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Confessiones
Caput 3
Quod autem in primis conditionibus dixisti: fiat lux, et facta est lux, non incongruenter hoc intellego in creatura spiritali, quia erat iam qualiscumque vita, quam inluminares. sed sicut non te promeruerat, ut esset talis vita, quae inluminari posset, ita nec cum iam esset promeruit te, ut inluminaretur. neque enim eius informitas placeret tibi, si non lux fieret, non existendo, sed intuendo inluminantem lucem eique cohaerendo, ut et quod utcumque vivit et quod beate vivit, non deberet nisi gratiae tuae, conversa per conmutationem meliorem ad id, quod neque in melius neque in deterius mutari potest: quod tu solus es, quia solus simpliciter es, cui non est aliud vivere, aliud beate vivere, quia tua beatitudo es.
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The Confessions of St. Augustin In Thirteen Books
Chapter III.--Genesis I. 3,--Of "Light,"--He Understands as It is Seen in the Spiritual Creature.
4. But what Thou saidst in the beginning of the creation, "Let there be light, and there was light," 1 I do not unfitly understand of the spiritual creature; because there was even then a kind of life, which Thou mightest illuminate. But as it had not deserved of Thee that it should be such a life as could be enlightened, so neither, when it already was, hath it deserved of Thee that it should be enlightened. For neither could its formlessness be pleasing unto Thee, unless it became light,--not by merely existing, but by beholding the illuminating light, and cleaving unto it; so also, that it lives, and lives happily, 2 it owes to nothing whatsoever but to Thy grace; being converted by means of a better change unto that which can be changed neither into better nor into worse; the which Thou only art because Thou only simply art, to whom it is not one thing to live, another to live blessedly, since Thou art Thyself Thine own Blessedness.