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Front Page arrow Titles (by Subject) arrow CHAP. XIII.—: LOVE ORIGINATES FROM GRACE AND BEAUTY ENTICING US. - A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, Vol. 1 (The Confessions and Letters of St. Augustine)

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CHAP. XIII.—: LOVE ORIGINATES FROM GRACE AND BEAUTY ENTICING US. - Philip Schaff, A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, Vol. 1 (The Confessions and Letters of St. Augustine) [1886]

Edition used:

A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, ed. Philip Schaff, LL.D. (Buffalo: The Christian Literature Co., 1886). Vol. 1 The Confessions and Letters of St. Augustin, with a Sketch of his Life and Work.

Part of: A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, 14 vols.

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CHAP. XIII.—

LOVE ORIGINATES FROM GRACE AND BEAUTY ENTICING US.

20. These things I knew not at that time, and I loved these lower beauties, and I was sinking to the very depths; and I said to my friends, “Do we love anything but the beautiful? What, then, is the beautiful? And what is beauty? What is it that allures and unites us to the things we love; for unless there were a grace and beauty in them, they could by no means attract us to them?” And I marked and perceived that in bodies themselves there was a beauty from their forming a kind of whole, and another from mutual fitness, as one part of the body with its whole, or a shoe with a foot, and so on. And this consideration sprang up in my mind out of the recesses of my heart, and I wrote books (two or three, I think) “on the fair and fit.” Thou knowest, O Lord, for it has escaped me; for I have them not, but they have strayed from me, I know not how.