wherewith we do whatever we are doing; and if this be pure and right, and looking at that which ought to be looked at, all our works which we perform in accordance therewith are necessarily good. And all those works He has called the whole body; for the apostle also speaks of certain works of which he disapproves as our members, and teaches that they are to be mortified, saying, “Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth; fornic- ation, uncleanness, covetousness,”370 and all other such things.371 46. It is not, therefore, what one does, but the intent with which he does it, that is to be considered. For this is the light in us, because it is a thing manifest to ourselves that we do with a good intent what we are doing; for everything which is made manifest is light.372 For the deeds themselves which go forth from us to human society, have an uncertain issue; and therefore He has called them darkness. For I do not know, when I present money to a poor man who asks it, either what he is to do with it, or what he is to suffer from it; and it may 49 happen that he does some evil with it, or suffers some evil on account of it, a thing I did not wish to happen when I gave it to him, nor would I have given it with such an intention. If, therefore, I did it with a good intention,—a thing which was known to me when I was doing it, and is therefore called light,—my deed also is lighted up, whatever issue it shall have; but that issue, inasmuch as it is uncertain and unknown, is called darkness. But if I have done it with a bad intent, the light itself even is darkness. For it is spoken of as light, because every one knows with what intent he acts, even when he acts with a bad intent; but the light itself is darkness, because the aim is not directed singly to things above, but is turned downwards to things beneath, and makes, as it were, a shadow by means of a double heart. “If, therefore, the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness!” i.e., if the very intent of the heart with which you do what you are doing (which is known to you) is polluted by the hunger after earthly and temporal things, and blinded, how much more is the deed itself, whose issue is uncertain, polluted and full of darkness! Because, although what you do with an intent which is neither upright nor pure, may turn out for some one’s good, it is the way in which you have done it, not how it has turned out for him, that is reckoned to you.373 370 Col. iii. 5. 371 “Singleness of intention will preserve us from the snare of having a double treasure, and therefore a divided heart” (Plumptre). 372 Eph. v. 13. Augustin’s rendering here is the true sense of the original. 373 The eye is as the lamp (Revised Version) through which the body gets light,—the organ whose proper work it is to transmit light. The blind have no light, because their lamp is out or destroyed. The light within us is “the reason, especially the practical reason” (Meyer); that which is left of the divine image in man (Tholuck); the reason that was left after the fall of Adam (Calvin); the Old-Testament revelation perverted (Lange); the conscience (Alford). “The spirit of man is the candle (lamp, Revised Version) of the Lord” (Prov. xx. 27): it guides the faculties of the soul. But if it be in darkness how great is that darkness; i.e. the darkness which already existed! What a terrible condition those are in who do not receive the Spirit of enlightenment (who becomes 121 Chapter XIII