Can you Guess It?
Last month we started a questions series called “Can you Guess It “? Since we don’t have a winner, below are the questions we asked followed by their answers:
- Can you guess the world’s first published autobiography?
- What is the world’s first published philosophy of history?
The answers are :
- Confessions (Click here to read the full text in Latin and here for English) by Augustine of Hippo
- The City of God (Click here to read the fulll text in Latin and here for English) byAugustine of Hippo
Excerpt from Confessions
“But I wanted to be equally sure about everything else, both material things for which I could not vouch by my own senses, and spiritual things for which I could form no idea except in bodily form. If I had been able to believe I might have been cured, because in my mind’s eye I should have had clearer vision, which by some means might have been directed towards your enternal unfailing truth. But it is often the case that a man who has had experience of a bad doctor is afraid to trust himself even to a good one, and in the same way my sick soul, which could not be healed except through faith, refused, this cure for fear believing a doctrine tha was false. My soul resisted your healing hand, for it was you who prepared and dispensed the medicine of faith and made it so potent a remedy for the diseases of the world” (Saint Agustine, Confessions, Penguin Classics, Book VI:4, 116).
” By now, O God my Help, you had released me by this means from the bondage of astrology. But I was still trying to discover the origin of evil, and I could find no solution to the problem. My ideas were always changing, like the ebb and flow of the tide, but you never allowed them to swep me away from the faith by which I believe that you were, that your substance was unchangeable, and that it was yours to care for and to judge mankind. I believe too that it was in Christ your Son, our Lord, and in the Holy Scriptures, which affirmed by the authority of your Catholic Church, that you had laid the path’s of man’s salvation, so that he might come to that other life which is follow this our life in death. These beliefs remained intact and firmly rooted in my mind, but I was still burning with anxiety to find the source from which evil comes” (Saint Agustine, Confessions, Penguin Classics, Book VII:7, 142-3).
Excerpt from the City of God
”The city of God we speak of is the same to which testimony is borne by that Scripture, which excels all the writings of all nations by its divine authority, and has brought under its influence all kinds of minds, and this not by a casual intellectual movement, but obviously by an express providential arrangement. For there it is written, “Glorious things are spoken of thee, O city of God.”446446 Ps. lxxxvii. 3. And in another psalm we read, “Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised in the city of our God, in the mountain of His holiness, increasing the joy of the whole earth.”447447 Ps. xlviii. 1. And, a little after, in the same psalm, “As we have heard, so have we seen in the city of the Lord of hosts, in the city of our God. God has established it for ever.” And in another, “There is a river the streams whereof shall make glad the city of our God, the holy place of the tabernacles of the Most High. God is in the midst of her, she shall not be moved.”448448 Ps. xlvi. 4. From these and similar testimonies, all of which it were tedious to cite, we have learned that there is a city of God, and its Founder has inspired us with a love which makes us covet its citizenship. To this Founder of the holy city the citizens of the earthly city prefer their own gods, not knowing that He is the God of gods, not of false, i.e., of impious and proud gods, who, being deprived of His unchangeable and freely communicated light, and so reduced to a kind of poverty-stricken power, eagerly grasp at their own private privileges, and seek divine honors from their deluded subjects; but of the pious and holy gods, who are better pleased to submit themselves to one, than to subject many to themselves, and who would rather worship God than be worshipped as God. But to the enemies of this city we have replied in the ten preceding books, according to our ability and the help afforded by our Lord and King. Now, recognizing what is expected of me, and not unmindful of my promise, and relying, too, on the same succor, I will endeavor to treat of the origin, and progress, and deserved destinies of the two cities (the earthly and the heavenly, to wit), which, as we said, are in this present world commingled, and as it were entangled together. And, first, I will explain how the foundations of these two cities were originally laid, in the difference that arose among the angels” (Saint Augustine, The City of God, Book XI chapter 1, )
Tomorrow I will post Can you Guess questions for the month of July. Stay tuned.
Click here for the rules and how to win a free book.