 CHAPTER 12 When therefore it is asked what death it was with which God threatened our first parents if they should transgress the commandment they had received from him and should fail to preserve their obedience, whether it was the death of soul or of body or of the whole man or that which is called second death, we must answer, it is all. For the first consists of two, the second is the complete death which consists of all. For as the whole earth consists of many lands and the church universal of many churches, so death universal consists of all deaths. The first consists of two, one of the body and another of the soul, so that the first death is a death of the whole man, since the soul without God and without the body suffers punishment for a time. But the second is when the soul without God but with the body suffers punishment everlasting. When therefore God said to that first man whom he had placed in paradise, referring to the forbidden fruit, in the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die. That threatening included not only the first part of the first death, by which the soul is deprived of God, nor only the subsequent part of the first death, by which the body is deprived of the soul, nor only the whole first death itself, by which the soul is punished in separation from God and from the body. It includes whatever of death there is, even to that final death which is called second, and to which none is subsequent. CHAPTER XIII For as soon as our first parents had transgressed the commandment, divine grace, forsook them, and they were confounded at their own wickedness, and therefore they took fig leaves, which were possibly the first that came to hand in their troubled state of mind, and covered their shame. For though their members remained the same, they had shame now where they had none before. They experienced a new motion of their flesh, which had become disobedient to them in strict retribution of their own disobedience to God. For the soul, reveling in its own liberty and scorning to serve God, was itself deprived of the command that had formerly maintained over the body. And because that it willfully deserted its superior Lord had no longer held its own inferior servant, neither could it hold the flesh subject as it would always have been able to do had it remained itself subject to God. Then began the flesh to lust against the spirit in which strife we are born, deriving from the first transgression a seed of death, and burying at our members in an arvisiated nature the contest or even victory of the flesh. CHAPTER XIV For God, the author of natures, not of vices, created man upright. But man, being of his own will corrupted and justly condemned, begot corrupted and condemned children. For we all were in that one man, since we all were that one man, who fell into sin by the woman who was made from him before the sin. For not yet was the particular form created and distributed to us in which we as individuals were to live, but already the seminal nature was there from which we were to be propagated. And this, being vitiated by sin and bound by the chain of death and justly condemned, man could not be born of man in any other state. And thus, from the bad use of free will, there originated the whole train of evil, which, with its concatenation of miseries, convoys the human race from its depraved origin, as from a corrupt root, on to the destruction of the second death, which has no end, those only being accepted, who are freed by the grace of God. CHAPTER XV It may perhaps be supposed that because God said, ye shall die the death, and not deaths. We shall understand only that death which occurs when the soul is deserted by God, who is its life. For it was not deserted by God, and so deserted him, but deserted him, and so was deserted by him. For its own will was the originator of its evil, as God was the originator of its motions towards good, both in making it when it was not, and in remaking it when it had fallen and perished. But though we suppose that God meant only this death, and that the words, in the day ye eat of it, ye shall die the death, should be understood as meaning, in the day ye desert me in disobedience, I will desert you in justice. Yet assuredly in this death the other deaths also were threatened, which are its inevitable consequence. For in the first stirring of the disobedient motion which was felt in the flesh of the disobedient soul, and which caused our first parents to cover their shame, one death indeed is experienced, that namely which occurs when God forsakes the soul. This was intimated by the words he uttered, when the man, stupefied by fear, had hit himself, Adam, where art thou? Words which he used, not in ignorance of inquiry, but warning him to consider where he was, since God was not with him. But when the soul itself forsook the body, corrupted and decayed with age, the other death was experienced, of which God had spoken in pronouncing man's sentence, earth thou art, and unto earth shall thou return. And of these two deaths, that first death of the whole man is composed. And this first death is finally followed by the second, unless man be freed by grace. For the body would not return to the earth from which it was made, save only by the death proper to itself, which occurs when it is forsaken of the soul its life. And therefore it is agreed among all Christians who truthfully hold the Catholic faith, that we are subject to the death of the body, not by the law of nature, by which God ordained no death for man, but by his righteous infliction on account of sin. For God, taking vengeance on sin, said to the man, in whom we all then were, dust thou art, and unto dust shall thou return. CHAPTER XVI But the philosophers against whom we are defending the city of God, that is, his church, seem to themselves to have good cause to deride us, because we say that the separation of the soul from the body is to be held as part of man's punishment. For they suppose that the blessedness of the soul then only is complete when it is quite denuded of the body, and returns to God a pure and simple and, as it were, naked soul. On this point, if I should find nothing in their own literature to refute this opinion, I should be forced laboriously to demonstrate that it is not the body, but the corruptibility of the body, which is a burden to the soul. Hence that sentence of Scripture we quoted in a foregoing book, for the corruptible body presseth down the soul. The word corruptible is added to show that the soul is burdened not by any body whatsoever, but by the body such as it has become in consequence of sin. And even though the word had not been added, we could understand nothing else. But when Plato most expressly declares that the gods who are made by the supreme have immortal bodies, and when he introduces their maker himself, promising them, as a great boon, that they should abide in their bodies eternally, and never by any death be loosed from them, why do these adversaries of ours, for the sake of troubling the Christian faith, feign to be ignorant of what they quite well know, and even prefer to contradict themselves rather than lose an opportunity of contradicting us? Here are Plato's words as Cicero has translated them, in which he introduces the supreme addressing the gods he had made, and saying, Ye who are sprung from a divine stock, consider of what works I am the parent and author. These your bodies are indestructible so long as I will it, although all that is composed can be destroyed. But it is wicked to dissolve what reason has compacted. But seeing that ye have been born, ye cannot indeed be immortal and indestructible, yet ye shall by no means be destroyed, nor shall any fates consign you to death, and prove superior to my will, which is a stronger assurance of your perpetuity than those bodies to which ye were joined when ye were born. Plato, you see, says that the gods are both mortal by the connection of the body and soul, and yet are rendered immortal by the will and decree of their maker. If therefore it is a punishment to the soul to be connected with any body whatever, why does God address them as if they were afraid of death, that is, of the separation of soul and body? Why does he seek to reassure them by promising them immortality, not in virtue of their nature, which is composite and not simple, but by virtue of his invincible will, whereby he can affect that neither things born die, nor things compounded be dissolved, but preserved eternally? What of this opinion of Plato's about the stars is true or not is another question, for we cannot at once grant to him that these luminous bodies or globes, which by day and night shine on the earth with the light of their bodily substance, have also intellectual and blessed souls which animate each its own body, as he confidently affirms of the universe itself as if it were one huge animal in which all other animals were contained. But this, as I said, is another question which we have not undertaken to discuss at present. This much only I deemed right to bring forward in opposition to those who so pride themselves on being or on being cold, Platonists, that they blush to be Christians, and who cannot brook to be cold by a name which the common people also bear, lest they vulgarize the philosopher's coterie which is proud in proportion to its exclusiveness. These men, seeking a weak point in the Christian doctrine, expect for attack the eternity of the body as if it were a contradiction to contend for the blessedness of the soul and to wish it to be always resident in the body, bound, as it were, in a lamentable chain. And this, although Plato, their own founder and master, affirms that it was granted by the Supreme as a boon to the gods he had made that they should not die, that is, should not be separated from the bodies with which he had connected them. CHAPTER XVII These same philosophers further contend that terrestrial bodies cannot be eternal, though they make no doubt that the whole earth, which is itself the central member of their God, not indeed of the greatest, but yet have a great God, that is, of this whole world, is eternal. Since then the Supreme made for them another God, that is, this world, superior to the other gods beneath him, and since they suppose that this God is an animal, having, as they affirm, a rational or intellectual soul enclosed in the huge mass of its body, and having, as the fitly situated and adjusted members of its body, the four elements whose union they wish to be indissoluble and eternal, lest perchance this great God of theirs might someday perish, one reason is there that the earth, which is the central member and the body of a greater creature, should be eternal, and the bodies of other terrestrial creatures should not possibly be eternal if God should so will it. That earth, they say, must return to earth out of which the terrestrial bodies of the animals have been taken. For this, they say, is the reason of the necessity of their death and dissolution, and this the manner of their restoration to the solid and eternal earth once they came. But if anyone says the same thing of fire, holding that the bodies which are derived from it to make celestial beings must be restored to the universal fire, does not the immortality which Plato represents these gods is receiving from the supreme evanesce and the heat of this dispute? Or does this not happen with those celestials, because God, whose will, as Plato says, overpowers all powers, has will that should not be so? What then hinders God from ordaining the same of terrestrial bodies? And since indeed Plato acknowledges that God can prevent things that are born from dying, and things that are joined from being sundered, and things that are composed from being dissolved, and can ordain that the souls once allotted to their bodies should never abandon them, but enjoy along with them immortality and everlasting bliss, why may he not also affect that terrestrial bodies die not? Is God powerless to do everything that is special to the Christian's creed, but powerful to affect everything the Platonist desire? The philosophers forsooth have been admitted to a knowledge of the divine purposes and power which has been denied to the prophets. The truth is that the Spirit of God taught his prophets so much of his will as he thought fit to reveal, but the philosophers and their efforts to discover it were deceived by human conjecture. But they should not have been so led astray I will not say by their ignorance but by their obstinacy as to contradict themselves so frequently, for they maintain with all their vaunted might that in order to the happiness of the soul it must abandon not only its earthly body, but every kind of body, and yet they hold that the gods whose souls are most blessed are bound to everlasting bodies, the celestials to fiery bodies, and the soul of Job himself, or this world as they would have us believe, to all the physical elements which compose this entire mass reaching from earth to heaven. For this soul Plato believes to be extended and diffused by musical numbers from the middle of the inside of the earth, which geometricians call the center, outwards through all its parts to the utmost heights and extremities of the heavens, so that this world is a very great and blessed immortal animal whose soul has both the perfect blessedness of wisdom and never leaves its own body, and whose body has life everlasting from the soul and by no means clogs or hinders it, though itself be not a simple body, but compacted of so many and so huge materials. Since therefore they allow so much to their own conjectures, why do they refuse to believe that by the divine will and power immortality can be conferred on earthly bodies in which the souls would be neither oppressed with the burden of them, nor separated from them by any death, but live eternally and blessedly. Do they not assert that their own gods so live in bodies of fire, and that Job himself, their king, so lives in the physical elements? If in order to its blessedness the soul must quit every kind of body, let their gods flit from the starry spheres and Jupiter from earth to sky, or if they cannot do so, let them be pronounced miserable. But neither alternative will these men adopt, for on the one hand they dare not ascribe to their own gods a departure from the body, lest they should seem to worship mortals, on the other hand they dare not deny their happiness, lest they should acknowledge wretches as gods. Therefore to obtain blessedness we need not quit every kind of body, but only the corruptible, cumbersome, painful dying. Not such bodies as the goodness of God can thrive for the first man, but such only as man's sin entailed. CHAPTER XVIII But it is necessary, they say, that the natural weight of earthly bodies either keeps them on earth or draws them to it, and therefore they cannot be in heaven. Our first parents were indeed on earth in a well-wooded and fruitful spot which has been named Paradise. But let our adversaries a little more carefully consider this subject of earthly weight, because it has important bearings both on the ascension of the body of Christ and also on the resurrection body of the saints. If human skill can by some contrivance fabricate vessels that float out of metals which sink as soon as they are placed on the water, how much more credible is it that God, by some occult mode of operation, should even more certainly affect that these earthy masses be emancipated from the downward pressure of their weight. This cannot be impossible to that God by whose almighty will, according to Plato, neither things born perish nor things composed dissolve, especially since it is much more wonderful that spiritual and bodily essences be conjoint than that bodies be adjusted to other material substances. Can we not also easily believe that souls, being made perfectly blessed, should be endowed with the power of moving their earthy but incorruptible bodies as they please with almost spontaneous movement, and of placing them where they please with the greddiest action? If the angels transport whatever terrestrial creatures they please from any place they please and convey them wither they please, is it to be believed that they cannot do so without toil and the feeling of burden? Why then may we not believe that the spirits of the saints made perfect and blessed by divine grace can carry their own bodies where they please and set them where they will? For though we have been accustomed to notice in bearing ways that the larger the quantity the greater the weight of earthly bodies is, and that the greater the weight the more burdensome it is, yet the soul carries the members of its own flesh with less difficulty when they are massive with health than in sickness when they are wasted. And though the hail and strong man feels heavier to other men carrying him than the lank and sickly, yet the man himself moves and carries his own body with less feeling of burden when he has the greater bulk of vigorous health than when his frame is reduced to a minimum by hunger or disease. Of such consequence in estimating the weight of earthly bodies, even while yet corruptible and mortal, is the consideration not of dead weight but of the healthy equilibrium of the parts. And what words can tell the difference between what we now call health and future immortality? Let not the philosophers then think to upset our faith with arguments from the weight of bodies, for I don't care to inquire why they cannot believe an earthly body can be in heaven while the whole earth is suspended on nothing. For perhaps the world keeps its central place by the same law that attracts to its center all heavy bodies. But this I say, if the lesser gods to whom Plato committed the creation of man and the other terrestrial creatures were able, as he affirms, to withdraw from the fire its quality of burning while they left it that of lighting, so that it should shine through the eyes. And if to the Supreme God Plato also concedes the power of preserving from death things that have been born and of preserving from dissolution things that are composed of parts so different as body and spirit, are we to hesitate to concede to this same God the power to operate on the flesh of him whom he has endowed with immortality so as to withdraw its corruption but leave its nature, remove its burdensome weight, but retain its seemly form and members? But concerning our belief in the resurrection of the dead and concerning their immortal bodies we shall speak more at large, not willing, in the end of this work. CHAPTER XIX At present let us go on as we have begun to give some explanation regarding the bodies of our first parents. I say then that except as the just consequence of sin they would not have been subjected even to this death which is good to the good, this death which is not exclusively known and believed in by a few but is known to all by which soul and body are separated and by which the body of an animal which was but now visibly living is now visibly dead. For though there can be no manner of doubt that the souls of the just and holy dead live in peaceful rest, yet so much better would it be for them to be alive in healthy well conditioned bodies that even those who hold the tenet that it is most blessed to be quit of every kind of body condemn this opinion in spite of themselves. For no one will dare to set wise men, whether yet to die or already dead, in other words whether already quit of the body or shortly to be so, above the immortal gods to whom the Supreme in Plato promises as a munificent gift, life indissoluble or an eternal union with their bodies. But the same Plato thinks that nothing better can happen to men than that they pass through life piously and justly and being separated from their bodies be received into the bosom of the gods who never abandon theirs. That oblivious of the past they may revisit the upper air and conceive the longing to return again to the body. Virgil is applauded for borrowing this from the Platonic system. Assuredly Plato thinks that the souls of mortals cannot always be in their bodies but must necessarily be dismissed by death, and on the other hand he thinks that without bodies they cannot endure forever but with ceaseless alternation pass from life to death and from death to life. This difference, however, he sets between wise men and the rest, that they are carried after death to the stars, that each man may repose for a while in a star suitable for him and may thence return to the labors and miseries of mortals when he has become oblivious of his former misery and possessed with the desire of being embodied. Those again who have lived foolishly trans-migrate into bodies fit for them, whether human or bestial. Thus he is appointed even the good and wise souls to a very hard lot indeed, since they do not receive such bodies as they might always and even immortally inhabit, but such only as they can neither permanently retain nor enjoy eternal purity without. Of this notion of Plato's we have in a former book already said that Porphyry was ashamed in the light of these Christian times so that he not only emancipated human souls from a destiny in the bodies of beasts, but also contended for the liberation of the souls of the wise from all bodily ties, so that escaping from all flesh they might as bare and blessed souls dwell with a father time without end. And that he might not seem to be outbid by Christ's promise of life everlasting to his saints, he also established purified souls in endless felicity without return to their former woes. But that he might contradict Christ, he denies the resurrection of incorruptible bodies and maintains that these souls will live eternally not only without earthly bodies but without any bodies at all. And yet whatever he meant by this teaching he at least did not teach that these souls should offer no religious observance to the gods who dwelt in bodies. And why did he not, unless because he did not believe that the souls, even though separate from the body, were superior to those gods? Therefore if these philosophers will not dare, as I think they will not, to set human souls above the gods who are most blessed and yet are tied eternally to their bodies, why do they find that absurd which the Christian faith preaches, namely that our first parents were so created that if they had not sinned they would not have been dismissed from their bodies by any death, but would have been endowed with immortality as the reward of their obedience and would have lived eternally with their bodies, and further that the saints will in the resurrection inhabit those very bodies in which they have here toiled, but in such sort that neither shall any corruption or unwieldiness be suffered to attach to their flesh nor any grief or trouble to cloud their felicity. CHAPTER XX Thus the souls of departed saints are not affected by the death which dismisses them from their bodies because their flesh rests in hope no matter what indignities it receives after sensation is gone. For they do not desire that their bodies be forgotten as Plato thinks fit, but rather because they remember what has been promised by him who deceives no man, and who gave them security for the safekeeping even of the hairs of their head, they with the longing patience wait in hope of the resurrection of their bodies, in which they have suffered many hardships and are now to suffer never again. For if they did not hate their own flesh when it, with its native infirmity, opposed their will and had to be constrained by the spiritual law, how much more shall they love it when it shall even itself have become spiritual? For as when the spirit serves the flesh it is fitly cold carnal, so when the flesh serves the spirit it will justly be called spiritual. Not that it is converted into spirit has some fancy from the words, it is sown in corruption, it is raised in incorruption, but because it is subject to the spirit with the perfect and marvelous readiness of obedience and responds in all things to the will that has entered on immortality, all reluctance, all corruption, and all slowness being removed. For the body will not only be better than it was here in its best estate of health, but it will surpass the bodies of our first parents ere they sinned. For though they were not to die unless they should sin, yet they used food, as men do now, their bodies not being as yet spiritual, but animal only. And though they decayed not with years, nor drew nearer to death, a condition secured to them in God's marvelous grace by the tree of life which grew along with the forbidden tree in the midst of paradise, yet they took other nourishment, though not of that one tree which was interdicted not because it was itself bad, but for the sake of commending a pure and simple obedience which is the great virtue of the rational creature sat under the Creator as His Lord. For though no evil thing was touched, yet if a thing forbidden was touched, the very disobedience was sin. They were then nourished by other fruit which they took that their animal bodies might not suffer the discomfort of hunger or thirst, but they tasted the tree of life the death might not steal upon them from any quarter and that they might not, spent with age, decay. Other fruits were, so to speak, their nourishment, but this their sacrament, so that the tree of life would seem to have been in the terrestrial paradise what the wisdom of God is in the spiritual of which it is written, she is a tree of life to them that lay hold upon her. CHAPTER XXI On this account some allegorize all that concerns paradise itself where the first men, the parents of the human race, are, according to the truth of holy scripture, recorded to have been, and they understand all its trees and fruit-bearing plants as virtues and habits of life as if they had no existence in the external world but were only so spoken of or related for the sake of spiritual meanings, as if there could not be a real terrestrial paradise, as if there never existed these two women, Sarah and Hagar, nor the two sons who were born to Abraham, the one of the bond woman, the other of the free, because the apostle says that in them the two covenants were prefigured, or as if water never flowed from the rock when Moses struck it, because therein Christ can be seen in a figure, as the same apostle says, now that rock was Christ. No one then denies that paradise may signify the life of the blessed, its four rivers, the four virtues, prudence, fortitude, temperance, and justice, its trees, all useful knowledge, its fruits, the customs of the godly, its tree of life, wisdom herself, the mother of all good, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, the experience of a broken commandment. The punishment which God appointed was in itself a just and therefore a good thing, but man's experience of it is not good. These things can also, and more profitably, be understood of the church so that they become prophetic foreshadowings of things to come. Thus paradise is the church, as it is cold in the canticles, the four rivers of paradise are the four gospels, the fruit trees, the saints, and the fruit there works, the tree of life is the holy of holies, Christ, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, the will's free choice. For if man despises the will of God, he can only destroy himself, and so he learns the difference between consecrating himself to the common good and reveling in his own. For he who loves himself is abandoned to himself, in order that being overwhelmed with fears and sorrows he may cry if there be yet soul in him to feel his ills in the words of the psalm, my soul is cast down within me, and when chastened may say, because of his strength I will wait upon thee. These and similar allegorical interpretations may be suitably put upon paradise without giving offence to any one, while yet we believe the strict truth of the history confirmed by its circumstantial narrative of facts. CHAPTER XII THROUGH TWENTY-FOUR of the City of God The bodies of the righteous, then, such as they shall be in the resurrection, shall need neither any fruit to preserve them from dying of disease or the wasting decay of old age nor any other physical nourishment to allay the cravings of hunger or of thirst, for they shall be invested with so sure and every way inviolable in immortality that they shall not eat save when they choose nor be under the necessity of eating while they enjoy the power of doing so. For so also was it with the angels who presented themselves to the eye and touch of men, not because they could do no otherwise, but because they were able and desirous to suit themselves to men by a kind of manhood ministry. For neither are we to suppose, when men receive them as guests, that the angels eat only in appearance, though to any who did not know them to be angels they might seem to eat from the same necessity as ourselves. So these words spoken in the Book of Tobit, you saw me eat, but you saw it but in vision. That is, you thought I took food as you do for the sake of refreshing my body. But if in the case of the angels another opinion seems more capable of defense, certainly our faith leaves no room to doubt regarding our Lord himself that even after his resurrection and when now in spiritual but yet real flesh he ate and drank with his disciples, for not the power but the need of eating and drinking is taken from these bodies, and so they will be spiritual not because they shall cease to be bodies, but because they shall subsist by the quickening spirit. CHAPTER XXIII For as those bodies of ours that have a living soul though not as yet a quickening spirit are called soul-informed bodies and yet are not souls but bodies, so also those bodies are called spiritual. Yet God forbid we should therefore suppose them to be spirits and not bodies, which, being quickened by the spirit, have the substance but not the unwieldiness and corruption of flesh. One will then be not earthly but heavenly, not because the body will not be that very body which was made of earth, but because by its heavenly endowment it will be a fit inhabitant of heaven, and this not by losing its nature, but by changing its quality. The first man of the earth-earthy was made a living soul, not a quickening spirit, which rank was reserved for him as the reward of obedience, and therefore his body which required meat and drink to satisfy hunger and thirst, and which had no absolute and indestructible immortality but by means of the tree of life warded off the necessity of dying and was thus maintained in the flower of youth. This body, I say, was doubtless not spiritual but animal, and yet it would not have died but that it provoked God's threatened vengeance by offending. And though sustenance was not denied him even outside paradise, yet, being forbidden the tree of life, he was delivered over to the wasting of time, at least in respect of that life which had he not sinned, he might have retained perpetually in paradise though only in an animal body till such time as it became spiritual in acknowledgment of his obedience. Therefore although we understand that this manifest death which consists in the separation of soul and body was also signified by God when he said, In the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die, it ought not on that account to seem absurd that they were not dismissed from the body on that very day in which they took the forbidden and death-bringing fruit, for certainly on that very day their nature was altered for the worse and vitiated, and by their most just banishment from the tree of life they were involved in the necessity even of bodily death in which necessity we are born. And therefore the apostle does not say the body indeed is doomed to die on account of sin, but he says the body indeed is dead because of sin. Then he adds, But if the spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his spirit that dwelleth in you. Then accordingly shall the body become a quickening spirit which is now a living soul, and yet the apostle calls it dead because already it lies under the necessity of dying. But in Paradise it was so made a living soul, though not a quickening spirit, that it could not properly be called dead, for, saved through the commission of sin, it could not come under the power of death. Now since God, by the words Adam, where art thou, pointed to the death of the soul which results when he abandons it, and since in the words earth thou art, and unto earth shall thou return, he signified the death of the body which results when the soul departs from it, we are led therefore to believe that he said nothing of the second death, wishing it to be kept hidden, and reserving it for the New Testament dispensation in which it is most plainly revealed. And this he did in order that first of all it might be evident that this first death which is common to all was the result of that sin which in one man became common to all. But the second death is not common to all, those being accepted who were called according to his purpose, for whom he did foreknow he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his son that he might be the first born among many brethren, those the grace of God has by a mediator delivered from the second death. Thus the apostle states that the first man was made in an animal body, for wishing to distinguish the animal body which now is from the spiritual which is to be in the resurrection, he says, it is sown in corruption, it is raised in incorruption, it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory, it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power, it is sown in natural body, it is raised in spiritual body. Then to prove this he goes on, there is a natural body and there is a spiritual body. And to show what the animated body is he says, thus it was written, the first man Adam was made a living soul, the last Adam was made a quickening spirit. He wished thus to show what the animated body is, though Scripture did not say of the first man Adam, when his soul was created by the breath of God, man was made in an animated body, but man was made a living soul. By these words, therefore, the first man was made a living soul, the apostle wishes man's animated body to be understood. But how he wishes the spiritual body to be understood he shows when he adds, but the last Adam was made a quickening spirit, plainly referring to Christ, who has so risen from the dead that he cannot die any more. He then goes on to say, but that was not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural, and afterward that which is spiritual. And here he much more clearly asserts that he referred to the animal body when he said that the first man was made a living soul, and to the spiritual when he said that the last man was made a quickening spirit. The animal body is the first, being such as the first Adam had, and which would not have died had he not sinned, being such also as we now have, its nature being changed and vitiated by sin to the extent of bringing us under the necessity of death, and being such as even Christ condescended first of all to assume, not indeed of necessity, but of choice. But afterwards comes the spiritual body, which already is worn by anticipation by Christ as our head, and will be worn by his members in the resurrection of the dead. Then the apostle subjoins a notable difference between these two men, saying, the first man is of the earth, earthy, the second man is the Lord from heaven, as is the earthy, such are they also that are earthy, and as is the heavenly, such are they also that are heavenly. And as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly. So elsewhere he says, as many of you has been baptized into Christ, have put on Christ, but in very deed this shall be accomplished when that which is animal in us by our birth shall it become spiritual in our resurrection. For to use his words again we are saved by hope. Now we bear the image of the earthly man by the propagation of sin and death which pass on us by ordinary generation, but we bear the image of the heavenly by the grace of pardon and life eternal which regeneration confers upon us through the mediator of God and men, the man Christ Jesus. And he is the heavenly man of Paul's passage because he came from heaven to be clothed with the body of earthly mortality that he might clothe it with heavenly immortality. And he calls others heavenly because by grace they become his members that together with them he may become one Christ as head and body. In the same epistle he puts this yet more clearly, since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. For as an atom all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive. That is to say, in a spiritual body which shall be made a quickening spirit. Not that all who die an atom shall be members of Christ, for the great majority shall be punished in eternal death. But he uses the word all in both clauses because, as no one dies in an animal body except an atom, so no one is quickened a spiritual body save in Christ. We are not then by any means to suppose that we shall in the resurrection have such a body as the first man had before he sinned, nor that the words as is the earthy, such are they also that are earthy, are to be understood of that which was brought about by sin. For we are not to think that Adam had a spiritual body before he fell, and that in punishment of his sin it was changed into an animal body. If this be thought, small heed has been given to the words of so great a teacher who says, there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body, as it is written the first man of Adam was made a living soul. Was it after sin he was made so? Or was not this the primal condition of man from which the blessed apostle selects his testimony to show what the animal body is? Chapter 24 Some have hastily supposed from the words, God breathed into Adam's nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul that a soul was not then first given to man, but that the soul already given was quickened by the Holy Ghost. They are encouraged in this supposition by the fact that the Lord Jesus, after his resurrection, breathed on his disciples and said, Receive ye the Holy Spirit. From this they supposed that the same thing was affected in either case as if the evangelist had gone on to say, and they became living souls. But if he had made this addition we should only understand that the Spirit is in some way the life of souls, and that without him reasonable souls must be accounted dead, though their bodies seem to live before our eyes. But that this was not what happened when man was created, the very words of the narrative sufficiently show, and God made man dust of the earth, which some have thought to render more clearly by the words, and God formed man of the clay of the earth. For it had before been said that there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground, in order that the reference to clay formed of this moisture and dust might be understood. For on this verse there immediately follows the announcement, and God created man, dust of the earth, so those Greek manuscripts have it, from which this passage has been translated into Latin. But whether one prefers to be created or formed, where the Greek reads a plazen, is of little importance, yet formed is the better rendering. But those who preferred created thought that they thus avoided the ambiguity arising from the fact that in the Latin language the usage obtains that those are said to form a thing who frames some feigned and fictitious thing. This man, then, who was created of the dust of the earth, or of the moistened dust or clay, this dust of the earth, that I may use the express words of Scripture, was made, as the apostle teaches, an animated body when he received a soul. This man, he says, was made a living soul, that is, this fashioned dust was made a living soul. They say, already he had a soul, else he would not be called a man, for man is not a body alone, nor a soul alone, but a being composed of both. This indeed is true, that the soul is not the whole man, but the better part of man, the body not the whole, but the inferior part of man, and that then when both are joined they receive the name of man, which, however, they do not severally lose, even when we speak of them singly. For who is prohibited from saying, in colloquial usage, that man is dead, and is now at rest, or in torment, though this can be spoken only of the soul, or he is buried in such and such a place, though this refers only to the body? Will they say that Scripture follows no such usage? On the contrary, it so thoroughly adopts it, that even while a man is alive, and body and soul are united, it calls each of them singly by the name man, speaking of the soul, as the inward man, and of the body as the outward man, as if there were two men, though both together are indeed but one. But we must understand in what sense man is said to be in the image of God, and is yet dust, and to return to the dust. The former is spoken of the rational soul, which God by his breathing, or to speak more appropriately, by his inspiration conveyed to man, that is, to his body. But the latter refers to his body, which God formed of the dust, and to which a soul was given, that it might become a living body, that is, that man might become a living soul. Therefore, when our Lord breathed in his disciples, and said, Receive ye the Holy Ghost, he certainly wished it to be understood that the Holy Ghost was not only the Spirit of the Father, but of the only begotten Son himself. For the same Spirit is indeed the Spirit of the Father and of the Son, making with them the trinity of Father, Son, and Spirit, not a creature but the Creator. For neither was that material breath which preceded from the mouth of his flesh the very substance and nature of the Holy Spirit, but rather the intimation, as I said, that the Holy Spirit was common to the Father and to the Son, for they have not each a separate Spirit, but both one and the same. Now, this Spirit is always spoken of in sacred scripture by the Greek word Numa, as the Lord too named him in the place cited when he gave him to his disciples and intimated the gift by the breathing of his lips, and there does not occur to me any place in the whole scriptures where he is otherwise named. But in this passage where it is said, and the Lord formed man dust of the earth, and breathed, or inspired into his face the breath of life, the Greek has not Numa, the usual word for the Holy Spirit, but no way, a word more frequently used to the creature than of the Creator. And for this reason some Latin interpreters have preferred to render it by breath rather than spirit. For this word occurs also in the Greek in Isaiah 5716 where God says, I have made all breath, meaning doubtless all souls. Accordingly this word no way is sometimes rendered breath, sometimes spirit, sometimes inspiration, sometimes aspiration, sometimes soul, even when it is used of God. Numa, on the other hand, is uniformly rendered spirit, whether of man, of whom the apostle says, for what man knoweth the things of a man save the spirit of man which is in him, or of beast, as in the book of Solomon, who knoweth the spirit of man that goeth upward, and the spirit of the beast that goeth downward to the earth, or of that physical spirit which is called wind, for so the psalmist calls it, fire and hail, snow and vapors, stormy wind, or of the uncreated Creator spirit of whom the Lord said in the Gospel, receive ye the Holy Ghost, indicating the gift by the breathing of his mouth, and when he says, go ye and baptize all nations in the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, words which very expressly and excellently commend the Trinity, and where it is said, God is a spirit, and in very many other places of the sacred writings. In all these quotations from Scripture we do not find in the Greek the word Noe used, but Numa, and in the Latin, not Flatus, but Spiritus. Wherefore, referring again to that place where it is written, he inspired, or to speak more properly, breathed into his face the breath of life, even though the Greek had not used Noe, as it has, but Numa, it would not on that account necessarily follow that the Creator Spirit, who in the Trinity is distinctively called the Holy Ghost, was meant, since, as has been said, it is plain that Numa is not used only of the Creator, but also of the creature. But say they, when the Scripture used the word Spirit, it would not have added of life unless it meant us to understand the Holy Spirit, nor when it said, man became a soul, would it also have inserted the word living unless that life of the soul were signified, which is imparted to it from above by the gift of God. For seeing that the soul by itself has a proper life of its own, what need, they ask, was there of adding living, save only to show that the life which is given it by the Holy Spirit was meant. What is this but to fight strenuously for their own conjectures, while they carelessly neglect the teaching of Scripture? Without troubling themselves much, they might have found in their preceding page of this very book of Genesis the words, Let the earth bring forth the living soul when all the terrestrial animals were created. Then at a slight interval, but still in the same book, was it impossible for them to notice this verse, all in whose nostrils was the breath of life of all that was in the dry land died, by which it was signified that all the animals which lived on the earth had perished in the deluge. If then we find that Scripture is accustomed to speak both of the living soul and the spirit of life, even in reference to beasts, and if in this place where it is said, all things which have the spirit of life, the word noe, not numa, is used, why may we not say what need was there to add living, since the soul cannot exist without being alive, or what need to add of life after the word spirit? But we understand that Scripture used these expressions in its ordinary style so long as it speaks of animals, that is animated bodies in which the soul serves as the residence of sensation. But when man is spoken of, we forget the ordinary and established usage of Scripture whereby it signifies that man received a rational soul which was not produced out of the waters in the earth like the other living creatures, but was created by the breath of God. Yet this creation was so ordered that the human soul should live in an animal body, like those other animals of which the Scripture said, let the earth produce every living soul, and regarding which it again says that in them is the breath of life, where the word noe, and not numa, is used in the Greek, and where certainly not the Holy Spirit, but their spirit is signified under that name. But again they object that breath is understood to have been emitted from the mouth of God, and if we believe that is the soul, we must consequently acknowledge it to be of the same substance, and equal to that wisdom which says, I come out of the mouth of the most high. Wisdom indeed does not say it was breathed out of the mouth of God, but proceeded out of it. But as we are able, when we breathe, to make a breath not of our own human nature, but of the surrounding air, which we inhale and exhale as we draw our breath and breathe again, so Almighty God was able to make breath not of his own nature, nor of the creature beneath him, but even of nothing. In this breath, when he communicated it to man's body, he is most appropriately said to have breathed or inspired, the immaterial breathing had also immaterial, but the immutable not also the immutable, for it was created, he uncreated. Yet that these persons who are forward to quote scripture, and yet know not the usages of its language, may know that not only what is equal and consubstantial with God is said to proceed out of his mouth, let them hear or read what God says. So then, because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spew thee out of my mouth. There is no ground then for our objecting when the apostle so expressly distinguishes the animal body from the spiritual, that is to say the body in which we now are from that in which we are to be. He says, it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body. And so it is written, the first man Adam was made a living soul, the last Adam was made a quickening spirit. How be it that was not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural, and afterward that which is spiritual? The first man is of the earth, earthy, the second man is the Lord from heaven. As is the earthy, such are they also that are earthy, and as is the heavenly, such are they also that are heavenly. And as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly. Of all which words of his we have previously spoken. The animal body, accordingly, in which the apostle says that the first man Adam was made, was not so made that it could not die at all, but so that it should not die unless he should have sinned. That body indeed which shall be made spiritual and immortal by the quickening spirit shall not be able to die at all, as the soul has been created immortal, and therefore, although by sin it may be said to die, and does lose a certain life of its own, namely the Spirit of God, by whom it was enabled to live wisely and blessedly, yet it does not cease living a kind of life, though immisurable, because it is immortal by creation. So too the rebellious angels, though by sinning they did in a sense die because they forsook God the fountain of life, which while they drank they were able to live wisely and well, yet they could not so die as to utterly cease living and feeling, for they are immortals by creation. And so, after the final judgment, they shall be hurled into the second death, and not even there be deprived of life or of sensation, but shall suffer torment. But those men who have been embraced by God's grace, and are become the fellow citizens of the holy angels who have continued in bliss, shall nevermore either sin or die being endued with spiritual bodies, yet being clothed with immortality, such as the angels in joy, of which they cannot be divested even by sinning, the nature of their flesh shall continue the same, but all carnal corruption and unwieldiness shall be removed. There remains a question which must be discussed, and by the help of the Lord God of Truth solved. If the motion of concubiscence and the unruly members of our first parents arose out of their sin, and only when the divine grace deserted them, and if it was on that occasion that their eyes were open to see, or more exactly notice their nakedness, and that they covered their shame because the shameless motion of their members was not subject to their will, how then would they have begotten children had they remained sinless as they were created? But as this book must be concluded, and so large a question cannot be summarily disposed of, we may relegated to the following book in which it will be more conveniently treated. End of Book 13, chapters 22 through 24. Recording by Darren L. Slider, Fort Worth, Texas, www.logoslibrary.org. Book 14, chapters 1 through 7 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 14. Chapter 1. We have already stated in the preceding books that God, desiring not only that the human race might be able by their similarity of nature to associate with one another, but also that they might be bound together in harmony and peace by the ties of relationship, was pleased to derive all men from one individual, and created man with such a nature that the members of the race should not have died, had not the two first, of whom the one was created out of nothing and the other out of him, merited this by their disobedience. For by them so great a sin was committed that by it the human nature was altered for the worse, and was transmitted also to their posterity, liable to sin and subject to death. And the kingdom of death so reigned over men that the deserved penalty of sin would have hurled all headlong even into the second death, of which there is no end, had not the undeserved grace of God saved some therefrom. And thus it has come to pass that though there are very many and great nations all over the earth, whose rights and customs, speech, arms, and dress are distinguished by market differences, yet there are no more than two kinds of human society which we may justly call two cities according to the language of our scriptures. The one consists of those who wish to live after the flesh, the other of those who wish to live after the spirit, and when they severally achieve what they wish, they live in peace each after their kind. Since then scripture uses the word flesh in many ways which there is not time to collect and investigate if we are to ascertain what it is to live after the flesh, which is certainly evil though the nature of flesh is not itself evil, we must carefully examine that passage of the epistle which the apostle Paul wrote to the Galatians in which he says, Now the works of the flesh are manifest which are these, adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, ravings, murders, drunkenness, revelings, and such like, of the which I tell you before as I have also told you in time past that they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God. This whole passage of the apostolic epistle being considered so far as it bears on the matter in hand will be sufficient to answer the question what it is to live after the flesh, for among the works of the flesh which he said were manifest and which he cited for condemnation, we find not only those which concern the pleasure of the flesh as fornications, uncleanness, lasciviousness, drunkenness, revelings, but also those which though they be remote from fleshly pleasure reveal the vices of the soul. For who does not see that idolatries, witchcrafts, hatreds, variants, emulations, wrath, strife, heresies, envions, or vices rather of the soul than of the flesh? For it is quite possible for a man to abstain from fleshly pleasures for the sake of idolatry or some heretical error, and yet even when he does so he is proved by this apostolic authority to be living after the flesh, and in abstaining from fleshly pleasure he is proved to be practicing damnable works of the flesh. Who that has enmity has it not in his soul, or who would say to his enemy or to the man he thinks his enemy, you have a bad flesh towards me, and not rather you have a bad spirit towards me? In fine if anyone heard of what I may call carnalities he would not fail to attribute them to the carnal part of man, so no one doubts that animosities belong to the soul of man. Why then does the doctor of the Gentiles in faith and verity call all these and similar things works of the flesh, unless because by that mode of speech whereby the part is used for the whole he means us to understand by the word flesh the man himself? CHAPTER III But if anyone says that the flesh is the cause of all vices and ill-conduct, inasmuch as the soul lives wickedly only because it is moved by the flesh, it is certain he has not carefully considered the whole nature of man. For the corruptible body, indeed, waith down the soul, whence to the apostle speaking of this corruptible body, of which he had shortly before said, though our outward man perish, says, We know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved we have a building of God, a house not made with hands eternal in the heavens. For in this we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed upon with our house which is from heaven. If so be that being clothed we shall not be found naked. For we that are in this tabernacle do groan, being burdened, not for that we would be unclothed, but clothed upon, that mortality might be swallowed up in life. We are then burdened with this corruptible body, but knowing that the cause of this burdensomeness is not the nature and substance of the body, but its corruption, we do not desire to be deprived of the body, but to be clothed with its immortality. For then also there will be a body, but it shall no longer be a burden, being no longer corruptible. At present, then, the corruptible body presseth down the soul, and the earthly tabernacle wayeth down the mind that museth upon many things. Nevertheless they are an error who suppose that all the evils of the soul proceed from the body. Virgil indeed seems to express the sentiments of Plato in the beautiful lines where he says, A fiery strength inspires their lives, an essence that from heaven derives, though clogged in part by limbs of clay, and the dull vester of decay. But though he goes on to mention the four most common mental emotions, desire, fear, joy, sorrow, with the intention of showing that the body is the origin of all sins and vices, saying, Hence wild desires and groveling fears, and human laughter, human tears, immured in dungeon-seeming night, they look abroad, yet see no light. Yet we believe quite otherwise. For the corruption of the body which weighs down the soul is not the cause, but the punishment of the first sin, and it was not the corruptible flesh that made the soul sinful, but the sinful soul that made the flesh corruptible. And though from this corruption of the flesh there arise certain incitements to vice, and indeed vicious desires, yet we must not attribute to the flesh all the vices of a wicked life, in case we thereby clear the devil of all these, for he has no flesh. For though we cannot call the devil a fornicator or drunkard, or ascribe to him any sensual indulgence, though he is the secret instigator and prompter of those who sin in these ways, yet he is exceedingly proud and envious. And this viciousness has so possessed him that on account of it he is reserved in chains of darkness to everlasting punishment. Now these vices which have dominion over the devil the apostle attributes to the flesh which certainly the devil has not. For he says, hatred, variance, emulations, strife, envying, are the works of the flesh, and of all these evils pride is the origin and head, and it rules in the devil though he has no flesh. For who shows more hatred to the saints, who is more at variance with them, who more envy is bitter and jealous? And since he exhibits all these works, though he has no flesh, how are they works of the flesh unless because they are the works of man, who is, as I said, spoken of under the name of flesh? For it is not by having flesh which the devil has not, but by living according to himself, that is, according to man, that man became like the devil. For the devil too wished to live according to himself when he did not abide in the truth, so that when he lied this was not of God but of himself, who is not only a liar but the father of lies, he being the first who lied, and the originator of lying as of sin. CHAPTER 4 When therefore man lives according to man, not according to God, he is like the devil. Because not even an angel might live according to an angel, but only according to God, if he was to abide in the truth and speak God's truth and not his own lie. And of man too the same apostle says in another place, if the truth of God hath more abounded through my lie, my lie, he said, and God's truth. When then a man lives according to the truth he lives not according to himself but according to God, for he was God who said, I am the truth. When therefore man lives according to himself, that is, according to man, not according to God, assuredly he lives according to a lie. Not that man himself is a lie, for God is his author and creator, who is certainly not the author and creator of a lie, but because man was made upright that he might not live according to himself, but according to him that made him. In other words, that he might do his will and not his own, and not to live as he was made to live, that is a lie. For he certainly desires to be blessed even by not living so that he may be blessed. And what is a lie if this desire be not? For it is not without meaning said that all sin is a lie. For no sin is committed, save by that desire or will by which we desire that it be well with us, and shrink from it being ill with us. That therefore is a lie which we do in order that it may be well with us, but which makes us more miserable than we were. And why is this, but because the source of man's happiness lies only in God whom he abandons when he sins, and not in himself by living according to whom he sins? In annunciating this proposition of ours, then, that because some live according to the flesh and others according to the spirit, there have arisen too diverse and conflicting cities, we might equally well have said, because some live according to man, others according to God. For Paul says very plainly to the Corinthians, for whereas there is among you envying and strife, are ye not carnal and walk according to man? So that to walk according to man, and to be carnal, are the same, for by flesh, that is, by a part of man, man is meant. For before he said that those same persons were animal whom afterwards he calls carnal, saying, for what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him? Even so, the things of God knoweth no man, but the spirit of God. Now we have received not the spirit of this world, but the spirit which is of God, that we might know the things which are freely given to us of God. Which things also we speak, not in the words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth, comparing spiritual things with spiritual, but the animal man perceiveth not the things of the spirit of God, for they are foolishness unto him. It is to men of this kind, then, that is, to animal man, he shortly after says, and I, brethren, could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal. And this is to be interpreted by the same usage, a part being taken for the whole. For both the soul and the flesh, the component parts of man, can be used to signify the whole man. And so the animal man and the carnal man are not two different things, but one and the same thing, man living according to man. In the same way it is nothing else than man that are meant either in the words, by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified, or in the words, seventy-five souls went down unto Egypt with Jacob. In the one passage no flesh signifies no man, and in the other, by seventy-five souls seventy-five men are meant. And the expression not in words which man's wisdom teacheth might equally be not in words which fleshly wisdom teacheth, and the expression ye walk according to man might be according to the flesh. And this is still more apparent in the words which followed. For while one saith, I am of Paul, and another, I am of Apollos, are ye not men? The same thing which he had before expressed by ye are animal, ye are carnal, he now expresses by ye are men. That is, ye live according to man, not according to God, for if ye lived according to him, ye should be gods. CHAPTER V There is no need, therefore, that in our sins and vices we accuse the nature of the flesh to the injury of the Creator, for in its own kind and degree the flesh is good. But to desert the Creator good, and live according to the created good, is not good, whether a man choose to live according to the flesh, or according to the soul, or according to the whole human nature, which is composed of flesh and soul, and which is therefore spoken of either by the name flesh alone, or by the name soul alone. For he who extols the nature of the soul as the chief good, and condemns the nature of the flesh as if it were evil, assuredly is fleshly both in his love of the soul and hatred of the flesh, for these his feelings arise from human fancy, not from divine truth. The Platonists, indeed, are not so foolish as, with the Manichaeans, to detest our present bodies as an evil nature, for they attribute all the elements of which this visible and tangible world is compacted with all their qualities to God their Creator. Nevertheless, from the death-infected members and earthly construction of the body, they believe the soul is so affected that there are thus originated in it the diseases of desires, and fears, and joy, and sorrow, under which four perturbations as Cicero calls them, or passions, as most preferred to name them with the Greeks, is included the whole viciousness of human life. But if this be so, how is it that Aeneas, in Virgil, when he had heard from his father in Hades that the soul should return to bodies, expresses surprise at this declaration, and exclaims, O Father, and can thought conceive that happy souls this realm would leave, and seek the upper sky with sluggish clay to reunite, this direful longing for the light, whence comes it, say, and why? This direful longing, then, does it still exist even in that boasted purity of the disembodied spirits, and does it still proceed from the death-infected members and earthly limbs? Does he not assert that when they begin to long to return to the body they have already been delivered from all these so-called pestilences of the body? From which we gather that were this endlessly alternating purification and defilement of departing and returning souls as true as it is most certainly false, yet it could not be avert that all culpable and vicious motions of the soul originate in the earthly body, for on their own showing this direful longing to use the words of their noble exponent is so extraneous to the body that it moves the soul that is purged of all bodily taint, and is existing apart from any body whatever, and moves it moreover to be embodied again. So that even they themselves acknowledge that the soul is not only moved to desire, fear, joy, sorrow, by the flesh, but that it can also be agitated with these emotions at its own instance. CHAPTER VI But the character of the human will is of moment, because if it is wrong, these motions of the soul will be wrong, but if it is right, they will be not merely blameless, but even praiseworthy. For the will is in them all, yea, none of them is anything else than will. For what our desire and joy but a volition of consent to the things we wish, and what our fear and sadness but a volition of aversion from the things which we do not wish. But when consent takes the form of seeking to possess the things we wish, this is called desire, and when consent takes the form of enjoying the things we wish, this is called joy. In like manner when we turn with aversion from that which we do not wish to happen, this volition is termed fear, and when we turn away from that which has happened against our will, this act of will is called sorrow. And generally in respect of all that we seek or shun as a man's will is attracted or repelled, so it is changed and turned into these different affections. Wherefore the man who lives according to God and not according to man ought to be a lover of good, and therefore a hater of evil. And since no one is evil by nature, but whoever is evil is evil by vice, he who lives according to God ought to cherish towards evil men a perfect hatred, so that he shall neither hate the man because of his vice, nor love the vice because of the man, but hate the vice and love the man. For the vice being cursed, all that ought to be loved and nothing that ought to be hated will remain. CHAPTER 7 He who resolves to love God and to love his neighbor as himself, not according to man, but according to God, he is on account of this love said to be of a good will. And this is in Scripture more commonly called charity, but it is also, even in the same books, called love. For the apostle says that the man to be elected as a ruler of the people must be a lover of good. Even when the Lord himself had asked Peter, hast thou a regard for me, diligence, more than these, Peter replied, Lord, thou knowest that I love, amo thee? And again a second time the Lord asked not whether Peter loved, amaret him, but whether he had a regard, diligence, for him, and he again answered, Lord, thou knowest that I love, amo thee? But on the third interrogation the Lord himself no longer says, hast thou a regard, diligence, for me, but loveest thou, amas, me? And then the evangelist adds, Peter was grieved because he set unto him the third time, loveest thou, amas, me? Though the Lord had not said three times, but only once, loveest thou, amas, me, and twice, diligence, may? From which we gather that, even when the Lord said diligence, he used an equivalent for amas. Peter too, throughout, used one word for the one thing, and the third time also replied, Lord, thou knowest all things, thou knowest that I love, amo thee? I have judged it right to mention this, because some are of opinion that charity or regard, delexio, is one thing, love, amore, another. They say that delexio is used of a good affection, amore, of an evil love. But it is very certain that even secular literature knows no such distinction. However, it is for the philosophers to determine whether and how they differ, though their own writings sufficiently testify that they make great account of love, amore, placed on good objects and even on God himself. But we wish to show that the scriptures of our religion, whose authority we prefer to all writings whatsoever, make no distinction between amore, delexio, and caritas, and we have already shown that amore is used in a good connection. And if anyone fancies that amore is no doubt used both of good and bad loves, but the delexio is reserved for the good only, let him remember what the psalm says. He that loveth, diligent, iniquity, hateeth his own soul. And the words of the apostle John, if any man love, deligerate the world, the love, delexio, of the father, is not in him. Here you have, in one passage, delexio used both in a good and a bad sense. And if anyone demands an instance of amore being used in a bad sense, for we have already shown its use in a good sense, let him read the words, for men shall be lovers amantes of their own selves, lovers amatores of money. The right will is, therefore, well-directed love, and the wrong will is ill-directed love. Love then, yearning to have what is loved, is desire, and having and enjoying it is joy. Fleeing what is opposed to it, it is fear, and feeling what is opposed to it, when it has befallen it, it is sadness. Now these motions are evil, if the love is evil, good if the love is good. What we assert, let us prove from Scripture. The apostle desires to depart and to be with Christ. And my soul desire to long for thy judgments, or if it is more appropriate to say, my soul long to desire thy judgments. And the desire of wisdom bringeth to a kingdom. Yet there is always obtained the usage of understanding desire and concubiscence in a bad sense if the object be not defined. But joy is used in a good sense. Be glad in the Lord and rejoice ye righteous, and thou hast put gladness in my heart, and thou wilt fill me with joy with eye countenance. Fear is used in a good sense by the apostle when he says, Work out your salvation with fear and trembling, and be not high-minded but fear. And I fear, lest by any means as the serpent beguiled eve through his subtlety, so your mind should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ. But with respect to sadness, which Cicero prefers to call sickness, egritudo, and Virgil pain, dallor, as he says, dolent gaudentque. But which I prefer to call sorrow, because sickness and pain are more commonly used to express bodily suffering. With respect to this emotion, I say, the question whether it can be used in a good sense is more difficult. End of Book 14, chapters 1 through 7. Recording by Darren L. Slider, Fort Worth, Texas, www.logoslibrary.org. Book 14, chapters 8 through 12 of the City of God. Chapter 8 Those emotions which the Greeks call Eupathaei, and which Cicero calls Constanzie, the Stoics would restrict to three. And instead of three perturbations in the soul of the wise man, they substituted severly in place of desire, will, in place of joy, contentment, and for fear, caution. And as to sickness or pain, which we, to avoid ambiguity, preferred to call sorrow, they denied that it could exist in the mind of a wise man. Still, they say, seeks the good, for this the wise man does. Contentment has its object in good that is possessed, and this the wise man continually possesses. Caution avoids evil, and this the wise man ought to avoid. But sorrow arises from evil that has already happened. And as they suppose that no evil can happen to the wise man, there can be no representative of sorrow in his mind. According to them, therefore, none but the wise man wills is contented, uses caution, and that the fool can do no more than desire, rejoice, fear, be sad. The former three affections, Cicero calls Constanzie, the last four, Perturbacionis. Many, however, call these last passions, and, as I have said, the Greeks call the former Upathaiai and the latter Pathaei. And when I made a careful examination of Scripture to find whether this terminology was sanctioned by it, I came upon this saying of the prophet. There is no contentment to the wicked, saith the Lord, as if the wicked might more properly rejoice than be contented regarding evils, for contentment is the property of the good and godly. I found also that verse in the Gospel whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, do ye even so unto them, which seems to imply that evil or shameful things may be the object of desire but not of will. But some interpreters have added good things to make the expression more in conformity with customary usage, and have given this meaning, whatsoever good deeds that ye would that men should do unto you. For they thought that this would prevent anyone from wishing other men to provide him with unseemly, not to say shameful gratifications, luxurious banquets, for example, on the supposition that if he returned the light to them he would be fulfilling this precept. In the Greek Gospel, however, from which the Latin is translated, good does not occur but only all things whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, do ye even so unto them, and, as I believe, because good is already included in the word would, for he does not say desire. Yet though we may sometimes avail ourselves of these precise proprieties of language, we are not to be always bridled by them, and when we read those writers against whose authority it is unlawful to reclaim, we must accept the meanings above mentioned in passages where a right sense can be adduced by no other interpretation, as in those instances we adduced partly from the prophet, partly from the Gospel. For who does not know that the wicked exalt with joy? Yet there is no contentment for the wicked, saith the Lord. And how so, unless because contentment, when the word is used in its proper and distinctive significance, means something different from joy? In like manner who would deny that it were wrong to enjoin upon men that whatever they desire others to do to them they should themselves do to others, lest they should mutually please one another by shameful and illicit pleasure? And yet the precept whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, do ye even so to them, is very wholesome and just. And how is this, unless because the will is in this place used strictly and signifies that will which cannot have evil for its object? That ordinary phraseology would not have allowed the saying, be unwilling to make any manner of lie, had there not been also an evil will whose wickedness separates it from that which the angels celebrated, peace on earth, of good will to men. For good is superfluous if there is no other kind of will, but good will. And why should the apostle have mentioned it among the praises of charity as a great thing, that it rejoices not in iniquity unless because wickedness does so rejoice? Or even with secular writers these words are used indifferently. For Cicero, that most fertile of orators, says, I desire conscript fathers to be merciful. And who would be so pedantic as to say that he should have said I will rather than I desire because the word is used in a good connection? Again, in Terence, the profligate youth burning with wild lust, says, I will nothing else than father Eumina. That this will was lust is sufficiently indicated by the answer of his old servant, which is there introduced. How much better were it to try and banish that love from your heart than to speak so as uselessly to inflame your passion still more? And that contentment was used by secular writers in a bad sense, that verse of Virgil testifies, in which he most succinctly comprehends these four perturbations, hence they fear and desire, grieve, and are content. The same author had also used the expression the evil contentments of the mind, so that good and bad men, alike will, are cautious and contented, or, to say the same thing in other words, good and bad men alike desire, fear, rejoice, but the former in a good, the latter in a bad fashion, according as the will, is right or wrong. Sorrow itself, too, which the Stoics would not allow to be represented in the mind of the wise man, is used in a good sense and especially in our writings. For the apostle praises the Corinthians because they had a godly sorrow, but possibly some one may say that the apostle congratulated them because they were penitently sorry, and that such sorrow can exist only in those who have sinned. For these are his words, for I perceive that the same epistle hath made you sorry, though it were but for a season. Now I rejoice not that you were made sorry, but that you sorrowed to repentance, for you were made sorry after a godly manner, that ye might receive damage by us in nothing. For godly sorrow worketh repentance to salvation not to be repented of, but the sorrow of the world worketh death. For behold, this self-same thing that ye sorrowed after a godly sort, what carefulness it wrought in you. Consequently the Stoics may defend themselves by replying that sorrow is indeed useful for repentance of sin, but that this can have no place in the mind of the wise man, in as much as no sin attaches to him of which ye could sorrowfully repent, nor any other evil the endurance or experience of which could make him sorrowful. For they say that Alcibiades, if my memory does not deceive me, who believed himself happy shed tears when Socrates argued with him and demonstrated that he was miserable because he was foolish. In his case, therefore, Folly was the cause of this useful and desirable sorrow wherewith a man mourns that he is what he ought not to be. But the Stoics maintain not that the fool, but that the wise man, cannot be sorrowful. CHAPTER IX But so far as regards this question of mental perturbations, we have answered these philosophers in the ninth book of this work, showing that it is rather a verbal than a real dispute, and that they seek contention rather than truth. Among ourselves, according to the sacred scriptures and sound doctrine, the citizens of the holy city of God, who live according to God and the pilgrimage of this life, both fear and desire, and grieve and rejoice, and because their love is rightly placed, all these affections of theirs are right. They fear eternal punishment, they desire eternal life, they grieve because they themselves groan within themselves, waiting for the adoption, the redemption of their body. They rejoice in hope, because there shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, death is swallowed up in victory. In like manner they fear to sin, they desire to persevere, they grieve in sin, they rejoice in good works. They fear to sin because they hear that because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold. They desire to persevere because they hear that it is written, he that endureth to the end shall be saved. They grieve for sin, hearing that if we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. They rejoice in good works, because they hear that the Lord loveth a cheerful giver. In like manner, according as they are strong or weak, they fear or desire to be tempted, grieve or rejoice in temptation. They fear to be tempted because they hear the injunction, if a man be overtaken in a fault, ye which are spiritual restore such and one in the spirit of meekness, considering thyself, lest thou also be tempted. They desire to be tempted because they hear one of the heroes of the city of God saying, Examine me, O Lord, and tempt me, try my reigns and my heart. They grieve in temptations because they see Peter weeping. They rejoice in temptations because they hear James saying, My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into diverse temptations. And not only on their own account do they experience these emotions, but also on account of those whose deliverance they desire, and whose perdition they fear, and whose loss or salvation affects them with grief or with joy. For if we who have come into the church from among the Gentiles may suitably instance that noble and mighty hero who glories in his infirmities, the teacher, doctor, of the nations in faith and truth, who also labored more than all his fellow apostles, and instructed the tribes of God's people by his epistles, which edified not only those of his own time, but all those who were to be gathered in, that hero, I say, and athlete of Christ, instructed by him, anointed of his spirit, crucified with him, glorious in him, lawfully maintaining a great conflict on the theater of this world, and being made a spectacle to angels and men, and pressing onwards for the prize of his high calling. Very joyfully do we with the eyes of faith behold him rejoicing with them that rejoice, and weeping with them that weep. Though hampered by fightings without and fears within, desiring to depart, and to be with Christ, longing to see the Romans that he might have some fruit among them as among other Gentiles, being jealous over the Corinthians, and fearing in that jealousy lest their minds should be corrupted from the chastity that is in Christ. Having great heaviness and continual sorrow of heart for the Israelites, because they, being ignorant of God's righteousness, and going about to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted themselves unto the righteousness of God, and expressing not only his sorrow, but bitter lamentation over some who had formally sinned, and had not repented of their uncleanness and fornications. If these emotions and affections arising as they do from the love of what is good, and from a holy charity, are to be called vices, then let us allow these emotions which are truly vices to pass under the name of virtues. But since these affections, when they are exercised in a becoming way, follow the guidance of right reason, who will dare to say that they are diseases, or vicious passions, wherefore even the Lord himself, when he condescended to lead a human life in the form of a slave, had no sin whatever, and yet exercised these emotions where he judged they should be exercised. For as there was in him a true human body and a true human soul, so was there also a true human emotion. When therefore we read in the Gospel that the hard-heartedness of the Jews moved him to sorrowful indignation, that he said, I am glad for your sakes to the intent ye may believe, that when about to raise Lazarus he even shed tears, that he earnestly desired to eat the Passover with his disciples, that as his passion drew near his soul was sorrowful, these emotions are certainly not falsely ascribed to him. But as he became man when it pleased him, so in the grace of his definite purpose when it pleased him he experienced those emotions in his human soul. But we must further make the admission that even when these affections are well regulated and according to God's will they are peculiar to this life, not to that future life we look for, and that often we yield to them against our will. And thus sometimes we weep in spite of ourselves being carried beyond ourselves, not indeed by culpable desire, but by praiseworthy charity. In us therefore these affections arise from human infirmity, but it was not so with the Lord Jesus, for even his infirmity was the consequence of his power. But so long as we wear the infirmity of this life we are rather worse men than better if we have none of these emotions at all. For the apostle vituperated and abominated some who, as he said, were without natural affection. The sacred psalmist also found fault with those of whom he said, I looked for some to lament with me and there was none. For to be quite free from pain while we are in this place of misery is only purchased, as one of this world's literati perceived and remarked, at the price of blunted sensibilities both of mind and body. And therefore that which the Greeks call apothea and what the Latins would call, if their language would allow them, impossibilitas, if it be taken to mean an impassibility of spirit and not of body, or in other words a freedom from those emotions which are contrary to reason and disturb the mind, then it is obviously a good and most desirable quality, but it is not one which is attainable in this life. For the words of the apostle or the confession not of the common herd, but of the eminently pious, just and holy men, if we say we have no sin we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. When there shall be no sin in a man then there shall be this apothea. At present it is enough if we live without crime and he who thinks he lives without sin puts aside not sin but pardon. And if that is to be called apothea, where the mind is the subject of no emotion, then who would not consider this insensibility to be worse than all vices? It may indeed reasonably be maintained that the perfect blessedness we hope for shall be free from all sting of fear or sadness, but who that is not quite lost to truth would say that neither love nor joy shall be experienced there. But if by apothea a condition be meant in which no fear terrifies nor any pain annoys, we must in this life renounce such a state if we would live according to God's will, but may hope to enjoy it in that blessedness which is promised as our eternal condition. For that fear of which the apostle John says, there is no fear in love but perfect love casteth out fear because fear has torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love. That fear is not of the same kind as the apostle Paul felt lest the Corinthians should be seduced by the subtlety of the serpent, for love is susceptible of this fear, yea, love alone is capable of it. But the fear which is not in love is of that kind of which Paul himself says, for ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear. But as for that clean fear which endureth forever, if it is to exist in the world to come, and how else can it be said to endure forever, it is not a fear deterring us from evil which may happen but preserving us in the good which cannot be lost. For where the love of acquired good is unchangeable, there certainly the fear that avoids evil is, if I may say so, free from anxiety. For under the name of clean fear David signifies that will by which we shall necessarily shrink from sin and guard against it, not with the anxiety of weakness which fears that we may strongly sin, but with the tranquillity of perfect love. For if no kind of fear at all shall exist in that most imperturbable security of perpetual and blissful delights, then the expression, the fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever, must be taken in the same sense as that other, the patience of the poor shall not perish forever. For patience which is necessary only where ills are to be born shall not be eternal, but that which patience leads us to will be eternal. So perhaps this clean fear is said to endure forever because that to which fear leads shall endure. And since this is so, since we must live a good life in order to attain to a blessed life, a good life has all these affections right, a bad life has them wrong. But in the blessed life eternal there will be love and joy, not only right, but also assured. But fear and grief there will be none. Once it already appears in some sort what manner of persons the citizens of the city of God must be in this their pilgrimage who live after the spirit, not after the flesh, that is to say, according to God, not according to man, and what manner of persons they shall be also in that immortality whether they are journeying. In the city or society of the wicked who live not according to God, but according to man, and who accept the doctrines of men or devils in the worship of a false and contempt of the true divinity, is shaken with those wicked emotions as by diseases and disturbances. And if there be some of its citizens who seem to restrain and, as it were, temper those passions, they are so elated with ungodly pride that their disease is as much greater as their pain is less. And if some with a vanity monstrous in proportion to its rarity have become enamored of themselves because they can be stimulated and excited by no emotion, moved or bent by no affection, such persons rather lose all humanity than obtain true tranquility. For a thing is not necessarily right because it is inflexible, nor healthy because it is insensible. CHAPTER 10 But it is a fair question whether our first parent or first parents, for there was a marriage of two, before they sinned, experienced in their animal body such emotions as we shall not experience in the spiritual body when sin has been purged and finally abolished. For if they did, then how were they blessed in that boasted place of bliss, paradise, for who that is affected by fear or grief can be called absolutely blessed? And what could those persons fear or suffer in such affluence of blessings where neither death nor ill health was feared and where nothing was wanting which a good will could desire and nothing present which could interrupt man's mental or bodily enjoyment? Their love to God was unclouded and their mutual affection was that of faithful and sincere marriage, and from this love flowed a wonderful delight because they always enjoyed what was loved. Their avoidance of sin was tranquil, and so long as it was maintained no other ill at all could invade them and bring sorrow. Or did they perhaps desire to touch and eat the forbidden fruit yet feared to die, and thus both fear and desire already, even in that blissful place, prayed upon those first of mankind? Away with the thought that such could be the case where there was no sin, and indeed this is already sin to desire those things which the law of God forbids and to abstain from them through fear of punishment not through love of righteousness. Away I say with the thought that before there was any sin there should already have been committed regarding that fruit the very sin which our Lord warns us against regarding a woman, whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart. As happy, then, as were these our first parents, who were agitated by no mental perturbations, and annoyed by no bodily discomforts, so happy should the whole human race have been had they not introduced that evil which they have transmitted to their posterity, and had none of their descendants committed iniquity worthy of damnation. But this original blessedness continuing until, in virtue of that benediction which said, increase and multiply, the number of the predestined saints should have been completed, there would then have been bestowed that higher felicity which is enjoyed by the most blessed angels, a blessedness in which there should have been a secure assurance that no one would sin and no one die, and so should the saints have lived after no taste of labor, pain, or death as now they shall live in the resurrection after they have endured all these things. CHAPTER 11 But because God foresaw all things, and was therefore not ignorant that man also would fall, we ought to consider this holy city in connection with what God foresaw and ordained, and not according to our own ideas, which do not embrace God's ordination. For man, by his sin, could not disturb the divine counsel, nor compel God to change what he had decreed. For God's foreknowledge had anticipated both, that is to say, both how evil the man whom he had created good should become, and what good he himself should even thus derive from him. For though God has said the changes determinations, so that in a tropical sense the holy scripture says even that God repented, this is said with reference to man's expectation, or the order of natural causes, and not with reference to that which the Almighty had foreknown that he would do. Accordingly God, as it is written, made man upright and consequently with a good will. For if he had not had a good will, he could not have been upright. The good will then is the work of God, for God created him with it. But the first evil will, which preceded all man's evil acts, was rather a kind of falling away from the work of God to its own works than any positive work. And therefore the acts resulting were evil, not having God, but the will itself for their end, so that the will or the man himself, so far as his will is bad, was, as it were, the evil tree bringing forth evil fruit. Moreover, the bad will, though it be not in harmony with, but opposed to nature, in as much as it is a vice or blemish, yet it is true of it, as of all vice, that it cannot exist except in a nature, and only in a nature created out of nothing, and not in that which the Creator has begotten of himself as he begot the word by whom all things were made. For though God formed man of the dust of the earth, yet the earth itself and every earthly material is absolutely created out of nothing, and man's soul, too, God created out of nothing and joined to the body when he made man. But evils are so thoroughly overcome by good that though they are permitted to exist for the sake of demonstrating how the most righteous foresight of God can make a good use even of them, yet good can exist without evil, as in the true and Supreme God himself, and as in every invisible and visible celestial creature that exists above this murky atmosphere. But evil cannot exist without good, because the natures in which evil exists insofar as they are natures are good. And evil is removed not by removing any nature or part of a nature which had been introduced by the evil, but by healing and correcting that which had been vitiated and depraved. The will, therefore, is then truly free when it is not the slave of vices and sins. Such was it given us by God, and this being lost by its own fault can only be restored by him who was able at first to give it. And therefore the truth says, if the Son shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed, which is equivalent to saying, if the Son shall save you, ye shall be saved indeed, for he is our liberator in as much as he is our Saviour. One then lived with God for his rule in a paradise at once physical and spiritual. For neither was it a paradise only physical for the advantage of the body, and not also spiritual for the advantage of the mind, nor was it only spiritual to afford enjoyment to man by his internal sensations and not also physical to afford him enjoyment through his external senses, but obviously it was both for both ends. But after that proud and therefore envious angel of whose fall I have said as much as I was able in the eleventh and twelfth books of this work, as well as that of his fellows, who, from being God's angels, became his angels, preferring to rule with the kind of pomp of empire rather than to be another subject, fell from the spiritual paradise, and, saying to insinuate his persuasive guile into the mind of man, whose unfallen condition provoked him to envy, now that himself was fallen, he chose the serpent as his mouthpiece in that bodily paradise in which it and all the other earthly animals were living with those two human beings, the man and his wife, subject to them and harmless. And he chose the serpent because, being slippery and moving in tortuous windings, it was suitable for his purpose. And this animal, being subdued to his wicked ends by the presence and superior force of his angelic nature, he abused as his instrument, and first tried his deceit upon the woman, making his assault upon the weaker part of that human alliance that he might gradually gain the whole, and not supposing that the man would readily give ear to him, or be deceived, but that he might yield to the error of the woman. For as Aaron was not induced to agree with the people when they blindly wished him to make an idol, and yet yielded to constraint, and as it is not credible that Solomon was so blind as to suppose that idols should be worshipped, but was drawn over to such sacrilege by the blandishments of women, so we cannot believe that Adam was deceived, and supposed the devil's word to be truth, and therefore transgressed God's law, but that he, by the drawings of Kindred, yielded to the woman, the husband, to the wife, the one human being, to the only other human being. For not without significance did the Apostles say, and Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression. But he speaks thus because the woman accepted as true what the serpent told her, but the man could not bear to be severed from his only companion, even though this involved a partnership in sin. He was not on this account less culpable, but sinned with his eyes open, and so the Apostle does not say he did not sin, but he was not deceived. For he shows that he sinned when he says, by one man sin entered into the world, and immediately after, more distinctly, in the likeness of Adam's transgression. But he meant that those are deceived who do not judge that which they do to be sin, but he knew. Otherwise, how were it true, Adam was not deceived. But having as yet no experience of the divine severity, he was possibly deceived insofar as he thought his sin venial. And consequently he was not deceived as the woman was deceived, but he was deceived as to the judgment which would be passed on his apology. The woman whom thou gave us to be with me, she gave me, and I did eat. What need of saying more? Although they were not both deceived by credulity, yet both were entangled in the snares of the devil, and taken by sin. CHAPTER XII If anyone finds a difficulty in understanding why other sins do not alter human nature as it was altered by the transgression of those first human beings, so that on account of it this nature is subject to the great corruption we feel and see, and to death, and is distracted and tossed with so many furious and contending emotions, and is certainly far different from what it was before sin, even though it were then lodged in an animal body. If I say any one is moved by this, he ought not to think that that sin was a small and light one because it was committed about food, and that not bad nor anxious, except because it was forbidden, for in that spot of singular felicity God could not have created and planted any evil thing. But by the precept he gave God commended obedience, which is, in a sort, the mother and guardian of all the virtues, and the reasonable creature, which was so created that submission is advantageous to it, while the fulfillment of its own will and preference to the Creator's is destruction. And as this commandment in joining abstinence from one kind of food in the midst of great abundance of other kinds was so easy to keep, so light a burden to the memory, and above all found no resistance to its observance and lust, which only afterwards sprung up as the penal consequence of sin, the iniquity of violating it was all the greater in proportion to the ease with which it might have been kept.