When, therefore, I willed or was unwilling to do
something, I was utterly certain that it was none but myself who
willed or was unwilling -- and immediately I realized that there
was the cause of my sin. I could see that what I did against my
will I suffered rather than did; and I did not regard such actions
as faults, but rather as punishments in which I might quickly
confess that I was not unjustly punished, since I believed thee to
be most just. Who was it that put this in me, and implanted in me
the root of bitterness, in spite of the fact that I was altogether
the handiwork of my most sweet God? If the devil is to blame, who
made the devil himself? And if he was a good angel who by his own
wicked will became the devil, how did there happen to be in him
that wicked will by which he became a devil, since a good Creator
made him wholly a good angel? By these reflections was I again
cast down and stultified. Yet I was not plunged into that hell of
error -- where no man confesses to thee -- where I thought that
thou didst suffer evil, rather than that men do it.
CHAPTER IV
6. For in my struggle to solve the rest of my difficulties,
I now assumed henceforth as settled truth that the incorruptible
must be superior to the corruptible, and I did acknowledge that
thou, whatever thou art, art incorruptible.
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