THE MYSTERY UNSOLVED

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all things; for He would not be Almighty, if He could not form anything good without making use of that matter which He had not created. Such were the thoughts which I was turning over in my wretched mind, weighed down to the earth with gnawing anxieties and fears, lest the hour of my death should come before I had found the truth; yet the faith of Thy Christ, our Lord and Saviour, professed in the Catholic Church, was firmly fixed in my heart, indeed in many respects as yet unformed, and floating beyond the limits of sound doctrine, yet my mind did not relax its hold of it, but rather daily imbibed it more and more.

I

CHAPTER VI.

He rejects the Divinations of Astrologers.

HAD by this time renounced the lying divinations and impious absurdities of the astrologers. For this also, O my God, let Thy Mercies from the inmost depths of my soul confess unto Thee. For it was Thou, Thou entirely; for who else recalls us from the death of every error, but the Life Which knows no death, and the Wisdom Which, needing no light for Itself, sheds Its light upon the minds which need It, by Which the universe is governed even to the leaves which float upon the breeze? Thou didst provide for that obstinacy of mine which stood out against Vindicianus, a sharp old man, and Nebridius, a youth of wonderful talent; the first affirming vehemently, and the latter frequently, though with somewhat of hesitation, "that there was no art by which the future could be foretold, but that men's conjectures often

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turned out to be true by chance, and that out of a multitude of prophecies some would be likely to come to pass, and that too unknown to those who made them, who hit upon them from the very fact of making so many." Thou didst provide me, then, a friend, no careless consulter of the astrologers, though not himself versed in the art, but (as I said) an observant consulter; and yet knowing something which he said he had heard from his father, and which, how far it went to overthrow a belief in that art, he knew not. This man then, by name Firminus, having had a liberal education and being well instructed in rhetoric, as an intimate friend of mine, asked my advice as to what his earthly prospects were, according to his so-called constellations, in some matters of a promising nature; but I, who already had begun concerning this thing to veer towards Nebridius' opinion, did not indeed refuse to make a guess, and to say what first came into my doubting mind; yet I added, that I was wellnigh persuaded that the whole thing was ridiculous and vain. Upon this, he told me that his father had been most curious about their books, and that he had a friend as zealous in the matter as himself, and that they had studied it together and mutually fanned the flame of affection for these follies; so that they even observed the moments when dumb animals gave birth, if they bred under their roof, and they marked the positions of the stars in order to make experiments of their socalled art. Then he said that he had heard from his father, that at the time when the mother of the said Firminus was about to give him birth, a servant of his father's friend was in the same condition, a fact which could not escape the observation of her master, who

PROVED BY A TRUE STORY

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even took care to note with the greatest precision the time when his dogs were born. And so it came to pass, that-the one in the case of his wife, and the other of his servant, with the greatest vigilance keeping an account of days, hours, nay, of the very minutes-both were delivered at the same time; so that they were forced by a most exact calculation to acknowledge, that both were born under the same stars, the son and the servant. For when the women began to be in labour, they both sent to each other's houses to give tidings of their state, and had messengers ready to despatch to one another when the event took place, of which they had been readily provided in their respective provinces, that the news might be communicated at once. And so it fell out, that the messengers who were despatched from the two houses, he said, met so exactly at midway, that they neither could note any difference between the position of the stars, nor an interval of a second of time between them and yet the one, Firminus, of high birth, entered upon a brilliant career in the world, increased in wealth, attained to honours; whereas the other, the servant, continued a servant, and obtained no relaxation from the yoke of his servitude, and this he related as one who knew the man himself.

Now when I heard these things, and could not but credit them, coming from such a man, all my former resistance collapsed; and my first endeavour was to reclaim Firminus himself from that curiosity, by pointing out to him how, from the inspection of the stars, I ought to find in his case a prediction of parents of eminent position, a noble family in its own city, gentle birth, honourable education, liberal instruction; whilst

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ASTROLOGY ABANDONED

if the servant asked me concerning the same stars, to tell him the truth, I ought to discover from them an ignoble family, a servile condition, and all other things the exact opposite to all that I had said about the former. Therefore, from the observation of the same stars, I should draw opposite conclusions, if I predicted the truth; but if I said the same in both cases, I should say in one what was untrue: it followed, therefore, that when true predictions were made from reading the stars, it was the result not of art but of chance; and whatever turned out to be false, was not from lack of skill in the art, but from a bad guess.

From this commencement, ruminating upon what I had heard, that none of those fools, who live by this profession, whom I longed to attack and confute as ridiculous, might urge against me, that either Firminus had told me, or his father him, a falsehood; I next thought of those who were twins, who were generally born so near together, that, whatever might be the effect they pretend the interval to have in the nature of things, it could not be noted by human observation, or be large enough to be reckoned in those figures which the astrologer is to inspect in order to prognosticate truly. Nor can they be true, because from inspecting the same figures, he would have to predict alike concerning Esau and Jacob, whereas the same things did not happen to both. Therefore he must speak falsely; or if truly, he must not say the same of both, though inspecting the same figures. It is not, then, by art, but by chance, that he speaks truth. But Thou, O Lord, most Just Ruler of the universe, though consulters and consulted be unconscious of it, dost by Thy secret Inspiration order it, so that he who consults

66

HE AGAIN SEEKS WHENCE IS EVIL?"

171

should hear that which he ought to hear according to the secret merits of souls, out of the abyss of Thy just Judgment, to Whom let no man say, Why is this? why Let him not so say, let him not so say, for he is but man.

that?

CHAPTER VII.

What Distress of Mind he suffered on the Question of the Drigin of Evil.

Now

OW then, O my Helper, Thou hadst loosed me from those chains, but the question "Whence is evil?" still remained, and there was no way out of it. But Thou didst not suffer me by any of those waves of thought to be borne away from the belief which I had in Thy Existence, and in the unchangeableness of Thy Substance, and in Thy Providence and Judgment of mankind, and in Christ, Thy Son, our Lord; and in the Holy Scriptures which the authority of Thy Catholic Church commended to us, whereby Thou hadst appointed the way of man's salvation, to that life which is to come after this death. These things, then, being safe and firmly fixed in my mind, I restlessly sought "whence is evil." What pangs of heart did I suffer in that travail ! my God, what groans! and Thou wert listening then, and I knew it not. And when in silence I struggled, the silent anguish of my soul was a strong cry to Thy Mercy. Thou knowest what I suffered, and Thou alone. For how much could I convey by my tongue into the ears of my most intimate friends? Could the whole tumult of my soul, for which neither time nor tongue sufficed, reach them? Yet the whole entered into Thy Ears, which "I roared out from