The City of God, Volume IIAugustine, of Hippo, Saint
ReligionChristian
The City of God, Volume II
Augustine, of Hippo, Saint
Apologetics -- Early works to 1800; Kingdom of God -- Early works to 1800
When, therefore, man lives according to man, not according to God,
he is like the devil. Because not even an angel might live according
to an angel, but only according to God, if he was to abide in the
truth, and speak God's truth and not his own lie. And of man, too,
the same apostle says in another place, "If the truth of God hath
more abounded through my lie;"[15]--"my lie," he said, and "God's
truth." When, then, a man lives according to the truth, he lives
not according to himself, but according to God; for He was God who
said, "I am the truth."[16] When, therefore, man lives according to
himself,--that is, according to man, not according to God,--assuredly
he lives according to a lie; not that man himself is a lie, for
God is his author and creator, who is certainly not the author and
creator of a lie, but because man was made upright, that he might not
live according to himself, but according to Him that made him,--in
other words, that he might do His will and not his own; and not to
live as he was made to live, that is a lie. For he certainly desires
to be blessed even by not living so that he may be blessed. And what
is a lie if this desire be not? Wherefore it is not without meaning
said that all sin is a lie. For no sin is committed save by that
desire or will by which we desire that it be well with us, and shrink
from it being ill with us. That, therefore, is a lie which we do in
order that it may be well with us, but which makes us more miserable
than we were. And why is this, but because the source of man's
happiness lies only in God, whom he abandons when he sins, and not in
himself, by living according to whom he sins?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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