 CHAPTER V We give a much more unlimited approval to their idea that the life of the wise man must be social. For how could the city of God, concerning which we are already writing no less than the nineteenth book of this work, either take a beginning or be developed or attain its proper destiny if the life of the saints were not his social life? But who can enumerate all the great grievances with which human society abounds in the misery of this mortal state, who can weigh them, hear how one of their comic writers makes one of his characters express the common feelings of all men in this matter? I am married, this is one misery, children are born to me, they are additional cares. What shall I say of the miseries of love which Terrence also recounts, slights, suspicions, quarrels, war to-day, peace to-morrow? Is not human life full of such things? Do they not often occur even in honourable friendships? On all hands we experience these slights, suspicions, quarrels, war, all of which are undoubted evils, while, on the other hand, peace is a doubtful good because we do not know the heart of our friend, and though we did know it to-day we should be as ignorant of what it might be to-morrow. Who ought to be, or who are, more friendly than those who live in the same family? And yet, who can rely even upon this friendship, seeing that secret treachery has often broken it up, and produced enmity as bitter as the amity was sweet, or seemed sweet, by the most perfect dissimulation? It is on this account that the words of Cicero so move the heart of every one, and provoke a sigh. There are no snares more dangerous than those which lurk under the guise of duty, or the name of relationship. For the man who is your declared foe, you can easily baffle by precaution, but this hidden, intestine, and domestic danger not merely exists, but overwhelms you before you can foresee and examine it. It is also to this that allusion is made by the Divine saying, a man's foes are those of his own household, words which one cannot hear without pain, for though a man have sufficient fortitude to endure it with equanimity, and sufficient sagacity to baffle the malice of a pretended friend, yet if he himself is a good man, he cannot but be greatly pained at the discovery of the perfidy of wicked men, whether they have always been wicked and merely feigned goodness, or have fallen from a better to a malicious disposition. If then, home, the natural refuge from the ills of life, is itself not safe. What shall we say of the city, which, as it is larger, is so much the more filled with lawsuits, civil, and criminal, and is never free from the fear, if sometimes from the actual outbreak, of disturbing and bloody insurrections and civil wars? What shall I say of these judgments which men pronounce on men, in which are necessary in communities, whatever outward peace they enjoy? Melancholy and lamentable judgments they are, since the judges are men who cannot discern the consciences of those at their bar, and are therefore frequently compelled to put innocent witnesses to the torture to ascertain the truth regarding the crimes of other men. What shall I say of torture applied to the accused himself? He is tortured to discover whether he is guilty, so that, though innocent, he suffers most undoubted punishment for crime that is still doubtful, not because it has proved that he committed it, but because it has not ascertained that he did not commit it. Thus the ignorance of the judge frequently involves an innocent person in suffering. And what is still more unendurable, a thing indeed to be bewailed, and, if that were possible, watered with fountains of tears, is this, that when the judge puts the accused to the question that he may not unwittingly put an innocent man to death, the result of this lamentable ignorance is that this very person whom he tortured that he might not condemn him if innocent is condemned to death both tortured and innocent. For if he has chosen in obedience to the philosophical instructions to the wise man to quit this life rather than endure any longer such tortures, he declares that he has committed the crime which, in fact, he has not committed. And when he has been condemned and put to death, the judge is still in ignorance whether he has put to death an innocent or a guilty person, though he put the accused to the torture for the very purpose of saving himself from condemning the innocent, and consequently he has both tortured an innocent man to discover his innocence and has put him to death without discovering it. For such darkness shrouds social life, will a wise judge take his seat on the bench, or no? Beyond question he will. For human society which he thinks that a wickedness to abandon constrains him and compels him to this duty, and he thinks that no wickedness that innocent witnesses are tortured regarding the crimes of which other men are accused, or that the accused are put to the torture so that they are often overcome with anguish and, though innocent, make false confessions regarding themselves and are punished, or that, though they be not condemned to die, they often die during, or in consequence of, the torture, or that sometimes the accusers, who perhaps have been prompted by a desire to benefit society by bringing criminals to justice, are themselves condemned through the ignorance of the judge because they are unable to prove the truth of their accusations, though they are true, and because the witnesses lie and the accused endures the torture without being moved to confession. These numerous and important evils he does not consider sins, for the wise judge does these things not with any intention of doing harm, but because his ignorance compels him and because human society claims him as a judge. But though we therefore acquit the judge of malice, we must nonetheless condemn human life as miserable. And if he has compelled the torture and punished the innocent because his office and his ignorance constrain him, is he a happy as well as a guiltless man? Surely it were proof of more profound considerateness and finer feeling were he to recognize the misery of these necessities and shrink from his own implication in that misery. And had he any piety about him he would cry to God, from my necessities deliver thou me. After the state or city comes the world, the third circle of human society, the first being the house and the second the city, and the world as it is larger so it is fuller of dangers as the greater sea is the more dangerous. And here in the first place man is separated from man by the difference of languages. For if two man, each ignorant of the other's language, meet and are not compelled to pass, but on the contrary, to remain in company, dumb animals, though of different species, would more easily hold intercourse than they, human beings though they be. For their common nature is no help to friendliness when they are prevented by diversity of language from conveying their sentiments to one another, so that a man would more readily hold intercourse with his dog than with a foreigner. But the imperial city has endeavored to impose on subject nations not only her yoke, but her language as a bond of peace, so that interpreters far from being scarce or numberless. This is true, but how many great wars, how much slaughter and bloodshed have provided this unity. And though these are past, the end of these miseries has not yet come. For though there have never been wanting, nor are yet wanting, hostile nations beyond the empire, against whom wars have been and are waged. Yet supposing there were no such nations, the very extent of the empire itself has produced wars of a more obnoxious description, social and civil wars, and with these the whole race has been agitated, either by the actual conflict or the fear of a renewed outbreak. If I attempted to give an adequate description of these manifold disasters, these stern and lasting necessities, though I am quite unequal to the task, what limit could I set? But say they, the wise man will wage just wars, as if he would not all the rather lament the necessity of just wars if he remembers that he is a man, for if they were not just he would not wage them and would therefore be delivered from all wars. For it is the wrongdoing of the opposing party which compels the wise man to wage just wars. And this wrongdoing, even though it gave rise to no war, would still be matter of grief to man, because it is man's wrongdoing. Let everyone, then, who thinks with pain on all these great evils, so horrible, so ruthless, acknowledge that this is misery, and if anyone either endures or thinks of them without mental pain, this is a more miserable plight still, for he thinks himself happy because he has lost human feeling. CHAPTER VIII In our present wretched condition, we frequently mistake a friend for an enemy, and an enemy for a friend. And if we escape this pitiable blindness, is not the un-faint confidence and mutual love of true and good friends are one solace in human society, filled as it is with misunderstandings and calamities. And yet the more friends we have, and the more widely they are scattered, the more numerous are our fears that some portion of the vast masses of the disasters of life may light upon them. For we are not only anxious lest they suffer from famine, war, disease, captivity, or the inconceivable horrors of slavery, but we are also affected by the much more painful dread that their friendship may be changed into perfidy, malice, and injustice. And when these contingencies actually occur, as they do the more frequently the more friends we have, and the more widely they are scattered, and when they come to our knowledge, who but the man who is experienced it can tell with what pangs the heart is torn. We would in fact prefer to hear that they were dead, although we could not without anguish hear of even this. For if their life has solaced us with the charms of friendship, can it be that their death should affect us with no sadness? He who will have none of this sadness must, if possible, have no friendly intercourse. Let him interdict or extinguish friendly affection, let him burst with ruthless insensibility the bonds of every human relationship, or let him contrive so to use them that no sweetness shall distil into his spirit. But if this is utterly impossible, how shall we contrive to feel no bitterness in the death of those whose life has been sweet to us? Hence arises that grief which affects the tender heart like a wound or a bruise, in which is healed by the application of kindly consolation. For though the cure is affected all the more easily and rapidly the better condition the soul is in, we must not on this account suppose that there is nothing at all to heal. Although then our present life is afflicted, sometimes at a milder, sometimes at a more painful degree, by the death of those very dear to us, and especially of useful public men, yet we would prefer to hear that such men were dead rather than to hear or perceive that they had fallen from the faith or from virtue, in other words, that they were spiritually dead. Of this vast material for misery the earth is full, and therefore it is written, is not human life upon earth a trial. And with the same reference the Lord says, woe to the world because of offenses, and again because iniquity abounded the love of many shall wax cold. And hence we enjoy some gratification when our good friends die, for though their death leaves us in sorrow we have the consolatory assurance that they are beyond the ills by which in this life even the best of men are broken down or corrupted or are in danger of both results. The philosophers who wished us to have the gods for our friends ranked the friendship of the holy angels in the fourth circle of society, advancing now from the three circles of society on earth to the universe and embracing heaven itself. And in this friendship we have indeed no fear that the angels will grieve us by their death or deterioration, but as we cannot mingle with them as familiarly as with men, which itself is one of the grievances of this life, and as Satan as we read sometimes transforms himself into an angel of light to tempt those whom it is necessary to discipline or just to deceive, there is great need of God's mercy to preserve us from making friends of demons and disguise, while we fancy we have good angels for our friends, for the astuteness and deceitfulness of these wicked spirits is equaled by their hurtfulness. And is this not a great misery of human life that we are involved in such ignorance as but for God's mercy makes us a prey to these demons? And it is very certain that the philosophers of the godless city who have maintained that the gods were their friends had fallen a prey to the malignant demons who rule that city and whose eternal punishment is to be shared by it. For the nature of these beings is sufficiently evinced by the sacred or rather sacrilegious observances which form their worship and by the filthy games in which their crimes are celebrated, in which they themselves originated and exacted from their worshipers as a fit propitiation. CHAPTER X But not even the saints and faithful worshipers of the one true and most high god are safe from the manifold temptations and deceits of the demons. For in this abode of weakness and in these wicked days this state of anxiety has also its use, stimulating us to seek with keener longing for that security where peace is complete and unassailable. There we shall enjoy the gifts of nature, that is to say, all that God the Creator of all natures has bestowed upon us. Gifts not only good, but eternal, not only of the spirit, healed now by wisdom, but also of the body renewed by the resurrection. There the virtue shall no longer be struggling against any vice or evil, but shall enjoy the reward of victory, the eternal peace which no adversary shall disturb. This is the final blessedness, this the ultimate consummation, the unending end. Here indeed we are said to be blessed when we have such peace as can be enjoyed in a good life, but such blessedness is mere misery compared to that final felicity. When we mortals possess such peace as this mortal life can afford, virtue, if we are living rightly, makes a right use of the advantages of this peaceful condition, and when we have it not, virtue makes a good use even of the evils a man suffers. But this is true virtue, when it refers all the advantages it makes a good use of, and all that it does in making good use of good and evil things, and itself also to that end in which we shall enjoy the best and greatest peace possible. CHAPTER 11 And thus we may say of peace, as we have said of eternal life, that it is the end of our good, and the rather, because the psalmist says of the city of God the subject of this laborious work, praise the Lord, O Jerusalem, praise thy God, O Zion, for he hath strengthened the bars of thy gates, he hath blessed thy children within thee, who hath made thy borders peace. For when the bars of her gates shall be strengthened, none shall go in or come out from her. Consequently we ought to understand the peace of her borders as that final peace we are wishing to declare. For even the mystical name of the city itself, that is, Jerusalem, means, as I have already said, vision of peace. But as the word peace is employed in connection with things in this world in which certainly life eternal has no place, we have preferred to call the end or supreme good of this city life eternal rather than peace. Of this end the apostle says, but now, being freed from sin and become servants to God, ye have your fruit unto holiness and the end life eternal. But on the other hand, as those who are not familiar with scripture may suppose that the life of the wicked is eternal life, other because of the immortality of the soul which some of the philosophers even have recognized, or because of the endless punishment of the wicked which forms a part of our faith and which seems impossible unless the wicked live forever, it may therefore be advisable in order that everyone may readily understand what we mean to say that the end or supreme good of this city is either peace in eternal life or eternal life in peace. For peace is a good so great that even in this earthly and mortal life there is no word we hear with such pleasure, nothing we desire with such zest or find to be more thoroughly gratifying. So that if we dwell for a little longer on this subject we shall not, in my opinion, be worrisome to our readers who will attend both for the sake of understanding what is the end of this city of which we speak, and for the sake of the sweetness of peace which is dear to all. CHAPTER XII Whoever gives even moderate attention to human affairs and to our common nature will recognize that if there is no man who does not wish to be joyful neither is there anyone who does not wish to have peace, for even they who make war desire nothing but victory, desire that is to say to attain to peace with glory. For what else is victory than the conquest of those who resist us, and when this is done there is peace. It is therefore with the desire for peace that wars are waged even by those who take pleasure in exercising their war-like nature and command and battle, and hence it is obvious that peace is the end sought for by war. For every man seeks peace by waging war, but no man seeks war by making peace. For even they who intentionally interrupt the peace in which they are living have no hatred of peace, but only wish that changed into a peace that suits them better. They do not therefore wish to have no peace, but only one more to their mind, and in the case of sedition, when men have separated themselves from the community, they yet do not affect what they wish unless they maintain some kind of peace with their fellow conspirators, and therefore even robbers take care to maintain peace with their comrades that they may with greater effect and greater safety invade the peace of other men. And if an individual happened to be of such unrivaled strength and to be so jealous of partnership that he trusts himself with no comrades, but makes his own plots and commits depredations and murders on his own account, yet he maintains some shadow of peace with such persons as he is unable to kill, and from whom he wishes to conceal his deeds. In his own home too he makes it his aim to be at peace with his wife and children and any other members of his household, for unquestionably their prompt obedience to his every look is a source of pleasure to him. And if this be not rendered he is angry, he chides and punishes, and even by this storm he secures the calm peace of his own home as occasion demands, for he sees that peace cannot be maintained unless all the members of the same domestic circle be subject to one head, such as he himself is in his own house. And therefore if a city or nation offered to submit itself to him, to serve him in the same style as he had made his household serve him, he would no longer lurk in a brigand's hiding places but lift his head in open day as a king, though the same covetousness and wickedness should remain in him, and thus all men desire to have peace with their own circle whom they wish to govern as suits themselves, for even those whom they make war against they wish to make their own and impose on them the laws of their own peace. But let us suppose a man such as poetry and mythology speak of, a man so insatiable and savage as to be called rather a semi-man than a man. Although then his kingdom was the solitude of a dreary cave and he himself was so singularly bad-hearted that he was named Kakos, which is the Greek word for bad, though he had no wife to soothe him with endearing talk, no children to play with, no sons to do his bidding, no friend to enliven him with intercourse, and even his father Vulcan, though in one respect he was happier than his father not having begotten a monster like himself, although he gave to no man but took as he wished whatever he could, from whom soever he could, when he could. Yet in that solitary den, the floor of which, as Virgil says, was always reeking with recent slaughter, there was nothing else than peace sought, a peace in which no one should molest him or disquiet him with any assault or alarm. With his own body he desired to be at peace, and he was satisfied only in proportion as he had this peace. For he ruled his members, and they obeyed him, and for the sake of pacifying his mortal nature, which rebelled when it needed anything, and of allaying the sedition of hunger which threatened to banish the soul from the body, he made forays, slew, and devoured, but used the ferocity and savageness he displayed in these actions only for the preservation of his own life's peace. So that, had he been willing to make with other men the same peace which he made with himself in his own cave, he would neither have been called bad, nor a monster, nor a semi-man. Or if the appearance of his body and his vomiting smoky fires frightened men from having any dealings with him, perhaps his fierce ways arose not from a desire to do mischief, but from the necessity of finding a living. That he may have had no existence, or at least he was not such as the poets fancifully describe him, for they had to exalt Hercules and did so at the expense of Kakus. It is better, then, to believe that such a man, or semi-man, never existed, and that this, in common with many other fancies of the poets, is mere fiction. For the most savage animals, and he has said to have been almost a wild beast, encompassed their own species with a ring of protecting peace. They cohabit, begat, produce, suckle, and bring up their young, though very many of them are not gregarious but solitary. Not like sheep, deer, pigeons, starlings, bees, but such as lions, foxes, eagles, bats. For what Tigris does not gently purr over her cubs and lay aside her ferocity to fondle them? What kite solitary as he is when circling over his prey does not seek a mate, build a nest, hatch the eggs, bring up the young birds, and maintain with the mother of his family as peaceful a domestic alliance as he can? How much more powerfully do the laws of man's nature move him to hold fellowship and maintain peace with all men so far as in him lies, since even wicked men wait war to maintain the peace of their own circle, and wish that if possible all men belong to them that all men and things might serve but one head and might either through love or fear yield themselves to peace with him. It is thus that pride in its perversity apes God. It abhors equality with other men under him, but instead of his rule it seeks to impose a rule of its own upon its equals. It abhors, that is to say, the just peace of God and loves its own unjust peace, but it cannot help loving peace of one kind or other, for there is no vice so clean contrary to nature that it obliterates even the faintest traces of nature. He then who prefers what is right to what is wrong and what is well-ordered to what is perverted sees that the peace of unjust men is not worthy to be cold peace and comparison with the peace of the just. And yet even what is perverted must of necessity be in harmony with and independence on and in some part of the order of things, for otherwise it would have no existence at all. Suppose a man hangs with his head downwards, and this is certainly a perverted attitude of body and arrangement of its members, for that which nature requires to be above is beneath and vice-versa. This perversity disturbs the peace of the body and is therefore painful. Nevertheless the spirit is at peace with its body and labors for its preservation, and hence the suffering. But if it is banished from the body by its pains, then so long as the bodily framework holds together there is in the remains a kind of peace among the members, and hence the body remains suspended. And in as much as the earthly body tends towards the earth and rests on the bond by which it is suspended, it tends thus to its natural peace, and the voice of its own weight demands a place for it to rest. And though now lifeless, and without feeling, it does not fall from the peace that is natural to its place in creation whether it already has it or is tending towards it. For if you apply embalming preparations to prevent the bodily frame from moldering and dissolving, a kind of peace still unites part to part and keeps the whole body in a suitable place on the earth—in other words, in a place that is at peace with the body. If on the other hand the body receive no such care but be left to the natural course, it is disturbed by exhalations that do not harmonize with one another and that offend our senses. For it is this which is perceived in putrefaction until it is assimilated to the elements of the world, and particle by particle enters into peace with them. Yet throughout this process the laws of the most high creator and governor are strictly observed, for it is by him the peace of the universe is administered. For although minute animals are produced from the carcass of a larger animal, all these little atoms, by the law of the same creator, serve the animals they belong to in peace. And although the flesh of dead animals be eaten by others, no matter where it be carried, nor what it be brought into contact with, nor what it be converted and changed into, it still is ruled by the same laws which pervade all things for the conservation of every mortal race in which bring things that fit one another into harmony. CHAPTERS XIII-21 OF THE CITY OF GOD This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Darren L. Slider, www.logoslibrary.org. The peace of the body then consists in the duly proportioned arrangement of its parts. The peace of the irrational soul is the harmonious repose of the appetites, and that of the rational soul the harmony of knowledge and action. The peace of body and soul is the well-ordered and harmonious life and health of the living creature. Peace between man and God is the well-ordered obedience of faith to eternal law. Peace between man and man is well-ordered concord. Domestic peace is the well-ordered concord between those of the family who rule and those who obey. Social peace is a similar concord among the citizens. The peace of the celestial city is the perfectly ordered and harmonious enjoyment of God and of one another in God. The peace of all things is the tranquility of order. Order is the distribution which elots things equal and unequal each to its own place. And hence, though the miserable insofar as they are such, who certainly not enjoy peace, but are severed from that tranquility of order in which there is no disturbance, nevertheless, in as much as they are deservedly and justly miserable, they are, by their very misery, connected with order. They are not indeed conjoined with the blessed, but they are disjoined from them by the law of order. And though they are disquieted, their circumstances are notwithstanding adjusted to them, and consequently they have some tranquility of order, and therefore some peace. But they are wretched because, although not wholly miserable, they are not in that place where any mixture of misery is impossible. They would, however, be more wretched if they had not that peace which arises from being in harmony with the natural order of things. When they suffer, their peace is insofar disturbed, but their peace continues insofar as they do not suffer, and insofar as their nature continues to exist. As then there may be life without pain, while there cannot be pain without some kind of life, so there may be peace without war, but there cannot be war without some kind of peace, because war supposes the existence of some natures to wage it, and these natures cannot exist without peace of one kind or other. And therefore there is a nature in which evil does not or even cannot exist. But there cannot be a nature in which there is no good. Hence not even the nature of the devil himself is evil insofar as it is nature, but it was made evil by being perverted. Thus he did not abide in the truth, but could not escape the judgment of the truth. He did not abide in the tranquility of order, but did not therefore escape the power of the ordainer. The good imparted by God to his nature did not screen him from the justice of God by which order was preserved in his punishment. Neither did God punish the good which he had created, but the evil which the devil had committed. God did not take back all he had imparted to his nature, but something he took and something he left that there might remain enough to be sensible of the loss of what was taken. And this very sensibility to pain as evidence of the good which has been taken away and the good which has been left. For were nothing good left there could be no pain on account of the good which had been lost. For he who sins is still worse if he rejoices in his loss of righteousness, but he who is in pain if he derives no benefit from it mourns at least the loss of health. And as righteousness and health are both good things and is the loss of any good thing as matter of grief, not of joy. If at least there is no compensation as spiritual righteousness may compensate for the loss of bodily health, certainly it is more suitable for a wicked man to grieve in punishment than to rejoice in his fault. As then the joy of a sinner who has abandoned what is good is evidence of a bad will, so his grief for the good he has lost when he has punished is evidence of a good nature. For he who laments the peace his nature has lost is stirred to do so by some relics of peace which make his nature friendly to itself. And it is very just that in the final punishment the wicked and godless should an anguish bewail the loss of the natural advantages they enjoyed and should perceive that they were most justly taken from them by that God whose benign liberality they had despised. God then the most wise creator and most just ordainer of all natures, who placed the human race upon earth as its greatest ornament, imparted to men some good things adapted to this life, to wit temporal peace, such as we can enjoy in this life from health and safety and human fellowship, in all things needful for the preservation and recovery of this peace, such as the objects which are accommodated to our outward senses, light, night, the air and waters suitable for us, and everything the body requires to sustain, shelter, heal, or beautify it. And all under this most equitable condition that every man who made a good use of these advantages suited to the peace of this mortal condition should receive ampler and better blessings, namely the peace of immortality accompanied by glory and honor in an endless life made fit for the enjoyment of God and of one another in God. But that he who used the present blessings badly should both lose them and should not receive the others. CHAPTER XIV The whole use then of things temporal has a reference to this result of earthly peace in the earthly community, while in the city of God it is connected with eternal peace. And therefore, if we were irrational animals, we should desire nothing beyond the proper arrangement of the parts of the body and the satisfaction of the appetites. Nothing therefore but bodily comfort and abundance of pleasures that the peace of the body might contribute to the peace of the soul. For if bodily peace be a wanting, a bar is put to the peace even of the irrational soul, since it cannot obtain the gratification of its appetites. And these two together help out the mutual peace of soul and body, the peace of harmonious life and health. For as animals, by shunning pain, show that they love bodily peace, and by pursuing pleasure to gratify their appetites, show that they love peace of soul, so their shrinking from death is a sufficient indication of their intense love of that peace which binds soul and body in close alliance. But as man has a rational soul, he subordinates all this which he has in common with the beasts, to the peace of his rational soul that his intellect may have free play and may regulate his actions, and that he may thus enjoy the well-ordered harmony of knowledge and action which constitutes, as we have said, the peace of the rational soul. And for this purpose he must desire to be neither molested by pain nor disturbed by desire nor extinguished by death that he may arrive at some useful knowledge by which he may regulate his life and manners. But owing to the liability of the human mind to fall into mistakes, this very pursuit of knowledge may be a snare to him unless he has a divine master whom he may obey without misgiving and who may at the same time give him such help as to preserve his own freedom. And because so long as he is in this mortal body he is a stranger to God, he walks by faith, not by sight, and he therefore refers all peace, bodily or spiritual or both, to that peace which mortal man has with the immortal God, so that he exhibits the well-ordered obedience of faith to eternal law. But as this divine master inculcates two precepts, the love of God and the love of our neighbor, and as in these precepts a man finds three things he has to love, God, himself, and his neighbor, and that he who loves God loves himself thereby, it follows that he must endeavor to get his neighbor to love God, since he is ordered to love his neighbor as himself. He ought to make this endeavor on behalf of his wife, his children, his household, all within his reach, even as he would wish his neighbor to do the same for him if he needed it, and consequently he will be at peace or in well-ordered concord with all men as far as in him lies. And this is the order of this concord that a man in the first place injure no one, and in the second do good to everyone he can reach. Primarily therefore his own household are his care, for the law of nature and of society gives him readyer access to them and greater opportunity of serving them. And hence the apostle says, Now if any provide not for his own, and specially for those of his own house, he hath denied the faith and is worse than an infidel. This is the origin of domestic peace or the well-ordered concord of those in the family who rule and those who obey. For they who care for the rest rule, the husband, the wife, the parents, the children, the masters, the servants, and they who are cared for obey, the women, their husbands, the children, their parents, the servants, their masters. But in the family of the just man who lives by faith and is as yet a pilgrim journeying on to the celestial city, even those who rule serve those whom they seem to command. For they rule not from a love of power, but from a sense of the duty they owe to others, not because they are proud of authority, but because they love mercy. CHAPTER XV This is prescribed by the order of nature. It is thus that God has created man. For let them, he says, have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every creeping thing which creepeth on the earth. He did not intend that his rational creature, who was made in his image, should have dominion over anything but the irrational creation, not man over man, but man over the beasts. And hence the righteous men in privative times were made shepherds of cattle rather than kings of men, God intending thus to teach us what the relative position of the creatures is and what the dessert of sin. For it is with justice we believe that the condition of slavery is the result of sin. And this is why we do not find the word slave in any part of scripture until righteous Noah branded the sin of his son with his name. It is a name, therefore, introduced by sin, and not by nature. The origin of the Latin word for slave is supposed to be found in the circumstance that those who by the law of war were liable to be killed were sometimes preserved by their victors, and were hence called servants. In these circumstances could never have arisen save through sin. For even when we wage a just war our adversaries must be sinning, and every victory even though gained by wicked men is a result of the first judgment of God, who humbles the vanquished either for the sake of removing or of punishing their sins. Witness that man of God, Daniel, who, when he was in captivity, confessed to God his own sins and the sins of his people, and declares with pious grief that these were the cause of the captivity. The prime cause, then, of slavery is sin, which brings man under the dominion of his fellow, that which does not happen saved by the judgment of God with whom is no one righteousness and who knows how to award fit punishments to every variety of offence. But our master in heaven says, everyone who doeth sin is the servant of sin. And thus there are many wicked masters who have religious men as their slaves and who are yet themselves in bondage, for of whom a man is overcome of the same as he brought in bondage. And beyond question it is a happier thing to be the slave of a man than of a lust, for even this very lust of ruling, to mention no others, lays waste men's hearts with the most ruthless dominion. Moreover, when man are subjected to one another in a peaceful order, the lowly position does as much good to the servant as the proud position does harm to the master. But by nature, as God first created us, no one is the slave either of man or of sin. This servitude is, however, penal, and is appointed by that law which enjoins the preservation of the natural order and forbids its disturbance, for if nothing had been done in violation of that law there would have been nothing to restrain by penal servitude. And therefore the apostle admonishes slaves to be subject to their masters and to serve them heartily and with good will, so that if they cannot be freed by their masters they may themselves make their slavery in some sort free by serving not in crafty fear but in faithful love until all unrighteousness pass away in all principality and every human power be brought to nothing and God be all in all. CHAPTER XVI And therefore although our righteous fathers had slaves and administered their domestic affairs so as to distinguish between the condition of slaves and the airship of sons in regard to the blessings of this life, yet in regard to the worship of God in whom we hope for eternal blessings they took an equally loving oversight of all the members of their household. And this is so much in accordance with the natural order that the head of the household was called Pater Familias, and this name has been so generally accepted that even those whose rule is unrighteous are glad to apply it to themselves. But those who are true fathers of their households desire and endeavor that all the members of their household equally with their own children should worship and win God and should come to that heavenly home in which the duty of ruling men is no longer necessary because the duty of caring for their everlasting happiness has also ceased. But until they reach that home, masters ought to feel their position of authority a greater burden than servants their service. And if any member of the family interrupts the domestic peace by disobedience, he is corrected either by word or blow or some kind of just and legitimate punishment such as society permits that he may himself be the better for it and be readjusted to the family harmony from which he had dislocated himself. Whereas it is not benevolent to give a man help at the expense of some greater benefit he might receive, so it is not innocent to spare a man at the risk of his falling into grave or sin. To be innocent we must not only do harm to no man, but also restrain him from sin or punish his sin, so that either the man himself who is punished may profit by his experience or others be warned by his example. Since then the house ought to be the beginning or element of the city, and every beginning bears reference to some end of its own kind, and every element to the integrity of the whole of which it is an element, it follows plainly enough that domestic peace has a relation to civic peace. In other words, that the well-ordered concord of domestic obedience and domestic rule has a relation to the well-ordered concord of civic obedience and civic rule, and therefore it follows further that the father of the family ought to frame his domestic rule in accordance with the law of the city, so that the household may be in harmony with the civic order. CHAPTER XVII. But the families which do not live by faith seek their peace in the earthly advantages of this life, while the families which live by faith look for those eternal blessings which are promised and use as pilgrims such advantages of time and of earth as do not fascinate and divert them from God, but rather aid them to endure with greater ease and to keep down the number of those burdens of the corruptible body which weigh upon the soul. Thus the things necessary for this mortal life are used by both kinds of men and families alike, but each has its own peculiar and widely different aim in using them. The earthly city which does not live by faith seeks an earthly peace and the end it proposes in the well-ordered concord of civic obedience and rule is the combination of men's wills to attain the things which are helpful to this life. The heavenly city, or rather the part of it which sojourns on earth and lives by faith, makes use of this peace only because it must until this mortal condition which necessitates it shall pass away. Consequently, so long as it lives like a captive and a stranger in the earthly city, though it has already received the promise of redemption and the gift of the Spirit as the earnest of it, it makes no scruple to obey the laws of the earthly city whereby the things necessary for the maintenance of this mortal life are administered, and thus as this life is common to both cities, so there is a harmony between them in regard to what belongs to it. But as the earthly city has had some philosophers whose doctrine is condemned by the divine teaching, and who being deceived, rather by their own conjectures or by demons, supposed that many gods must be invited to take an interest in human affairs and assign to each a separate function and a separate department, to one the body to another the soul, and in the body itself to one the head to another the neck, and each of the other members to one of the gods, and in like manner in the soul to one god the natural capacity was assigned to another education, to another anger, to another lust, and so the various affairs of life were assigned, cattle to one, corn to another, wine to another, oil to another, the woods to another, money to another, navigation to another, wars and victories to another, marriages to another, births and fecundity to another, and other things to other gods, and as the celestial city, on the other hand, knew that one god only was to be worshiped, and that to him alone was due that service, which the Greeks call Latreia, and which can be given only to a god. It has come to pass that the two cities could not have common laws of religion, and that the heavenly city has been compelled in this matter to dissent, and to become obnoxious to those who think differently, and to stand the brunt of their anger and hatred and persecutions, except insofar as the minds of their enemies have been alarmed by the multitude of the Christians and quelled by the manifest protection of God accorded to them. This heavenly city, then, while it sojourns on earth, calls citizens out of all nations, and gathers together a society of pilgrims of all languages, not scrupling about diversities in the manners, laws, and institutions whereby earthly peace is secured and maintained, but recognizing that however various these are, they all tend to one in the same end of earthly peace. But therefore is so far from ascending and abolishing these diversities that it even preserves and adopts them so long only as no hindrance to the worship of the one supreme and true God is thus introduced. Even the heavenly city, therefore, while in its state of pilgrimage, avails itself of the peace of earth, and so far as it can, without injuring faith and godliness, desires and maintains a common agreement among men regarding the acquisition of the necessaries of life, and makes this earthly peace bear upon the peace of heaven, for this alone can be truly cold and esteemed the peace of the reasonable creatures, consisting as it does in the perfectly ordered and harmonious enjoyment of God and of one another in God. When we shall have reached that peace, this mortal life shall give place to one that is eternal, and our body shall be no more this animal body which by its corruption weighs down the soul but a spiritual body feeling no want and in all its members subjected to the will. In its pilgrim state the heavenly city possesses this peace by faith, and by this faith it lives righteously when it refers to the attainment of that peace every good action towards God and man, for the life of the city is a social life. CHAPTER XVIII As regards the uncertainty about everything which Varo alleges to be the differentiating characteristic of the new academy, the city of God thoroughly detests such doubt as madness. Regarding matters which it apprehends by the mind and reason it has most absolute certainty, although its knowledge is limited because of the corruptible body pressing down the mind, for, as the apostle says, we know in part. It believes also the evidence of the senses which the mind uses by aid of the body, for if one who trusts his senses is sometimes deceived he is more wretchedly deceived who fancies he should never trust them. It believes also the holy scriptures, old and new, which we call canonical, in which are the source of the faith by which the just lives, and by which we walk without doubting whilst we are absent from the Lord. So long as this faith remains inviolate and firm, we may without blame entertain doubts regarding some things which we have neither perceived by sense nor by reason, and which have not been revealed to us by the canonical scriptures, nor come to our knowledge through witnesses whom it is absurd to disbelieve. CHAPTER XIX It is a matter of no moment in the city of God whether he who adopts the faith that brings men to God adopts it in one dress in manner of life or another, so long only as he lives in conformity with the commandments of God, and hence when philosophers themselves become Christians they are compelled indeed to abandon their erroneous doctrines but not their dress in mode of living which are no obstacle to religion, so that we make no account of that distinction of sects which Varro adduced in connection with the cynic school provided always nothing indecent or self-indulgent is retained. As to these three modes of life, the contemplative, the active, and the composite, although so long as a man's faith is preserved he may choose any of them without detriment to his eternal interests, yet he must never overlook the claims of truth and duty. No man has a right to lead such a life of contemplation as to forget in his own ease the service due to his neighbor, nor has any man a right to be so immersed in active life as to neglect the contemplation of God. The charm of leisure must not be indolent vacancy of mind but the investigation or discovery of truth that thus every man may make solid attainments without grudging that others do the same. And in active life it is not the honors or power of this life we should covet since all things under the sun are vanity, but we should aim at using opposition and influence if these have been honorably attained for the welfare of those who are under us in the way we have already explained. It is to this the apostle refers when he says, He that desireth the Episcopate desireth a good work. He wished to show that the Episcopate is the title of a work not of an honor. It is a Greek word and signifies that he who governs super intense or takes care of those whom he governs, for epi means over and scopane to see. Therefore Episcopane means to oversee, so that he who loves to govern rather than to do good is no bishop. Accordingly no one is prohibited from the search after truth for in this leisure may most laudably be spent, but it is unseemly to covet the high position requisite for governing the people, even though that position be held and that government be administered in a seemly manner. And therefore holy leisure is longed for by the love of truth, but it is the necessity of love to undertake requisite business. If no one imposes this burden upon us we are free to sift and contemplate truth, but if it be laid upon us we are necessitated for love's sake to undertake it, and yet not even in this case are we obliged wholly to relinquish the sweets of contemplation, for were these to be withdrawn the burden might prove more than we could bear. CHAPTER XX Since then the supreme good of the city of God is perfect and eternal peace, not such as mortals pass into and out of by birth and death, but the peace of freedom from all evil in which the immortals ever abide. Who can deny that that future life is most blessed, or that in comparison with it, this life which we now live is most wretched, be it filled with all blessings of body and soul and external things? And yet if any man uses this life with a reference to that other which he ardently loves, and confidently hopes for, he may well be called even now blessed, though not in reality so much as in hope. But the actual possession of the happiness of this life, without the hope of what is beyond, is but a false happiness and profound misery. But the true blessings of the soul are not now enjoyed, for that is no true wisdom which does not direct all its prudent observations, manly actions, virtuous self-restraint, and just arrangements to that end in which God shall be all in all in a secure eternity and perfect peace. CHAPTER XXI This then is the place where I should fulfill the promise I gave in the second book of this work, and explain as briefly and clearly as possible that if we are to accept the definitions laid down by Shippeo in Cicero's De Repubblica, there never was a Roman republic, for he briefly defines a republic as the wheel of the people. And if this definition be true, there never was a Roman republic for the people's wheel was never attained among the Romans. For the people, according to his definition, is an assemblage associated by a common acknowledgement of right and by a community of interests. And what he means by a common acknowledgement of right, he explains at large, showing that a republic cannot be administered without justice. Where therefore there is no true justice, there can be no right. For that which is done by right is justly done, and what is unjustly done cannot be done by right. For the unjust inventions of men are neither to be considered nor spoken of as rights, for even they themselves say that right is that which flows from the fountain of justice and deny the definition which is commonly given by those who misconceive the matter, that right is that which is useful to the stronger party. Thus where there is not true justice, there can be no assemblage of men associated by a common acknowledgement of right, and therefore there can be no people as defined by Shippeo or Cicero. And if no people, then no wheel of the people, but only of some promiscuous multitude unworthy of the name of people. Consequently, if the republic is the wheel of the people, and there is no people, have it be not associated by a common acknowledgement of right, and if there is no right where there is no justice, then most certainly it follows that there is no republic where there is no justice. Further, justice is that virtue which gives everyone his due. Where then is the justice of man when he deserts the true God and yields himself to impure demons? Is this to give everyone his due? Or is he who keeps back a piece of ground from the purchaser and gives it to a man who has no right to it, unjust, while he who keeps back himself from the God who made him and serves wicked spirits, is just? This same book, The Republica, advocates the cause of justice against injustice with great force and keenness. While pleading for injustice against justice was first heard, and it was asserted that without injustice a republic could neither increase nor even subsist, for it was laid down as an absolutely unassailable position that it is unjust for some men to rule and some to serve, and yet the imperial city to which the republic belongs cannot rule her provinces without having recourse to this injustice. It was replied, in behalf of justice, that this ruling of the provinces is just because servitude may be advantageous to the provincials and is so when rightly administered, that is to say when lawless men are prevented from doing harm, and further, as they became worse and worse so long as they were free, they will improve by subjection. To confirm this reasoning there is added an eminent example drawn from nature, for why it is asked, does God rule man, the soul, the body, the reason, the passions, and other vicious parts of the soul? This example leaves no doubt that, to some, servitude is useful, and indeed to serve God is useful to all. And it is when the soul serves God that it exercises a right control over the body, and in the soul itself the reason must be subject to God if it is to govern as it ought the passions and other vices. Hence when a man does not serve God, what justice can we ascribe to him, since in this case his soul cannot exercise a just control over the body, nor his reason over his vices? And if there is no justice in such an individual, certainly there can be none in a community composed of such persons. Here therefore there is not that common acknowledgment of right which makes an assemblage of men a people whose affairs we call a republic. And why need I speak of the advantageousness, the common participation in which, according to the definition, makes a people? For although, if you choose to regard the matter attentively, you will see that there is nothing advantageous to those who live godlessly, as everyone lives who does not serve God, but demons, whose wickedness you may measure by their desire to receive the worship of men, though they are most impure spirits. But what I have said of the common acknowledgment of right is enough to demonstrate that according to the above definition there can be no people, and therefore no republic where there is no justice. For if they assert that in their republic the Romans did not serve unclean spirits, but good and holy gods, must we therefore again reply to this evasion, though already we have said enough and more than enough to expose it. He must be an uncommonly stupid or a shamelessly contentious person who has read through the foregoing books to this point and can yet question what of the Romans served wicked and impure demons. But not to speak of their character, it is written in the law of the true God, he that sacrifices unto any god save unto the Lord only, he shall be utterly destroyed. He therefore who uttered so menacing a commandment decreed that no worship should be given either to good or bad gods. CHAPTER XXII But it may be replied, who is this god, or what proof is there that he alone is worthy to receive sacrifice from the Romans? One must be very blind to be still asking who this god is. He is the god whose prophets predicted the things we see accomplished. He is the god from whom Abraham received the assurance, in thy seed shall all nations be blessed. That this was fulfilled in Christ, who according to the flesh sprang from that seed is recognized, what if they will or know, even by those who have continued to be the enemies of this name. He is the god whose divine spirit spake by the men whose predictions I cited in the preceding books, and which are fulfilled in the church which has extended over all the world. This is the god whom Varro, the most learned of the Romans, supposed to be Jupiter, though he knows not what he says. Yet I think it right to note the circumstance that a man of such learning was unable to suppose that this god had no existence or was contemptible, but believed him to be the same as the Supreme God. In fine he is the god whom Porphyry, the most learned of the philosophers, though the bitterest enemy of the Christians, confesses to be a great god, even according to the oracles of those whom he esteems gods. CHAPTER XXIII For in his book called Eclogion Philosopheus, in which he collects and comments upon the responses which he pretends were uttered by the gods concerning divine things, he says, I give his own words as they have been translated from the Greek, to one who inquired what god he should propitiate in order to recall his wife from Christianity, Apollo replied in the following verses. Then the following words are given as those of Apollo. You will probably find it easier to write lasting characters on the water or lightly fly like a bird through the air than to restore right feeling in your impious wife once she has polluted herself. Let her remain as she pleases in her foolish deception and sing false laments to her dead god, who was condemned by right-minded judges and perished ignominiously by a violent death. Then after these verses of Apollo, which we have given in a Latin version that does not preserve the metrical form, he goes on to say, In these verses Apollo exposed the incurable corruption of the Christians saying that the Jews rather than the Christians recognized God, see how he misrepresents Christ giving the Jews the preference to the Christians and the recognition of God. This was his explanation of Apollo's verses in which he says that Christ was put to death by right-minded or just judges, in other words that he deserved to die. I leave the responsibility of this oracle regarding Christ on the lying interpreter of Apollo or on this philosopher who believed it or possibly himself invented it. As to its agreement with Porphyry's opinions or with other oracles, we shall in a little have something to say. In this passage, however, he says that the Jews as the interpreters of God judged justly in pronouncing Christ to be worthy of the most shameful death. He should have listened, then, to this God of the Jews to whom he bears this testimony when that God says, He that sacrifices to any other God saved to the Lord alone shall be utterly destroyed. But let us come to still plainer expressions and hear how great a God Porphyry thinks the God of the Jews is. Apollo, he says, when asked whether word, that is reason or law, is the better thing replied in the following verses. Then he gives the verses of Apollo from which I select the following as sufficient, God the Generator and the King prior to all things before whom heaven and earth and the sea and the hidden places of hell tremble and the deities themselves are afraid for their law is the Father whom the Holy Hebrews honor. In this oracle of his God Apollo Porphyry avowed that the God of the Hebrews is so great that the deities themselves are afraid before him. I am surprised, therefore, that when God said, He that sacrifices the other God shall be utterly destroyed, Porphyry himself was not afraid lest he should be destroyed for sacrificing to other gods. This philosopher, however, has also some good to say of Christ, oblivious, as it were, of that contumely of his of which we have just been speaking, or as if his God spoke evil of Christ only while asleep, and recognized him to be good and gave him his deserved praise when they awoke. For as if he were about to proclaim some marvelous thing passing belief he says, What we are going to say will certainly take some by surprise, for the gods have declared that Christ was very pious and has become immortal and that they cherish his memory, that the Christians, however, are polluted, contaminated and involved in error, and many other such things, he says, do the gods say against the Christians? Then he gives specimens of the accusations made, as he says, by the gods against them, and then goes on. But to some who ask Techate whether Christ were a God, she replied, You know the condition of the disembodied immortal soul, and that if it has been severed from wisdom it always errs. The soul you refer to is that of a man foremost in piety. They worship it because they mistake the truth. To this so-called oracular response he adds the following words of his own. Of this very pious man, then, Techate said that the soul, like the souls of other good men, was after death, dowered with immortality, and that the Christians, through ignorance, worship it. And to those who ask why he was condemned to die, the oracle of the goddess replied, The body indeed is always exposed to torments, but the souls of the pious abide in heaven. And the soul you inquire about has been the fatal cause of error to other souls which were not fated to receive the gifts of the gods, and to have the knowledge of immortal jove. Such souls are therefore hated by the gods, for they who were fated not to receive the gifts of the gods, and not to know God, were fated to be involved in error by means of him you speak of. He himself, however, was good, and heaven has been open to him as to other good men. We were not then to speak evil of him but to pity the folly of men, and through him man's danger is imminent. Who is so foolish as not to see that these oracles were either composed by a clever man with a strong animus against the Christians, or were uttered as responses by impure demons with a similar design? That is to say, in order that their praise of Christ may win credence for their vituporation of Christians, and that thus they may, if possible, close the way of eternal salvation which is identical with Christianity. For they believe that they are by no means counterworking their own hurtful craft by promoting belief in Christ so long as their columniation of Christians is also accepted, for they thus secure that even the man who thinks well of Christ declines to become a Christian, and is therefore not delivered from their own rule by the Christ he praises. Besides, their praise of Christ is so contrived that whosoever believes in him, as thus represented, will not be a true Christian but a Photinian heretic, recognizing only the humanity, and not also the divinity of Christ, and will thus be precluded from salvation and from deliverance out of the meshes of those devilish lies. For our part we are no better pleased with Hecate's praises of Christ than with Apollo's columniation of him. Apollo says that Christ was put to death by right-minded judges, implying that he was unrighteous. Hecate says that he was a most pious man, but no more. The intention of both is the same, to prevent men from becoming Christians, because if this be secured men shall never be rescued from their power. But it is incumbent on our philosopher, or rather on those who believe in these pretended oracles against the Christians, first of all, if they can, to bring Apollo and Hecate to the same mind regarding Christ, so that either both may condemn or both praise him. And even if they succeeded in this, we, for our part, would notwithstanding repudiate the testimony of demons, whether favorable or adverse, to Christ. But when our adversaries find a God and Goddess of their own at variance about Christ, the one praising the other vituperating him, they can certainly give no credence if they have any judgment to mere men who blaspheme the Christians. When porphyry or Hecate praises Christ and adds that he gave himself to the Christians as a fatal gift that they might be involved in error, he exposes, as he thinks, the causes of this error. But before I cite his words to that purpose, I would ask, if Christ did thus give himself to the Christians to involve them in error, did he do so willingly or against his will? If willingly, how is he righteous? If against his will, how is he blessed? However, let us hear the causes of this error. There are, he says, in a certain place very small earthly spirits subject to the power of evil demons. The wise men of the Hebrews, among whom was this Jesus, as you have heard from the oracles of Apollo cited above, turned religious persons from these very wicked demons and minor spirits, and taught them rather to worship the celestial gods, and especially to adore God the Father. This, he said, the gods enjoin, and we have already shown how they admonish the soul to turn to God and command it to worship him. But the ignorant and the ungodly, who were not destined to receive favors from the gods, nor to know the immortal Jupiter, not listening to the gods and their messages, have turned away from all gods and have not only refused to hate, but have venerated the prohibited demons. Professing to worship God they refuse to do those things by which alone God is worshiped, for God indeed, being the Father of all, is in need of nothing, but for us it is good to adore him by means of justice, chastity, and other virtues, and thus to make life itself a prayer to him by inquiring into and imitating his nature. For inquiry, says he, purifies and imitation deifies us by moving us nearer to him. He is right insofar as he proclaims God the Father and the conduct by which we should worship him. Of such precepts the prophetic books of the Hebrews are full when they praise or blame the life of the saints. But in speaking of the Christians he is an error and columnates them as much as is desired by the demons whom he takes for gods, as if it were difficult for any man to recollect the disgraceful and shameful actions which used to be done in the theaters and temples to please the gods, and to compare with these things what is heard in our churches and what is offered to the true God, and from this comparison to conclude where character is edified and where it is ruined. But who but a diabolical spirit has told or suggested to this man so manifest and vain a lie, as that the Christians reverenced rather than hated the demons whose worship the Hebrews prohibited? But that God whom the Hebrews sages worshiped forbids sacrifice to be offered even to the holy angels of heaven and divine powers whom we in this our pilgrimage venerate and love as our most blessed fellow-citizens. For in the law which God gave to his Hebrew people he uttered this menace as in a voice of thunder, he that sacrifices unto any God save unto the Lord only he shall be utterly destroyed. And that no one might suppose that this prohibition extends only to the very wicked demons and earthly spirits whom this philosopher calls very small and inferior, for even these are in the scripture called gods, not of the Hebrews but of the nations as the Septuagint translators have shown in the Psalm where it is said, for all the gods of the nations are demons. That no one might suppose, I say, that sacrifice to these demons was prohibited, but that sacrifice might be offered to all or some of the celestials it was immediately added save unto the Lord alone. The God of the Hebrews, then, to whom this renowned philosopher bears this signal testimony, gave to his Hebrew people a law composed in the Hebrew language and not obscure and unknown but published now in every nation, and in this law it is written, he that sacrifices unto any God save unto the Lord alone he shall be utterly destroyed. What need is there to seek further proofs in the law or the prophets of this same thing? Seek we need not say, for the passages are neither few nor difficult to find. But what need to collect and apply to my argument the proofs which are thickly sown and obvious, and by which it appears clear as day that sacrifice may be paid to none but the supreme and true God? Here is one brief but decided, even menacing and certainly true utterance of that God whom the wisest of our adversaries so highly extoll. Let this be listened to, feared, fulfilled, that there may be no disobedient soul cut off. He that sacrifices, he says, not because he needs anything but because it behooves us to be his possession. Hence the solmist in the Hebrew scriptures sings, I have said to the Lord, Thou art my God, for Thou needest not my good. For we ourselves, who are his own city, are his most noble and worthy sacrifice, and it is this mystery we celebrate in our sacrifices which are well known to the faithful as we have explained in the preceding books. For through the prophets the oracles of God declared that the sacrifices which the Jews offered as a shadow of that which was to be would cease, and that the nations from the rising to the setting of the sun would offer one sacrifice. From these oracles which we now see accomplished we have made such selections as seemed suitable to our purpose in this work. And therefore, whether is not this righteousness whereby the one supreme God rules the obedient city according to his grace so that it sacrifices to none but him, and whereby in all the citizens of this obedient city the soul consequently rules the body and reason the vices in the rightful order, so that, as the individual just man, so also the community and people of the just live by faith which works by love, that love whereby man loves God as he ought to be loved, and his neighbor as himself. There I say, there is not an assemblage associated by a common acknowledgement of right, and by a community of interests. But if there is not this, there is not a people if our definition be true, and therefore there is no republic, for where there is no people, there can be no republic. CHAPTER 24 But if we discard this definition of a people, and assuming another, say that a people is an assemblage of reasonable beings bound together by a common agreement as to the objects of their love, then in order to discover the character of any people we have only to observe what they love. Yet whatever it loves, if only it is an assemblage of reasonable beings and not of beasts, and is bound together by an agreement as to the objects of love, it is reasonably called a people, and it will be a superior people in proportion as it is bound together by higher interests, inferior in proportion as it is bound together by lower. According to this definition of ours, the Roman people is a people, and its wheel is without doubt a common wealth or republic. But what its tastes were, and its early and subsequent days, and how it declined into sanguinary seditions and then to social and civil wars, and so burst asunder or rotted off the bond of concord in which the health of a people consists, history shows, and in the preceding books I have related at large. And yet I would not, on this account, say either that it was not a people or that its administration was not a republic so long as there remains an assemblage of reasonable beings bound together by a common agreement as to the objects of love. But what I say of this people and of this republic I must be understood to think and say of the Athenians or any Greek state, of the Egyptians, of the early Assyrian Babylon, and of every other nation, great or small, which had a public government. For in general the city of the ungodly which did not obey the command of God that it should offer no sacrifice saved to him alone, and which therefore could not give to the soul its proper command over the body, nor to the reason its just authority over the vices, is void of true justice. CHAPTER XXV For though the soul may seem to rule the body admirably, and the reason the vices, if the soul and reason do not themselves obey God as God has commanded them to serve him, they have no proper authority over the body and the vices. For what kind of mistress of the body and the vices can that mind be which is ignorant of the true God, in which instead of being subject to his authority is prostituted to the corrupting influences of the most vicious demons. It is for this reason that the virtues which it seems to itself to possess, and by which it restrains the body and the vices that it may obtain and keep what it desires, are rather vices than virtues so long as there is no reference to God in the matter. For although some suppose that virtues which have a reference only to themselves and are desired only on their own account are yet true and genuine virtues, the fact is that even then they are inflated with pride and are therefore to be reckoned vices rather than virtues. For as that which gives life to the flesh is not derived from flesh, but is above it, so that which gives blessed life to man is not derived from man, but is something above him, and what I say of man is true of every celestial power and virtue whatsoever. CHAPTER XXVI. Wherefore, as the life of the flesh is the soul, so the blessed life of man is God, of whom the sacred writings of the Hebrews say, blessed is the people whose God is the Lord. People therefore is the people which is alienated from God. Yet even this people has a peace of its own which is not to be lightly esteemed, though indeed it shall not in the end enjoy it, because it makes no good use of it before the end. But it is our interest that it enjoy this peace meanwhile in this life, for as long as the two cities are co-mingled we also enjoy the peace of Babylon. For from Babylon the people of God is so freed that it meanwhile sojourns in its company, and therefore the apostle also admonished the church to pray for kings and those in authority assigning as the reason that we may live a quiet and tranquil life in all godliness and love. And the prophet Jeremiah, when predicting the captivity that was to befall the ancient people of God and giving them the divine command to go obediently to Babylonia and thus serve their God, counseled them also to pray for Babylonia, saying in the peace thereof shall ye have peace, the temporal peace which the good and the wicked together enjoy. CHAPTER 27 But the peace which is peculiar to ourselves we enjoy now with God by faith and shall hereafter enjoy eternally with him by sight. But the peace which we enjoy in this life, whether common to all or peculiar to ourselves, is rather the solace of our misery than the positive enjoyment of felicity. Our very righteousness, too, though true, insofar as it has respect to the true good, is yet in this life of such a kind that it consists rather in the remission of sins than in the perfecting of virtues. Witness the prayer of the whole city of God in its pilgrim state, for it cries to God by the mouth of all its members, forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. And this prayer is efficacious not for those whose faith is without works and dead, but for those whose faith worketh by love. For as reason, though subjected to God, is yet pressed down by the corruptible body so long as it is in this mortal condition, it has not perfect authority over vice, and therefore this prayer is needed by the righteous. For though it exercises authority, the vices do not submit without a struggle. For however well one maintains the conflict, and however thoroughly he has subdued these enemies, there steals in some evil thing, which if it do not find ready expression and act slips out by the lips or insinuates itself into the thought, and therefore his peace is not full so long as he is at war with his vices. For it is a doubtful conflict he wages with those that resist, and his victory over those that are defeated is not secure, but full of anxiety and effort. Amidst these temptations, therefore, of all which it has been summarily said in the Divine Oracles, is not human life upon earth a temptation, who but a proud man can presume that he so lives that he has no need to say to God, forgive us our debts. Such a man is not great, but swollen and puffed up with vanity, and is justly resisted by him who abundantly gives grace to the humble. Once it is said, God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace to the humble. In this then consists the righteousness of a man that he submit himself to God, his body to his soul, and his vices even when they rebel to his reason which either defeats or at least resists them, and also that he beg from God grace to do his duty and the pardon of his sins, and that he renders to God thanks for all the blessings he receives. But in that final peace to which all our righteousness has reference, and for the sake of which it is maintained, as our nature shall enjoy a sound immortality and incorruption, and shall have no more vices, and as we shall experience no resistance either from ourselves or from others, it will not be necessary that reason should rule vices which no longer exist, but God shall rule the man, and the soul shall rule the body, with the sweetness and facility suitable to the felicity of a life which is done with bondage. And this condition shall there be eternal, and we shall be assured of its eternity, and thus the peace of this blessedness and the blessedness of this peace shall be the supreme good. CHAPTER XXVIII But on the other hand, they who do not belong to this city of God shall inherit eternal misery, which is also called the second death, because the soul shall then be separated from God, its life, and therefore cannot be said to live, and the body shall be subjected to eternal pains. And consequently this second death shall be the more severe, because no death shall terminate it. But war, being contrary to peace, as misery to happiness, and life to death, it is not without reason asked what kind of war can be found in the end of the wicked answering to the peace which is declared to be the end of the righteous. The person who puts this question has only to observe what it is in war that is hurtful and destructive, and he shall see that it is nothing else than the mutual opposition and conflict of things. But can he conceive a more grievous and bitter war than that in which the will is so opposed to passion and passion to the will that their hostility can never be terminated by the victory of either, and in which the violence of pain so conflicts with the nature of the body that neither yields to the other? For in this life, when this conflict has arisen, either pain conquers and death expels the feeling of it, or nature conquers and health expels the pain. And in the world to come, the pain continues that it may torment, and the nature endures that it may be sensible of it, and neither ceases to exist, lest punishment also should cease. Now as it is through the last judgment that men pass to these ends, the good to the supreme good, the evil to the supreme evil, I will treat of this judgment in the following book. CHAPTERS XXI. CHAPTERS I THROUGH SIX OF THE CITY OF GOD. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Darren L. Slider, www.logoslibrary.org. THE CITY OF GOD by St. Augustine of Hippo. BOOK XXI. Intending to speak, independence on God's grace, of the day of His final judgment, and to affirm it against the ungodly and incredulous, we must first of all lay, as it were, in the foundation of the edifice, the divine declarations. Those persons who do not believe such declarations do their best to oppose to them false and illusive sophisms of their own, either contending that what is adduced from Scripture has another meaning, or altogether denying that it is an utterance of God's. For I suppose no man who understands what is written and believes it to be communicated by the supreme and true God through holy men refuses to yield and consent to these declarations, whether he orally confesses his consent, or is from some evil influence ashamed or afraid to do so, or even, with an opinionativeness closely resembling madness, makes strenuous efforts to defend what he knows and believes to be false against what he knows and believes to be true. That therefore which the whole church of the true God holds and professes as its creed, that Christ shall come from heaven to judge quick and dead, this we call the last day, or last time, of the divine judgment. For we do not know how many days this judgment may occupy, but no one who reads the Scriptures, however negligently, need be told that in them day is customarily used for time. And when we speak of the day of God's judgment we add the word last or final for this reason, because even now God judges and has judged from the beginning of human history, banishing from paradise and excluding from the tree of life those first men who perpetrated so great a sin. Yea, he was certainly exercising judgment also when he did not spare the angels who sinned, whose prince, overcome by envy, seduced men after being himself seduced. Neither is it without God's profound and just judgment that the life of demons and men, the one in the air, the other on earth, is filled with misery, calamities, and mistakes. And even though no one had sinned, it could only have been by the good and right judgment of God that the whole rational creation could have been maintained in eternal blessedness by a persevering adherence to its Lord. He judges too, not only in the mass, condemning the race of devils and the race of men to be miserable on account of the original sin of these races, but he also judges the voluntary and personal acts of individuals. For even the devils pray that they may not be tormented, which proves that without injustice they might either be spared or tormented according to their deserts. And men are punished by God for their sins often visibly, always secretly, either in this life or after death, although no man acts rightly saved by the assistance of divine aid, and no man or devil acts unrighteously saved by the permission of the divine and most just judgment. For as the Apostle says, there is no unrighteousness with God, and as he elsewhere says, his judgments are inscrutable and his ways past finding out. In this book, then, I shall speak, as God permits, not of those first judgments, nor of these intervening judgments of God, but of the last judgment, when Christ is to come from heaven to judge the quick and the dead. For that day is properly cold the day of judgment, because in it there shall be no room left for the ignorant questioning why this wicked person is happy and that righteous man unhappy. In that day true and full happiness shall be the lot of none but the good, while deserved and supreme misery shall be the portion of the wicked and of them only. CHAPTER 2 In this present time we learn to bear with equanimity the ills to which even good men are subject and to hold cheap the blessings which even the wicked enjoy. And consequently, even in those conditions of life in which the justice of God is not apparent, his teaching is salutary. For we do not know by what judgment of God this good man is poor and that bad man rich. Why he who, in our opinion, ought to suffer acutely for his abandoned life, enjoys himself, while sorrow pursues him whose praiseworthy life leads us to suppose he should be happy. Why the innocent man is dismissed from the bar not only unevented, but even condemned, being either wronged by the iniquity of the judge or overwhelmed by false evidence, while his guilty adversary, on the other hand, is not only discharged with impunity, but even has his claims admitted. Why the ungodly enjoys good health, while the godly pines in sickness. Why ruffians are of the soundest constitution, while they who could not hurt anyone, even with a word, are from infancy afflicted with complicated disorders. Why he who is useful to society is cut off by premature death, while those who, as it might seem, ought never to have been so much as born, have lives of unusual length. Why he who is full of crimes is crowned with honors, while the blameless man is buried in the darkness of neglect. But who can collect or enumerate all the contrasts of this kind? But if this anomalous state of things were uniform in this life, in which, as the sacred solmist says, man is like to vanity, his days as a shadow that passeth away, so uniform that none but wicked men won the transitory prosperity of earth, while only the good suffered its ills, this could be referred to the just and even benign judgment of God. We might suppose that they who were not destined to obtain those everlasting benefits which constitute human blessedness were either deluded by transitory blessings as the just reward of their wickedness, or were, in God's mercy, consoled by them, and that they who were not destined to suffer eternal torments were afflicted with temporal chastisement for their sins, or were stimulated to greater attainment in virtue. But now, as it is, since we not only see good men involved in the ills of life and bad men enjoying the good of it, which seems unjust, but also that evil often overtakes evil men, and good surprises the good, the rather on this account are God's judgments unsearchable, and his ways past finding out. Although, therefore, we do not know by what judgment these things are done or permitted to be done by God, with whom is the highest virtue, the highest wisdom, the highest justice, no infirmity, no rashness, no unrighteousness, yet it is salutary for us to learn to hold cheap such things, be they good or evil, as they attach indifferently to good men and bad, and to covet those good things which belong only to good men, and flee those evils which belong only to evil men. But when we shall have come to that judgment, the date of which is called peculiarly the Day of Judgment, and sometimes the Day of the Lord, we shall then recognize the justice of all God's judgments, not only of such as shall then be pronounced, but of all which take effect from the beginning, or may take effect before that time. And in that day we shall also recognize with what justice so many, or almost all, the just judgments of God in the present life defy the scrutiny of human sense or insight, though in this matter it is not concealed from pious minds that what is concealed is just. CHAPTER III Solomon, the wisest king of Israel, who reigned in Jerusalem, thus commences the book called Ecclesiastes, which the Jews number among their canonical scriptures. VANITY OF VANITES, said Ecclesiastes, VANITY OF VANITES, ALL HIS VANITY. What profit hath a man of all his labor which he hath taken under the sun? And after going on to enumerate, with this as his text, the calamities and delusions of this life, and the shifting nature of the present time, in which there is nothing substantial, nothing lasting, he bewails among the other vanities that are under the sun, this also, that though wisdom excelleth folly, his light excelleth darkness, and though the eyes of the wise man are in his head, while the fool walketh in darkness, yet one event happeneth to them all, that is to say, in this life under the sun, unquestionably alluding to those evils which we see before good and bad men alike. He says further that the good suffered the ills of life as if they were evil doers, and the bad enjoy the good of life as if they were good. There is a vanity which is done upon the earth, that there be just men unto whom it happeneth according to the work of the wicked. Again there be wicked men to whom it happeneth according to the work of the righteous. I said that this also is vanity. This wisest man devoted this whole book to a full exposure of this vanity evidently with no other object than that we might long for that life in which there is no vanity unto the sun but verity unto him who made the sun. In this vanity, then, was it not by the just and righteous judgment of God that man, made like to vanity, was destined to pass away? But in these days of vanity it makes an important difference whether he resists or yields to the truth and whether he is destitute of true piety or a partaker of it. Nothing not so far as regards the requirement of the blessings or the evasion of the calamities of this transitory and vain life, but in connection with the future judgment which shall make over to good men good things and to bad men bad things in permanent inalienable possession. In fine this wiseman concludes this book of his by saying, Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is every man, for God shall bring every work into judgment with every despised person, whether it be good or whether it be evil. What truer, tercer, more salutary announcement could be made. Fear God, he says, and keep his commandments, for this is every man. For whosoever has real existence is this, is a keeper of God's commandments, and he who is not this is nothing. For so long as he remains in the likeness of vanity he is not renewed in the image of the truth. For God shall bring into judgment every work, that is, whatever man does in this life, whether it be good or whether it be evil, with every despised person, that is, with every man who here seems despicable and is therefore not considered, for God sees even him and does not despise him nor pass over him in his judgment. CHAPTER IV The proofs, then, of this last judgment of God which I propose to adduce shall be drawn first from the New Testament and then from the Old. For although the Old Testament is prior and point of time, the New has the precedence in intrinsic value, for the Old acts the part of herald to the New. We shall therefore first cite passages from the New Testament and confirm them by quotations from the Old Testament. The Old contains the Law and the Prophets, the New, the Gospel, and the Apostolic Epistles. Now the Apostle says, By the Law is the knowledge of sin, but now the righteousness of God without the Law is manifested, being witnessed by the Law and the Prophets. Now the righteousness of God is by faith of Jesus Christ upon all them that believe. This righteousness of God belongs to the New Testament and evidence for it exists in the Old Books, that is to say, in the Law and the Prophets. I shall first then state the case and then call the witnesses. This order Jesus Christ himself directs us to observe, saying, The scribe instructed in the kingdom of God is like a good householder bringing out of his treasure things new and old. He did not say old and new, which he certainly would have said had he not wished to follow the order of merit rather than that of time. Chapter 5 The Savior himself, while reproving the cities in which he had done great works but which had not believed, and while setting them in unfavorable comparison with foreign cities, says, But I say unto you it shall be more tolerable for tire and siden at the day of judgment than for you. And a little after he says, Verily I say unto you it shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and the day of judgment than for thee. Here he most plainly predicts that a day of judgment is to come. And in another place he says, The men of Nineveh shall rise in judgment with this generation and shall condemn it, because they repented at the preaching of Jonas, and behold, a greater than Jonas is here. The Queen of the South shall rise up in the judgment with this generation and shall condemn it, for she came from the uttermost parts of the earth to hear the words of Solomon, and behold, a greater than Solomon is here. Two things we learn from this passage that a judgment is to take place and that it is to take place at the resurrection of the dead. For when he spoke of the Ninevites and the Queen of the South, he certainly spoke of dead persons, and yet he said that they should rise up in the day of judgment. He did not say they shall condemn as if they themselves were to be the judges, but because in comparison with them the others shall be justly condemned. Again in another passage, in which he was speaking of the present intermingling and future separation of the good and bad, the separation which shall be made in the day of judgment, he adduced to comparison drawn from the sown wheat and the tears sown among them, and gave this explanation of it to his disciples, he that soweth the good seed as the son of man, etcetera. Here indeed he did not name the judgment or the day of judgment, but indicated it much more clearly by describing the circumstances and foretold that it should take place in the end of the world. In like manner he says to his disciples, Verily I say unto you that ye which have followed me in the regeneration when the son of man shall sit on throne of his glory, ye also shall sit upon twelve thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel. Here we learn that Jesus shall judge with his disciples, and therefore he said elsewhere to the Jews, If I by Beelzebub cast out devils, by whom do your sons cast them out, therefore they shall be your judges. Neither ought we to suppose that only twelve men shall judge along with him, though he says that they shall sit upon twelve thrones, for by the number twelve is signified the completeness of the multitude of those who shall judge. For the two parts of the number seven, which commonly symbolizes totality, that is to say four and three, multiplied into one another, give twelve. For four times three, or three times four, are twelve. There are other meanings, too, in this number twelve. We're not this the right interpretation of the twelve thrones, then since we read that Matthias was ordained an apostle in the room of Judas the traitor, the apostle Paul, though he labored more than them all, should have no throne of judgment, but he unmistakably considers himself to be included in the number of the judges when he says, No ye not that we shall judge angels. The same rule is to be observed in applying the number twelve to those who ought to be judged. For though it was said, Judging the twelve tribes of Israel, the tribe of Levi, which is the thirteenth, shall not on this account be exempt from judgment, neither shall judgment be passed only on Israel and not on the other nations. And by the words in the regeneration he certainly meant the resurrection of the dead to be understood, for our flesh shall be regenerated by incorruption as our soul is regenerated by faith. Many passages I omit because, though they seem to refer to the last judgment, yet on a closer examination they are found to be ambiguous or to allude rather to some other event, whether to that coming of the Saviour which continually occurs in his church, that is, in his members, in which he comes little by little and piece by piece, since the whole church is his body, or to the destruction of the earthly Jerusalem. For when he speaks even of this he often uses language which is applicable to the end of the world, and that last and great day of judgment, so that these two events cannot be distinguished unless all the corresponding passages bearing on the subject and the three evangelists, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, are compared with one another. For some things are put more obscurely by one evangelist and more plainly by another, so that it becomes apparent what things are meant to be referred to one event. It is this which I have been at pains to do, in a letter which I wrote to Hysicius of blessed memory, Bishop of Salon, and entitled, Of the End of the World. I shall now cite from the Gospel, according to Matthew, the passage which speaks of the separation of the good from the wicked by the most efficacious and final judgment of Christ. When the Son of Man, he says, shall come in his glory, then shall he say also unto them on his left hand, depart from me ye cursed into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels. Then he, in like manner, recounts to the wicked the things they had not done, but which he had said those on the right hand had done, and when they ask when they had seen him in need of these things, he replies that in as much as they had not done it, to the least of his brethren, they had not done it unto him, and concludes his address in the words, and these shall go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into life eternal. Moreover, the evangelist John most distinctly states that he had predicted that the judgment should be at the resurrection of the dead. For after saying, The Father judges no man, but hath committed all judgment unto the Son, that all men should honor the Son, even as they honor the Father. He that honoreth not the Son, honoreth not the Father which hath sent him. He immediately adds, Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me hath everlasting life, and shall not come into judgment, but is passed from death to life. Here he said that believers on him should not come into judgment. How then shall they be separated from the wicked by judgment, and be set at his right hand, unless judgment be in this passage used for condemnation? For into judgment in this sense they shall not come, who hear his word, and believeth on him that sent him. After that he adds the words, Verily, verily, I say unto you, The hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and they that hear shall live. For as the Father hath life in himself, so hath he given to the Son to have life in himself. As yet he does not speak of the second resurrection, that is the resurrection of the body, which shall be in the end, but of the first which now is. It is for the sake of making this distinction that he says, The hour is coming, and now is. Now this resurrection regards not the body, but the soul. For souls too have a death of their own in wickedness, and sins, whereby they are the dead, of whom the same lips say, Suffer the dead to bury their dead, that is, let those who are dead in soul bury them that are dead in body. It is of these dead, then, the dead in ungodliness and wickedness, that he says, The hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and they that hear shall live. They that hear, that is, they who obey, believe, and persevere to the end. Here no difference is made between the good and the bad. For it is good for all men to hear his voice and live by passing to the life of godliness from the death of ungodliness. Of this death the apostle Paul says, Therefore all are dead, and he died for all that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto him which died for them, and rose again. Thus all, without one exception, were dead in sins, whether original or voluntary sins, sins of ignorance or sins committed against knowledge, and for all the dead there died the one only person who lived, that is, who had no sin whatever, in order that they who live by the remission of their sins should live not to themselves, but to him who died for all, for our sins, and rose again for our justification, that we, believing in him who justifies the ungodly, and being justified from ungodliness or quickened from death, may be able to attain to the first resurrection which now is. For in this first resurrection none have a part save those who shall be eternally blessed. But in the second of which he goes on to speak, all as we shall learn, have a part, both the blessed and the wretched. The one is the resurrection of mercy, the other of judgment, and therefore it is written in the Psalm, I will sing of mercy and of judgment, unto thee, O Lord, will I sing. And of this judgment he went on to say, and hath given him authority to execute judgment also, because he is the Son of man. Here he shows that he will come to judge in that flesh in which he had come to be judged. For it is to show this, he says, because he is the Son of man. And then follow the words for our purpose, marvel not at this, for the hour is coming, in the which all that are in the grave shall hear his voice, and shall come forth, they that have done good unto the resurrection of life, and they that have done evil unto the resurrection of judgment. This judgment he uses here in the same sense as a little before, when he says, He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into judgment, but is passed from death to life. That is, by having a part in the first resurrection, by which a transition from death to life is made in this present time, he shall not come into damnation, which he mentions by the name of judgment, as also in the place where he says, that they that have done evil unto the resurrection of judgment, that is, of damnation. He therefore who would not be damned in the second resurrection, let him rise in the first. For the hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and they that hear shall live, that is, shall not come into damnation, which is called the second death, into which death, after the second or bodily resurrection, they shall be hurled, who do not rise in the first or spiritual resurrection. For the hour is coming, but here he does not say, and now is, because it shall come in the end of the world, in the last and greatest judgment of God, when all that are in the grave shall hear his voice, and shall come forth. He does not say, as in the first resurrection, and they that hear shall live, for all shall not live, at least with such life as ought alone to be called life, because it alone is blessed. For some kind of life they must have, in order to hear, and come forth from the graves in their rising bodies. And why all shall not live, he teaches in the words that follow, they that have done good to the resurrection of life, these are they who shall live, but they that have done evil to the resurrection of judgment, these are they who shall not live, for they shall die in the second death. They have done evil because their life has been evil, and their life has been evil because it has not been renewed in the first or spiritual resurrection which now is, or because they have not persevered to the end in their renewed life. As then there are two regenerations of which I have already made mention, the one according to faith, and which takes place in the present life by means of baptism, the other according to the flesh, and which shall be accomplished in its incorruption and immortality by means of the great and final judgment. So are there also two resurrections, the one the first and spiritual resurrection which has place in this life, and preserves us from coming into the second death, the other the second which does not occur now, but in the end of the world, and which is of the body, not at the soul, and which by the last judgment shall dismiss some into the second death, others into that life which has no death.