 12 It is already in the preceding book been shown how the two cities originated among the angels. Before I speak of the creation of man and show how the cities took their rise, so far as regards the race of rational mortals, I see that I must first, so far as I can, adduce what may demonstrate that it is not incongruous and unsuitable to speak of a society composed of angels and men together, so that there are not four cities or societies, two namely of angels and as many of men, but rather two in all, one composed of the good, the other of the wicked, angels or men, indifferently. That the contrary propensities in good and bad angels have arisen, not from a difference in their nature and origin, since God, the good author and creator of all essences, created them both, but from a difference in their wills and desires, it is impossible to doubt. While some steadfastly continued in that which was the common good of all, suddenly in God himself and in his eternity truth and love, others, being enamored rather of their own power as if they could be their own good, lapsed to this private good of their own from that higher and beotific good which was common to all, and bartering the lofty dignity of eternity for the inflation of pride, the most assured verity for the slowness of vanity, uniting love for factious partisanship, they became proud, deceived, envious. The cause therefore of the blessedness of the good is adherence to God, and so the cause of the other's misery will be found in the contrary, that is, in their not adhering to God. Wherefore, if when the question is asked why are the former blessed, it is rightly answered because they adhere to God, and when it is asked why are the latter miserable, it is rightly answered because they do not adhere to God. Then there is no other good for the rational or intellectual creature save God only. Thus, though it is not every creature that can be blessed, for beasts, trees, stones, and things of that kind have not this capacity, yet that creature which has the capacity cannot be blessed of itself since it is created out of nothing but only by him by whom it has been created, for it is blessed by the possession of that whose loss makes it miserable. He then who is blessed not in another but in himself cannot be miserable because he cannot lose himself. Accordingly, we say that there is no unchangeable good but the one true blessed God, that the things which he made are indeed good because from him yet mutable because made not out of him but out of nothing. Although therefore they are not the supreme good for God is a greater good, yet those mutable things which can adhere to the immutable good and so be blessed are very good, for so completely is he their good that without him they cannot but be wretched, and the other created things in the universe are not better on this account that they cannot be miserable, for no one would say that the other members of the body are superior to the eyes because they cannot be blind. But as the sentient nature, even when it feels pain, is superior to the stony which can feel none, so the rational nature, even when wretched, is more excellent than that which lacks reason or feeling and can therefore experience no misery. And since this is so, then in this nature which has been created so excellent that though it be mutable itself it can yet secure its blessedness by adhering to the immutable good, the supreme God, and since it is not satisfied unless it be perfectly blessed and cannot be thus blessed save in God. In this nature I say not to adhere to God is manifestly a fault. Now every fault injures the nature and is consequently contrary to the nature. The creature therefore which cleaves to God differs from those who do not, not by nature but by fault, and yet by this very fault the nature itself has proved to be very noble and admirable, for that nature is certainly praised the fault of which is justly blamed, for we justly blame the fault because it marrs the praiseworthy nature. As then when we say that blindness is a defect of the eyes, we prove that sight belongs to the nature of the eyes, and when we say that deafness is a defect of the ears, hearing is thereby proved to belong to their nature. So when we say that it is a fault of the angelic creature that it does not cleave to God, we hereby most plainly declare that it pertain to its nature to cleave to God. And who can worthily conceive or express how great a glory that is to cleave to God so as to live to him, to draw wisdom from him, to delight in him, and to enjoy this so great good without death, error, or grief? And thus, since every vice is an injury of the nature, that very vice of the wicked angels, their departure from God, is sufficient proof that God created their nature so good that it is an injury to it not to be with God. Chapter 2 This may be enough to prevent anyone from supposing when we speak of the apostate angels that they could have another nature derived as it were from some different origin and not from God. From the great impiety of this error we shall disentangle ourselves the more readily and easily the more distinctly we understand that which God spoke by the angel when he sent Moses to the children of Israel, I am that I am. For since God is the supreme existence, that is to say supremely is and is therefore unchangeable, the things that he made he empowered to be but not to be supremely like himself. To some he communicated a more ample, to others a more limited existence and thus arranged the natures of beings and ranks. For as from Saperre comes Sapiensia, so from Ese comes Essencia, a new word indeed which the old Latin writers did not use but which is naturalized in our day that our language may not want an equivalent for the Greek Ussia, for this is expressed word for word by Essencia. Consequently to that nature which supremely is and which created all else that exists, no nature is contrary save that which does not exist. For non-entity is the contrary of that which is, and thus there is no being contrary to God, the supreme being and author of all beings whatsoever. Chapter 3 In scripture they are called God's enemies who oppose his rule, not by nature but by vice, having no power to hurt him but only themselves. For they are his enemies not through their power to hurt but by their will to oppose him. For God is unchangeable to holy proof against injury. Therefore the vice which makes those who are called his enemies resist him is an evil not to God but to themselves, and to them it is an evil solely because it corrupts the good of their nature. It is not nature therefore but vice which is contrary to God, for that which is evil is contrary to the good. And who will deny that God is the supreme good? Vice therefore is contrary to God as evil to good. Further the nature it vitiates is a good and therefore to this good also it is contrary. But while it is contrary to God only as evil to good it is contrary to the nature it vitiates both as evil and as hurtful. For to God no evils are hurtful but only to nature's mutable and corruptible though by the testimony of the vices themselves originally good. For were they not good vices could not hurt them. For how do they hurt them but by depriving them of integrity, beauty, welfare, virtue, and in short whatever natural good vices want to diminish or destroy. But if there be no good to take away then no injury can be done and consequently there can be no vice. For it is impossible that there should be a harmless vice. When we gather that though vice cannot injure the unchangeable good it can injure nothing but good because it does not exist or it does not injure. This then may be thus formulated. Vice cannot be in the highest good and cannot be but in some good. Things solely good therefore can in some circumstances exist. Things solely evil never. For even those natures which are vitiated by an evil will so far indeed as they are vitiated are evil but insofar as they are natures they are good. And when a vitiated nature is punished besides the good it has in being a nature it has this also that it is not unpunished. For this is just and certainly everything just is a good. For no one is punished for natural but for voluntary vices. For even the vice which by the force of habit and long continuance has become a second nature had its origin and the will. For at present we are speaking of the vices of the nature which has a mental capacity for that enlightenment which discriminates between what is just and what is just. Chapter 4 But it is ridiculous to condemn the faults of beasts and trees and other such mortal and mutable things as our void of intelligence, sensation or life even though these faults should destroy their corruptible nature. For these creatures received at their creator's will in existence fitting them by passing away and giving place to others to secure that lowest form of beauty, the beauty of seasons which in its own place are the requisite part of this world. For things earthly were neither to be made equal to things heavenly nor were they though inferior to be quite omitted from the universe. Since then in those situations where such things are appropriate some perished to make way for others that are born in their room and the less succumb to the greater and the things that are overcome are transformed into the quality of those that have the mastery. This is the appointed order of things transitory. Of this order the beauty does not strike us because by our mortal frailty we are so involved in a part of it that we cannot perceive the whole in which these fragments that offend us are harmonized with the most accurate fitness and beauty. And therefore, where we are not so well able to perceive the wisdom of the creator we are very properly enjoined to believe it, lest in the vanity of human rashness we presume to find any fault with the work of so great an artificer. At the same time if we attentively consider even these faults of earthly things which are neither voluntary nor penal they seem to illustrate the excellence of the natures themselves which are all originated and created by God. For it is that which pleases us in this nature which we are displeased to see removed by the fault, unless even the natures themselves displease men as often happens when they become hurtful to them and then men estimate them not by their nature but by their utility, as in the case of those animals whose swarms scourge the pride of the Egyptians. But in this way of estimating they may find fault with the sun itself for certain criminals or debtors are sentenced by the judges to be set in the sun. Therefore it is not with respect to our convenience or discomfort but with respect to their own nature that the creatures are glorifying to their artificer. Thus even the nature of the eternal fire, penal though it be to the condemned sinners, is most assuredly worthy of praise. For what is more beautiful than fire flaming, blazing and shining? What more useful than fire for warming, restoring, cooking, though nothing is more destructive than fire burning and consuming? The same thing then when applied in one way is destructive but when applied suitably is most beneficial. For who can find words to tell its uses throughout the whole world? We must not listen then to those who praise the light of fire but find fault with its heat, judging it not by its nature but by their convenience or discomfort, for they wish to see but not to be burned. But they forget that this very light which is so pleasant to them disagrees with and hurts weak eyes, and in that heat which is disagreeable to them some animals find the most suitable conditions of a healthy life. All natures then, in as much as they are, and have therefore a rank and species of their own, and a kind of internal harmony, are certainly good. And when they are in the places assigned to them by the order of their nature they preserve such being as they have received. And those things which have not received everlasting being are altered for better or for worse so as to suit the wants and motions of those things to which the Creator's law has made them subservient, and thus they tend in the Divine Providence to that end which is embraced in the general scheme of the government of the universe. So that, though the corruption of transitory and perishable things brings them to utter destruction, it does not prevent their producing that which was designed to be their result. And this being so, God, who supremely is and who therefore created every being which has not supreme existence, for that which was made of nothing could not be equal to him, and indeed could not be at all had he not made it, is not to be found fault with on account of the creature's faults, but is to be praised in view of the natures he has made. Thus the true cause of the blessedness of the good angels is found to be this, that they cleave to him who supremely is. And if we ask the cause of the misery of the bad, it occurs to us, and not unreasonably, that they are miserable because they have forsaken him who supremely is, and have turned to themselves who have no such essence. And this vice, what else is it called, than pride? For pride is the beginning of sin. They were unwilling then to preserve their strength for God, and as adherents to God was the condition of their enjoying an appler being, they diminished it by preferring themselves to him. This was the first effect, and the first impoverishment, and the first flaw of their nature which was created, not indeed supremely existent, but finding its blessedness in the enjoyment of the supreme being, whilst by abandoning him it should become not indeed no nature at all, but a nature with a less ample existence, and therefore wretched. If the further question be asked, what was the efficient cause of their evil will, there is none. For what is it which makes the will bad, when it is the will itself which makes the action bad? And consequently the bad will is the cause of the bad action, but nothing is the efficient cause of the bad will. For if anything is the cause, this thing either has or has not a will. If it has, the will is either good or bad. If good, who is so left to himself as to say that a good will makes a will bad? For in this case a good will would be the cause of sin, a most absurd supposition. On the other hand, if this hypothetical thing has a bad will, I wish to know what made it so, and that we may not go on forever, I ask at once what made the first evil will bad. For that is not the first which was itself corrupted by an evil will, but that is the first which was made evil by no other will. For if it were preceded by that which made it evil, that will was first which made the other evil. But if it is replied, nothing made it evil, it always was evil, I ask if it has been existing in some nature. For if not, then it did not exist at all. And if it did exist in some nature, then it vitiated and corrupted it, and injured it, and consequently deprived it of good. And therefore the evil will could not exist in an evil nature, but in a nature had once good and mutable which this vice could injure. For if it did no injury, it was no vice, and consequently the will in which it was could not be called evil. But if it did injury, it did it by taking away or diminishing good. And therefore there could not be from eternity, as was suggested, an evil will in that thing in which there had been previously a natural good which the evil will was able to diminish by corrupting it. If then it was not from eternity, who, I ask, made it. The only thing that can be suggested in reply is that something which itself had no will made the will evil. I ask then whether this thing was superior, inferior, or equal to it. If superior, then it is better. How then has it no will, and not rather a good will? The same reasoning applies if it was equal. For so long as two things have equally a good will, the one cannot produce in the other an evil will. Then remains the supposition that that which corrupted the will of the angelic nature which first sinned was itself an inferior thing without a will. But that thing, be it of the lowest and most earthly kind, is certainly itself good, since it is a nature and being with a form and rank of its own in its own kind and order. How then can a good thing be the efficient cause of an evil will? How, I say, can good be the cause of evil? For when the will abandons what is above itself and turns to what is lower, it becomes evil, not because that is evil to which it turns, but because the turning itself is wicked. Therefore it is not an inferior thing which has made the will evil, but it is itself which has become so by wickedly and inordinately desiring an inferior thing. For if two men, alike in physical and moral constitution, see the same corporal beauty, and one of them is excited by the sight to desire an illicit enjoyment, while the other steadfastly maintains a modest restraint of his will, what do we suppose brings it about that there is an evil will in the one and not in the other? What produces it and the man in whom it exists? Not the bodily beauty, for that was presented equally to the gaze of both and yet did not produce in both an evil will. Did the flesh of the one cause the desire as he looked? But why did not the flesh of the other? Or was it the disposition? But why not the disposition of both? For we are supposing that both were of a light temperament of body and soul. Must we then say that the one was tempted by a secret suggestion of the evil spirit? As if it was not by his own will that he consented to this suggestion, and to any inducement whatever. This consent, then, this evil will which he presented to the evil suasive influence, what was the cause of it, we ask? For not to delay on such a difficulty as this, if both are tempted equally, and one yields and consents to the temptation, while the other remains unmoved by it, what other account can we give of the matter than this, that the one is willing, the other unwilling, to fall away from chastity? And what causes this but their own wills, in cases at least such as we are supposing, where the temperament is identical? The same beauty was equally obvious to the eyes of both, the same secret temptation pressed on both with equal violence. However minutely we examine the case, therefore, we can discern nothing which caused the will of the one to be evil. For if we say that the man himself made his will evil, what was the man himself before his will was evil, but a good nature created by God, the unchangeable good? Here are two men who, before the temptation, were alike in body and soul, and of whom one yielded to the tempter who persuaded him, while the other could not be persuaded, to desire that lovely body which was equally before the eyes of both. Shall we say of the successfully tempted man that he corrupted his own will, since he was certainly good before his will became bad? Then why did he do so? Was it because his will was a nature, or because it was made of nothing? We shall find that the latter is the case. For if a nature is the cause of an evil will, what else can we say than that evil arises from good, or that good is the cause of evil? And how can it come to pass that a nature, good, though mutable, should produce any evil, that is to say, should the will itself wicked? Let no one therefore look for an efficient cause of the evil will, for it is not efficient, but deficient, as the will itself is not an effecting of something, but a defect. For defection from that which supremely is, to that which has less of being, this is to begin to have an evil will. Now to seek to discover the causes of these defections, causes as I have said not efficient, but deficient, is as if someone sought to see darkness, or hear silence. Yet both of these are known by us, and the former by means only of the eye, the latter only by the ear, but not by their positive actuality, but by their want of it. Let no one then seek to know for me what I know that I do not know, unless he perhaps wishes to learn to be ignorant of that, of which all we know is that it cannot be known. For those things which are known not by their actuality, but by their want of it, are known, if our expression may be allowed and understood, by not knowing them, that by knowing them they may be not known. For when the eyesight surveys objects that strike the sense, it nowhere sees darkness but where it begins not to see. And so no other sense but the ear can perceive silence, and yet it is only perceived by not hearing. Thus too our mind perceives intelligible forms by understanding them, but when they are deficient it knows them by not knowing them, for who can understand defects. Chapter 8 This I do know that the nature of God can never, nowhere, know wise be defective, and that nature is made of nothing, can. These latter, however, the more being they have, and the more good they do, for then they do something positive, the more they have efficient causes. But insofar as they are defective in being, and consequently do evil, for then what is their work, but vanity, they have deficient causes. And I know likewise that the will could not become evil were an unwilling to become so, and therefore its failings are justly punished, being not necessary but voluntary. For its defections are not to evil things, but are themselves evil. That is to say, are not towards things that are naturally and in themselves evil, but the defection of the will is evil, because it is contrary to the order of nature and an abandonment of that which has supreme being for that which has less. For avarice is not a fault inherent in gold, but in the man who inordinately loves gold to the detriment of justice which ought to be held in an incomparably higher regard than gold. Now there is luxury, the fault of lovely and charming objects, but of the heart that inordinately loves sensual pleasures to the neglect of temperance which attaches us to objects more lovely in their spirituality and more delectable by their incorruptibility. Nor yet is boasting the fault of human praise, but of the soul that is inordinately fond of the applause of men and that it makes light of the voice of conscience. Pride too is not the fault of him who delegates power, nor of power itself, but of the soul that is inordinately enamored of its own power and despises the more just dominion of a higher authority. Consequently he who inordinately loves the good which any nature possesses, even though he obtain it, himself becomes evil in the good and wretched because deprived of a greater good. CHAPTER IX There is, then, no naturally efficient cause, or if I may be allowed the expression no essential cause of the evil will, since itself is the origin of evil and mutable spirits by which the good of their nature is diminished and corrupted, and the will is made evil by nothing else than defection from God, a defection of which the cause too is certainly deficient. But as to the good will, if we should say that there is no efficient cause of it, we must beware of giving currency to the opinion that the good will of the good angels is not created, but is co-eternal with God. For if they themselves are created, how can we say that their good will was eternal? But if created was it created along with themselves, or did they exist for a time without it? If along with themselves, then doubtless it was created by him who created them, and as soon as ever they were created they attached themselves to him who created them with the love he created in them. And they are separated from the society of the rest because they have continued in the same good will, while the others have fallen away to another will, which is an evil one, by the very fact of its being a falling away from the good, from which we may add they would not have fallen away had they been unwilling to do so. But if the good angels existed for a time without a good will, and produced it in themselves without God's interference, then it follows that they made themselves better than he made them, away with such a thought. For without a good will what were they but evil? Or if they were not evil because they had not an evil will any more than a good one, for they had not fallen away from that which as yet they had not begun to enjoy, certainly they were not the same, not so good, as when they came to have a good will. Or if they could not make themselves better than they were made by him who is surpassed by none in his work, then certainly without his helpful operation they could not come to possess that good will which made them better. And though their good will affected that they did not turn to themselves who had a more stinted existence but to him who supremely is, and that being united to him their own being was enlarged, and they lived a wise and blessed life by his communications to them, what does this prove but that the will, however good it might be, would have continued helplessly only to desire him had not he who had made their nature out of nothing and yet capable of enjoying him first stimulated it to desire him and then filled it with himself and so made it better. Besides this too has to be inquired into whether if the angels made their own good will they did so with or without will, if without then it was not their doing, if with was the will good or bad, if bad how could a bad will give birth to a good one, if good then already they had a good will, and who made this will which already they had but he who created them with a good will or with that chaste love by which they cleaved to him in one and the same act creating their nature and endowing it with grace, and thus we are driven to believe that the holy angels never existed without a good will or the love of God, but the angels who though created good or yet evil now became so by their own will, and this will was not made evil by their good nature unless by its voluntary defection from good, for good is not the cause of evil but a defection from good is. These angels therefore either received less of the grace of divine love than those who persevered in the same, or if both were created equally good then while the one fell by their evil will the others were more abundantly assisted and attained to that pitch of blessedness at which they became certain they should never fall from it, as we have already shown in the preceding book. We must therefore acknowledge with the praise due to the Creator that not only of holy man but also of the holy angels it can be said that the love of God who shed abroad in their hearts by the holy ghost which is given unto them, and that not only of men but primarily and principally of angels that is true as it is written it is good to draw near to God, and those who have this good in common have both with him to whom they draw near and with one another a holy fellowship and form one city of God, his living sacrifice and his living temple, and I see that as I have now spoken of the rise of this city among the angels it is time to speak of the origin of that part of it which is hereafter to be united to the immortal angels in which at present is being gathered from among mortal men and is either sojourning on earth or in the persons of those who have passed through death is resting in the secret receptacles and abodes of disembodied spirits. For from one man whom God created as the first the whole human race descended according to the faith of holy culture which deservedly is a wonderful authority among all nations throughout the world since among its other true statements it predicted by its divine foresight that all nations would give credit to it. CHAPTER X Let us then omit the conjectures of men who know not what they say when they speak of the nature and origin of the human race. For some hold the same opinion regarding men that they hold regarding the world itself that they have always been. Thus Apolaus says when he is describing our race individually they are mortal but collectively and as a race they are immortal. And when they are asked how if the human race has always been they vindicate the truth of their history which narrates who were the inventors and what they invented and who first instituted the liberal studies in the other arts and who first inhabited this or that region and this or that island they reply that most if not all lands were so desolated at intervals by fire and flood that men were greatly reduced in numbers and from these again the population was restored to its former numbers and that thus there was at intervals a new beginning made. And though these things which had been interrupted and checked by the severe devastations were only renewed yet they seemed to be originated then but that man could not exist at all save as produced by man but they say what they think not what they know. They are deceived too by those highly mendacious documents which profess to give the history of many thousand years though reckoning by the sacred writings we find that not six thousand years have yet passed and not to spend many words in exposing the baselessness of these documents in which so many thousands of years are accounted for nor improving that their authorities are totally inadequate let me cite only that letter which Alexander the Great wrote to his mother Olympias giving her the narrative he had from an Egyptian priest which he had extracted from their sacred archives and which gave an account of kingdoms mentioned also by the Greek historians. In this letter of Alexander is a term of upwards of five thousand years as assigned to the kingdom of Assyria while in the Greek history only one thousand three hundred years are reckoned from the reign of Bell himself whom both Greek and Egyptian agree in counting the first king of Assyria. Then to the empire of the Persians and Macedonians this Egyptian assigned more than eight thousand years counting to the time of Alexander to whom he was speaking while among the Greeks four hundred and eighty five years are assigned to the Macedonians down to the death of Alexander and to the Persians two hundred and thirty three years reckoning to the termination of his conquests thus these give a much smaller number of years than the Egyptians and indeed though multiplied three times the Greek chronology would still be shorter for the Egyptians are said to have formally reckoned only four months to their year so that one year according to the fuller and truer computation now in use among them as well as among ourselves would comprehend three of their old years but not even thus as I said as the Greek history correspond with the Egyptian and its chronology and therefore the former must receive the greater credit because it does not exceed the true account of the duration of the world as it is given by our documents which are truly sacred further if this letter of Alexander which has become so famous differs widely in this matter of chronology from the probable credible account how much less can we believe these documents which though full of fabulous and fictitious antiquities they would faint opposed to the authority of our well known and divine books which predicted that the whole world would believe them in which the whole world accordingly has believed which proved to that it had truly narrated past events by its prediction of future events which have so exactly come to pass chapter eleven there are some again who though they do not suppose that this world is eternal are of opinion out of this is not the only world but that there are numberless worlds or that indeed it is the only one but that it dies and is born again at fixed intervals and this times without number but they must acknowledge that the human race existed before there were other men to be get them for they cannot suppose that if the whole world perish some men would be left alive in the world as they might survive in floods and conflagrations which those other speculators supposed to be partial and from which therefore reasonably argue that a few men survived whose posterity would renew the population but as they believe that the world itself is renewed out of its own material so they must believe that out of its elements the human race was produced and then that the progeny of mortals sprang like that of other animals from their parents chapter twelve as to those who are always asking why man was not created during these countless ages of the infinitely extended past and came into being so lately that according to scripture less than six thousand years have elapsed since he began to be I would reply to them regarding the creation of man just as I replied regarding the origin of the world to those who will not believe that it is not eternal but had a beginning which even Plato himself most plainly declares though something his statement was not consistent with his real opinion if it offends them that the time has that has elapsed since the creation of man is so short in his years so few according to our authorities let them take this into consideration that nothing that has a limit is long and that all the ages of time being finite are very little or indeed nothing at all when compared to the interminable eternity consequently if there had elapsed since the creation of man I do not say five or six but even sixty or six hundred thousand years or sixty times as many or six hundred or six hundred thousand times as many or this sum multiplied until it could no longer be expressed in numbers the same question could still be put why was he not made before for the past and boundless eternity during which God abstained from creating man is so great that compare it with what vast and untold number of ages you please so long as there is a definite conclusion of this term of time it is not even as if you compare the minutest drop of water with the ocean that everywhere flows around the globe for of these two one indeed is very small the other incomparably vast yet both are finite but that space of time which starts from some beginning and is limited by some termination be it of what extent it may if you compare it with that which has no beginning I know not whether to say we should count it the very minutest thing or nothing at all for take this limited time and deduct from the end of it one by one the briefest moments as you might take day by day from a man's life beginning at the day in which he now lives back to that of his birth and though the number of moments you must subtract in this backward movement be so great that no word can express it yet this subtraction will sometime carry you to the beginning but if you take away from a time which has no beginning I do not say brief moments one by one nor yet hours or days or months or years even in quantities the terms of years so vast that they cannot be named by the most skillful arithmeticians take away terms of years as vast as that which we have supposed to be gradually consumed by the deduction of moments and take them away not once and again repeatedly but always and what do you effect what do you make by your deduction since you never reach the beginning which has no existence where for that which we now demand after five thousand odd years our descendants might with like curiosity demand after six hundred thousand years supposing these dying generations of men continue so long to decay and be renewed and supposing posterity continues as weak and ignorant as ourselves the same question might have been asked by those who have lived before us and while man was even newer upon earth the first man himself in short might the day after or the very day of his creation have asked why he was created no sooner and no matter at what earlier or later period he had been created this controversy about the commencement of this world's history would have had precisely the same difficulties as it has now chapter thirteen this controversy some philosophers have seen no other approved means of solving than by introducing cycles of time in which there should be a constant renewal and repetition of the order of nature and they have therefore asserted these cycles will ceaselessly recur one passing away and another coming though they are not agreed as to whether one permanent world shall pass through all these cycles or what of the world shall it fixed intervals die out and be renewed so as to exhibit a recurrence of the same phenomena the things which have been and those which are to be coinciding and from this fantastic vicissitude they exempt not even the immortal soul that has attained wisdom consigning it to a ceaseless transmigration between delusive blessedness and real misery for how can that be truly called blessed which has no assurance of being so eternally and is either an ignorance of the truth and blind to the misery that is approaching or knowing it is in misery and fear or if it passes to bliss and leaves miseries forever then there happens in time a new thing which time shall not end why not then the world also why may not man to be a similar thing so that by following the straight path of sound doctrine we escape I know not what circuitous paths discovered by deceiving a deceived sages some to an advocating these recurring cycles that restore all things to their original site in favor of their supposition what Solomon says in the book of Ecclesiastes what is that which hath been it is that which shall be and what is that which is done it is that which shall be done and there is no new thing under the sun who can speak and say see this is new it hath been already of old time which was before us this he said either of those things of which he had just been speaking the succession of generations the orbit of the sun the course of rivers or else of all kinds of creatures that are born and die for men before us are with us and shall be after us and so all living things and all plans even monstrous and irregular productions though differing from one another and the some are reported as solitary instances yet resemble one another generally in so far as they are miraculous and monstrous and in this sense have been and shall be and are no new and recent things under the sun however somewhat understand these words is meaning that in the succession of God all things have already existed and that thus there is no new thing under the sun at all events far be it from any true believer to suppose that by these words of Solomon those cycles are meant in which according to those philosophers the same periods and events of time are repeated as if for example the philosopher Plato having taught in the school at Athens which is called the Academy so numberless ages before at long but certain intervals the same Plato and the same school and the same disciples existed and so also are to be repeated during the countless cycles that are yet to be far be it I say from us to believe this for once Christ died for our sins and rising from the dead he died no more death has no more dominion over him and we ourselves after the resurrection shall be ever with the Lord to whom we now say as the sacred psalmist dictates thou shalt keep us no Lord thou shalt preserve us from this generation and that to which follows is I think appropriate enough the wicked walk in a circle not because their life is to recur by means of these circles which these philosophers imagine but because the path in which their false doctrine now runs is circuitous. Chapter 14 What wonder is it if entangled in these circles they find neither entrance nor egress for they know not how the human race and this mortal condition of ours took its origin nor how it will be brought to an end since they cannot penetrate the inscrutable wisdom of God for though himself eternal and without beginning yet he caused time to have a beginning and man whom he had not previously made he made in time not from a new and sudden resolution but by his unchangeable and eternal design. Who can search out the unsearchable depth of this purpose who can scrutinize the inscrutable wisdom where with God without change of will created man who had never before been and gave him an existence in time and increased the human race from one individual. For the psalmist himself when he had first said thou shalt keep us O Lord thou shalt preserve us from this generation forever and had then rebuked those whose foolish and impious doctrine preserves for the soul no eternal deliverance and blessedness adds immediately the wicked walk in a circle. Then as if it were said to him what then do you believe feel no are we to believe that it suddenly occurred to God to create man whom he had never before made in a past eternity God to whom nothing new can occur and in whom is no changefulness the psalmist goes on to reply as if addressing God himself according to the depth of thy wisdom thou hast multiplied the children of men. Let men he seems to say fancy what they please let them conjecture and dispute as seems good to them but thou hast multiplied the children of men according to the depth of thy wisdom which no man can comprehend. For this is a depth indeed that God always has been and that man whom he had never made before he will to make in time and this without changing his design and will. For my own part indeed as I dare not say that there ever was a time when the Lord God was not Lord so I ought not to doubt that man had no existence before time and was first created in time. But when I consider what God could be the Lord of if there was not always some creature I shrink from making any assertion remembering my own insignificance and that it is written what man is he that can know the counsel of God or who can think what the will of the Lord is for the thoughts of mortal man are timid and our devices are but uncertain for the corruptible body presses down the soul and the earthly tabernacle wayeth down the mind that museth upon many things. Many things certainly do I muse upon in this earthly tabernacle because the one thing which is true among the many or beyond the many I cannot find. If then among these many thoughts I say there have always been creatures for him to be Lord of who is always and ever has been Lord but that these creatures have not always been the same but succeeded one another for we would not seem to say that any is co-eternal with the Creator in assertion condemned equally by faith and sound reason I must take care lest I fall into the absurd and ignorant error of maintaining that by these successions and changes mortal creatures have always existed whereas the immortal creatures had not begun to exist until the date of our own world when the angels were created if at least the angels were intended by that light which was first made or rather by that heaven of which it is said in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The angels at least did not exist before they were created for if we say that they have always existed we shall seem to make them co-eternal with the Creator again if I say that the angels were not created in time but existed before all times as those over whom God who has ever been sovereign exercised his sovereignty then I shall be asked whether if they were created before all time they being creatures could possibly always exist it may perhaps be replied why not always since that which is in all time a very properly be said to be always now so true is it that these angels have existed in all time that even before time was they were created if at least time began with the heavens and the angels existed before the heavens and if time was even before the heavenly bodies not indeed marked by hours days months and years for these measures of times periods which are commonly and properly called times did manifestly begin with emotion of the heavenly bodies and so God said when he appointed them let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and for years if I say time was before these heavenly bodies by some changing movement whose parts succeeded one another and could not exist simultaneously and if there was some such movement among the angels which necessitated the existence of time and that they from their very creation should be subject to these temporal changes then they have existed in all time for time came into being along with them and who will say that what was in all time was not always but if I make such a reply will be said to me how then are they not co-eternal with the Creator if he and they always have been how even can they be said to have been created if we are to understand that they have always existed what shall we reply to this shall we say that both statements are true that they always have been since they have been in all time they being created along with time or time along with them and yet that also they were created for similarly we will not deny that time itself was created though no one doubts the time has been in all time for if it has not been in all time then there was a time when there was no time but the most foolish person could not make such an assertion for we can reasonably say there was a time when Rome was not there was a time when Jerusalem was not there was a time when Abraham was not there was a time when man was not and so on in fine if the world was not made at the commencement of time but after some time had elapsed we can say there was a time when the world was not but to say there was a time when time was not is as absurd as to say there was a man when there was no man or this world when this world was not for if we are not referring to the same object the form of expression may be used as there was another man when this man was not thus we can reasonably say there was another time when this time was not but not the nearest simpleton could say that there was a time when there was no time as then we say that time was created though we also say that it always has been since an all time time has been so it does not follow that if the angels have always been they were therefore not created for we say that they have always been because they have been in all time and we say that they have been in all time because time itself could no wise be without them for whether is no creature whose changing movements admit of succession there cannot be time at all and consequently even if they have always existed they were created neither if they have always existed are they therefore co-eternal with the creator for he has always existed in unchangeable eternity while they were created and are said to have been always because they have been in all time time being impossible without the creature but time passing away by his changefulness cannot be co-eternal with changeless eternity and consequently though the immortality of the angels does not pass in time does not become past as if now it were not nor has a future as if it were not yet still their movements which are the basis of time do pass from future to past then therefore they cannot be a co-eternal with the creator in whose movement we cannot say that there has been that which now is not or shall be that which is not yet where for if God always has been Lord he has always had creatures under his dominion creatures however not begotten of him but created by him out of nothing nor co-eternal with him for he was before them though at no time without them because he preceded them not by the lapse of time but by his abiding eternity but if I make this reply to those who demand how he was always creator always Lord if there were not always a subject of creation or how this was created and not rather co-eternal with its creator if it always was I fear I may be accused of recklessly affirming what I know not instead of teaching what I know I return therefore to that which our creator has seen fit that we should know and those things which he has allowed the abler men to know in this life or has reserved to be known in the next by the perfected saints I acknowledge to be beyond my capacity but I have thought it right to do these matters without making positive assertions that they who read may be warned to abstain from hazardous questions and may not deem themselves fit for everything let them rather endeavor to obey the wholesome injunction of the apostle when he says for I say through the grace given unto me to every man that is among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think but to think soberly according as God had dealt to every man the infant receive nourishment suited to its strength it becomes capable as it grows of taking more but if its strength and capacity be overtaxed it winds away in place of growing Chapter 16 I own that I do not know what ages past before the human race was created yet I have no doubt that no created thing is co-eternal with the creator but even the apostle speaks of time as eternal and this with reference not to the God but which is more surprising to the past for he says in hope of eternal life which God that cannot lie promised before the eternal times but hath in due times manifested his word you see he says that in the past there have been eternal times which however were not co-eternal with God and since God before these eternal times not only existed but also promised life eternal which he manifested in its own times that is to say in due times what else is this that his word for this is life eternal but then how did he promise for the promise was made to men and yet they had no existence before eternal times does this not mean that in his own eternity and in his co-eternal word that which was to be in its own time was already predestined and fixed Chapter 17 of this too I have no doubt that the first man was created there never had been a man at all neither the same man himself recurring by I know not what cycles and having made I know not how many revolutions nor any other of similar nature from this belief I am not frightened by philosophical arguments among which that is reckoned the most acute which is founded on the assertion that the infinite cannot be comprehended by any mode of knowledge consequently they argue God has in his own mind the exceptions of all finite things which he makes now it cannot be supposed that his goodness was ever idle for if it were there should be ascribed to him an awakening to activity and time from a past eternity of inactivity as if he repented of an idleness that had no beginning and proceeded therefore to make a beginning of work this being the case they say it must be that the same things are always repeated and that as they pass leads to all these changes the world remains the same the world which has always been and yet was created or that the world in these revolutions is perpetually dying out and being renewed otherwise if we point to a time when the works of God were begun it would be believed that he had considered his past eternal leisure to be inert and indolent and therefore condemned and altered it as displeasing to himself now if God is supposed to have been indeed always making temporal things from one another and one after the other so that he thus came at last to make man whom he had never made before then it may seem that he made man not with knowledge for they suppose no knowledge can comprehend the infinite succession of creatures but at the dictate of the hour as it struck him at the moment with a sudden and accidental change of mind on the other hand say they if those cycles be admitted and if we suppose that the same temporal things are repeated while the world remains identical through all these rotations or else dies away and is renewed then there is a scribe to God now that the slothful ease of a past eternity nor a rash and unforeseen creation and if the same things be not thus repeated in cycles then they cannot by any science or pressions be comprehended in their endless diversity even though reason could not refute faith would smile at these argumentations with which the godless endeavor to turn our simple humanity from the right way that we may walk with them in a circle but by the help of the Lord our God even reason and that readily enough shatters these revolving circles which conjecture frames for that which specially leads these men astray to prefer their own circles to the straight path of truth is that they measure by their own human changeable and narrow intellect the divine mind which is absolutely unchangeable infinitely capacious and without succession without thought counting all things without number so that saying of the apostle comes true of them for comparing themselves with themselves they do not understand for because they do in virtue of a new purpose whatever new thing has occurred to them to be done their minds being changeable they conclude it is so with God and thus compare not God for they cannot conceive God but think of one like themselves when they think of him with him but with themselves for our part we do not believe that God is affected in one way when he works in another when he rests indeed to say that he is affected at all is an abuse of language since it implies that there comes to be something in his nature which was not there before for he who is affected is acted upon and whatever is acted upon is changeable his leisure therefore is no laziness indolence in activity as in his work is no labor effort industry he can act while he reposes and repose while he acts he can begin a new work with not a new but an eternal design and what he has not made before he does not now begin to make because he repents of his former repose but when one speaks of his former repose and subsequent operation and I know not how men can understand these things this former and subsequent are applied only to the things created did not exist and subsequently came into existence but in God the former purpose is not altered and obliterated by the subsequent and different purpose but by one and the same eternal and unchangeable will he affected regarding the things he created both that formerly so long as they were not they should not be and that subsequently when they began to be they should come into existence and thus perhaps he would show in a very striking way to those who have eyes for such things how independent he is of what he makes and how it is of his own gratuitous goodness he creates since from eternity he dwelt without creatures in no less perfect a blessedness Chapter 18 as for their other assertion that God's knowledge cannot comprehend things infinite it only remains for them to affirm in order that they may sound the depths of their impiety that God does not know all numbers for it is very certain that they are infinite since no matter of what number you suppose and end to be made this number can be I will not say increased by the addition of one more but however great it be and however vast be the multitude of which it is the rational and scientific expression it can still be not only doubled but even multiplied moreover each number is so defined by its own properties that no two numbers are equal they're therefore both unequal and different from one another and while they are simply finite collectively they are infinite thus God therefore not known numbers on account of this infinity and thus his knowledge extend only to a certain height in numbers while of the rest he is ignorant who is so left to himself is to say so yet they can hardly pretend to put numbers out of the question or maintain that they have nothing to do with the knowledge of God for Plato their great authority represents God is framing the world on numerical principles and in our books also it is said to God now has ordered all things in number and measure and weight the prophet also says who bringeth out their host by number and the savior says on the gospel the very hairs of your head are all numbered far be it then from us to doubt that all number is known to him whose understanding according to the psalmist is infinite the infinity of number though there be no numbering of infinite numbers is yet not incomprehensible by him whose understanding is infinite and thus if everything which is comprehended is defined or made finite by the comprehension of him who knows it then all infinity is in some ineffable way made finite to God for it is comprehensible by his knowledge wherefore if the infinity of numbers cannot be infinite to the knowledge of God by which it is comprehended what are we poor creatures that we should presume to fix limits to his knowledge and say that unless the same temporal thing be repeated by the same periodic revolutions God cannot either foreknow his creatures that he may make them or know them when he has made them God whose knowledge is simply manifold and uniform in its variety comprehends all incomprehensibles with so incomprehensible a comprehension that though he will always to make his later works novel and unlike what went before them he could not produce them without order and foresight nor conceive them only but by his eternal foreknowledge end of book 12 chapters 10 through 18 recording by Darren L. Slider Fort Worth Texas www.logoslibrary.org book 12 chapters 19 through 27 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 12 chapter 19 I do not presume to determine whether God does so and whether these times which are called ages of ages are joined together in a continuous series and succeed one another with a regulated diversity and leave exempt from their vicissitudes who are freed from their misery and abide without end in a blessed immortality or whether these are called ages of ages that we may understand that the ages remain unchangeable and God's unwavering wisdom and are the efficient causes as it were of those ages which are being spent in time possibly ages is used for age so that nothing else is meant by ages of ages than by age of age as nothing else is meant by heavens of heavens than by heaven of heaven for God called the firmament above which are the waters heaven and yet the psalm says let the waters that are above the heavens praise the name of the Lord which of these two meanings were to attach to ages of ages or whether there is not some other and better meaning still is a very profound question in the subject we are at present handling presents no obstacle to our meanwhile deferring the discussion of it whether we may be able to determine anything about it cautious by its further treatment so as to be deterred from making any rash affirmations in a matter of such obscurity for at present we are disputing the opinion that affirms the existence of those periodic revolutions by which the same things are always recurring at intervals of time now whichever of these suppositions regarding the ages of ages be the true one it avails nothing for the substantiating of those cycles for what of the ages of ages of the same world but different worlds succeeding one another in a regulated connection the ransomed souls abiding in a well assured bliss without any recurrence of misery or what of the ages of ages be the eternal causes which rule what shall be and is in time it equally follows that those cycles which bring round the same things have no existence and nothing more thoroughly explodes them than the fact of the eternal life of the saints what pious ears could bear to hear that after a life spent in so many and severe distresses if indeed that should be called a life at all which is rather a death so utter that the love of this present death makes us fear that death which delivers us from it that after evils so disastrous and miseries of all kinds have at length been expiated and finished by the help of true religion and wisdom and when we have thus attained to the vision of God and have entered into bliss by the contemplation of spiritual light and participation in his unchangeable immortality which we burn to attain that we must at some time lose all this and that they who do lose it are cast down from that eternity truth and felicity to infernal morality and shameful foolishness and are involved in accursed woes in which God has lost truth held in detestation and happiness sought in an iniquitous impurities and that this will happen endlessly again and again recurring at fixed intervals and in regularly returning periods and that this everlasting and ceaseless revolution of definite cycles which remove and restore true misery and deceitful bliss in turn is contrived in order that God may be able to know his own works since on the one hand he cannot rest from creating and on the other cannot know the infinite number of his creatures if he always makes creatures accept or suffer them to be spoken were they true it were not only more prudent to keep silence regarding them but even to express myself as best I can it were the part of wisdom not to know them for if in the future world we shall not remember these things and by this oblivion be blessed why should we now increase our misery already burdensome enough by the knowledge of them if on the other hand the knowledge of them will be forced upon us hereafter now at least remain in ignorance that in the present expectation we may enjoy a blessedness which the future reality is not to bestow since in this life we are expecting to obtain life everlasting but in the world to come are to discover it to be blessed but not everlasting and if they maintain that no one can attain to the blessedness of the world to come unless in this life he has been indoctrinated in those cycles in which bliss and misery relieve one another now that the more a man loves God the more readily he attains to blessedness they who teach what paralyzes love itself for who would not be more remiss and luke warm in his love for a person whom he thinks he shall be forced to abandon and whose truth and wisdom he shall come to hate and this too after he has quite attained to the utmost and most blissful knowledge of him that he is capable of can anyone be faithful in his love even to a human friend if he knows to become his enemy God forbid that there be any truth in an opinion which threatens us with a real misery that is never to end but is often and endlessly to be interrupted by intervals of fallacious happiness for what happiness can be more fallacious and false than that in whose blaze of truth we yet remain ignorant that we shall be miserable or in whose most secure citadel we yet fear that we shall be so for if on the one hand we are to be ignorant then our present misery is not so short cited for it is assured of coming bliss if on the other hand the disaster that threatens is not concealed from us in the world to come then the time of misery which is to be at last exchanged for a state of blessedness is spent by the soul more happily than its time of happiness which is to end in a return to misery and thus our expectation of unhappiness is happy but of happiness unhappy and therefore as we here suffer present ills and hereafter fear ills that are imminent it were truer to say that we shall always be miserable than that we can sometime be happy but these things are declared to be false by the loud testimony of religion and truth for religion truthfully promises a true blessedness of which we shall be eternally assured and which cannot be interrupted by any disaster let us therefore keep to the straight path which is Christ and with him as our guide and saviour let us turn away in heart and mind from the unreal and futile cycles of the godless porphyry platinist though he was abjured the opinion of his school that in these cycles souls are ceaselessly passing away and returning either being struck with the extravagance of the idea or sobered by his knowledge of Christianity as I mentioned in the 10th book he preferred saying that the soul as that had been sent into the world and be purged and delivered from it was never again exposed to such an experience after he had once returned to the father and if he abjured the tenets of his school how much more ought we Christians to abominate and avoid an opinion so unfounded and hostile to our faith but having disposed of these cycles and escaped out of them no necessity compels us to suppose that the human race had no beginning in time on the ground that there is nothing which by I know not what cycles has not at some previous period existed and is not hereafter to exist again for if the soul once delivered as it never was before is never to return to misery then there happens in its experience something which never happened before and this indeed something of the greatest consequence to wit the secure entrance into eternal felicity and if in an immortal nature there can occur a novelty which never has been more ever shall be reproduced by any cycle why is it disputed that the same may occur in mortal natures if they maintain that blessedness is no new experience to the soul but only a return to that state in which it is ban eternally then at least its deliverance from misery is something new since by their own showing the misery from which it is delivered is itself too a new experience and if this new experience fell out by accident and was not embraced in the world of things appointed by divine providence then where are those determinant and measured cycles in which no new thing happens but all things are reproduced as they were before if however this new experience was embraced in that providential order of nature whether the soul was exposed to the evil of this world for the sake of discipline or fell into it by sin then it is possible for new things to happen which never happened before and which yet are not extraneous to the order and if the soul is able by its own imprudence to create for itself a new misery which was not unforeseen by the divine providence but was provided for in the order of nature along with the deliverance from it how can we even with all the rashness of human vanity presume to deny that God can create new things new to the world but not to him which he never before created but yet foresaw from all eternity if they say that it is indeed true that ransomed souls return no more to misery but that even so no new thing happens since there always have been now are and ever shall be a succession of ransomed souls they must at least grant that in this case there are new souls to whom the misery and the deliverance from it are new for if they maintain that those souls out of which new men are daily being made from whose bodies if they have lived wisely they are so delivered that they never return to misery are not new but have existed from eternity they must logically admit that they are infinite for however great a finite number of souls there were that would not have suffice to make perpetually new men from eternity men whose souls were to be eternally freed from this mortal state and never afterwards to return to it and our philosophers will find it hard to explain how there is an infinite number of souls in an order of nature which they require shall be finite that it may be known by God and now that we have exploded these cycles which were supposed to bring back the soul at fixed periods to the same miseries what can seem more in accordance with godly reason than to believe that it is possible for God both to create new things never before created and in doing so to preserve his will unaltered but whether the number of eternally redeemed souls can be continually increased or not let the philosophers themselves decide who are so subtle in determining where infinity cannot be admitted for our own part our reasoning holds in either case for if the number of souls can be indefinitely increased what reason is there to deny that what had never before been created could be created since the number of ransom souls never existed before and has yet not only been once made but will never cease to be a new coming into being if on the other hand it be more suitable that the number of eternally ransom souls be definite and that this number will never be increased yet this number whatever it be did assuredly never exist before and it cannot increase and reach the amount it signifies without having some beginning and this beginning never before existed that this beginning therefore might be the first man was created Chapter 21 now that we have solved as well as we could this very difficult question about the eternal god creating new things without any novelty of will it is easy to see how much better it is that god was pleased to produce the human race from the one individual whom he created than if he had originated it in several men for as to the other animals he created some solitary and naturally seeking lonely places as the eagles kites lions wolves and such like others were gregarious which heard together and prefer to live in company as pigeons starlings stags and little fallow deer and the like but neither class that he caused to be propagated from individuals but called into being several at once man on the other hand whose nature was to be a mean between the angelic and bestial he created in such sort that if he remained in subjection to his creator as his rightful lord and piously kept his commandments he should pass into the company of the angels and obtain without the intervention of death a blessed and endless immortality but if he offended the lord his god by a proud and disobedient use of his free will he should become subject to death and live as the beasts do the slave of appetite and doomed to eternal punishment after death and therefore god created only one single man not certainly that he might be a solitary bereft of all society but that by this means the unity of society and the bond of concord might be more effectually commended to him men being bound together not only by similarity in nature but by family affection and indeed he did not even create the woman that was to be given him as his wife as he created the man but created her out of the man that the whole human race might derive from one man Chapter 22 and god was not ignorant that man would sin and that being himself made subject now to death he would propagate men doomed to die and that these mortals would run to such enormities in sin that even the beasts devoid of rational will and who were created in numbers from the waters and the earth would live more securely and peaceably with their own kind than men who had been propagated from one individual for the very purpose of commending concord for not even lions or dragons have ever waged with their own kind such wars as men have waged with one another but god foresaw also that by his grace a people would be called to adoption and that they being justified by the notion of their sins would be united by the holy ghost the holy angels in eternal peace the last enemy death being destroyed and he knew that this people would derive profit from the consideration that god had caused all men to be derived from one for the sake of showing how highly he prizes unity in a multitude Chapter 23 God then made man in his own image for he created for him a soul of intelligence so that he might excel all the creatures of earth, air and sea which were not so gifted and when he had formed the man out of the dust of the earth and had willed that his soul should be such as I have said whether he had already made it and now by breathing imparted it to man or rather made it by breathing so that that breath which god made by breathing for what else is to breathe and to make breath is the soul he made also a wife for him to aid him in the work of making his kind and her he formed of a bone taken out of the man's side working in a divine manner for we are not to conceive of this work in a carnal fashion as if god wrought as we commonly see artisans who use their hands and material furnished to them that by their artistic skill they may fashion some material object god's hand is god's power and he working invisibly affects visible results but this seems fabulous rather than true for man who measure by customary and everyday works the power and wisdom of god whereby he understands and produces without seeds even seeds themselves and because they cannot understand the things which at the beginning were created they are skeptical regarding them as if the very things which they do know about human propagation, conceptions and births would seem less incredible if told to those who had no experience of them though these very things too were attributed by many physical and natural causes than to the work of the divine mind Chapter 24 But in this book we have nothing to do with those who do not believe that the divine mind made or cares for this world as for those who believe their own Plato that all mortal animals among whom man holds the preeminent place and is near to the gods themselves were created not by that most high god who made the world but by other lesser gods created by the supreme and exercising a delegated power under his control if only those persons be delivered from the superstition which prompts them to seek a plausible reason for paying divine honors and sacrificing to these gods as their creators they will easily be disentangled also from this their error for it is blasphemy to believe or to say even before it can be understood that any other than god as creator of any nature be it never so small and mortal and as for the angels whom those Platonists prefer to call gods although they do so far as they are permitted and commissioned aid in the production of the things around us yet not on that account are we to call them creators any more than we call gardeners the creators of fruits and trees Chapter 25 for whereas there is one form which is given from without to every bodily substance such as the form which is constructed by the potters and smiths and that class of artists who paint in fashion forms like the body of animals but another and internal form which is not itself constructed but as the efficient cause produces not only the natural bodily forms but even the life itself of the living creatures in which proceeds from the secret and hidden choice of an intelligent and living nature let that first mentioned form be attributed to every artificer but this latter to one only god the creator and originator who made the world itself and the angels without the help of world or angels for the same divine and so to speak creative energy which cannot be made but makes in which gave to the earth and sky their roundness the same divine effective and creative energy gave their roundness to the eye and to the apple and the other natural objects which we anywhere see received also their form not from without the secret and profound might of the creator who said do not I fill heaven and earth and whose wisdom it is that reaches from one end to another mightily and sweetly doth she order all things wherefore I know not what kind of aid the angels themselves created first afforded to the creator in making other things I cannot ascribe to them what perhaps they cannot do, neither ought I to deny them such faculty as they have their leave I attribute the creating and originating work which gave being to all natures to God to whom they themselves thankfully ascribe their existence we do not call gardeners the creators of their fruits for we read neither is he that planteth anything neither he that watereth but God that giveth the increase nay not even the earth itself do we call a creator though she seems to be the prolific mother of all things which she aids in germinating earth from the seed in which she keeps rooted in her own breast for we likewise read God giveth at a body as it hath pleased him into every seed his own body we ought not even to call a woman the creatress of her own offspring for he rather is its creator who said to his servant before I formed thee in the womb I knew thee and although the various mental emotions of a pregnant woman do produce in the fruit of her womb similar qualities as peeled wands caused piebald sheep to be produced yet the mother as little creates her offspring as she created herself whatever bodily or seminal causes then may be used for the production of things either by the cooperation of angels men or the lower animals or by sexual generation and whatever power the desires and mental emotions of the mother have to produce in the tender and plastic fetus corresponding lineaments and colors yet the natures themselves which are thus variously affected are the production of none but the most high God it is his occult power which pervades all things and is present in all without being contaminated which gives being to all that is and modifies and limits its existence so that without him it would not be thus or thus nor would have any being at all if then in regard to that outward form which the workman's hand imposes on his work we not say that Rome and Alexandria were built by masons and architects but by the kings whose will plan and resources they were built but so that the one has Romulus the other Alexander for its founder with how much greater reason ought we to say that God alone is the author of all natures since he neither uses for his work any material which was not made by him nor any workman who were not also made by him and since if he were so to speak to withdraw from created things as creative power they would straightway relapse into the nothingness in which they were before they were created before I mean in respect to eternity not of time for what other creator could there be of time than he who created those things whose movements make time Chapter 26 it is obvious that in attributing the creation of the other animals to those inferior gods who were made by the supreme he meant it to be the mortal part was taken from God himself and that these minor creators added the mortal part that is to say he meant them to be considered the creators of our bodies but not of our souls but since porphyry maintains that if the soul is to be purified all entanglement with the body must be escaped from and at the same time agrees with Plato and the Platonists in thinking that those who have not spent a temperate and honorable life or punishment to bodies of Brutes and Plato's opinion to human bodies and porphyries it follows that those whom they would have us worship as our parents and authors that they may plausibly call them gods are after all but the forgers of our fetters and chains not our creators but our jailers and turnkeys who lock us up in the most bitter and melancholy house of correction let the Platonists then either cease menacing us with our bodies as the punishment of our souls or preaching that we are to worship as gods those whose work upon us they exhort us by all means and our power to avoid and escape from but indeed both opinions are quite false it is false that souls return again to this life to be punished and it is false that there is any other creator of anything in heaven or earth than he who made the heaven and the earth for if we live in a body only to expiate our sins it is as Plato in another place that the world could not have been the most beautiful and good had it not been filled with all kinds of creatures mortal and immortal but if our creation even as mortals be a divine benefit how is it a punishment to be restored to a body that is to a divine benefit and if God as Plato continually maintains embraced in his eternal intelligence all the ideas both of the universe and of all the animals how then should he not with his own hand make them all could he be unwilling to be the constructor of works the idea and plan of which called for his ineffable and ineffably to be praised intelligence Chapter 27 with good cause therefore does the true religion recognize and proclaim that the same God who created the universal cosmos created also all the animals souls as well as bodies among the terrestrial animals man was made by him in his own image and for the reason I have given was made one individual though he was not left solitary for there is nothing so social by nature so unsocial by its corruption as this race and human nature has nothing more appropriate either for the prevention of discord or for the healing of it where it exists then the remembrance of that first parent of us all whom God was pleased to create alone that all men might be derived from one and that they might thus be admonished to preserve unity among their whole multitude but from the fact that the woman was made for him from his side it was plainly meant that we should learn how dear the bond between man and wife should be these works of God do certainly seem extraordinary because they are the first works they who do not believe them ought not to believe any prodigies for these would not be called prodigies that they not happen out of the ordinary course of nature but is it possible that anything should happen in vain however hidden be its cause in so grand a government of divine providence one of the sacred solmists says come behold the works of the Lord what prodigies he hath wrought in the earth why God made woman out of man's side and what this first prodigy prefigured I shall with God's help tell in another place but at present since this book must be concluded let us merely say that in this first man who was created in the beginning there was laid the foundation not indeed evidently but in God's foreknowledge of these two cities or societies so far as regards to human race for from that man all men were to be derived some of them to be associated with the good angels and their reward others with a wicked and punishment all being ordered by the secret yet just judgment of God for since it is written all the paths of the Lord are mercy and truth neither can his grace be unjust nor his justice cruel end of book 12 chapters 19 through 27 recording by Darren L. Slider Fort Worth, Texas www.logoslibrary.org book 13 chapters 1 through 11 of the city of God this is 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 13 chapter 1 having disposed of the very difficult questions concerning the origin of our world at the beginning of the human race the natural order requires that we now discuss the fall of the first man we may say of the first men and of the origin and propagation of human death for God had not made man like the angels in such a condition that even though they had sinned they could none the more die he had so made them that if they discharged the obligations of obedience and angelic immortality and a blessed eternity might ensue without the intervention of death but if they disobeyed death should be visited on them with just sentence which too has been spoken to in the preceding book chapter 2 but I see I must speak a little more carefully of the nature of death for although the human soul is truly affirmed to be immortal yet it also has a certain death of its own for it is therefore called immortal because in a sense it does not cease to live and to feel the body is called mortal because it can be forsaken of all life and cannot by itself live at all the death then of the soul takes place when God forsakes it as the death of the body when the soul forsakes it therefore the death of both that is of the whole man occurs when the soul forsaken by God forsakes the body for in this case neither is God the life of the soul nor the soul the life of the body is followed by that which on the authority of the divine oracles we call the second death this the saviour referred to when he said fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell and since this does not happen before the soul is so joined to its body that they cannot be separated at all it may be a matter of wonder how the body can be said to be killed by that death in which it is not forsaken by the soul but tormented for in that penal and everlasting punishment of which in its own place we are to speak more at large the soul is justly said to die because it does not live in connection with God but how can we say that the body is dead seeing that it lives by the soul for it could not otherwise feel the bodily torments which are to follow the resurrection is it because life of every kind is good and pain and evil that we decline to say that that body lives the soul is the cause not of life but of pain the soul then lives by God when it lives well for it cannot live well unless by God working in it what is good and the body lives by the soul when the soul lives in the body whether itself be living by God or no for the wicked man's life in the body is a life not of the soul but of the body which even dead souls that is souls forsaken of God can confer upon bodies forever of their own proper life by which they are immortal they retain but in the last damnation though man does not cease to feel yet because this feeling of his is neither sweet with pleasure nor wholesome with repose but painfully penal it is not without reason called death rather than life and it is called the second death because it follows the first which sunders the two cohering essences whether these be God and the soul of the first and bodily death then we may say that to the good it is good and evil to the evil but doubtless the second as it happens to none of the good so it can be good for none Chapter 3 but a question not to be shirked arises whether in very truth death which separates soul and body is good to the good for if it be how has it come to pass that such a thing should be the punishment of sin for the first men would not have suffered death had they not sinned how then can that be good to the good which could not have happened except to the evil then again if it could only happen to the evil to the good it ought not to be good but nonexistent for why should there be any punishment where there is nothing to punish wherefore we must say that the first men were indeed so created that if they had not sinned they would not have experienced any kind of death that having become sinners they were so punished with death that whatsoever sprang from their stock should also be punished with the same death for nothing else could be born of them than that which they themselves had been their nature was deteriorated in proportion to the greatness of the condemnation of their sin so that what existed as punishment in those who first sinned became a natural consequence in their children for man is not produced by man as he was from the dust for dust was the material out of which man was made man is the parent by whom man is begotten wherefore earth and flesh are not the same thing though flesh be made of earth but as man the parent is such is man the offspring in the first man therefore there existed the whole human nature which was to be transmitted by the woman to posterity when that conjugal union received the divine sentence of its own condemnation and what man was made not when created but when he sinned and was punished this he propagated so far as the origin of sin and death are concerned for neither by sin nor its punishment was he himself reduced to that infantile and helpless infirmity of body and mind which we see in children for God ordained that infant should begin the world as the young of beasts begin it since their parents had fallen to the level of the beasts in the fashion of their life and of their death then man when he was in honor understood not he became like the beasts that have no understanding name more infants we see are even feebler in the use and movements of their limbs and more infirm to choose and refuse than the most tender offspring of other animals as if the force that dwells in human nature were destined to surpass all other living things so much the more eminently as its energy has been longer restrained in the time of its exercise delayed just as an arrow flies the higher the further back it has been drawn to this infantine imbecility the first man did not fall by his lawless presumption and just sentence but human nature was in his person vitiated and altered to such an extent that he suffered in his members the warring of disobedient lust and became subject to the necessity of dying and what he himself had become by sin and punishment such he generated those whom he got that is to say subject to sin and death and if infants are delivered from this bondage of sin by the redeemer's grace they can suffer only this death which separates soul and body but being redeemed from the obligation of sin they do not pass to that second endless and penal death Chapter 4 if moreover anyone is solicitous about this point how if death be the very punishment of sin they whose guilt is do yet suffer death this difficulty has already been handled and solved in our other work which we have written on the baptism of infants there it was said that the parting of soul and body was left though its connection with sin was removed for this reason that if the immortality of the body followed immediately upon the sacrament of regeneration faith itself would be thereby innervated for faith is then only faith when it waits in hope for what is not sin and substance and by the vigor and conflict of faith at least in times past was the fear of death overcome especially was this conspicuous and the holy martyrs who could have had no victory no glory to whom there could not even have been any conflict if after the labor of regeneration saints could not suffer bodily death who would not then in company with the infants presented for baptism run to the grace of Christ so that he would not be missed from the body and thus faith would not be tested with an unseen reward and so would not even be faith seeking and receiving an immediate recompense of its works but now by the greater and more admirable grace of the Saviour the punishment of sin is turned to the service of righteousness for then it was proclaimed to man if thou sinnest thou shalt die now it is said to the martyr die that thou sin not if ye transgress the commandments ye shall die now it is said if ye decline death ye transgress the commandment that which was formally said as an object of terror that men might not sin is now to be undergone if we would not sin thus by the unutterable mercy of God even the very punishment of wickedness has become the armor of virtue and the penalty of the sinner becomes the reward of the righteous for then death was incurred by sinning now righteousness is fulfilled by dying in the case of the holy martyrs it is so for to them the persecutor proposes the alternative apostasy or death for the righteous prefer by believing to suffer what the first transgressors suffered by not believing for unless they had sinned they would not have died but the martyrs sin if they do not die the one died because they sinned the others do not sin because they die by the guilt of the first punishment was incurred by the punishment of the second guilt is prevented not that death which was before an evil has become something good but only that God has granted to faith this grace that death which is the admitted opposite to life should become the instrument by which life is reached Chapter 5 the apostle wishing to show how hurtful a thing sin is when grace does not aid us has not hesitated to say that the strength of sin is that very law by which sin is prohibited the sting of death is sin and the strength of sin is the law most certainly true for prohibition increases the desire of illicit action if righteousness is not so loved that the desire of sin is conquered by that love but unless divine grace aid us we cannot love nor delight in true righteousness but less the law should be thought to be an evil since it is called the strength of sin the apostle when treating a similar question in another place says the law indeed is holy and the commandment holy and just and good was then that which is holy made death unto me God forbid but sin that it might appear sin working death in me by that which is good that sin by the commandment might become exceeding sinful says because the transgression is more heinous when through the increasing lust of sin the law itself also is despised why have we thought it worthwhile to mention this for this reason because as the law is not an evil when it increases the lust of those who sin so neither is death a good thing when it increases the glory of those who suffer it since either the former is abandoned wickedly and makes transgressors or the latter is embraced for the truth's work and makes martyrs and thus the law is indeed good because it is prohibition of sin and death is evil because it is the wages of sin but as wicked men make an evil use not only of evil but also of good things so the righteous make a good use not only of good but also of evil things once it comes to pass that the wicked make an ill use of the law though the law is good and that the good die well and evil Chapter 6 wherefore as regards bodily death that is the separation of the soul from the body it is good unto none while it is being endured by those whom we say are in the article of death for the very violence with which body and soul are wrenched asunder which in the living had been conjoined and closely intertwined brings with it a harsh experience jarring horribly on nature so long as it continues till there comes a total loss of sensation which arose from the very interpenetration of spirit and flesh and all this anguish is sometimes forestalled by one stroke of the body or sudden flitting of the soul the swiftness of which prevents it from being felt but whatever that may be in the dying which with violently painful sensation robs of all sensation yet when it is piously and faithfully born it increases the merit of patience but does not make the name of punishment inapplicable death proceeding by ordinary generation from the first man is the punishment of all who are born of him yet if it be endured for righteousness sake it becomes the glory of those who are born again and though death be the award of sin it sometimes secures that nothing be awarded to sin Chapter 7 for whatever unbaptized persons die confessing Christ no confession is of the same efficacy for the remission of sins as if they were washed in the sacred font of baptism for he who said except a man be born of water and of the spirit he cannot enter into the kingdom of God made also an exception in their favor in that other sentence where he no less absolutely said whosoever shall confess me before men him will I confess also before my father which is in heaven and in another place life for my sake shall find it and this explains the verse precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints for what is more precious than a death by which a man's sins are all forgiven and his merits increased in hundred fold for those who have been baptized when they could no longer escape death and have departed this life when all their sins blotted out have not equal merit with those who did not defer death though it was in their power to do so to end their life by confessing Christ rather than by denying him to secure an opportunity of baptism and even had they denied him under pressure of the fear of death this too would have been forgiven them in that baptism in which was remitted even the enormous wickedness of those who had slain Christ but how abundant in these men must have been the grace of the spirit who breathes where he listeth seeing that they so dearly loved Christ is to be unable to deny him even in so sore an emergency and with so sure a hope of pardon precious therefore is the death of the saints to whom the grace of Christ has been applied with such gracious effects that they do not hesitate to meet death themselves if so be that they might meet him and precious is it also because it has proved that what was originally ordained for the punishment of the sinner has been used for the production of a richer harvest of righteousness but on this account should we look upon death as a good thing for it is diverted to such useful purposes not by any virtue of its own but by the divine interference death was originally proposed as an object of dread that sin might not be committed now it must be undergone that sin may not be committed or if committed be remitted and the award of righteousness bestowed on him whose victory has earned it Chapter 8 For if we look at the matter a little more carefully we shall see that even when a man dies faithfully and laudably for the truth's sake it is still death he is avoiding for he submits to some part of death for the very purpose of avoiding the whole and the second and eternal death over and above he submits to the separation of soul and body lest the soul be separated both from God and from the body and so the whole first death be completed and the second death lastingly wherefore death is indeed, as I said good to none while it is being actually suffered and while it is subduing the dying to its power but it is meritoriously endured for the sake of retaining or winning what is good and regarding what happens after death it is no absurdity to say that death is good to the good and evil to the evil for the disembodied spirits of the just are at rest again those of the just to life everlasting and of the others to death eternal which is called the second death chapter 9 the point of time in which the souls of the good and evil are separated from the body are we to say it is after death or in death rather if it is after death then it is not death which is good or evil since death is done with and past but it is the life which the soul has now entered on is an evil when it was present that is to say when it was being suffered by the dying for to them it brought with it a severe and grievous experience which the good make a good use of but when death is past how can that which no longer is be either good or evil still further if we examine the matter more closely we shall see that even that sore and grievous pain which the dying experience is not death itself for so long as they have any sensation still alive and if still alive must rather be said to be in a state previous to death than in death for when death actually comes it robs us of all bodily sensation which while death is only approaching is painful and thus it is difficult to explain how we speak of those who are not yet dead but are agonized in their last and mortal extremity as being in the article of death yet what else can we call them than dying persons for when death which was imminent shall have actually come we can no longer call them dying but dead no one therefore is dying and less living since even he who is in the last extremity of life and as we say giving up the ghost yet lives the same person is therefore at once dying and living but drawing near to death departing from life yet in life because his spirit yet abides in the body not yet in death because not yet his spirit forsaken the body but if when it is forsaken it the man is not even then in death but after death who shall say when he is in death on the one hand no one can be cold dying if a man cannot be dying and living at the same time and as long as the soul is in the body we cannot deny that he is living on the other hand if the man who is approaching death be rather cold dying I know not who is living Chapter 10 for no sooner do we begin to live in this dying body than we begin to move ceaselessly towards death for in the whole course of this life if life we must call it its mutability tends towards death certainly there is no one who is not nearer at this year than last year and tomorrow than today and today than yesterday and a short while hence than now and now than a short while ago for whatever time we live is deducted from our whole term of life and that which remains is daily becoming less and less so that our whole life is nothing but a race towards death in which no one is allowed to stand still for a little space or to go somewhat more slowly but all are driven forwards with an impartial movement and with equal rapidity for he whose life is short spends a day no more swiftly than he whose life is longer but while the equal moments are impartially snatched from both the one has a nearer and the other a more remote goal to reach speed it is one thing to make a longer journey and another to walk more slowly he therefore who spends longer time on his way to death does not proceed at a more leisurely pace but goes over more ground further if every man begins to die that is is in death as soon as death has begun to show itself in him by taking away life to it for when life is all taken away the man will be then not in death but after death then he begins to die so soon as he begins to live for what else is going on in all his days hours and moments until this slow working death is fully consummated and then comes the time after death instead of that in which life was being withdrawn in which we called being in death man then is never in life from the moment he dwells in this dying rather than living body if at least he cannot be in life and death at once or rather shall we say both in life namely which he lives to all is consumed but in death also which he dies as his life is consumed for if he is not in life what is it which is consumed till all be gone and if he is not in death what is this consumption itself for when the whole of life has been consumed the expression after death would be meaningless had that consumption not been death and if when it is all been consumed a man is not in death but after death when is he in death unless one life is being consumed away Chapter 11 but if it be absurd to say that a man is in death before he reaches death for to what is his course running as he passes through life if already he is in death and if it outrage common usage to speak of a man being at once alive and dead as much as it does so to speak of him as it wants to sleep and awake it remains to be asked when a man is dying for before death comes he is not dying but living and when death has come he is not dying but dead the one is before the other after death when then is he in death so that we can say he is dying for as there are three times before death in death after death so there are three states corresponding living dying dead and it is very hard to define when a man is in death or dying when he is not a living which is before death nor dead after death but dying which is in death for so long as the soul is in the body especially if consciousness remain the man certainly lives for body and soul constitute the man and thus before death he cannot be said to be in death but when on the other hand the soul has departed and all bodily sensation is extinct death has passed and the man is dead between these two states the dying condition finds no place for if a man yet lives death has not arrived if he has ceased to live death is passed never then is he dying that is comprehended in the state of death so also in the passing of time you try to lay your finger on the present and cannot find it because the present occupies no space but is only the transition of time from the future to the past must we then conclude that there is thus no death of the body at all for if there is where is it since it is in no one and no one be in it since indeed if there is yet life death is not yet for this state is before death not in death and if life is already ceased death is not present for this state is after death not in death on the other hand if there is no death before or after what do we mean when we say after death or before death this is a foolish way of speaking if there is no death and would that we had lived so well in paradise that in very truth there were now no death but not only does it now exist but so grievous a thing is it that no skill is sufficient either to explain it or to escape it let us then speak in the customary way no man ought to speak otherwise and let us cold the time before death come before death as it is written praise no man before his death and when it has happened let us say that after death this or that took place and of the present take his best we can as when we say he when dying made his will and left this or that to such and such persons though of course he could not do so unless he were living and did this rather before death than in death and let us use the same phrase theology as scripture uses for it makes no scruple of saying that the dead are not after but in death so that verse for in death there is no remembrance of thee for until death is said to be in death as everyone is said to be in sleep till he awakes however though we can say of persons in sleep that they are sleeping we cannot speak in this way of the dead and say they are dying for so far as regards the death of the body of which we are now speaking one cannot say that those who are already separated from their bodies continue dying but this you see is just what I was saying that no words of the dead are said even after death to be in death for how can they be after death if they be in death especially when we do not even call them dying as we call those in sleep sleeping and those in languishing and those in grief grieving and those in life living and yet the dead until they rise again are said to be in death but cannot be called dying and therefore I think it has not unsuitably nor inappropriately come to pass the intention of man yet perhaps with divine purpose that this Latin word moritur cannot be declined by the grammarians according to the rule followed by similar words for oritur gives the form ortuus est for the perfect and all similar verbs form this tense from their perfect participles but if we ask the perfect of moritur we get the regular answer mortuus est with a w for thus mortuus is pronounced like fatuus conspicuus and similar words which are not perfect participles but adjectives and are declined without regard to tense but mortuus though in form and adjective is used as perfect participle as if that were to be declined which cannot be declined and thus it is suitably come to pass that as the thing itself cannot in point of fact be declined so neither can the word significant of the act be declined yet by the aid of our redeemer's grace we may manage at least to decline the second for that is more grievous still and indeed of all evils the worst since it consists not in the separation of soul and body but in the uniting of both and death eternal and there in striking contrast to our present conditions men will not be before or after death but always in death and thus never living never dead but endlessly dying and never can a man be more disastrously in death when death itself shall be deathless