 Book 20. CHAPTER XXV THROUGH THIRTY OF THE CITY OF GOD. The prophet Malachi, who is also called Angel, and is by some, for Jerome tells us that this is the opinion of the Hebrews, identified with Ezra the priest, others of whose writings have been received into the canon, predicts the last judgment, saying, Behold, he cometh, saith the Lord Almighty, and who shall abide the day of his entrance? For I am the Lord your God, and I change not. From these words it more evidently appears that some shall in the last judgment suffer some kind of purgatorial punishments. For what else can be understood by the word, who shall abide the day of his entrance, or who shall be able to look upon him? For he enters as a moulders fire, and as the herb of fullers, and he shall sit fusing and purifying as if over gold and silver, and he shall purify the sons of Levi, and pour them out like gold and silver. Similarly, Isaiah says, The Lord shall wash the filthiness of the sons and daughters of Zion, and shall cleanse away the blood from their midst by the spirit of judgment and by the spirit of burning. Unless perhaps we should say that they are cleansed from filthiness, and in a manner clarified, when the wicked are separated from them by penal judgment, so that the elimination and damnation of the one party is the purgation of the others, because they shall henceforth live free from the contamination of such men. But when he says, And he shall purify the sons of Levi and pour them out like gold and silver, and they shall offer to the Lord sacrifices in righteousness, and the sacrifices of Judah and Jerusalem shall be pleasing to the Lord, he declares that those who shall be purified shall then please the Lord with sacrifices of righteousness, and consequently they themselves shall be purified from their own unrighteousness which made them displeasing to God. Now they themselves, when they have been purified, shall be sacrifices of complete and perfect righteousness, for what more acceptable offering can such persons make to God than themselves. But this question of purgatorial punishments we must defer to another time to give it a more adequate treatment. By the sons of Levi and Judah and Jerusalem we ought to understand the church herself gathered not from the Hebrews only, but from other nations as well. Nor such a church as she now is when, if we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us, but as she shall then be purged by the last judgment as a threshing floor by a winnowing wind, and those of her members who need it being cleansed by fire, so that there remains absolutely not one who offers sacrifice for his sins. For all who make such offerings are assuredly in their sins, for the remission of which they make offerings, that having made to God an acceptable offering, they may then be absolved. CHAPTER XXVI And it was with the design of showing that his city shall not then follow this custom that God said that the sons of Levi should offer sacrifices in righteousness, not therefore in sin, and consequently not for sin. And hence we see how vainly the Jews promise themselves a return of the old times of sacrificing according to the law of the Old Testament, grounding on the words which follow, and the sacrifice of Judah and Jerusalem shall be pleasing to the Lord as in the primitive days and as in the former years. For in the times of the law they offered sacrifices not in righteousness, but in sins, offering especially and primarily for sins, so much so that even the priest himself whom we must suppose to have been their most righteous man was accustomed to offer according to God's commandments first for his own sins, and then for the sins of the people. And therefore we must explain how we are to understand the words as in the primitive days and as in the former years, for perhaps he alludes to the time in which our first parents were in paradise. In indeed intact and pure from all stain and blemish of sin they offered themselves to God as the purest sacrifices. But since they were banished thence on account of their transgression and human nature was condemned in them with the exception of the one mediator and those who have been baptized and are as yet infants, there is none clean from stain, not even the babe whose life has been but for a day upon the earth. But if it be replied that those who offer in faith may be said to offer in righteousness because the righteous lives by faith, he deceives himself however if he says that he has no sin and therefore he does not say so because he lives by faith, will any man say this time of faith can be placed on an equal footing with that consummation when they who offer sacrifices in righteousness shall be purified by the fire of the last judgment? And consequently since it must be believed that after such a cleansing the righteous shall retain no sin, assuredly that time so far as regards its freedom from sin can be compared to no other period unless to that during which our first parents lived in paradise in the most innocent happiness before their transgression. It is this period then which is properly understood when it is said as in the primitive days and as in former years. For in Isaiah too after the new heavens and the new earth have been promised among other elements in the blessedness of the saints which are there depicted by allegories and figures, from giving an adequate explanation of which I am prevented by a desire to avoid prolixity, it is said, according to the days of the tree of life shall be the days of my people. And who that has looked at scripture does not know where God planted the tree of life from whose fruit he excluded our first parents when their own iniquity ejected them from paradise and round which a terrible and fiery fence was set. But if anyone contends that those days of the tree of life mentioned by the prophet Isaiah are the present times of the Church of Christ and that Christ himself is prophetically called the tree of life because he is wisdom and of wisdom Solomon says it is a tree of life to all who embrace it and if they maintain that our first parents did not pass years in paradise but were driven from it so soon that none of their children were begotten there and that therefore that time cannot be alluded to in words which run as in the primitive days and as in former years, I forbear entering on this question lest by discussing everything I become prolix and leave the whole subject in uncertainty. For I see another meaning which should keep us from believing that a restoration of the primitive days and former years of the legal sacrifices could have been promised to us by the prophet as a great boon. For the animals selected as victims under the old law were required to be immaculate and free from all blemish whatever and symbolized holy men free from all sin the only instance of which character was found in Christ. As therefore after the judgment those who are worthy of such purification shall be purified even by fire and shall be rendered thoroughly sinless and shall offer themselves to God in righteousness and be indeed victims immaculate and free from all blemish whatever they shall then certainly be as in the primitive days and as in former years when the purest victims were offered the shadow of this future reality. For there shall then be in the body and soul of the saints the purity which was symbolized in the bodies of these victims. Then with reference to those who are worthy not of cleansing but of damnation he says, and I will draw near to you to judgment and I will be a swift witness against evil doers and against adulterers, and after enumerating other damnable crimes he adds, for I am the Lord your God and I am not changed. It is as if he said, though your fault has changed you for the worse and my grace has changed you for the better, I am not changed. And he says that he himself will be a witness because in his judgment he needs no witnesses, and that he will be swift either because he is to come suddenly and the judgment which seemed to lag shall be very swift by his unexpected arrival or because he will convince the consciences of men directly and without any prolix harangue. For as it is written in the thoughts of the wicked his examination shall be conducted. And the apostle says the thoughts accusing or else excusing in the day in which God shall judge the hidden things of men according to my gospel in Jesus Christ. Thus then shall the Lord be a swift witness when he shall suddenly bring back into the memory that which shall convince and punish the conscience. The passage also which I formally quoted for another purpose from this prophet refers to the last judgment in which he says they shall be mine saith the Lord Almighty in the day in which I make up my gains, etc. When this diversity between the rewards and punishments which distinguish the righteous from the wicked shall appear under that son of righteousness in the brightness of life eternal, a diversity which is not discerned under this son which shines on the vanity of this life, there shall then be such a judgment as has never before been. In the succeeding words remember the law of Moses, my servant, which I commanded to him in Horeb for all Israel. The prophet opportunely mentions precepts and statutes after declaring the important distinction hereafter to be made between those who observe and those who despise the law. He intends also that they learn to interpret the law spiritually and find Christ in it by whose judgment that separation between the good and the bad is to be made. For it is not without reason that the Lord himself says to the Jews, Had ye believed Moses ye would have believed me, for he wrote of me. For by receiving the law carnally without perceiving that its earthly promises were figures of things spiritual they fell into such murmurings as audaciously to say it is vain to serve God, and what prophet is it that we have kept his ordinance and that we have walked supplyantly before the face of the Lord Almighty, and now we call aliens happy, yea, they that work wickedness are set up. It was these words of theirs which in a manner compelled the prophet to announce the last judgment in which the wicked shall not even in appearance be happy, but shall manifestly be most miserable, and in which the good shall be oppressed with not even a transitory wretchedness that shall enjoy unsullied and eternal felicity. For he had previously cited some similar expressions of those who said, every one that doeth evil is good in the sight of the Lord and such are pleasing to him. It was I say by understanding the law of Moses carnally that they had come to murmur thus against God. And hence too the writer of the seventy-third Psalm says that his feet were almost gone, his steps had well nigh slipped, because he was envious of sinners while he considered their prosperity, so that he said, among other things, how does God know, and is there knowledge, in the most high, and again, have I sanctified my heart in vain and washed my hands in innocency? He goes on to say that his efforts to solve this most difficult problem which arises when the good seemed to be wretched and the wicked happy were in vain until he went into the sanctuary of God and understood the last things. For in the last judgment things shall not be so, but in the manifest felicity of the righteous and manifest misery of the wicked quite another state of things shall appear. CHAPTER XXIX After admonishing them to give heed to the law of Moses as he foresaw that for a long time to come they would not understand it spiritually and rightly, he went on to say, and behold, I will send to you, Elias, the Tishbite, before the great and signaled day of the Lord come, and he shall turn the heart of the Father to the Son and the heart of a man to his next of kin lest I come and utterly smite the earth. It is a familiar theme in the conversation and heart of the faithful that in the last days before the judgment the Jews shall believe in the true Christ, that is, our Christ, by means of this great and admirable prophet Elias who shall expound the law to them. For not without reason do we hope that before the coming of our judge and saviour Elias shall come, because we have good reason to believe that he is now alive, for, as Scripture most distinctly informs us, he was taken up from this life in a chariot of fire. When therefore he is come he shall give a spiritual explanation of the law which the Jews at present understand carnally, and shall thus turn the heart of the Father to the Son, that is, the heart of fathers to their children, for the Septuagint translators have frequently put the singular for the plural number. And the meaning is that the sons, that is, the Jews shall understand the law as the fathers, that is, the prophets, and among them Moses himself understood it. For the heart of the fathers shall be turned to their children when the children understand the law as their fathers did, and the heart of the children shall be turned to their fathers when they have the same sentiments as the fathers. The Septuagint used the expression, and the heart of a man to his next of kin, because fathers and children are eminently neighbours to one another. Another, and a preferable sense, can be found in the words of the Septuagint translators, who had translated Scripture with an I to prophecy, the sense, that is, that Elias shall turn the heart of God the Father to the Son, not certainly as if he should bring about this love of the Father for the Son, but meaning that he should make it known, and that the Jews also, who had previously hated, should then love the Son, who is our Christ. For so far as regards the Jews God has his heart turned away from our Christ, this being their conception about God and Christ. But in their case the heart of God shall be turned to the Son when they themselves shall turn in heart and learn the love of the Father towards the Son. The words following and the heart of a man to his next of kin, that is, Elias shall also turn the heart of a man to his next of kin, how can we understand this better than as the heart of a man to the man Christ? For though in the form of God he is our God, yet, taking the form of a servant, he condescended to become also our next of kin. It is this then which Elias will do, lest, he says, I come and smite the earth utterly. For they who mind earthly things are the earth. Such are the carnal Jews until this day, and hence these murmurs of theirs against God, the wicked are pleasing to him, and it is a vain thing to serve God. CHAPTER 30 There are many other passages of Scripture bearing on the last judgment of God, so many indeed that to cite them all would swell this book to an unpardonable size. Suffice it to have proved that both old and new testament announce the judgment. But in the old it is not so definitely declared as in the new that the judgment shall be administered by Christ, that is, that Christ shall descend from heaven as the judge, for when it is therein stated by the Lord God or his prophet that the Lord God shall come, we do not necessarily understand this of Christ. For both the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost are the Lord God. We must not, however, leave this without proof, and therefore we must first show how Jesus Christ speaks in the prophetical books under the title of the Lord God, while yet there can be no doubt that it is Jesus Christ who speaks, so that in other passages where this is not at once apparent, and where nevertheless it is said that the Lord God will come to that last judgment, we may understand that Jesus Christ is meant. There is a passage in the prophet Isaiah which illustrates what I mean. For God says by the prophet, Hear me, Jacob and Israel, whom I call, I am the first, and I am forever, and my hand has founded the earth, and my right hand has established the heaven. I will call them, and they shall stand together and be gathered and hear. Who has declared to them these things? In love of thee I have done thy pleasure upon Babylon that I might take away the seed of the Chaldeans. I have spoken, and I have called, I have brought him, and have made his way prosperous. Come ye near unto me, and hear this. I have not spoken and secret from the beginning. When they were made, there was I, and now the Lord God and his Spirit hath sent me. It was himself who was speaking as the Lord God, and yet we should not have understood that it was Jesus Christ had he not added, and now the Lord God and his Spirit hath sent me. For he said this with reference to the form of a servant, speaking of a future event as if it were past, and in the same prophet we read, he was led as a sheep to the slaughter, not he shall be led, but the past tense is used to express the future, and prophecy constantly speaks in this way. There is also another passage in Zechariah which plainly declares that the Almighty sent the Almighty, and of what persons can this be understood but of God the Father and God the Son? For it is written, Thus saith the Lord Almighty, After the glory hath he sent me unto the nations which spoiled you, for he that toucheth you, toucheth the apple of his eye. Behold, I will bring mine hand upon them, and they shall be a spoil to their servants, and ye shall know that the Lord Almighty hath sent me. Observe the Lord Almighty saith that the Lord Almighty sent him. Who can presume to understand these words of any other than Christ who is speaking to the lost sheep of the house of Israel? For he says in the gospel, I am not sent, save to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, which he here compared to the pupil of God's eye to signify the profoundest love, and to this class of sheep the apostles themselves belonged. But after the glory to wit of his resurrection, for before it happened the evangelist said that Jesus was not yet glorified, he was sent unto the nations and the persons of his apostles, and thus the saying of the Psalm was fulfilled that wilt deliver me from the contradictions of the people that wilt set me as the head of the nations. So that those who had spoiled the Israelites, and whom the Israelites had served when they were subdued by them, were not themselves to be spoiled in the same fashion, but were in their own persons to become the spoil of the Israelites. For this had been promised to the apostles when the Lord said, I will make you fishers of men, and to one of them he says, from henceforth thou shalt catch men. They were then to become a spoil, but in a good sense, as those who are snatched from that strong one when he is bound by a stronger. In like manner the Lord speaking by the same prophet says, and it shall come to pass in that day that I will seek to destroy all the nations that come against Jerusalem, and I will pour upon the house of David, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem the spirit of grace and mercy, and they shall look upon me because they have insulted me, and they shall mourn for him as for one very dear, and shall be in bitterness as for and only begotten. To whom but to God does it belong to destroy all the nations that are hostile to the holy city Jerusalem, which come against it, that is, are opposed to it, or, as some translate, come upon it as if putting it down under them, or to pour out upon the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem the spirit of grace and mercy. This belongs doubtless to God, and it is to God the prophet ascribes the words, and yet Christ shows that he is the God who does these so great and divine things when he goes on to say, and they shall look upon me because they have insulted me, and they shall mourn for him as if for one very dear, or beloved, and shall be in bitterness for him as for and only begotten. For in that day the Jews, those of them at least, who shall receive the spirit of grace and mercy, when they see him coming in his majesty, and recognize that it is he whom they, in the person of their parents, insulted when he came before in his humiliation, shall repent of insulting him in his passion, and their parents themselves, who were the perpetrators of this huge impiety, shall see him when they arise, but this will be only for their punishment and not for their correction. It is not of them we are to understand the words, and I will pour upon the house of David and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem the spirit of grace and mercy, and they shall look upon me because they have insulted me, but we are to understand the words of their descendants who shall, at that time, believe through a liars. But as we say to the Jews, you killed Christ, although it was their parents who did so, so these persons shall grieve that they in some sort did what their progenitors did. Although, therefore, those that receive the spirit of mercy and grace and believe shall not be condemned but their impious parents, yet they shall mourn as if they themselves had done what their parents did. Their grief shall arise not so much from guilt as from pious affection. Certainly the words which the Septuagint have translated, they shall look upon me because they insulted me, stand in the Hebrew, they shall look upon me whom they pierced. And by this word the crucifixion of Christ is certainly more plainly indicated. But the Septuagint translators preferred to allude to the insult which was involved in his whole passion, for in point of fact they insulted him both when he was arrested and when he was bound, when he was judged, when he was mocked by the robe they put on him and the homage they did on bended knee, when he was crowned with thorns and struck with a rod on the head, when he bore his cross, and when, at last, he hung upon the tree. And therefore we recognize more fully the Lord's passion when we do not confine ourselves to one interpretation but combine both and read both insulted and pierced. When therefore we read in the prophetical books that God is to come to do judgment at the last, from the mere mention of the judgment, and although there is nothing else to determine the meaning we must gather that Christ is meant. For though the Father will judge, he will judge by the coming of the Son. For he himself, by his own manifested presence, judges no man but has committed all judgment to the Son. For as the Son was judged as a man, he shall also judge in human form. For it is none but he of whom God speaks by Isaiah, under the name of Jacob and Israel, of whose seed Christ took a body, as it is written, Jacob is my servant, I will uphold him, Israel is mine elect, my spirit has assumed him. I have put my spirit upon him, he shall bring forth judgment to the Gentiles. He shall not cry, nor cease, neither shall his voice be heard without. A bruised reed shall he not break, and the smoking flax shall he not quench, but in truth shall he bring forth judgment. He shall shine and shall not be broken until he sets judgment in the earth, and the nations shall hope in his name. The Hebrew has not Jacob and Israel, but the Septuagint translators wishing to show the significance of the expression, my servant, and that it refers to the form of a servant in which the Most High humbled himself, inserted the name of that man from whose stock he took the form of a servant. The Holy Spirit was given to him, and was manifested as the evangelist testifies in the form of a dove. He brought forth judgment to the Gentiles because he predicted what was hidden from them. In his meekness he did not cry, nor did he cease to proclaim the truth. But his voice was not heard, nor is it heard without, because he is not obeyed by those who are outside of his body. And the Jews themselves who persecuted him he did not break, though as a bruised reed they had lost their integrity, and as smoking flax their light was quenched, for he spared them, having come to be judged, and not yet to judge. He brought forth judgment in truth, declaring that they should be punished did they persist in their wickedness. His face shone on the mount, his fame in the world. He is not broken nor overcome, because neither in himself nor in his church has persecution prevailed to annihilate him. And therefore that has not and shall not be brought about which his enemies said or say when shall he die and his name perish, until he set judgment in the earth. Behold, the hidden thing which we were seeking is discovered, for this is the last judgment which he will set in the earth when he comes from heaven. And it is in him, too, we already see the concluding expression of the prophecy fulfilled, in his name shall the nations hope. And by this fulfillment which no one can deny, men are encouraged to believe in that which is most evidently denied. For who could have hoped for that which even those who do not yet believe in Christ now see fulfilled among us, and which is so undeniable that they can but gnash their teeth and pine away? Who, I say, could have hoped that the nations would hope in the name of Christ when he was arrested, bound, scourged, mocked, crucified, when even the disciples themselves had lost the hope which they had begun to have in him. The hope which was then entertained scarcely by the one thief on the cross is now cherished by nations everywhere on the earth, who are marked with the sign of the cross on which he died that they may not die eternally. That the last judgment then shall be administered by Jesus Christ in the manner predicted in the sacred writings is denied or doubted by no one, unless by those who, through some incredible animosity or blindness, decline to believe these writings, though already their truth is demonstrated to all the world. And at or in connection with that judgment the following events shall come to pass as we have learned. Elias the Tishbite shall come. The Jews shall believe. Antichrist shall persecute. Christ shall judge. The dead shall rise. The good and the wicked shall be separated. The world shall be burned and renewed. All these things we believe shall come to pass, but how or in what order human understanding cannot perfectly teach us but only the experience of the events themselves. My opinion, however, is that they will happen in the order in which I have related them. Two books yet remain to be written by me in order to complete by God's help what I promised. One of these will explain the punishment of the wicked, the other the happiness of the righteous, and in them I shall be at special pains to refute by God's grace the arguments by which some unhappy creatures seem to themselves to undermine the divine promises and threatenings and to ridicule as empty words statements which are the most salutary nutriment of faith. But they who are instructed in divine things hold the truth and omnipotence of God to be the strongest arguments in favor of those things which, however incredible they seem to men, are yet contained in the scriptures whose truth has already, in many ways, been proved, for they are sure that God can in no wise lie and that he can do what is impossible to the unbelieving. End of Book 20, chapters 25 through 30. Recording by Darren L. Slider, Fort Worth, Texas, www.logoselibrary.org. Book 21, chapters 1 through 6 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.logoselibrary.org. The City of God by St. Augustine of Hippo. Book 21, Chapter 1. I propose with such ability as God may grant me to discuss in this book more thoroughly the nature of the punishment which shall be assigned to the devil and all his retainers when the two cities, the one of God, the other of the devil, shall have reached their proper ends through Jesus Christ our Lord, the judge of quick and dead. And I have adopted this order and preferred to speak first of the punishment of the devils and afterwards of the blessedness of the saints because the body partakes of either destiny, and it seems to be more incredible that bodies endure an everlasting torments than that they continue to exist without any pain and everlasting felicity. Consequently, when I shall have demonstrated that that punishment ought not to be incredible, this will materially aid me in proving that which is much more credible, that is, the immortality of the bodies of the saints which are delivered from all pain. Neither is this order out of harmony with the divine writings in which sometimes indeed the blessedness of the good is placed first, as in the words, they that have done good unto the resurrection of life and they that have done evil unto the resurrection of judgment. But sometimes also last as the Son of man shall send forth his angels and they shall gather out of his kingdom all things which offend and shall cast them into a furnace of fire, there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth, then shall the righteous shine forth as the Son in the kingdom of his Father, and that these shall go away into eternal punishment but the righteous into life eternal. And though we have not room to cite instances, anyone who examines the prophets will find that they adopt now the one arrangement and now the other, my own reason for following the latter order I have given. CHAPTER II What then can I adduce to convince those who refuse to believe that human bodies, animated and living, can not only survive death, but also last in the torments of everlasting fires? They will not allow us to refer this simply to the power of the Almighty, but demand that we persuade them by some example. If then we reply to them that there are animals which certainly are corruptible because they are mortal and which yet live in the midst of flames, and likewise that in springs of water so hot that no one can put his hand in it with impunity a species of worm is found which not only lives there but cannot live elsewhere. They either refuse to believe these facts unless we can show them, or if we are in circumstances to prove them by ocular demonstration or by adequate testimony, they contend with the same skepticism that these facts are not examples of what we seek to prove in as much as these animals do not live forever, and besides they live in that blaze of heat without pain the element of fire being congenial to their nature and causing it to thrive and not to suffer, just as if it were not more incredible that it should thrive than that it should suffer in such circumstances. It is strange that anything should suffer in fire and yet live, but stranger that it should live in fire and not suffer. If then the latter be believed, why not also the former? But say they there is no body which can suffer and cannot also die. How do we know this? For who can say with certainty that the devils do not suffer in their bodies when they own that they are grievously tormented? And if it is replied that there is no earthly body, that is to say no solid and perceptible body, or in one word no flesh, which can suffer and cannot die, is not this to tell us only what men have gathered from experience and their bodily senses. For they indeed have no acquaintance with any flesh but that which is mortal, and this is their whole argument that what they have had no experience of they judge quite impossible. For we cannot call it reasoning to make pain a presumption of death while in fact it is rather a sign of life. For though it be a question whether that which suffers can continue to live forever, yet it is certain that everything which suffers pain does live and that pain can exist only in a living subject. It is necessary therefore that he who is pained be living not necessary that pain kill him, for every pain does not kill even those mortal bodies of ours which are destined to die, and that any pain kills them is caused by the circumstance that the soul is so connected with the body that it succumbs to great pain and withdraws. For the structure of our members and vital parts is so infirm that it cannot bear up against that violence which causes great or extreme agony. But in the life to come this connection of soul and body is of such a kind that as it is dissolved by no lapse of time so neither is it burst asunder by any pain. And so although it be true that in this world there is no flesh which can suffer pain and yet cannot die, yet in the world to come there shall be flesh such as now there is not, as there will also be death such as now there is not. For death will not be abolished but will be eternal since the soul will neither be able to enjoy God and live nor to die and escape the pains of the body. The first death drives the soul from the body against her will, the second death holds the soul in the body against her will. The two have this in common that the soul suffers against her will what her own body inflicts. Our opponents too make much of this that in this world there is no flesh which can suffer pain and cannot die while they make nothing of the fact that there is something which is greater than the body. For the spirit whose presence animates and rules the body can both suffer pain and cannot die. Here then is something which, though it can feel pain, is immortal. And this capacity which we now see in the spirit of all shall be here after in the bodies of the damned. Moreover, if we attend to the matter a little more closely we see that what is called bodily pain is rather to be referred to the soul. For it is the soul not the body which is pained even when the pain originates with the body, the soul feeling pain at the point where the body is hurt. As then we speak of body's feeling and living, though the feeling and life of the body are from the soul, so also we speak of bodies being pained, though no pain can be suffered by the body apart from the soul. The soul then is pained with the body in that part where something occurs to hurt it, and it is pained alone though it be in the body when some invisible cause distresses it while the body is safe and sound. Even when not associated with the body it is pained, for certainly that rich man was suffering in hell when he cried, I am tormented in this flame. But as for the body it suffers no pain when it is soulless, and even when adamant it can suffer only by the soul's suffering. If therefore we might draw a just presumption from the existence of pain to that of death and conclude that where pain can be felt death can occur death would rather be the property of the soul for to it pain more peculiarly belongs. But seeing that that which suffers most cannot die, what ground is there for supposing that those bodies, because destined to suffer, are therefore destined to die? The Platonists indeed maintained that these earthly bodies and dying members give rise to the fears, desires, griefs, and joys of the soul. Hence says Virgil, that is, from these earthly bodies and dying members, hence while desires and groveling fears and human laughter, human tears. But in the fourteenth book of this work we have proved that according to the Platonists' own theory souls, even when purged from all pollution of the body, are yet possessed by a monstrous desire to return again into their bodies. But where desire can exist certainly pain also can exist, for desire frustrated, either by missing what it aims at or losing what it attained, is turned into pain. And therefore if the soul, which is either the only or the chief sufferer, has yet a kind of immortality of its own, it is inconsequent to say that because the bodies of the damned shall suffer pain, therefore they shall die. In fine, if the body causes the soul to suffer, why can the body not cause death as well as suffering, unless because it does not follow that what causes pain causes death as well? And why, then, is it incredible that these fires can cause pain but not death to those bodies we speak of, just as the bodies themselves cause pain but not therefore death to the souls? Pain is therefore no necessary presumption of death. CHAPTER IV If therefore the salamander lives in fire as naturalists have recorded, and if certain famous mountains of Cicely have been continually on fire from the remotest antiquity until now, and yet remain in tire, these are sufficiently convincing examples that everything which burns is not consumed. As the soul too is approved that not everything which can suffer pain can also die, why, then, do they yet demand that we produce real examples to prove that it is not incredible that the bodies of men condemned to everlasting punishment may retain their soul and the fire may burn without being consumed and may suffer without perishing? For suitable properties will be communicated to the substance of the flesh by him who has endowed the things we see with so marvelous and diverse properties that their very multitude prevents our wonder. For who but God the Creator of all things has given to the flesh of the peacock its antiseptic property? This property when I first heard of it seemed to me incredible, but it happened at Carthage that a bird of this kind was cooked and served up to me, and, taking a suitable slice of flesh from its breast, I ordered it to be kept, and when it had been kept as many days as make any other flesh stinking, it was produced and set before me and emitted no offensive smell, and after it had been laid by for thirty days and more it was still in the same state, and a year after the same still except that it was a little more shriveled and drier. Who gave to chaff such power to freeze that it preserves snow buried under it and such power to warm that it ripens green fruit? But who can explain the strange properties of fire itself which blackens everything it burns, though itself bright, and which though of the most beautiful colors, discolors almost all it touches and feeds upon, and turns blazing fuel into grimy cinders? Still this is not laid down as an absolutely uniform law, for on the contrary stones baked in glowing fire themselves also glow, and though the fire be rather of a red hue and they white, yet white is congruous with light and black with darkness. Thus though the fire burns the wood and calcining the stones, these contrary effects do not result from the contrariety of the materials. For though wood and stone differ, they are not contraries like black and white, the one of which colors is produced in the stones while the other is produced in the wood by the same action of fire which imparts its own brightness to the former while it begrimes the latter and which could have no effect on the one were it not fed by the other. Then what wonderful properties do we find in charcoal which is so brittle that a light tap breaks it and a slight pressure pulverizes it and yet is so strong that no moisture rots it nor any time causes it to decay? So enduring is it that it is customary in laying down landmarks to put charcoal underneath them so that if after the longest interval anyone raises an action and pleads that there is no boundary stone he may be convicted by the charcoal below? What then has enabled it to last so long without rotting, though buried in the damp earth in which its original wood rots except this same fire which consumes all things? Again let us consider the wonders of lime, for besides growing white in fire which makes other things black and of which I have already said enough it has also a mysterious property of conceiving fire within it. It self-cold to the touch it yet has a hidden store of fire which is not at once apparent to our senses but which experience teaches us lies as it were slumbering within it even while unseen. And it is for this reason called quick lime as if the fire were the invisible soul quickening the visible substance or body. But the marvelous thing is that this fire is kindled when it is extinguished. For to disengage the hidden fire the lime is moistened or drenched with water and then though it be cold before it becomes hot by that very application which cools what is hot. As if the fire were departing from the lime and breathing its last it no longer lies hid but appears and then the lime lying in the coldness of death cannot be re-quickened and what we before called quick we now call slaked. What can be stranger than this? Yet there is a greater marvel still. For if you treat the lime not with water but with oil which is as fuel to fire no amount of oil will heat it. Now if this marvel had been told us of some Indian mineral which we had no opportunity of experimenting upon we should either have forthwith pronounced it a falsehood or certainly should have been greatly astonished. But things that daily present themselves to our own observation we despise not because they are really less marvelous but because they are common so that even some products of India itself remote as it is from ourselves cease to excite our admiration as soon as we can admire them at our leisure. The diamond is a stone possessed by many among ourselves especially by jewelers and lapidaries and the stone is so hard that it can be wrought neither by iron nor fire nor they say by anything at all except goat's blood. But do you suppose it is as much admired by those who own it and are familiar with its properties as by those to whom it is shown for the first time? Persons who have not seen it perhaps do not believe what is said of it or if they do they wonder as about a thing beyond their experience and if they happen to see it still they marvel because they are unused to it but gradually familiar experience of it dulls their admiration. We know that the lodestone has a wonderful power of attracting iron. When I first saw it I was thunderstruck for I saw an iron ring attracted and suspended by the stone and then as if it had communicated its own property to the iron it attracted and had made it a substance like itself this ring was put near another and lifted it up and as the first ring clung to the magnet so did the second ring to the first. A third and a fourth were similarly added so that they are hung from the stone a kind of chain of rings with their hoops connected not interlinking but attached together by their outer surface. Who would not be amazed at this virtue of the stone subsisting as it does not only in itself but transmitted through so many suspended rings and binding them together by invisible links. Yet far more astonishing is what I heard about this stone from my brother in the Episcopate Severus Bishop of Mylevis. He told me that Bathanarius once Count of Africa when the bishop was dining with him produced a magnet and held it under a silver plate on which he placed a bit of iron then as he moved his hand with the magnet underneath the plate the iron upon the plate moved about accordingly. The intervening silver was not affected at all but precisely as the magnet was moved backwards and forwards below it no matter how quickly so was the iron attracted above. I have related what I myself have witnessed I have related what I was told by one whom I trust as I trust my own eyes. Let me further say what I have read about this magnet. When a diamond is laid near it it does not lift iron or if it has already lifted it as soon as the diamond approaches it drops it. These stones come from India but if we cease to admire them because they are now familiar how much less must they admire them who procure them very easily and send them to us. Perhaps they are held as cheap as we hold lime which because it is common we think nothing of though it has the strange property of burning when water which is want to quench fire is poured on it and of remaining cool when mixed with oil which ordinarily feeds fire. CHAPTER V Nevertheless when we declare the miracles which God has wrought or will yet work and which we cannot bring under the very eyes of men skeptics keep demanding that we shall explain these marvels to reason and because we cannot do so in as much as they are above human comprehension they suppose we are speaking falsely. These persons themselves therefore ought to account for all these marvels which we either can or do see. And if they perceive that this is impossible for man to do they should acknowledge that it cannot be concluded that a thing has not been or shall not be because it cannot be reconciled to reason since there are things now in existence of which the same is true. I will not then detail the multitude of marvels which are related in books in which refer not to things that happened once and passed away but that are permanent in certain places where if anyone has the desire and opportunity he may ascertain their truth but a few only I recount. The following are some of the marvels men tell us. The salt of agrogentum in Sicily when thrown into the fire becomes fluid as if it were in water but in the water it crackles as if it were in the fire. The Garamante have a fountain so cold by day that no one can drink it so hot by night no one can touch it. In Epirus too there is a fountain which like all others quenches lighted torches but unlike all others lights quench torches. There is a stone found in Arcadia and called asbestos because once lit it cannot be put out. The wood of a certain kind of Egyptian fig tree sinks in water and does not float like other wood and, stranger still, when it has been sunk to the bottom for some time it rises again to the surface though nature requires that when soaked in water it should be heavier than ever. Then there are the apples of Sodom which grow indeed to an appearance of ripeness but when you touch them with hand or tooth the peel cracks and they crumble into dust and ashes. The Persian stone pirates burns the hand when it is tightly held in it and so gets its name from fire. In Persia too there is found another stone called Selenite because its interior brilliancy waxes and wanes with the moon. Then in Cappadocia the mares are impregnated by the wind and their foals live only three years. Tilan an Indian island has this advantage over all other lands that no tree which grows in it ever loses its foliage. These and numberless other marvels recorded in the history not of past events but of permanent localities I have no time to enlarge upon and diverge from my main object but let those skeptics who refuse to credit the divine writings give me, if they can, a rational account of them. For their only ground of unbelief in the scriptures is that they contain incredible things just such as I have been recounting. For, say they, reason cannot admit that flesh burn and remain unconsumed, suffer without dying. Mighty reasoners indeed who are competent to give the reason of all the marvels that exist. Let them then give us the reason of the few things we have cited and which, if they did not know they existed and were only assured by us that some future time occur they would believe still less than that which they now refuse to credit on our word. For which of them would believe us if, instead of saying that the living bodies of men hereafter will be such as to endure everlasting pain and fire without ever dying, we were to say that in the world to come there will be salt which becomes liquid in fire as if it were in water and crackles in water as if it were in fire or that there will be a fountain whose water in the chill air of night is so hot that it cannot be touched while in the heat of day it is so cold that it cannot be drunk or that there will be a stone which by its own heat burns the hand when tightly held or a stone which cannot be extinguished if it has been lit in any part or any of those wonders I have cited while omitting numberless others. If we were to say that these things would be found in the world to come and our skeptics were to reply, if you wish us to believe these things satisfy our reason about each of them, we should confess that we could not because the frail comprehension of man cannot master these and such like wonders of God's working, and that yet our reason was thoroughly convinced that the Almighty does nothing without reason, though the frail mind of man cannot explain the reason, and that while we are in many instances uncertain what he intends, yet that it is always most certain that nothing which he intends is impossible to him, and that when he declares his mind we believe him whom we cannot believe to be either powerless or false. Nevertheless these cavalers at faith and exacters of reason how do they dispose of those things of which a reason cannot be given and which yet exist, though an apparent contrariety to the nature of things. If we had announced that these things were to be, these skeptics would have demanded from us the reason of them as they do in the case of those things which we are announcing as destined to be, and consequently as these present marvels are not nonexistent, though human reason and discourse are lost in such works of God, so those things we speak of are not impossible because inexplicable, for in this particular they are in the same predicament as the marvels of earth. Chapter 6 At this point they will perhaps reply, these things have no existence, we don't believe one of them, they are travelers' tales and fictitious romances, and they may add what has the appearance of argument, and say, if you believe such things as these, believe what is recorded in the same books that there was or is a temple of Venus in which a condolabrum set in the open air holds a lamp which burns so strongly that no storm or rain extinguishes it, and which is therefore called, like the stone mentioned above, the asbestos or inextinguishable lamp. They may say this with the intention of putting us into a dilemma, for if we say this is incredible then we shall impugn the truth of the other recorded marvels, if on the other hand we admit that this is credible we shall avouch the pagan deities. But as I have already said in the eighteenth book of this work, we do not hold it necessary to believe all that profane history contains, since, as Varro says, even historians themselves disagree on so many points that one would think they intended and were at pains to do so. But we believe if we are disposed to those things which are not contradicted by these books, which we do not hesitate to say we are bound to believe. But as to those permanent miracles of nature whereby we wish to persuade the skeptical of the miracles of the world to come, those are quite sufficient for our purpose which we ourselves can observe, or of which it is not difficult to find trustworthy witnesses. Moreover, that temple of Venus, with its inextinguishable lamp so far from hemming us into a corner, opens an advantageous field to our argument. For to this inextinguishable lamp we add a host of marvels wrought by men, or by magic, that is, by men under the influence of devils, or by the devils directly. For such marvels we cannot deny without impugning the truth of the sacred scriptures we believe. That lamp, therefore, was either by some mechanical and human device fitted with asbestos, or it was arranged by magical art in order that the worshippers might be astonished, or some devil under the name of Venus so signally manifested himself that this prodigy both began and became permanent. Now devils are attracted to dwell in certain temples by means of the creatures, God's creatures, not theirs, who present to them what suits their various tastes. They are attracted not by food like animals, but like spirits by such symbols as suit their taste, various kinds of stones, woods, plants, animals, songs, rites. And that men may provide these attractions the devils first of all cunningly seduce them, either by imbuing their hearts with a sacred poison, or by revealing themselves under a friendly guise, and thus make a few of them their disciples who become the instructors of the multitude. For unless they first instructed men, it were impossible to know what each of them desires, what they shrink from, by what name they should be invoked or constrained to be present. Hence the origin of magic and magicians. But above all they possess the hearts of men and are chiefly proud of this possession when they transform themselves into angels of light. Very many things that occur therefore are there doing, and these deeds of theirs we ought all the more carefully to shun as we acknowledge them to be very surprising. And yet these very deeds forward my present arguments, for if such marvels are wrought by unclean devils, how much might here are the holy angels, and what cannot that God do who made the angels themselves capable of working miracles? If then very many effects can be contrived by human art of so surprising a kind that the uninitiated think them divine, as when, for example, in a certain temple two magnets have been adjusted, one in the roof, another in the floor, so that an iron image is suspended in mid-air between them, one would suppose by the power of the divinity were he ignorant of the magnets above and beneath, or as in the case of that lamp of Venus which we already mentioned as being a skillful adaptation of asbestos, if again by the help of magicians whom scripture calls sorcerers and enchanters the devils could gain such power that the noble poet Virgil should consider himself justified in describing a very powerful magician in these lines. Her charms can cure what souls she please, rob other hearts of healthful ease, turn rivers backward to their source, and make the stars forget their course, and call up ghosts from night, the ground shall bellow neath your feet, the mountain ash shall quit its seat, and travel down the height. If this be so, how much more able is God to do those things which the skeptics are incredible but to his power easy, since it is he who is given to stones and all other things their virtue, and to mend their skill to use them in wonderful ways? He who is given to the angels a nature more mighty than that of all that lives on earth, he whose power surpasses all marvels, and whose wisdom in working, ordaining, and permitting is no less marvelous in its governance of all things than in its creation of all. Why then cannot God effect both that the bodies of the dead shall rise, and that the bodies of the damned shall be in torment in everlasting fire? God who made the world full of countless miracles in sky, earth, air, and waters, while itself is a miracle unquestionably greater and more admirable than all the marvels that is filled with. But those with whom or against whom we are arguing, who believe both that there is a God who made the world and that there are gods created by him who administer the world's laws as his vice regents? Our adversaries, I say, who so far from denying emphatically assert that there are powers in the world which effect marvelous results, whether of their own accord or because they are invoked by some rite or prayer or in some magical way. When we lay before them the wonderful properties of other things which are neither rational animals nor rational spirits, but such material objects as those we have just cited, are in the habit of replying, this is their natural property, their nature, these are the powers naturally belonging to them. Thus the whole reason why agrogentine salt dissolves in fire and crackles in water is that this is its nature. Yet this seems rather contrary to nature which has given not to fire but to water the power of melting salt and the power of scorching it not to water but to fire. But this, they say, is the natural property of this salt to show effects contrary to these. The same reason, therefore, is assigned to account for that garamachian fountain of which one and the same runlet is chilled by day and boiling by night so that in either extreme it cannot be touched. So also of that other fountain which, though it is cold to the touch and though it, like other fountains, extinguishes a lighted torch, yet unlike other fountains, and in a surprising manner kindles an extinguished torch. So of the asbestos stone which, though it has no heat of its own, yet when kindled by fire applied to it cannot be extinguished. And so of the rest which I am weary of reciting and in which, though there seems to be an extraordinary property contrary to nature, yet no other reason is given for them than this, that this is their nature. A brief reason truly, and I own a satisfactory reply. But since God is the author of all natures, how is it that our adversaries, when they refuse to believe what we affirm on the ground that it is impossible, are unwilling to accept from us a better explanation than their own, namely that this is the will of Almighty God, for certainly he is cold to Almighty only because he is mighty to do all he will. He who was able to create so many marvels, not only unknown, but very well ascertained, as I have been showing, and which, were they not under our own observation, or reported by recent and credible witnesses, would certainly be pronounced impossible. For as for those marvels which have no other testimony than the writers in whose books we read them, and who wrote without being divinely instructed, and are therefore liable to human error, we cannot justly blame anyone who declines to believe them. For my own part I do not wish all the marvels I have cited to be rashly accepted, for I do not myself believe them implicitly, save those which have either come under my own observation, or which anyone can readily verify, such as the lime which is heated by water and cooled by oil, the magnet which by its mysterious and insensible suction attracts the iron, but has no effect on a straw, the peacock's flesh which triumphs over the corruption from which not the flesh of Plato is exempt, the chaff so chilling that it prevents snow from melting, so heating that it forces apples to ripen, the glowing fire which in accordance with its glowing appearance whitens the stones it bakes, while contrary to its glowing appearance it begrimes most things it burns, just as dirty stains are made by oil, however pure it be, and as the lines drawn by white silver are black. The charcoal too, which by the action of fire is so completely changed from its original, that a finely marked piece of wood becomes hideous, the tough becomes brittle, the decaying incorruptible. Some of these things I know in common with many other persons, some of them in common with all men, and there are many others which I have not room to insert in this book, but of those which I have cited, though I have not myself seen, but only read about them, I have been unable to find trustworthy witnesses from whom I could ascertain whether they are facts, except in the case of that fountain in which burning torches are extinguished and extinguished torches lit, and of the apples of Sodom which are ripe to appearance, but are filled with dust. And, indeed, I have not met with any who said that they had seen that fountain in a pierce, but with some who knew there was a similar fountain in Gaul not far from Grenoble. The fruit of the trees of Sodom, however, is not only spoken of in books worthy of credit, but so many persons say that they have seen it that I cannot doubt the fact. But the rest of the prodigies I receive without definitely affirming or denying them, and I have cited them because I read them in the authors of our adversaries, and that I might prove how many things many among themselves believe because they are written in the works of their own literary men, though no rational explanation of them is given, and yet they scorn to believe us when we assert that Almighty God will do what is beyond their experience and observation, and this they do even though we assign a reason for his work. For what better and stronger reason for such things can be given than to say that the Almighty is able to bring them to pass and will bring them to pass, having predicted them in those books in which many other marvels which have already come to pass were predicted? Those things which are regarded as impossible will be accomplished according to the word and by the power of that God who predicted and effected that the incredulous nations should believe incredible wonders. CHAPTER 8 But if they reply that their reason for not believing us when we say that human bodies will always burn and yet never die, is that the nature of human bodies is known to be quite otherwise constituted. If they say that for this miracle we cannot give the reason which was valid in the case of those natural miracles, namely that this is the natural property, the nature of the thing, for we know that this is not the nature of human flesh, we find our answer in the sacred writings that even this human flesh was constituted in one fashion before there was sin, was constituted in fact so that it could not die, and in another fashion after sin, being made such as we see it in this miserable state of mortality, unable to retain enduring life. And so in the resurrection of the dead shall it be constituted differently from its present well-known condition. But as they do not believe these writings of ours in which we read what nature man had in paradise and how remote he was from the necessity of death, and indeed if they did believe them we should of course have little trouble in debating with them the future punishment of the damned. We must produce from the writings of their own most learned authorities some instances to show that it is possible for a thing to become different from what it was formerly known characteristically to be. From the book of Marcus Varo, entitled of the Race of the Roman People, I cite word for word the following instance. There occurred a remarkable celestial portent, for Caster records that in the brilliant star Venus, called Vesperugo by Plautus, and the lovely Hesperus by Homer, there occurred so strange a prodigy that it changed its color, size, form, course, which never happened before nor since. A drastus of Cisacus and Dion of Naples, famous mathematicians, said that this occurred in the reign of Agagies. So great an author as Varo would certainly not have called this a portent had it not seemed to be contrary to nature. For we say that all portents are contrary to nature, but they are not so. For how is that contrary to nature which happens by the will of God since the will of so mighty a creator is certainly the nature of each created thing? A portent therefore happens not contrary to nature, but contrary to what we know as nature. But who can number the multitude of portents recorded in profane histories? Let us stand at present, fix our attention on this one only which concerns the matter in hand. What is there so arranged by the author of the nature of heaven and earth as the exactly ordered course of the stars? What is there established by laws so sure and inflexible? And yet when it pleased him who with sovereignty and supreme power regulates all he has created, a star conspicuous among the rest by its size and splendor changed its color, size, form, and most wonderful of all the order and law of its course. Certainly that phenomenon disturbed the cannons of the astronomers if there were any then by which they tabulate as by an airing computation the past and future movements of the stars so as to take upon them to affirm that this which happened to the morning star Venus never happened before nor since. But we read in the divine books that even the sun itself stood still when a holy man, Joshua the son of none, had begged this from God until victory should finish the battle he had begun, and that it even went back that the promise of 15 years added to the life of King Hezekiah might be sealed by this additional prodigy. But these miracles which were vouchsafed to the merits of holy men even when our adversaries believed them they attribute to the magical arts. So Virgil in the lines I quoted above ascribes to magic the power to turn rivers backward to their source and make the stars forget their course. For in our sacred books we read that this also happened that a river turned backward was stayed above while the lower part flowed on when the people passed over under the above mentioned leader Joshua the son of none, and also when Elias the prophet crossed and afterwards when his disciple Elisha passed through it, and we have just mentioned how in the case of King Hezekiah the greatest of the stars forgot its course. But what happened to Venus according to Varro was not said by him to have happened in answer to any man's prayer. But not the skeptics then benight themselves in this knowledge of the nature of things as if divine power cannot bring to pass in an object anything else than what their own experience has shown them to be in its nature. Even the very things which are most commonly known as natural would not be less wonderful nor less effectual to excite surprise in all who beheld them if men were not accustomed to admire nothing but what is rare. For who that thoughtfully observes the countless multitude of men and their similarity of nature can fail to remark with surprise and admiration the individuality of each man's appearance, suggesting to us as it does that unless men were like one another they would not be distinguished from the rest of the animals, while unless on the other hand they were unlike they could not be distinguished from one another so that those whom we declare to be like we also find to be unlike. And the unlikeness is the more wonderful consideration of the two, for a common nature seems rather to require similarity. And yet because the very rarity of things is that which makes them wonderful we are filled with much greater wonder when we are introduced to two men so like that we either always or frequently mistake in endeavoring to distinguish between them. Yet possibly though Varro is a heathen historian and a very learned one they may disbelieve that what I have cited from him truly occurred, or they may say the example is invalid because the star did not for any length of time continue to follow its new course but return to its ordinary orbit. There is then another phenomenon at present open to their observation and which, in my opinion, ought to be sufficient to convince them that though they have observed and ascertained some natural law they ought not on that account prescribed to God as if he could not change and turn it into something very different from what they have observed. The land of Sodom was not always as it now is, but once it had the appearance of other lands and enjoyed equal if not richer fertility, for in the divine narrative it was compared to the Paradise of God. But after it was touched by fire from heaven as even pagan history testifies and as is now witnessed by those who visit the spot it became unnaturally and horribly sooty an appearance and its apples under a deceitful appearance of rightness contain ashes within. Here is a thing which was of one kind and is of another. You see how its nature was converted by the wonderful transmutation wrought by the creator of all natures into so very disgusting a diversity, an alteration which after so long a time took place and after so long a time still continues. As therefore it was not impossible to God to create such natures as he pleased, so it is not impossible to him to change these natures of his own creation into whatever he pleases and thus spread abroad a multitude of those marvels which are called monsters, portents, prodigies, phenomena, and which if I were minded to cite and record what end would there be to this work. They say that they are called monsters because they demonstrate or signify something, portents because they portend something, and so forth. But let their diviners see how they are either deceived or even when they do predict true things it is because they are inspired by spirits who are intent upon entangling the minds of men worthy indeed of such a fate in the meshes of a hurtful curiosity or how they light now and then upon some truth because they make so many predictions. Yet for our part these things which happen contrary to nature and are said to be contrary to nature as the apostles speaking after the manner of men says that to graph the wild olive into the good olive and to partake of its fatness is contrary to nature and are called monsters, such phenomena, portents, prodigies ought to demonstrate, portend, predict that God will bring to pass what he has foretold regarding the bodies of men, no difficulty preventing him, no law of nature prescribing to him his limit. How he has foretold what he is to do I think I have sufficiently shown in the preceding book culling from the sacred scriptures both of the new and old Testaments not indeed all the passages that relate to this but as many as I judged to suffice for this work. CHAPTER IX So then what God by his prophet has said of the everlasting punishment of the damned shall come to pass, shall without fail come to pass, their worm shall not die, neither shall their fire be quenched. In order to impress this upon us most forcibly the Lord Jesus himself when ordering us to cut off our members, meaning thereby those persons whom a man loves as the most useful members of his body, says, it is better for thee to enter into life maimed than having two hands to go into hell into the fire that never shall be quenched, where their worm dieeth not, and their fire is not quenched. Similarly of the foot. It is better for thee to enter halt into life than having two feet to be cast into hell into the fire that shall never be quenched, where their worm dieeth not, and the fire is not quenched. So too of the eye. It is better for thee to enter into the kingdom of God with one eye than having two eyes to be cast into hell fire where their worm dieeth not, and the fire is not quenched. He did not shrink from using the same words three times over in one passage, and who is not terrified by this repetition and by the threat of that punishment uttered so vehemently by the lips of the Lord himself. Now they who would refer both the fire and the worm to the spirit and not to the body affirm that the wicked who are separated from the kingdom of God shall be burned as it were by the anguish of a spirit repenting too late and fruitlessly, and they contend that fire is therefore not inappropriately used to express this burning torment as when the apostle exclaims, Who is offended and I burn not. The worm, too, they think, is to be similarly understood, for it is written, they say, as the moth consumes the garment and the worm the wood, so does grief consume the heart of a man. But they who make no doubt that in that future punishment both body and soul shall suffer affirm that the body shall be burned with fire, while the soul shall be as it were gnawed by a worm of anguish. Though this view is more reasonable, for it is absurd to suppose that either body or soul will escape pain in the future punishment, yet for my own part I find it easier to understand both as referring to the body than to suppose that neither does, and I think that scripture is silent regarding the spiritual pain of the damned, because though not expressed it is necessarily understood that in a body thus tormented the soul also is tortured with the fruitless repentance. For we read in the ancient scriptures the vengeance of the flesh of the ungodly is fire and worms. It might have been more briefly said the vengeance of the ungodly. Why then was it said the flesh of the ungodly, unless, because both the fire and the worm are to be the punishment of the flesh? Or if the object of the writer in saying the vengeance of the flesh was to indicate that this shall be the punishment of those who live after the flesh, for this leads to the second death as the apostle intimated when he said, for if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die. Let each one make his own choice, either assigning the fire to the body and the worm to the soul, the one figuratively, the other really, or assigning both really to the body. For I have already sufficiently made out that animals can live in the fire in burning without being consumed, in pain without dying, by a miracle of the most omnipotent Creator to whom no one can deny that this is possible if he be not ignorant by whom has been made all that is wonderful in all nature. For it is God himself who has wrought all these miracles, great and small, in this world which I have mentioned, and incomparably more which I have omitted, and who has enclosed these marvels in this world itself the greatest miracle of all. Let each man then choose which he will, whether he thinks that the worm is real and pertains to the body, or that spiritual things are meant by bodily representations, and that it belongs to the soul. But which of these is true will be more readily discovered by the facts themselves when there shall be in the saints such knowledge as shall not require that their own experience teach them the nature of these punishments, and as shall, by its own fullness and perfection, suffice to instruct them in this matter. For now we know in part until that which is perfect is calm, only this we believe about those future bodies that they shall be such as shall certainly be pained by the fire. Here arises the question if the fire is not to be immaterial analogous to the pain of the soul, but material burning by contact so that bodies may be tormented in it, how can evil spirits be punished in it? For it is undoubtedly the same fire which is to serve for the punishment of men and of devils, according to the words of Christ, depart from me ye cursed into everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels. Unless perhaps as learned men have thought the devils have a kind of body made of that dense and humid air which we feel strikes us when the wind is blowing. And if this kind of substance could not be affected by fire it could not burn when heated in the baths. For in order to burn it is first burned and affects other things as itself is affected. But if any one maintains that the devils have no bodies, this is not a matter either to be laboriously investigated or to be debated with keenness. For why may we not assert that even immaterial spirits may, in some extraordinary way, yet really be pained by the punishment of material fire, if the spirits of men, which also are certainly immaterial, are both now contained in material members of the body, and in the world to come, shall be insoluble united to their own bodies? Therefore, though the devils have no bodies, yet their spirits, that is, the devils themselves, shall be brought into thorough contact with the material fires to be tormented by them. Not that the fires themselves with which they are brought into contact shall be animated by their connection with these spirits, and become animals composed of body and spirit, but, as I said, this junction will be affected in a wonderful and ineffable way, so that they shall receive pain from the fires, but give no life to them. And in truth this other mode of union by which bodies and spirits are bound together, and become animals, is thoroughly marvelous, and beyond the comprehension of man, though this it is, which is man. I would indeed say that these spirits will burn without any body of their own, as that rich man was burning in hell when he exclaimed, I am tormented in this flame, were I not aware that it is aptly said in reply that that flame was of the same nature as the eyes he raised and fixed on Lazarus as the tongue on which he entreated that a little cooling water might be dropped or as the finger of Lazarus with which he asked that this might be done, all of which took place where souls exist without bodies. Thus therefore both that flame in which he burned and that drop he begged were immaterial and resembled divisions of sleepers or persons in an ecstasy to whom immaterial objects appear in a bodily form. For the man himself, who is in such a state, though it be in spirit only, not in body, yet sees himself so like to his own body that he cannot discern any difference whatever. But that hell, which also is called a lake of fire and brimstone, will be material fire and will torment the bodies of the damned whether men or devils, the solid bodies of the one, aerial bodies of the others, or if only men have bodies as well as souls, yet the evil spirits, though without bodies, shall be so connected with the bodily fires as to receive pain without imparting life. One fire certainly shall be the lot of both, for thus the truth has declared. CHAPTER 11 Some, however, of those against whom we are defending the city of God, think it unjust that any man be doomed to an eternal punishment for sins which no matter how great they were were perpetrated in a brief space of time, as if any law ever regulated the duration of the punishment by the duration of the offense punished. Cicero tells us that the laws recognize eight kinds of penalty—damages, imprisonment, scourging, reparation, disgrace, exile, death, slavery. Is there any one of these which may be compressed into a brevity proportion to the rapid commission of the offense, so that no longer time may be spent in its punishment than in its perpetration, unless perhaps reparation? For this requires that the offender suffer what he did, as that clause of the law says, eye for eye, tooth for tooth. For certainly it is possible for an offender to lose his eye by the severity of legal retaliation in as brief a time as he deprived another of his eye by the cruelty of his own lawlessness. But if scourging be a reasonable penalty for kissing another man's wife, is not the fault of an instant visited with long hours of atonement and the momentary delight punished with lasting pain. What shall we say of imprisonment? Must the criminal be confined only for so long a time as he spent on the offense for which he is committed? Or is not a penalty of many years confinement imposed on the slave who has provoked his master with a word, or who has struck him with a blow that is quickly over? And as to damages, disgrace, exile, slavery, which are commonly inflicted, so as to admit of no relaxation or pardon, do not these resemble eternal punishments insofar as this short life allows a resemblance. For they are not eternal only because the life in which they are endured is not eternal, and yet the crimes which are punished with these most protracted sufferings are perpetrated in a very brief space of time. Nor is there anyone who would suppose that the pains of punishment should occupy as short a time as the offense, or that murder, adultery, sacrilege, or any other crime should be measured not by the enormity of the injury or wickedness, but by the length of time spent in its perpetration. Then as to the award of death for any great crime, do the laws reckon the punishment to consist in the brief moment in which death is inflicted, or in this that the offender is eternally banished from the society of the living? And just as the punishment of the first death cuts men off from this present mortal city, so does the punishment of the second death cut men off from that future immortal city. For as the laws of this present city do not provide for the executed criminals returned to it, so neither is he who is condemned to the second death recalled again to life everlasting. But if temporal sin is visited with eternal punishment, how then, they say, is that true which your Christ says, with the same measure that ye meet with all, it shall be measured to you again? And they do not observe that the same measure refers not to an equal space of time, but to the retribution of evil, or in other words, to the law by which he who has done evil suffers evil. Besides, these words could be appropriately understood as referring to the matter of which our Lord was speaking when he used them, namely judgments and condemnation. Thus if he who unjustly judges and condemns is himself justly judged and condemned, he receives with the same measure, though not the same thing as he gave. For judgment he gave, and judgment he receives, though the judgment he gave was unjust, the judgment he receives just. CHAPTER XII But eternal punishment seems hard and unjust to human perceptions, because in the weakness of our mortal condition there is wanting that highest and purest wisdom by which it can be perceived how greater wickedness was committed in that first transgression. The more enjoyment man found in God the greater was his wickedness in abandoning him, and he who destroyed in himself a good which might have been eternal became worthy of eternal evil. Hence the whole mass of the human race is condemned, for he who at first gave entrance to sin has been punished with all his posterity who were in him as in a root, so that no one is exempt from this just and due punishment unless delivered by mercy and undeserved grace. And the human race is so apportioned that in some is displayed the efficacy of merciful grace, in the rest the efficacy of just retribution. For both could not be displayed in all, for if all had remained under the punishment of just condemnation that it would have been seen in no one the mercy of redeeming grace. And on the other hand if all had been transferred from darkness to light the severity of retribution would have been manifested in none. But many more are left under punishment than are delivered from it in order that it may thus be shown what was due to all. And had it been inflicted on all no one could justly have found fault with the justice of him who taketh vengeance. Whereas in the deliverance of so many from that just award there is cause to render the most cordial thanks to the gratuitous bounty of him who delivers. CHAPTER XIII The Platonists, indeed, while they maintain that no sins are unpunished, suppose that all punishment is administered for remedial purposes, be it inflicted by human or divine law in this life or after death, for a man may be scatheless here or though punished may yet not amend. Hence that passage of Virgil, where, when he had said of our earthly bodies and mortal members that our souls derive, hence while desires and groveling fears and human laughter, human tears, and mirrored in dungeon-seeming night they look abroad yet see no light, goes on to say, May, when at last a life is fled and left the body cold and dead, even then there passes not away the painful heritage of clay. Full many a long contracted stain perforced must linger deep in grain. So penal sufferings they endure for ancient crime to make them pure. Some hang aloft in open view, for winds to pierce them through and through, while others purge their guilt deep-died in burning fire or whelming tide. They who are of this opinion would have all punishments after death to be purgatorial, and as the elements of air, fire, and water are superior to earth, one or other of these may be the instrument of expiating and purging away the stain contracted by the contagion of earth. So Virgil hints at the air in the words, Some hang aloft, for winds to pierce, at the water in whelming tide, and at fire in the expression in burning fire. For our part we recognize that even in this life some punishments are purgatorial, not indeed to those whose life is none the better, but rather the worse for them, but to those who are constrained by them to amend their life. All other punishments, whether temporal or eternal, inflicted as they are on everyone by divine providence, are sent either on account of past sins, or of sins presently allowed in the life, or to exercise and reveal a man's graces. They may be inflicted by the instrumentality of bad men and angels as well as of the good. For even if any one suffers some hurt through another's wickedness or mistake, the man indeed sins whose ignorance or injustice does the harm, but God, who by his just though hidden judgment, permits it to be done, sins not. But temporary punishments are suffered by some in this life only, by others after death, by others both now and then, but all of them before that last and strictest judgment. But of those who suffer temporary punishments after death all are not doomed to those everlasting pains which are to follow that judgment, for to some, as we have already said, what is not remitted in this world is remitted in the next, that is, they are not punished with the eternal punishment of the world to come. CHAPTER XIV Quite exceptional are those who are not punished in this life but only afterwards. Yet that there have been some who have reached the decrepitude of age without experiencing even the slightest sickness, and who have had uninterrupted enjoyment of life, I know both from report and from my own observation. However the very life we mortals lead is itself all punishment, for it is all temptation, as the scriptures declare, where it is written, is not the life of man upon earth a temptation. For ignorance is itself no slight punishment, or want of culture, which it is with justice thought so necessary to escape that boys are compelled under pain of severe punishment to learn trades or letters, and the learning to which they are driven by punishment is itself so much of a punishment to them that they sometimes prefer the pain that drives them to the pain to which they are driven by it. And who would not shrink from the alternative and elect to die if it were proposed to him either to suffer death or to be again an infant? Our infancy indeed introducing us to this life not with laughter but with tears seems unconsciously to predict the ills we are to encounter. Zoroaster alone is said to have laughed when he was born, and that unnatural omen portended no good to him, for he is said to have been the inventor of magical arts, though indeed they were unable to secure to him even the poor felicity of this present life against the assaults of his enemies. For himself king of the Bactrians he was conquered by Nina's king of the Assyrians. In short the words of scripture and heavy yoke is upon the sons of Adam from the day that they go out of their mother's womb till the day that they return to the mother of all things. These words so infallibly find fulfillment that even the little ones who by the labor of regeneration have been freed from the bond of original sin in which alone they were held yet suffer many ills and in some instances are even exposed to the assaults of evil spirits. But let us not for a moment suppose that this suffering is prejudicial to their future happiness even though it has so increased as to sever a soul from body and to terminate their life in that early age.