THE MEDIAEVAL ATTITUDE 



colour, and enliven it with a soul. But all this can 

 happen only by the art of a godly thought, as any 

 one can grasp who sees with the spiritual rather than 

 with the material eye." 



While Augustine may use the idea of nature and 

 natural law, and may question philosophically many 

 things, he never hesitates to postulate the existence of 

 a living personal God who is external to natural law 

 and constantly contravenes law by the employment 

 of the miraculous. His conception of the relations of 

 God to the world is that of the governor of a city 

 towards its inhabitants. If any one had put the ques- 

 tion to him that by a law of nature an ape had des- 

 cended from a fish he would have repelled the idea as 

 inconceivable; the statement that a man came from 

 an ape would have been sheer blasphemy. 



There is, however, little need to comment on one 

 who has left so clear and full a statement of his be- 

 liefs. Augustine accepted the Mosaic cosmogony lit- 

 erally with very few and insignificant reservations. 

 The evolutionist can get little support from his words 

 which I have taken from the City of God.'' 



God who made the world has made it so that all things are 

 admirable, and the beauty and order show its divine author- 

 ship {De Civ. Dei, XI, 22). If we ask who made it. The 

 answer is God. He also made it out of nothing and He made 

 it because it was good {ibid., XI, 21). All things were made 

 in six days as revealed to Moses. Not only terrestrial things 



'■ St. Augustine, The City of God, trans, by Rev. Marcus Dods. 

 T. and T. Clark, 1888. 



C 93 3 



