either to do something or not to do it; and in what way they are compelled by the eternal law by which the universe is governed, bound and constrained either to wait for God to permit or to give way to him when he commands — to take all this in is hard, and to unfold it would take very long indeed.

But I am afraid that these very things I have said may both have fallen short of your expectation and have been wearisome to your gravity — seeing that, when out of all the things you asked you wanted one small book sent from me, I have sent two books, and those very long ones, and have perhaps not answered your questions carefully or readily at all. And so I ask that your prayers for my mistakes be many and unremitting. And I press you for your judgement on this work — even a very brief one, but a very weighty one; and provided it is entirely truthful, I do not refuse that it be utterly severe.