“God is always trying to give good things to us, but our hands are too full to receive them.”
In direct opposition to the skepticism of the Gnostics, Augustine remains optimistic. He believes that humans suffer because they refuse to accept the blessings of God. Instead they occupy their time with themselves and their own interests, completely missing the greater purpose of their lives.
“Thus, a good man, though a slave, is free; but a wicked man, though a king, is a slave. For he serves, not one man alone, but what is worse, as many masters as he has vices.”
As a religious figure, Augustine's primary concern is to advise people to live more righteous lives. In this excerpt, he explains that the wealthy man is less free than his faithful but poor counterpart because he is the slave of desire. He will always chase after his desires, but he will not control them.
“Though good and bad men suffer alike, we must not suppose that there is no difference between the men themselves, because there is no difference in what they both suffer. For even in the likeness of the sufferings, there remains an unlikeness in the sufferers; and though exposed to the same anguish, virtue and vice are not the same thing. For as the same fire causes gold to glow brightly, and chaff to smoke; and under the same flail the straw is beaten small, while the grain is cleansed; and as the lees are not mixed with the oil, though squeezed out of the vat by the same pressure, so the same violence of affliction proves, purges, clarifies the good, but damns, ruins, exterminates the wicked.”
Augustine's main argument about the cause of Rome is the empire's moral degeneration. He believes that all men are subjected to suffering, but their aims are different. The righteous man will be refined by his suffering, but the evil man is consumed by it.
“The bodies of irrational animals are bent toward the ground, whereas man was made to walk erect with his eyes on heaven, as though to remind him to keep his thoughts on things above.”
Here Augustine expresses a fascination with the divine. He ascribes to the Platonic system of ideals, desiring what is superior and higher by nature. In Augustine's view, the orientation of our bodies to place our heads erect is intentionally designed to make us look upward and remember our true natures, divinely oriented beings.
