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The Orthodox Library

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The Confessions

Book XII, Chapter II: Of the Double Heaven,—The Visible, and the Heaven of Heavens.

Saint Augustine of Hippo · Historical English edition; series volume first published 1886 · 182 words
Historical English translation. Original wording is not automatically translated.

Chapter II.—Of the Double Heaven,—The Visible, and the Heaven of Heavens.

2. The weakness of my tongue confesseth unto Thy Highness, seeing that Thou madest heaven and earth. This heaven which I see, and this earth upon which I tread (from which is this earth that I carry about me), Thou hast made. But where is that heaven of heavens, O Lord, of which we hear in the words of the Psalm, The heaven of heavens are the Lord’s, but the earth hath He given to the children of men? Where is the heaven, which we behold not, in comparison of which all this, which we behold, is earth? For this corporeal whole, not as a whole everywhere, hath thus received its beautiful figure in these lower parts, of which the bottom is our earth; but compared with that heaven of heavens, even the heaven of our earth is but earth; yea, each of these great bodies is not absurdly called earth, as compared with that, I know not what manner of heaven, which is the Lord’s, not the sons’ of men.

Edition and rights

NPNF1-01. The Confessions and Letters of St. Augustine, with a Sketch of his Life and Work. Historical English edition; series volume first published 1886.

J. G. Pilkington, translator of the Confessions

Ancient work and historical English translation: public domain in the United States (published before 1931). Copyright rules vary by country. This is a historical source transcription, not an official Church edition. Modern website material is not reproduced.

Historical footnotes and publisher introductions are omitted. Author-written openings are retained. Paragraph whitespace is normalized. Transcriptions can contain errors; this is not a critical edition. Attribution follows the historical edition, not universal scholarly agreement.

Digitization provenance (not an external reading link): https://www.ccel.org/ccel/s/schaff/npnf101.xml

Source section: vi.XII.II · Text SHA-256: b1cc61f89fd4dc0bf4e05a75e5e97567db515d2fc972a58181e375f7ab012cb8