Confessions

by Augustine of Hippo

What (he asked) was that darkness, whatever exactly it was, going to do to you—the darkness that according to them was a mass opposed to you—if you had been unwilling to fight against it? If the answer was that it would have done something to harm you, you would be violable and corruptible. But if they said that it could do you no harm, then they could offer no reason why you would fight against it, and indeed fight in such a way that some portion or part of you, or some offspring of your own substance, would become intermingled with hostile powers, natures not created by you, and would be so corrupted and degraded by them that it would fall from happiness into misery and would need help to be extricated and purified: and that this is the soul, enslaved, contaminated, and corrupted, which is helped by your word, free, pure, and sound. Yet your word would itself also be corruptible, since it comes from one and the same substance. And so if they said that you, whatever you are—that is, the substance by which you exist—are incorruptible, all these things would be false and detestable. If, however, they said that you are corruptible, that very claim is itself false; it should be rejected the very moment it is uttered.