Edition
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Confessiones
Caput 14
Mira profunditas eloquiorum tuorum, quorum ecce ante nos superficies blandiens parvulis: sed mira profunditas, deus meus, mira profunditas! horror est intendere in eam, horror honoris et tremor amoris. odi hostes eius vehementer: o si occidas eos de gladio bis acuto, et non sint hostes eius! sic enim amo eos occidi sibi, ut vivant tibi. ecce autem alii non reprehensores, sed laudatores libri Geneseos: non inquiunt hoc voluit in his verbis intellegi spiritus dei, qui per Moysen famulum eius ista conscripsit, non hoc voluit intellegi, quod tu dicis, sed aliud, quod nos dicimus. quibus ego te arbitro, deus omnium nostrum, ita respondeo.
Übersetzung
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The Confessions of St. Augustin In Thirteen Books
Chapter XIV.--Of the Depth of the Sacred Scripture, and Its Enemies.
17. Wonderful is the depth of Thy oracles, whose surface is before us, inviting the little ones; and yet wonderful is the depth, O my God, wonderful is the depth. 1 It is awe to look into it; and awe of honour, and a tremor of love. The enemies thereof I hate vehemently. 2 Oh, if Thou wouldest slay them with Thy two-edged sword, 3 that they be not its enemies! For thus do I love, that they should be slain unto themselves that they may live unto Thee. But behold others not reprovers, but praisers of the book of Genesis,--"The Spirit of God," say they, "Who by His servant Moses wrote these things, willed not that these words should be thus understood. He willed not that it should be understood as Thou sayest, but as we say." Unto whom, O God of us all, Thyself being Judge, do I thus answer.
See p. 112, note 2, and p. 178, note 2, above. See also Trench, Hulsean Lectures (1845), lect. 6, "The Inexhaustibility of Scripture." ↩
Ps. cxxxix. 21. ↩
Ps. cxlix. 6. He refers to the Manichaeans (see p. 71, note l). In his comment on this place, he interprets the "two-edged sword" to mean the Old and New Testament, called two-edged, he says, because it speaks of things temporal and eternal. ↩