Of the eternal happiness of the saints, the resurrection of the
body, and the miracles of the early Church, 472
THE CITY OF GOD.
BOOK FOURTEENTH.[1]
ARGUMENT.
AUGUSTINE AGAIN TREATS OF THE SIN OF THE FIRST MAN, AND TEACHES
THAT IT IS THE CAUSE OF THE CARNAL LIFE AND VICIOUS AFFECTIONS
OF MAN. ESPECIALLY HE PROVES THAT THE SHAME WHICH ACCOMPANIES
LUST IS THE JUST PUNISHMENT OF THAT DISOBEDIENCE, AND INQUIRES
HOW MAN, IF HE HAD NOT SINNED, WOULD HAVE BEEN ABLE WITHOUT
LUST TO PROPAGATE HIS KIND.
1. _That the disobedience of the first man would have plunged all
men into the endless misery of the second death, had not the
grace of God rescued many._
We have already stated in the preceding books that God, desiring
not only that the human race might be able by their similarity of
nature to associate with one another, but also that they might be
bound together in harmony and peace by the ties of relationship, was
pleased to derive all men from one individual, and created man with
such a nature that the members of the race should not have died, had
not the two first (of whom the one was created out of nothing, and
the other out of him) merited this by their disobedience; for by them
so great a sin was committed, that by it the human nature was altered
for the worse, and was transmitted also to their posterity, liable
to sin and subject to death. And the kingdom of death so reigned
over men, that the deserved penalty of sin would have hurled all
headlong even into the second death, of which there is no end, had
not the undeserved grace of God saved some therefrom. And thus it
has come to pass, that though there are very many and great nations
all over the earth, whose rites and customs, speech, arms, and dress,
are distinguished by marked differences, yet there are no more than
two kinds of human society, which we may justly call two cities,
according to the language of our Scriptures. The one consists of
those who wish to live after the flesh, the other of those who wish
to live after the spirit; and when they severally achieve what they
wish, they live in peace, each after their kind.
2. _Of carnal life, which is to be understood not only of living
in bodily indulgence, but also of living in the vices of the
inner man._
First, we must see what it is to live after the flesh, and what to live
after the spirit. For any one who either does not recollect, or does
not sufficiently weigh, the language of sacred Scripture, may, on first
hearing what we have said, suppose that the Epicurean philosophers
live after the flesh, because they place man's highest good in bodily
pleasure; and that those others do so who have been of opinion that in
some form or other bodily good is man's supreme good; and that the mass
of men do so who, without dogmatizing or philosophizing on the subject,
are so prone to lust that they cannot delight in any pleasure save
such as they receive from bodily sensations: and he may suppose that
the Stoics, who place the supreme good of men in the soul, live after
the spirit; for what is man's soul, if not spirit? But in the sense of
the divine Scripture both are proved to live after the flesh. For by
flesh it means not only the body of a terrestrial and mortal animal, as
when it says, "All flesh is not the same flesh, but there is one kind
of flesh of men, another flesh of beasts, another of fishes, another
of birds,"[2] but it uses this word in many other significations; and
among these various usages, a frequent one is to use flesh for man
himself, the nature of man taking the part for the whole, as in the
words, "By the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified;"[3]
for what does he mean here by "no flesh" but "no man?" And this,
indeed, he shortly after says more plainly: "No man shall be justified
by the law;"[4] and in the Epistle to the Galatians, "Knowing that a
man is not justified by the works of the law." And so we understand
the words, "And the Word was made flesh,"[5]--that is, man, which some
not accepting in its right sense, have supposed that Christ had not a
human soul.[6] For as the whole is used for the part in the words of
Mary Magdalene in the Gospel, "They have taken away my Lord, and I know
not where they have laid Him,"[7] by which she meant only the flesh
of Christ, which she supposed had been taken from the tomb where it
had been buried, so the part is used for the whole, flesh being named,
while man is referred to, as in the quotations above cited.
Since, then, Scripture uses the word flesh in many ways, which there
is not time to collect and investigate, if we are to ascertain what
it is to live after the flesh (which is certainly evil, though the
nature of flesh is not itself evil), we must carefully examine that
passage of the epistle which the Apostle Paul wrote to the Galatians,
in which he says, "Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which
are these: adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness,
idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife,
seditions, heresies, envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings,
and such like: of the which I tell you before, as I have also told
you in time past, that they which do such things shall not inherit
the kingdom of God."[8] This whole passage of the apostolic epistle
being considered, so far as it bears on the matter in hand, will
be sufficient to answer the question, what it is to live after the
flesh. For among the works of the flesh which he said were manifest,
and which he cited for condemnation, we find not only those which
concern the pleasure of the flesh, as fornications, uncleanness,
lasciviousness, drunkenness, revellings, but also those which, though
they be remote from fleshly pleasure, reveal the vices of the soul.
For who does not see that idolatries, witchcrafts, hatreds, variance,
emulations, wrath, strife, heresies, envyings, are vices rather of
the soul than of the flesh? For it is quite possible for a man to
abstain from fleshly pleasures for the sake of idolatry or some
heretical error; and yet, even when he does so, he is proved by this
apostolic authority to be living after the flesh; and in abstaining
from fleshly pleasure, he is proved to be practising damnable works
of the flesh. Who that has enmity has it not in his soul? or who
would say to his enemy, or to the man he thinks his enemy, You have a
bad flesh towards me, and not rather, You have a bad spirit towards
me? In fine, if any one heard of what I may call "carnalities," he
would not fail to attribute them to the carnal part of man; so no
one doubts that "animosities" belong to the soul of man. Why then
does the doctor of the Gentiles in faith and verity call all these
and similar things works of the flesh, unless because, by that mode
of speech whereby the part is used for the whole, he means us to
understand by the word flesh the man himself?
3. _That sin is caused not by the flesh, but by the soul, and
that the corruption contracted from sin is not sin, but sin's
punishment._
But if any one says that the flesh is the cause of all vices and
ill conduct, inasmuch as the soul lives wickedly only because it is
moved by the flesh, it is certain he has not carefully considered
the whole nature of man. For "the corruptible body, indeed, weigheth
down the soul."[9] Whence, too, the apostle, speaking of this
corruptible body, of which he had shortly before said, "though our
outward man perish,"[10] says, "We know that if our earthly house
of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an
house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For in this we
groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed upon with our house which
is from heaven: if so be that being clothed we shall not be found
naked. For we that are in this tabernacle do groan, being burdened:
not for that we would be unclothed, but clothed upon, that mortality
might be swallowed up in life."[11] We are then burdened with this
corruptible body; but knowing that the cause of this burdensomeness
is not the nature and substance of the body, but its corruption, we
do not desire to be deprived of the body, but to be clothed with
its immortality. For then, also, there will be a body, but it shall
no longer be a burden, being no longer corruptible. At present,
then, "the corruptible body presseth down the soul, and the earthly
tabernacle weigheth down the mind that museth upon many things,"
nevertheless they are in error who suppose that all the evils of the
soul proceed from the body.
Virgil, indeed, seems to express the sentiments of Plato in the
beautiful lines, where he says,--
"A fiery strength inspires their lives,
An essence that from heaven derives,
Though clogged in part by limbs of clay,
And the dull 'vesture of decay;'"[12]
but though he goes on to mention the four most common mental
emotions,--desire, fear, joy, sorrow,--with the intention of showing
that the body is the origin of all sins and vices, saying,--
"Hence wild desires and grovelling fears,
And human laughter, human tears,
Immured in dungeon-seeming night,
They look abroad, yet see no light,"[13]
yet we believe quite otherwise. For the corruption of the body,
which weighs down the soul, is not the cause but the punishment of
the first sin; and it was not the corruptible flesh that made the
soul sinful, but the sinful soul that made the flesh corruptible.
And though from this corruption of the flesh there arise certain
incitements to vice, and indeed vicious desires, yet we must not
attribute to the flesh all the vices of a wicked life, in case we
thereby clear the devil of all these, for he has no flesh. For though
we cannot call the devil a fornicator or drunkard, or ascribe to
him any sensual indulgence (though he is the secret instigator and
prompter of those who sin in these ways), yet he is exceedingly
proud and envious. And this viciousness has so possessed him, that
on account of it he is reserved in chains of darkness to everlasting
punishment.[14] Now these vices, which have dominion over the devil,
the apostle attributes to the flesh, which certainly the devil has
not. For he says "hatred, variance, emulations, strife, envying" are
the works of the flesh; and of all these evils pride is the origin
and head, and it rules in the devil though he has no flesh. For
who shows more hatred to the saints? who is more at variance with
them? who more envious, bitter, and jealous? And since he exhibits
all these works, though he has no flesh, how are they works of the
flesh, unless because they are the works of man, who is, as I said,
spoken of under the name of flesh? For it is not by having flesh,
which the devil has not, but by living according to himself,--that
is, according to man,--that man became like the devil. For the devil
too, wished to live according to himself when he did not abide in the
truth; so that when he lied, this was not of God, but of himself, who
is not only a liar, but the father of lies, he being the first who
lied, and the originator of lying as of sin.
4. _What it is to live according to man, and what to live according
to God._
When, therefore, man lives according to man, not according to God,
he is like the devil. Because not even an angel might live according
to an angel, but only according to God, if he was to abide in the
truth, and speak God's truth and not his own lie. And of man, too,
the same apostle says in another place, "If the truth of God hath
more abounded through my lie;"[15]--"my lie," he said, and "God's
truth." When, then, a man lives according to the truth, he lives
not according to himself, but according to God; for He was God who
said, "I am the truth."[16] When, therefore, man lives according to
himself,--that is, according to man, not according to God,--assuredly
he lives according to a lie; not that man himself is a lie, for
God is his author and creator, who is certainly not the author and
creator of a lie, but because man was made upright, that he might not
live according to himself, but according to Him that made him,--in
other words, that he might do His will and not his own; and not to
live as he was made to live, that is a lie. For he certainly desires
to be blessed even by not living so that he may be blessed. And what
is a lie if this desire be not? Wherefore it is not without meaning
said that all sin is a lie. For no sin is committed save by that
desire or will by which we desire that it be well with us, and shrink
from it being ill with us. That, therefore, is a lie which we do in
order that it may be well with us, but which makes us more miserable
than we were. And why is this, but because the source of man's
happiness lies only in God, whom he abandons when he sins, and not in
himself, by living according to whom he sins?
In enunciating this proposition of ours, then, that because some live
according to the flesh and others according to the spirit there have
arisen two diverse and conflicting cities, we might equally well
have said, "because some live according to man, others according to
God." For Paul says very plainly to the Corinthians, "For whereas
there is among you envying and strife, are ye not carnal, and walk
according to man?"[17] So that to walk according to man and to be
carnal are the same; for by _flesh_, that is, by a part of man, man
is meant. For before he said that those same persons were animal whom
afterwards he calls carnal, saying, "For what man knoweth the things
of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him? even so the things
of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God. Now we have received
not the spirit of this world, but the Spirit which is of God; that
we might know the things which are freely given to us of God. Which
things also we speak, not in the words which man's wisdom teacheth,
but which the Holy Ghost teacheth; comparing spiritual things with
spiritual. But the animal man perceiveth not the things of the Spirit
of God; for they are foolishness unto him."[18] It is to men of this
kind, then, that is, to animal men, he shortly after says, "And I,
brethren, could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as unto
carnal."[19] And this is to be interpreted by the same usage, a part
being taken for the whole. For both the soul and the flesh, the
component parts of man, can be used to signify the whole man; and so
the animal man and the carnal man are not two different things, but
one and the same thing, viz. man living according to man. In the same
way it is nothing else than men that are meant either in the words,
"By the deeds of the law there shall no _flesh_ be justified;"[20]
or in the words, "Seventy-five _souls_ went down into Egypt with
Jacob."[21] In the one passage, "no flesh" signifies "no man;" and
in the other, by "seventy-five souls" seventy-five men are meant.
And the expression, "not in words which man's wisdom teacheth," might
equally be "not in words which fleshly wisdom teacheth;" and the
expression, "ye walk according to man," might be "according to the
flesh." And this is still more apparent in the words which followed:
"For while one saith, I am of Paul, and another, I am of Apollos,
are ye not men?" The same thing which he had before expressed by "ye
are animal," "ye are carnal," he now expresses by "ye are men;" that
is, ye live according to man, not according to God, for if you lived
according to Him, you should be gods.
5. _That the opinion of the Platonists regarding the nature of
body and soul is not so censurable as that of the Manichæans,
but that even it is objectionable, because it ascribes the
origin of vices to the nature of the flesh._
There is no need, therefore, that in our sins and vices we accuse
the nature of the flesh to the injury of the Creator, for in its own
kind and degree the flesh is good; but to desert the Creator good,
and live according to the created good, is not good, whether a man
choose to live according to the flesh, or according to the soul,
or according to the whole human nature, which is composed of flesh
and soul, and which is therefore spoken of either by the name flesh
alone, or by the name soul alone. For he who extols the nature of
the soul as the chief good, and condemns the nature of the flesh as
if it were evil, assuredly is fleshly both in his love of the soul
and hatred of the flesh; for these his feelings arise from human
fancy, not from divine truth. The Platonists, indeed, are not so
foolish as, with the Manichæans, to detest our present bodies as an
evil nature;[22] for they attribute all the elements of which this
visible and tangible world is compacted, with all their qualities,
to God their Creator. Nevertheless, from the death-infected members
and earthly construction of the body they believe the soul is
so affected, that there are thus originated in it the diseases
of desires, and fears, and joy, and sorrow, under which four
perturbations, as Cicero[23] calls them, or passions, as most prefer
to name them with the Greeks, is included the whole viciousness of
human life. But if this be so, how is it that Æneas in Virgil, when
he had heard from his father in Hades that the souls should return
to bodies, expresses surprise at this declaration, and exclaims:
"O father! and can thought conceive
That happy souls this realm would leave,
And seek the upper sky,
With sluggish clay to reunite?
This direful longing for the light,
Whence comes it, say, and why?"[24]
This direful longing, then, does it still exist even in that boasted
purity of the disembodied spirits, and does it still proceed from the
death-infected members and earthly limbs? Does he not assert that,
when they begin to long to return to the body, they have already been
delivered from all these so-called pestilences of the body? From
which we gather that, were this endlessly alternating purification
and defilement of departing and returning souls as true as it is most
certainly false, yet it could not be averred that all culpable and
vicious motions of the soul originate in the earthly body; for, on
their own showing, "this direful longing," to use the words of their
noble exponent, is so extraneous to the body, that it moves the soul
that is purged of all bodily taint, and is existing apart from any
body whatever, and moves it, moreover, to be embodied again. So that
even they themselves acknowledge that the soul is not only moved to
desire, fear, joy, sorrow, by the flesh, but that it can also be
agitated with these emotions at its own instance.
6. _Of the character of the human will which makes the affections
of the soul right or wrong._
But the character of the human will is of moment; because, if it is
wrong, these motions of the soul will be wrong, but if it is right,
they will be not merely blameless, but even praiseworthy. For the
will is in them all; yea, none of them is anything else than will.
For what are desire and joy but a volition of consent to the things
we wish? And what are fear and sadness but a volition of aversion
from the things which we do not wish? But when consent takes the form
of seeking to possess the things we wish, this is called desire; and
when consent takes the form of enjoying the things we wish, this
is called joy. In like manner, when we turn with aversion from that
which we do not wish to happen, this volition is termed fear; and
when we turn away from that which has happened against our will, this
act of will is called sorrow. And generally in respect of all that
we seek or shun, as a man's will is attracted or repelled, so it is
changed and turned into these different affections. Wherefore the
man who lives according to God, and not according to man, ought to
be a lover of good, and therefore a hater of evil. And since no one
is evil by nature, but whoever is evil is evil by vice, he who lives
according to God ought to cherish towards evil men a perfect hatred,
so that he shall neither hate the man because of his vice, nor love
the vice because of the man, but hate the vice and love the man. For
the vice being cursed, all that ought to be loved, and nothing that
ought to be hated, will remain.
7. _That the words love and regard_ (amor _and_ dilectio) _are in
Scripture used indifferently of good and evil affection._
He who resolves to love God, and to love his neighbour as himself, not
according to man but according to God, is on account of this love said
to be of a good will; and this is in Scripture more commonly called
charity, but it is also, even in the same books, called love. For the
apostle says that the man to be elected as a ruler of the people must
be a lover of good.[25] And when the Lord Himself had asked Peter,
"Hast thou a regard for me (_diligis_) more than these?" Peter replied,
"Lord, Thou knowest that I love (_amo_) Thee." And again a second time
the Lord asked not whether Peter loved (_amaret_) Him, but whether he
had a regard (_diligeret_) for Him, and he again answered, "Lord, Thou
knowest that I love (_amo_) Thee." But on the third interrogation the
Lord Himself no longer says, "Hast thou a regard (_diligis_) for me,"
but "Lovest thou (_amas_) me?" And then the evangelist adds, "Peter was
grieved because He said unto him the third time, Lovest thou (_amas_)
me?" though the Lord had not said three times but only once, "Lovest
thou (_amas_) me?" and twice "_Diligis me?_" from which we gather
that, even when the Lord said "_diligis_," He used an equivalent for
"_amas_." Peter, too, throughout used one word for the one thing,
and the third time also replied, "Lord, Thou knowest all things, Thou
knowest that I love (_amo_) Thee."[26]
I have judged it right to mention this, because some are of opinion
that charity or regard (_dilectio_) is one thing, love (_amor_)
another. They say that _dilectio_ is used of a good affection, _amor_
of an evil love. But it is very certain that even secular literature
knows no such distinction. However, it is for the philosophers to
determine whether and how they differ, though their own writings
sufficiently testify that they make great account of love (_amor_)
placed on good objects, and even on God Himself. But we wished to
show that the Scriptures of our religion, whose authority we prefer
to all writings whatsoever, make no distinction between _amor_,
_dilectio_, and _caritas_; and we have already shown that _amor_
is used in a good connection. And if any one fancy that _amor_ is
no doubt used both of good and bad loves, but that _dilectio_ is
reserved for the good only, let him remember what the psalm says, "He
that loveth (_diligit_) iniquity hateth his own soul;"[27] and the
words of the Apostle John, "If any man love (_diligere_) the world,
the love (_dilectio_) of the Father is not in him."[28] Here you have
in one passage _dilectio_ used both in a good and a bad sense. And
if any one demands an instance of _amor_ being used in a bad sense
(for we have already shown its use in a good sense), let him read
the words, "For men shall be lovers (_amantes_) of their own selves,
lovers (_amatores_) of money."[29]
The right will is, therefore, well-directed love, and the wrong will
is ill-directed love. Love, then, yearning to have what is loved,
is desire; and having and enjoying it, is joy; fleeing what is
opposed to it, it is fear; and feeling what is opposed to it, when
it has befallen it, it is sadness. Now these motions are evil if
the love is evil; good if the love is good. What we assert let us
prove from Scripture. The apostle "desires to depart, and to be with
Christ."[30] And, "My soul desired to long for Thy judgments;"[31]
or if it is more appropriate to say, "My soul longed to desire Thy
judgments." And, "The desire of wisdom bringeth to a kingdom."[32]
Yet there has always obtained the usage of understanding desire
and concupiscence in a bad sense if the object be not defined. But
joy is used in a good sense: "Be glad in the Lord, and rejoice,
ye righteous."[33] And, "Thou hast put gladness in my heart."[34]
And, "Thou wilt fill me with joy with Thy countenance."[35] Fear is
used in a good sense by the apostle when he says, "Work out your
salvation with fear and trembling."[36] And, "Be not high-minded, but
fear."[37] And, "I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled
Eve through his subtilty, so your minds should be corrupted from
the simplicity that is in Christ."[38] But with respect to sadness,
which Cicero prefers to call sickness (_ægritudo_), and Virgil pain
(_dolor_) (as he says, "_Dolent gaudentque_"[39]), but which I prefer
to call sorrow, because sickness and pain are more commonly used to
express bodily suffering,--with respect to this emotion, I say, the
question whether it can be used in a good sense is more difficult.
8. _Of the three perturbations, which the Stoics admitted in the
soul of the wise man to the exclusion of grief or sadness,
which the manly mind ought not to experience._
Those emotions which the Greeks call εὐπαθείαι, and which Cicero
calls _constantiæ_, the Stoics would restrict to three; and,
instead of three "perturbations" in the soul of the wise man, they
substituted severally, in place of desire, will; in place of joy,
contentment; and for fear, caution; and as to sickness or pain,
which we, to avoid ambiguity, preferred to call sorrow, they denied
that it could exist in the mind of a wise man. Will, they say, seeks
the good, for this the wise man does. Contentment has its object in
good that is possessed, and this the wise man continually possesses.
Caution avoids evil, and this the wise man ought to avoid. But sorrow
arises from evil that has already happened; and as they suppose that
no evil can happen to the wise man, there can be no representative of
sorrow in his mind. According to them, therefore, none but the wise
man wills, is contented, uses caution; and that the fool can do no
more than desire, rejoice, fear, be sad. The former three affections
Cicero calls _constantiæ_, the last four _perturbationes_. Many,
however, call these last _passions_; and, as I have said, the Greeks
call the former εὐπαθείαι, and the latter πάθη. And when I made a
careful examination of Scripture to find whether this terminology was
sanctioned by it, I came upon this saying of the prophet: "There is
no contentment to the wicked, saith the Lord;"[40] as if the wicked
might more properly rejoice than be contented regarding evils, for
contentment is the property of the good and godly. I found also
that verse in the Gospel: "Whatsoever ye would that men should do
unto you, do ye even so unto them;"[41] which seems to imply that
evil or shameful things may be the object of desire, but not of
will. Indeed, some interpreters have added "good things" to make the
expression more in conformity with customary usage, and have given
this meaning, "Whatsoever good deeds that ye would that men should
do unto you." For they thought that this would prevent any one from
wishing other men to provide him with unseemly, not to say shameful,
gratifications,--luxurious banquets, for example,--on the supposition
that if he returned the like to them he would be fulfilling this
precept. In the Greek Gospel, however, from which the Latin is
translated, "good" does not occur, but only, "All things whatsoever
ye would that men should do unto you, do ye even so unto them," and,
as I believe, because "good" is already included in the word "would;"
for He does not say "desire."
Yet though we may sometimes avail ourselves of these precise
proprieties of language, we are not to be always bridled by them; and
when we read those writers against whose authority it is unlawful
to reclaim, we must accept the meanings above mentioned in passages
where a right sense can be educed by no other interpretation, as in
those instances we adduced partly from the prophet, partly from the
Gospel. For who does not know that the wicked exult with joy? Yet
"there is no _contentment_ for the wicked, saith the Lord." And how
so, unless because contentment, when the word is used in its proper
and distinctive significance, means something different from joy? In
like manner, who would deny that it were wrong to enjoin upon men
that whatever they desire others to do to them they should themselves
do to others, lest they should mutually please one another by shameful
and illicit pleasure? And yet the precept, "Whatsoever ye _would_ that
men should do unto you, do ye even so to them," is very wholesome
and just. And how is this, unless because the will is in this place
used strictly, and signifies that will which cannot have evil for its
object? But ordinary phraseology would not have allowed the saying,
"Be unwilling to make any manner of lie,"[42] had there not been also
an evil will, whose wickedness separates it from that which the angels
celebrated, "Peace on earth, of good will to men."[43] For "good" is
superfluous if there is no other kind of will but good will. And why
should the apostle have mentioned it among the praises of charity as
a great thing, that "it rejoices not in iniquity," unless because
wickedness does so rejoice? For even with secular writers these words
are used indifferently. For Cicero, that most fertile of orators, says,
"I desire, conscript fathers, to be merciful."[44] And who would be
so pedantic as to say that he should have said "I will" rather than
"I desire," because the word is used in a good connection? Again,
in Terence, the profligate youth, burning with wild lust, says, "I
will nothing else than Philumena."[45] That this "will" was lust is
sufficiently indicated by the answer of his old servant which is there
introduced: "How much better were it to try and banish that love from
your heart, than to speak so as uselessly to inflame your passion still
more!" And that contentment was used by secular writers in a bad sense,
that verse of Virgil testifies, in which he most succinctly comprehends
these four perturbations,--
"Hence they fear and desire, grieve and are content."[46]
The same author had also used the expression, "the evil contentments
of the mind."[47] So that good and bad men alike will, are cautious,
and contented; or, to say the same thing in other words, good and bad
men alike desire, fear, rejoice, but the former in a good, the latter
in a bad fashion, according as the will is right or wrong. Sorrow
itself, too, which the Stoics would not allow to be represented in
the mind of the wise man, is used in a good sense, and especially in
our writings. For the apostle praises the Corinthians because they
had a godly sorrow. But possibly some one may say that the apostle
congratulated them because they were penitently sorry, and that such
sorrow can exist only in those who have sinned. For these are his
words: "For I perceive that the same epistle hath made you sorry,
though it were but for a season. Now I rejoice, not that ye were made
sorry, but that ye sorrowed to repentance; for ye were made sorry
after a godly manner, that ye might receive damage by us in nothing.
For godly sorrow worketh repentance to salvation not to be repented
of, but the sorrow of the world worketh death. For, behold, this
selfsame thing that ye sorrowed after a godly sort, what carefulness
it wrought in you!"[48] Consequently the Stoics may defend themselves
by replying,[49] that sorrow is indeed useful for repentance of sin,
but that this can have no place in the mind of the wise man, inasmuch
as no sin attaches to him of which he could sorrowfully repent,
nor any other evil the endurance or experience of which could make
him sorrowful. For they say that Alcibiades (if my memory does not
deceive me), who believed himself happy, shed tears when Socrates
argued with him, and demonstrated that he was miserable because he
was foolish. In his case, therefore, folly was the cause of this
useful and desirable sorrow, wherewith a man mourns that he is what
he ought not to be. But the Stoics maintain not that the fool, but
that the wise man, cannot be sorrowful.
9. _Of the perturbations of the soul which appear as right
affections in the life of the righteous._
But so far as regards this question of mental perturbations, we have
answered these philosophers in the ninth book[50] of this work,
showing that it is rather a verbal than a real dispute, and that they
seek contention rather than truth. Among ourselves, according to the
sacred Scriptures and sound doctrine, the citizens of the holy city of
God, who live according to God in the pilgrimage of this life, both
fear and desire, and grieve and rejoice. And because their love is
rightly placed, all these affections of theirs are right. They fear
eternal punishment, they desire eternal life; they grieve because
they themselves groan within themselves, waiting for the adoption,
the redemption of their body;[51] they rejoice in hope, because
there "shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death
is swallowed up in victory."[52] In like manner they fear to sin,
they desire to persevere; they grieve in sin, they rejoice in good
works. They fear to sin, because they hear that "because iniquity
shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold."[53] They desire to
persevere, because they hear that it is written, "He that endureth to
the end shall be saved."[54] They grieve for sin, hearing that "If we
say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in
us."[55] They rejoice in good works, because they hear that "the Lord
loveth a cheerful giver."[56] In like manner, according as they are
strong or weak, they fear or desire to be tempted, grieve or rejoice in
temptation. They fear to be tempted, because they hear the injunction,
"If a man be overtaken in a fault, ye which are spiritual restore such
an one in the spirit of meekness; considering thyself, lest thou also
be tempted."[57] They desire to be tempted, because they hear one of
the heroes of the city of God saying, "Examine me, O Lord, and tempt
me: try my reins and my heart."[58] They grieve in temptations, because
they see Peter weeping;[59] they rejoice in temptations, because they
hear James saying, "My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into
divers temptations."[60]
And not only on their own account do they experience these emotions,
but also on account of those whose deliverance they desire and whose
perdition they fear, and whose loss or salvation affects them with
grief or with joy. For if we who have come into the Church from among
the Gentiles may suitably instance that noble and mighty hero who
glories in his infirmities, the teacher (_doctor_) of the nations in
faith and truth, who also laboured more than all his fellow-apostles,
and instructed the tribes of God's people by his epistles, which
edified not only those of his own time, but all those who were to be
gathered in,--that hero, I say, and athlete of Christ, instructed
by Him, anointed of His Spirit, crucified with Him, glorious in
Him, lawfully maintaining a great conflict on the theatre of this
world, and being made a spectacle to angels and men,[61] and pressing
onwards for the prize of his high calling,[62]--very joyfully do we
with the eyes of faith behold him rejoicing with them that rejoice,
and weeping with them that weep;[63] though hampered by fightings
without and fears within;[64] desiring to depart and to be with
Christ;[65] longing to see the Romans, that he might have some fruit
among them as among other Gentiles;[66] being jealous over the
Corinthians, and fearing in that jealousy lest their minds should
be corrupted from the chastity that is in Christ;[67] having great
heaviness and continual sorrow of heart for the Israelites,[68]
because they, being ignorant of God's righteousness, and going about
to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted themselves
unto the righteousness of God;[69] and expressing not only his
sorrow, but bitter lamentation over some who had formally sinned and
had not repented of their uncleanness and fornications.[70]
If these emotions and affections, arising as they do from the love
of what is good and from a holy charity, are to be called vices,
then let us allow these emotions which are truly vices to pass under
the name of virtues. But since these affections, when they are
exercised in a becoming way, follow the guidance of right reason,
who will dare to say that they are diseases or vicious passions?
Wherefore even the Lord Himself, when He condescended to lead a
human life in the form of a slave, had no sin whatever, and yet
exercised these emotions where He judged they should be exercised.
For as there was in Him a true human body and a true human soul, so
was there also a true human emotion. When, therefore, we read in the
Gospel that the hard-heartedness of the Jews moved Him to sorrowful
indignation,[71] that He said, "I am glad for your sakes, to the
intent ye may believe,"[72] that when about to raise Lazarus He
even shed tears,[73] that He earnestly desired to eat the passover
with His disciples,[74] that as His passion drew near His soul was
sorrowful,[75] these emotions are certainly not falsely ascribed
to Him. But as He became man when it pleased Him, so, in the grace
of His definite purpose, when it pleased Him He experienced those
emotions in His human soul.
But we must further make the admission, that even when these affections
are well regulated, and according to God's will, they are peculiar
to this life, not to that future life we look for, and that often we
yield to them against our will. And thus sometimes we weep in spite
of ourselves, being carried beyond ourselves, not indeed by culpable
desire, but by praiseworthy charity. In us, therefore, these affections
arise from human infirmity; but it was not so with the Lord Jesus, for
even His infirmity was the consequence of His power. But so long as we
wear the infirmity of this life, we are rather worse men than better if
we have none of these emotions at all. For the apostle vituperated and
abominated some who, as he said, were "without natural affection."[76]
The sacred Psalmist also found fault with those of whom he said, "I
looked for some to lament with me, and there was none."[77] For to
be quite free from pain while we are in this place of misery is only
purchased, as one of this world's literati perceived and remarked,[78]
at the price of blunted sensibilities both of mind and body. And
therefore that which the Greeks call ἀπάθεια, and what the Latins would
call, if their language would allow them, "impassibilitas," if it be
taken to mean an impassibility of spirit and not of body, or, in other
words, a freedom from those emotions which are contrary to reason
and disturb the mind, then it is obviously a good and most desirable
quality, but it is not one which is attainable in this life. For the
words of the apostle are the confession, not of the common herd, but
of the eminently pious, just, and holy men: "If we say we have no sin,
we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us."[79] When there
shall be no sin in a man, then there shall be this ἀπάθεια. At present
it is enough if we live without crime; and he who thinks he lives
without sin puts aside not sin, but pardon. And if that is to be called
apathy, where the mind is the subject of no emotion, then who would not
consider this insensibility to be worse than all vices? It may, indeed,
reasonably be maintained that the perfect blessedness we hope for shall
be free from all sting of fear or sadness; but who that is not quite
lost to truth would say that neither love nor joy shall be experienced
there? But if by apathy a condition be meant in which no fear terrifies
nor any pain annoys, we must in this life renounce such a state if we
would live according to God's will, but may hope to enjoy it in that
blessedness which is promised as our eternal condition.
For that fear of which the Apostle John says, "There is no fear in
love; but perfect love casteth out fear, because fear hath torment.
He that feareth is not made perfect in love,"[80]--that fear is not
of the same kind as the Apostle Paul felt lest the Corinthians should
be seduced by the subtlety of the serpent; for love is susceptible
of this fear, yea, love alone is capable of it. But the fear which
is not in love is of that kind of which Paul himself says, "For ye
have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear."[81] But as
for that "clean fear which endureth for ever,"[82] if it is to exist
in the world to come (and how else can it be said to endure for
ever?), it is not a fear deterring us from evil which may happen,
but preserving us in the good which cannot be lost. For where the
love of acquired good is unchangeable, there certainly the fear
that avoids evil is, if I may say so, free from anxiety. For under
the name of "clean fear" David signifies that will by which we
shall necessarily shrink from sin, and guard against it, not with
the anxiety of weakness, which fears that we may strongly sin, but
with the tranquillity of perfect love. Or if no kind of fear at all
shall exist in that most imperturbable security of perpetual and
blissful delights, then the expression, "The fear of the Lord is
clean, enduring for ever," must be taken in the same sense as that
other, "The patience of the poor shall not perish for ever."[83] For
patience, which is necessary only where ills are to be borne, shall
not be eternal, but that which patience leads us to will be eternal.
So perhaps this "clean fear" is said to endure for ever, because that
to which fear leads shall endure.
And since this is so,--since we must live a good life in order to
attain to a blessed life,--a good life has all these affections
right, a bad life has them wrong. But in the blessed life eternal
there will be love and joy, not only right, but also assured; but
fear and grief there will be none. Whence it already appears in some
sort what manner of persons the citizens of the city of God must be
in this their pilgrimage, who live after the spirit, not after the
flesh,--that is to say, according to God, not according to man,--and
what manner of persons they shall be also in that immortality whither
they are journeying. And the city or society of the wicked, who
live not according to God, but according to man, and who accept the
doctrines of men or devils in the worship of a false and contempt
of the true divinity, is shaken with those wicked emotions as by
diseases and disturbances. And if there be some of its citizens who
seem to restrain and, as it were, temper those passions, they are
so elated with ungodly pride, that their disease is as much greater
as their pain is less. And if some, with a vanity monstrous in
proportion to its rarity, have become enamoured of themselves because
they can be stimulated and excited by no emotion, moved or bent by
no affection, such persons rather lose all humanity than obtain true
tranquillity. For a thing is not necessarily right because it is
inflexible, nor healthy because it is insensible.
10. _Whether it is to be believed that our first parents in
Paradise, before they sinned, were free from all perturbation._
But it is a fair question, whether our first parent or first parents
(for there was a marriage of two), before they sinned, experienced
in their animal body such emotions as we shall not experience in
the spiritual body when sin has been purged and finally abolished.
For if they did, then how were they blessed in that boasted place
of bliss, Paradise? For who that is affected by fear or grief can
be called absolutely blessed? And what could those persons fear
or suffer in such affluence of blessings, where neither death nor
ill-health was feared, and where nothing was wanting which a good
will could desire, and nothing present which could interrupt man's
mental or bodily enjoyment? Their love to God was unclouded, and
their mutual affection was that of faithful and sincere marriage;
and from this love flowed a wonderful delight, because they always
enjoyed what was loved. Their avoidance of sin was tranquil; and,
so long as it was maintained, no other ill at all could invade them
and bring sorrow. Or did they perhaps desire to touch and eat the
forbidden fruit, yet feared to die; and thus both fear and desire
already, even in that blissful place, preyed upon those first of
mankind? Away with the thought that such could be the case where
there was no sin! And, indeed, this is already sin, to desire those
things which the law of God forbids, and to abstain from them through
fear of punishment, not through love of righteousness. Away, I say,
with the thought, that before there was any sin, there should already
have been committed regarding that fruit the very sin which our Lord
warns us against regarding a woman: "Whosoever looketh on a woman
to lust after her, hath committed adultery with her already in his
heart."[84] As happy, then, as were these our first parents, who
were agitated by no mental perturbations, and annoyed by no bodily
discomforts, so happy should the whole human race have been, had
they not introduced that evil which they have transmitted to their
posterity, and had none of their descendants committed iniquity
worthy of damnation; but this original blessedness continuing
until, in virtue of that benediction which said, "Increase and
multiply,"[85] the number of the predestined saints should have been
completed, there would then have been bestowed that higher felicity
which is enjoyed by the most blessed angels,--a blessedness in which
there should have been a secure assurance that no one would sin, and
no one die; and so should the saints have lived, after no taste of
labour, pain, or death, as now they shall live in the resurrection,
after they have endured all these things.
11. _Of the fall of the first man, in whom nature was created
good, and can be restored only by its Author._
But because God foresaw all things, and was therefore not ignorant
that man also would fall, we ought to consider this holy city in
connection with what God foresaw and ordained, and not according to
our own ideas, which do not embrace God's ordination. For man, by
his sin, could not disturb the divine counsel, nor compel God to
change what He had decreed; for God's foreknowledge had anticipated
both,--that is to say, both how evil the man whom He had created good
should become, and what good He Himself should even thus derive from
him. For though God is said to change His determinations (so that in
a tropical sense the Holy Scripture says even that God repented[86]),
this is said with reference to man's expectation, or the order of
natural causes, and not with reference to that which the Almighty had
foreknown that He would do. Accordingly God, as it is written, made
man upright,[87] and consequently with a good will. For if he had
not had a good will, he could not have been upright. The good will,
then, is the work of God; for God created him with it. But the first
evil will, which preceded all man's evil acts, was rather a kind of
falling away from the work of God to its own works than any positive
work. And therefore the acts resulting were evil, not having God, but
the will itself for their end; so that the will or the man himself,
so far as his will is bad, was as it were the evil tree bringing
forth evil fruit. Moreover, the bad will, though it be not in harmony
with, but opposed to nature, inasmuch as it is a vice or blemish,
yet it is true of it as of all vice, that it cannot exist except in
a nature, and only in a nature created out of nothing, and not in
that which the Creator has begotten of Himself, as He begot the Word,
by whom all things were made. For though God formed man of the dust
of the earth, yet the earth itself, and every earthly material, is
absolutely created out of nothing; and man's soul, too, God created
out of nothing, and joined to the body, when He made man. But evils
are so thoroughly overcome by good, that though they are permitted
to exist, for the sake of demonstrating how the most righteous
foresight of God can make a good use even of them, yet good can exist
without evil, as in the true and supreme God Himself, and as in every
invisible and visible celestial creature that exists above this murky
atmosphere; but evil cannot exist without good, because the natures
in which evil exists, in so far as they are natures, are good. And
evil is removed, not by removing any nature, or part of a nature,
which had been introduced by the evil, but by healing and correcting
that which had been vitiated and depraved. The will, therefore, is
then truly free, when it is not the slave of vices and sins. Such was
it given us by God; and this being lost by its own fault, can only
be restored by Him who was able at first to give it. And therefore
the truth says, "If the Son shall make you free, ye shall be free
indeed;"[88] which is equivalent to saying, If the Son shall save
you, ye shall be saved indeed. For He is our Liberator, inasmuch as
He is our Saviour.
Man then lived with God for his rule in a paradise at once physical
and spiritual. For neither was it a paradise only physical for the
advantage of the body, and not also spiritual for the advantage of
the mind; nor was it only spiritual to afford enjoyment to man by his
internal sensations, and not also physical to afford him enjoyment
through his external senses. But obviously it was both for both ends.
But after that proud and therefore envious angel (of whose fall I
have said as much as I was able in the eleventh and twelfth books
of this work, as well as that of his fellows, who, from being God's
angels, became his angels), preferring to rule with a kind of pomp of
empire rather than to be another's subject, fell from the spiritual
Paradise, and essaying to insinuate his persuasive guile into the
mind of man, whose unfallen condition provoked him to envy now that
himself was fallen, he chose the serpent as his mouthpiece in that
bodily Paradise in which it and all the other earthly animals were
living with those two human beings, the man and his wife, subject to
them, and harmless; and he chose the serpent because, being slippery,
and moving in tortuous windings, it was suitable for his purpose.
And this animal being subdued to his wicked ends by the presence and
superior force of his angelic nature, he abused as his instrument,
and first tried his deceit upon the woman, making his assault upon
the weaker part of that human alliance, that he might gradually
gain the whole, and not supposing that the man would readily give
ear to him, or be deceived, but that he might yield to the error of
the woman. For as Aaron was not induced to agree with the people
when they blindly wished him to make an idol, and yet yielded to
constraint; and as it is not credible that Solomon was so blind as
to suppose that idols should be worshipped, but was drawn over to
such sacrilege by the blandishments of women; so we cannot believe
that Adam was deceived, and supposed the devil's word to be truth,
and therefore transgressed God's law, but that he by the drawings of
kindred yielded to the woman, the husband to the wife, the one human
being to the only other human being. For not without significance
did the apostle say, "And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being
deceived was in the transgression;"[89] but he speaks thus, because
the woman accepted as true what the serpent told her, but the man
could not bear to be severed from his only companion, even though
this involved a partnership in sin. He was not on this account less
culpable, but sinned with his eyes open. And so the apostle does not
say, "He did not sin," but "He was not deceived." For he shows that
he sinned when he says, "By one man sin entered into the world,"[90]
and immediately after more distinctly, "In the likeness of Adam's
transgression." But he meant that those are deceived who do not judge
that which they do to be sin; but he knew. Otherwise how were it
true "Adam was not deceived?" But having as yet no experience of the
divine severity, he was possibly deceived in so far as he thought
his sin venial. And consequently he was not deceived as the woman
was deceived, but he was deceived as to the judgment which would be
passed on his apology: "The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she
gave me, and I did eat."[91] What need of saying more? Although they
were not both deceived by credulity, yet both were entangled in the
snares of the devil, and taken by sin.
12. _Of the nature of man's first sin._
If any one finds a difficulty in understanding why other sins do
not alter human nature as it was altered by the transgression of
those first human beings, so that on account of it this nature is
subject to the great corruption we feel and see, and to death,
and is distracted and tossed with so many furious and contending
emotions, and is certainly far different from what it was before
sin, even though it were then lodged in an animal body,--if, I say,
any one is moved by this, he ought not to think that that sin was a
small and light one because it was committed about food, and that
not bad nor noxious, except because it was forbidden; for in that
spot of singular felicity God could not have created and planted any
evil thing. But by the precept He gave, God commended obedience,
which is, in a sort, the mother and guardian of all the virtues
in the reasonable creature, which was so created that submission
is advantageous to it, while the fulfilment of its own will in
preference to the Creator's is destruction. And as this commandment
enjoining abstinence from one kind of food in the midst of great
abundance of other kinds was so easy to keep,--so light a burden to
the memory,--and, above all, found no resistance to its observance
in lust, which only afterwards sprung up as the penal consequence of
sin, the iniquity of violating it was all the greater in proportion
to the ease with which it might have been kept.
13. _That in Adam's sin an evil will preceded the evil act._
Our first parents fell into open disobedience because already they
were secretly corrupted; for the evil act had never been done had not
an evil will preceded it. And what is the origin of our evil will but
pride? For "pride is the beginning of sin."[92] And what is pride
but the craving for undue exaltation? And this is undue exaltation,
when the soul abandons Him to whom it ought to cleave as its end,
and becomes a kind of end to itself. This happens when it becomes
its own satisfaction. And it does so when it falls away from that
unchangeable good which ought to satisfy it more than itself. This
falling away is spontaneous; for if the will had remained stedfast in
the love of that higher and changeless good by which it was illumined
to intelligence and kindled into love, it would not have turned away
to find satisfaction in itself, and so become frigid and benighted;
the woman would not have believed the serpent spoke the truth, nor
would the man have preferred the request of his wife to the command
of God, nor have supposed that it was a venial transgression to
cleave to the partner of his life even in a partnership of sin. The
wicked deed, then,--that is to say, the transgression of eating the
forbidden fruit,--was committed by persons who were already wicked.
That "evil fruit"[93] could be brought forth only by "a corrupt
tree." But that the tree was evil was not the result of nature; for
certainly it could become so only by the vice of the will, and vice
is contrary to nature. Now, nature could not have been depraved by
vice had it not been made out of nothing. Consequently, that it is
a nature, this is because it is made by God; but that it falls away
from Him, this is because it is made out of nothing. But man did not
so fall away[94] as to become absolutely nothing; but being turned
towards himself, his being became more contracted than it was when he
clave to Him who supremely is. Accordingly, to exist in himself, that
is, to be his own satisfaction after abandoning God, is not quite to
become a nonentity, but to approximate to that. And therefore the
holy Scriptures designate the proud by another name, "self-pleasers."
For it is good to have the heart lifted up, yet not to one's self,
for this is proud, but to the Lord, for this is obedient, and can
be the act only of the humble. There is, therefore, something in
humility which, strangely enough, exalts the heart, and something
in pride which debases it. This seems, indeed, to be contradictory,
that loftiness should debase and lowliness exalt. But pious humility
enables us to submit to what is above us; and nothing is more exalted
above us than God; and therefore humility, by making us subject to
God, exalts us. But pride, being a defect of nature, by the very
act of refusing subjection and revolting from Him who is supreme,
falls to a low condition; and then comes to pass what is written:
"Thou castedst them down when they lifted up themselves."[95] For
he does not say, "when they had been lifted up," as if first they
were exalted, and then afterwards cast down; but "when they lifted
up themselves" even then they were cast down,--that is to say,
the very lifting up was already a fall. And therefore it is that
humility is specially recommended to the city of God as it sojourns
in this world, and is specially exhibited in the city of God, and
in the person of Christ its King; while the contrary vice of pride,
according to the testimony of the sacred writings, specially rules
his adversary the devil. And certainly this is the great difference
which distinguishes the two cities of which we speak, the one
being the society of the godly men, the other of the ungodly, each
associated with the angels that adhere to their party, and the one
guided and fashioned by love of self, the other by love of God.
The devil, then, would not have ensnared man in the open and manifest
sin of doing what God had forbidden, had man not already begun to live
for himself. It was this that made him listen with pleasure to the
words, "Ye shall be as gods,"[96] which they would much more readily
have accomplished by obediently adhering to their supreme and true
end than by proudly living to themselves. For created gods are gods
not by virtue of what is in themselves, but by a participation of the
true God. By craving to be more, man becomes less; and by aspiring
to be self-sufficing, he fell away from Him who truly suffices him.
Accordingly, this wicked desire which prompts man to please himself as
if he were himself light, and which thus turns him away from that light
by which, had he followed it, he would himself have become light,--this
wicked desire, I say, already secretly existed in him, and the open
sin was but its consequence. For that is true which is written, "Pride
goeth before destruction, and before honour is humility;"[97] that is
to say, secret ruin precedes open ruin, while the former is not counted
ruin. For who counts exaltation ruin, though no sooner is the Highest
forsaken than a fall is begun? But who does not recognise it as ruin,
when there occurs an evident and indubitable transgression of the
commandment? And consequently, God's prohibition had reference to such
an act as, when committed, could not be defended on any pretence of
doing what was righteous.[98] And I make bold to say that it is useful
for the proud to fall into an open and indisputable transgression, and
so displease themselves, as already, by pleasing themselves, they had
fallen. For Peter was in a healthier condition when he wept and was
dissatisfied with himself, than when he boldly presumed and satisfied
himself. And this is averred by the sacred Psalmist when he says, "Fill
their faces with shame, that they may seek Thy name, O Lord;"[99] that
is, that they who have pleased themselves in seeking their own glory
may be pleased and satisfied with Thee in seeking Thy glory.
14. _Of the pride in the sin, which was worse than the sin itself._
But it is a worse and more damnable pride which casts about for
the shelter of an excuse even in manifest sins, as these our first
parents did, of whom the woman said, "The serpent beguiled me, and I
did eat;" and the man said, "The woman whom Thou gavest to be with
me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat."[100] Here there is no
word of begging pardon, no word of entreaty for healing. For though
they do not, like Cain, deny that they have perpetrated the deed, yet
their pride seeks to refer its wickedness to another,--the woman's
pride to the serpent, the man's to the woman. But where there is a
plain transgression of a divine commandment, this is rather to accuse
than to excuse oneself. For the fact that the woman sinned on the
serpent's persuasion, and the man at the woman's offer, did not make
the transgression less, as if there were any one whom we ought rather
to believe or yield to than God.
15. _Of the justice of the punishment with which our first parents
were visited for their disobedience._
Therefore, because the sin was a despising of the authority of
God,--who had created man; who had made him in His own image; who had
set him above the other animals; who had placed him in Paradise; who
had enriched him with abundance of every kind and of safety; who had
laid upon him neither many, nor great, nor difficult commandments,
but, in order to make a wholesome obedience easy to him, had given
him a single very brief and very light precept by which He reminded
that creature whose service was to be free that He was Lord,--it was
just that condemnation followed, and condemnation such that man, who
by keeping the commandments should have been spiritual even in his
flesh, became fleshly even in his spirit; and as in his pride he had
sought to be his own satisfaction, God in His justice abandoned him
to himself, not to live in the absolute independence he affected, but
instead of the liberty he desired, to live dissatisfied with himself
in a hard and miserable bondage to him to whom by sinning he had
yielded himself, doomed in spite of himself to die in body as he had
willingly become dead in spirit, condemned even to eternal death (had
not the grace of God delivered him) because he had forsaken eternal
life. Whoever thinks such punishment either excessive or unjust
shows his inability to measure the great iniquity of sinning where
sin might so easily have been avoided. For as Abraham's obedience is
with justice pronounced to be great, because the thing commanded, to
kill his son, was very difficult, so in Paradise the disobedience
was the greater, because the difficulty of that which was commanded
was imperceptible. And as the obedience of the second Man was the
more laudable because He became obedient even "unto death,"[101] so
the disobedience of the first man was the more detestable because he
became disobedient even unto death. For where the penalty annexed
to disobedience is great, and the thing commanded by the Creator is
easy, who can sufficiently estimate how great a wickedness it is, in
a matter so easy, not to obey the authority of so great a power, even
when that power deters with so terrible a penalty?
In short, to say all in a word, what but disobedience was the
punishment of disobedience in that sin? For what else is man's
misery but his own disobedience to himself, so that in consequence
of his not being willing to do what he could do, he now wills to do
what he cannot? For though he could not do all things in Paradise
before he sinned, yet he wished to do only what he could do, and
therefore he could do all things he wished. But now, as we recognise
in his offspring, and as divine Scripture testifies, "Man is like
to vanity."[102] For who can count how many things he wishes which
he cannot do, so long as he is disobedient to himself, that is, so
long as his mind and his flesh do not obey his will? For in spite
of himself his mind is both frequently disturbed, and his flesh
suffers, and grows old, and dies; and in spite of ourselves we suffer
whatever else we suffer, and which we would not suffer if our nature
absolutely and in all its parts obeyed our will. But is it not the
infirmities of the flesh which hamper it in its service? Yet what
does it matter _how_ its service is hampered, so long as the fact
remains, that by the just retribution of the sovereign God whom we
refused to be subject to and serve, our flesh, which was subjected
to us, now torments us by insubordination, although our disobedience
brought trouble on ourselves, not upon God? For He is not in need of
our service as we of our body's; and therefore what we did was no
punishment to Him, but what we receive is so to us. And the pains
which are called bodily are pains of the soul in and from the body.
For what pain or desire can the flesh feel by itself and without
the soul? But when the flesh is said to desire or to suffer, it is
meant, as we have explained, that the man does so, or some part of
the soul which is affected by the sensation of the flesh, whether
a harsh sensation causing pain, or gentle, causing pleasure. But
pain in the flesh is only a discomfort of the soul arising from the
flesh, and a kind of shrinking from its suffering, as the pain of
the soul which is called sadness is a shrinking from those things
which have happened to us in spite of ourselves. But sadness is
frequently preceded by fear, which is itself in the soul, not in the
flesh; while bodily pain is not preceded by any kind of fear of the
flesh, which can be felt in the flesh before the pain. But pleasure
is preceded by a certain appetite which is felt in the flesh like
a craving, as hunger and thirst and that generative appetite which
is most commonly identified with the name "lust," though this is the
generic word for all desires. For anger itself was defined by the
ancients as nothing else than the lust of revenge;[103] although
sometimes a man is angry even at inanimate objects which cannot feel
his vengeance, as when one breaks a pen, or crushes a quill that
writes badly. Yet even this, though less reasonable, is in its way
a lust of revenge, and is, so to speak, a mysterious kind of shadow
of [the great law of] retribution, that they who do evil should
suffer evil. There is therefore a lust for revenge, which is called
anger; there is a lust of money, which goes by the name of avarice;
there is a lust of conquering, no matter by what means, which is
called opinionativeness; there is a lust of applause, which is named
boasting. There are many and various lusts, of which some have names
of their own, while others have not. For who could readily give a
name to the lust of ruling, which yet has a powerful influence in the
soul of tyrants, as civil wars bear witness?
16. _Of the evil of lust,--a word which, though applicable to many
vices, is specially appropriated to sexual uncleanness._
Although, therefore, lust may have many objects, yet when no object
is specified, the word lust usually suggests to the mind the lustful
excitement of the organs of generation. And this lust not only takes
possession of the whole body and outward members, but also makes
itself felt within, and moves the whole man with a passion in which
mental emotion is mingled with bodily appetite, so that the pleasure
which results is the greatest of all bodily pleasures. So possessing
indeed is this pleasure, that at the moment of time in which it is
consummated, all mental activity is suspended. What friend of wisdom
and holy joys, who, being married, but knowing, as the apostle says,
"how to possess his vessel in sanctification and honour, not in the
disease of desire, as the Gentiles who know not God,"[104] would
not prefer, if this were possible, to beget children without this
lust, so that in this function of begetting offspring the members
created for this purpose should not be stimulated by the heat of
lust, but should be actuated by his volition, in the same way as his
other members serve him for their respective ends? But even those
who delight in this pleasure are not moved to it at their own will,
whether they confine themselves to lawful or transgress to unlawful
pleasures; but sometimes this lust importunes them in spite of
themselves, and sometimes fails them when they desire to feel it, so
that though lust rages in the mind, it stirs not in the body. Thus,
strangely enough, this emotion not only fails to obey the legitimate
desire to beget offspring, but also refuses to serve lascivious lust;
and though it often opposes its whole combined energy to the soul
that resists it, sometimes also it is divided against itself, and
while it moves the soul, leaves the body unmoved.
17. _Of the nakedness of our first parents, which they saw after
their base and shameful sin._
Justly is shame very specially connected with this lust; justly,
too, these members themselves, being moved and restrained not at
our will, but by a certain independent autocracy, so to speak, are
called "shameful." Their condition was different before sin. For as
it is written, "They were naked and were not ashamed,"[105]--not that
their nakedness was unknown to them, but because nakedness was not
yet shameful, because not yet did lust move those members without the
will's consent; not yet did the flesh by its disobedience testify
against the disobedience of man. For they were not created blind,
as the unenlightened vulgar fancy;[106] for Adam saw the animals to
whom he gave names, and of Eve we read, "The woman saw that the tree
was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes."[107] Their
eyes, therefore, were open, but were not open to this, that is to
say, were not observant so as to recognise what was conferred upon
them by the garment of grace, for they had no consciousness of their
members warring against their will. But when they were stripped of
this grace,[108] that their disobedience might be punished by fit
retribution, there began in the movement of their bodily members a
shameless novelty which made nakedness indecent: it at once made them
observant and made them ashamed. And therefore, after they violated
God's command by open transgression, it is written: "And the eyes
of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and
they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons."[109]
"The eyes of them both were opened," not to see, for already they
saw, but to discern between the good they had lost and the evil into
which they had fallen. And therefore also the tree itself which they
were forbidden to touch was called the tree of the knowledge of good
and evil from this circumstance, that if they ate of it it would
impart to them this knowledge. For the discomfort of sickness reveals
the pleasure of health. "They knew," therefore, "that they were
naked,"--naked of that grace which prevented them from being ashamed
of bodily nakedness while the law of sin offered no resistance to
their mind. And thus they obtained a knowledge which they would have
lived in blissful ignorance of, had they, in trustful obedience to
God, declined to commit that offence which involved them in the
experience of the hurtful effects of unfaithfulness and disobedience.
And therefore, being ashamed of the disobedience of their own flesh,
which witnessed to their disobedience while it punished it, "they
sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons," that is,
cinctures for their privy parts; for some interpreters have rendered
the word by _succinctoria_. _Campestria_ is, indeed, a Latin word,
but it is used of the drawers or aprons used for a similar purpose by
the young men who stripped for exercise in the _campus_; hence those
who were so girt were commonly called _campestrati_. Shame modestly
covered that which lust disobediently moved in opposition to the
will which was thus punished for its own disobedience. Consequently
all nations, being propagated from that one stock, have so strong an
instinct to cover the shameful parts, that some barbarians do not
uncover them even in the bath, but wash with their drawers on. In the
dark solitudes of India also, though some philosophers go naked, and
are therefore called gymnosophists, yet they make an exception in the
case of these members, and cover them.
18. _Of the shame which attends all sexual intercourse._
Lust requires for its consummation darkness and secrecy; and this
not only when unlawful intercourse is desired, but even such
fornication as the earthly city has legalized. Where there is no
fear of punishment, these permitted pleasures still shrink from the
public eye. Even where provision is made for this lust, secrecy also
is provided; and while lust found it easy to remove the prohibitions
of law, shamelessness found it impossible to lay aside the veil of
retirement. For even shameless men call this shameful; and though
they love the pleasure, dare not display it. What! does not even
conjugal intercourse, sanctioned as it is by law for the propagation
of children, legitimate and honourable though it be, does it not seek
retirement from every eye? Before the bridegroom fondles his bride,
does he not exclude the attendants, and even the paranymphs, and such
friends as the closest ties have admitted to the bridal chamber?
The greatest master of Roman eloquence says, that all right actions
wish to be set in the light, _i.e._ desire to be known. This right
action, however, has such a desire to be known, that yet it blushes
to be seen. Who does not know what passes between husband and wife
that children may be born? Is it not for this purpose that wives are
married with such ceremony? And yet, when this well-understood act
is gone about for the procreation of children, not even the children
themselves, who may already have been born to them, are suffered to
be witnesses. This right action seeks the light, in so far as it
seeks to be known, but yet dreads being seen. And why so, if not
because that which is by nature fitting and decent is so done as to
be accompanied with a shame-begetting penalty of sin?
19. _That it is now necessary, as it was not before man sinned,
to bridle anger and lust by the restraining influence of wisdom._
Hence it is that even the philosophers who have approximated to the
truth have avowed that anger and lust are vicious mental emotions,
because, even when exercised towards objects which wisdom does not
prohibit, they are moved in an ungoverned and inordinate manner, and
consequently need the regulation of mind and reason. And they assert
that this third part of the mind is posted as it were in a kind of
citadel, to give rule to these other parts, so that, while it rules and
they serve, man's righteousness is preserved without a breach.[110]
These parts, then, which they acknowledge to be vicious even in a wise
and temperate man, so that the mind, by its composing and restraining
influence, must bridle and recall them from those objects towards which
they are unlawfully moved, and give them access to those which the
law of wisdom sanctions,--that anger, _e.g._, may be allowed for the
enforcement of a just authority, and lust for the duty of propagating
offspring,--these parts, I say, were not vicious in Paradise before
sin, for they were never moved in opposition to a holy will towards
any object from which it was necessary that they should be withheld
by the restraining bridle of reason. For though now they are moved in
this way, and are regulated by a bridling and restraining power, which
those who live temperately, justly, and godly exercise, sometimes with
ease, and sometimes with greater difficulty, this is not the sound
health of nature, but the weakness which results from sin. And how is
it that shame does not hide the acts and words dictated by anger or
other emotions, as it covers the motions of lust, unless because the
members of the body which we employ for accomplishing them are moved,
not by the emotions themselves, but by the authority of the consenting
will? For he who in his anger rails at or even strikes some one, could
not do so were not his tongue and hand moved by the authority of the
will, as also they are moved when there is no anger. But the organs
of generation are so subjected to the rule of lust, that they have no
motion but what it communicates. It is this we are ashamed of; it is
this which blushingly hides from the eyes of onlookers. And rather
will a man endure a crowd of witnesses when he is unjustly venting his
anger on some one, than the eye of one man when he innocently copulates
with his wife.
20. _Of the foolish beastliness of the Cynics._
It is this which those canine or cynic[111] philosophers have
overlooked, when they have, in violation of the modest instincts
of men, boastfully proclaimed their unclean and shameless opinion,
worthy indeed of dogs, viz., that as the matrimonial act is
legitimate, no one should be ashamed to perform it openly, in the
street or in any public place. Instinctive shame has overborne this
wild fancy. For though it is related[112] that Diogenes once dared to
put his opinion in practice, under the impression that his sect would
be all the more famous if his egregious shamelessness were deeply
graven in the memory of mankind, yet this example was not afterwards
followed. Shame had more influence with them, to make them blush
before men, than error to make them affect a resemblance to dogs. And
possibly, even in the case of Diogenes, and those who did imitate
him, there was but an appearance and pretence of copulation, and not
the reality. Even at this day there are still Cynic philosophers to
be seen; for these are Cynics who are not content with being clad
in the _pallium_, but also carry a club; yet no one of them dares
to do this that we speak of. If they did, they would be spat upon,
not to say stoned, by the mob. Human nature, then, is without doubt
ashamed of this lust; and justly so, for the insubordination of these
members, and their defiance of the will, are the clear testimony
of the punishment of man's first sin. And it was fitting that this
should appear specially in those parts by which is generated that
nature which has been altered for the worse by that first and great
sin,--that sin from whose evil connection no one can escape, unless
God's grace expiate in him individually that which was perpetrated to
the destruction of all in common, when all were in one man, and which
was avenged by God's justice.
21. _That man's transgression did not annul the blessing of fecundity
pronounced upon man before he sinned, but infected it with the
disease of lust._
Far be it, then, from us to suppose that our first parents in
Paradise felt that lust which caused them afterwards to blush and
hide their nakedness, or that by its means they should have fulfilled
the benediction of God, "Increase and multiply and replenish the
earth;"[113] for it was after sin that lust began. It was after sin
that our nature, having lost the power it had over the whole body,
but not having lost all shame, perceived, noticed, blushed at, and
covered it. But that blessing upon marriage, which encouraged them to
increase and multiply and replenish the earth, though, it continued
even after they had sinned, was yet given before they sinned, in
order that the procreation of children might be recognised as part of
the glory of marriage, and not of the punishment of sin. But now, men
being ignorant of the blessedness of Paradise, suppose that children
could not have been begotten there in any other way than they know
them to be begotten now, _i.e._ by lust, at which even honourable
marriage blushes; some not simply rejecting, but sceptically deriding
the divine Scriptures, in which we read that our first parents,
after they sinned, were ashamed of their nakedness, and covered it;
while others, though they accept and honour Scripture, yet conceive
that this expression, "Increase and multiply," refers not to carnal
fecundity, because a similar expression is used of the soul in the
words, "Thou wilt multiply me with strength in my soul;"[114] and
so, too, in the words which follow in Genesis, "And replenish the
earth, and subdue it," they understand by the earth the body which
the soul fills with its presence, and which it rules over when it
is multiplied in strength. And they hold that children could no
more then than now be begotten without lust, which, after sin, was
kindled, observed, blushed for, and covered; and even that children
would not have been born in Paradise, but only outside of it, as in
fact it turned out. For it was after they were expelled from it that
they came together to beget children, and begot them.
22. _Of the conjugal union as it was originally instituted and
blessed by God._
But we, for our part, have no manner of doubt that to increase and
multiply and replenish the earth in virtue of the blessing of God,
is a gift of marriage as God instituted it from the beginning before
man sinned, when He created them male and female,--in other words,
two sexes manifestly distinct. And it was this work of God on which
His blessing was pronounced. For no sooner had Scripture said, "Male
and female created He them,"[115] than it immediately continues, "And
God blessed them, and God said unto them, Increase, and multiply,
and replenish the earth, and subdue it," etc. And though all these
things may not unsuitably be interpreted in a spiritual sense, yet
"male and female" cannot be understood of two things in one man,
as if there were in him one thing which rules, another which is
ruled; but it is quite clear that they were created male and female,
with bodies of different sexes, for the very purpose of begetting
offspring, and so increasing, multiplying, and replenishing the
earth; and it is great folly to oppose so plain a fact. It was not
of the spirit which commands and the body which obeys, nor of the
rational soul which rules and the irrational desire which is ruled,
nor of the contemplative virtue which is supreme and the active which
is subject, nor of the understanding of the mind and the sense of the
body, but plainly of the matrimonial union by which the sexes are
mutually bound together, that our Lord, when asked whether it were
lawful for any cause to put away one's wife (for on account of the
hardness of the hearts of the Israelites Moses permitted a bill of
divorcement to be given), answered and said, "Have ye not read that
He which made them at the beginning made them male and female, and
said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall
cleave to his wife, and they twain shall be one flesh? Wherefore they
are no more twain, but one flesh. What, therefore, God hath joined
together, let not man put asunder."[116] It is certain, then, that
from the first men were created, as we see and know them to be now,
of two sexes, male and female, and that they are called one, either
on account of the matrimonial union, or on account of the origin of
the woman, who was created from the side of the man. And it is by
this original example, which God Himself instituted, that the apostle
admonishes all husbands to love their own wives in particular.[117]
23. _Whether generation should have taken place even in Paradise
had man not sinned, or whether there should have been any
contention there between chastity and lust._
But he who says that there should have been neither copulation nor
generation but for sin, virtually says that man's sin was necessary
to complete the number of the saints. For if these two by not sinning
should have continued to live alone, because, as is supposed, they
could not have begotten children had they not sinned, then certainly
sin was necessary in order that there might be not only two but many
righteous men. And if this cannot be maintained without absurdity,
we must rather believe that the number of the saints fit to complete
this most blessed city would have been as great though no one had
sinned, as it is now that the grace of God gathers its citizens out
of the multitude of sinners, so long as the children of this world
generate and are generated.[118]
And therefore that marriage, worthy of the happiness of Paradise,
should have had desirable fruit without the shame of lust, had
there been no sin. But how that could be, there is now no example
to teach us. Nevertheless, it ought not to seem incredible that
one member might serve the will without lust then, since so many
serve it now. Do we now move our feet and hands when we will to do
the things we would by means of these members? do we meet with no
resistance in them, but perceive that they are ready servants of the
will, both in our own case and in that of others, and especially of
artisans employed in mechanical operations, by which the weakness
and clumsiness of nature become, through industrious exercise,
wonderfully dexterous? and shall we not believe that, like as all
those members obediently serve the will, so also should the members
have discharged the function of generation, though lust, the award
of disobedience, had been awanting? Did not Cicero, in discussing
the difference of governments in his _De Republica_, adopt a simile
from human nature, and say that we command our bodily members as
children, they are so obedient; but that the vicious parts of the
soul must be treated as slaves, and be coerced with a more stringent
authority? And no doubt, in the order of nature, the soul is more
excellent than the body; and yet the soul commands the body more
easily than itself. Nevertheless this lust, of which we at present
speak, is the more shameful on this account, because the soul is
therein neither master of itself, so as not to lust at all, nor of
the body, so as to keep the members under the control of the will;
for if they were thus ruled, there should be no shame. But now the
soul is ashamed that the body, which by nature is inferior and
subject to it, should resist its authority. For in the resistance
experienced by the soul in the other emotions there is less shame,
because the resistance is from itself, and thus, when it is conquered
by itself, itself is the conqueror, although the conquest is
inordinate and vicious, because accomplished by those parts of the
soul which ought to be subject to reason, yet, being accomplished
by its own parts and energies, the conquest is, as I say, its own.
For when the soul conquers itself to a due subordination, so that
its unreasonable motions are controlled by reason, while it again is
subject to God, this is a conquest virtuous and praiseworthy. Yet
there is less shame when the soul is resisted by its own vicious
parts than when its will and order are resisted by the body, which is
distinct from and inferior to it, and dependent on it for life itself.
But so long as the will retains under its authority the other
members, without which the members excited by lust to resist the
will cannot accomplish what they seek, chastity is preserved,
and the delight of sin foregone. And certainly, had not culpable
disobedience been visited with penal disobedience, the marriage of
Paradise should have been ignorant of this struggle and rebellion,
this quarrel between will and lust, that the will may be satisfied
and lust restrained, but those members, like all the rest, should
have obeyed the will. The field of generation[119] should have been
sown by the organ created for this purpose, as the earth is sown by
the hand. And whereas now, as we essay to investigate this subject
more exactly, modesty hinders us, and compels us to ask pardon of
chaste ears, there would have been no cause to do so, but we could
have discoursed freely, and without fear of seeming obscene, upon
all those points which occur to one who meditates on the subject.
There would not have been even words which could be called obscene,
but all that might be said of these members would have been as pure
as what is said of the other parts of the body. Whoever, then, comes
to the perusal of these pages with unchaste mind, let him blame his
disposition, not his nature; let him brand the actings of his own
impurity, not the words which necessity forces us to use, and for
which every pure and pious reader or hearer will very readily pardon
me, while I expose the folly of that scepticism which argues solely
on the ground of its own experience, and has no faith in anything
beyond. He who is not scandalized at the apostle's censure of the
horrible wickedness of the women who "changed the natural use into
that which is against nature,"[120] will read all this without being
shocked, especially as we are not, like Paul, citing and censuring
a damnable uncleanness, but are explaining, so far as we can, human
generation, while with Paul we avoid all obscenity of language.
24. _That if men had remained innocent and obedient in Paradise,
the generative organs should have been in subjection to the
will as the other members are._
The man, then, would have sown the seed, and the woman received it,
as need required, the generative organs being moved by the will, not
excited by lust. For we move at will not only those members which are
furnished with joints of solid bone, as the hands, feet, and fingers,
but we move also at will those which are composed of slack and soft
nerves: we can put them in motion, or stretch them out, or bend and
twist them, or contract and stiffen them, as we do with the muscles
of the mouth and face. The lungs, which are the very tenderest of
the viscera except the brain, and are therefore carefully sheltered
in the cavity of the chest, yet for all purposes of inhaling and
exhaling the breath, and of uttering and modulating the voice, are
obedient to the will when we breathe, exhale, speak, shout, or sing,
just as the bellows obey the smith or the organist. I will not press
the fact that some animals have a natural power to move a single spot
of the skin with which their whole body is covered, if they have felt
on it anything they wish to drive off,--a power so great, that by
this shivering tremor of the skin they can not only shake off flies
that have settled on them, but even spears that have fixed in their
flesh. Man, it is true, has not this power; but is this any reason
for supposing that God could not give it to such creatures as He
wished to possess it? And therefore man himself also might very well
have enjoyed absolute power over his members had he not forfeited it
by his disobedience; for it was not difficult for God to form him
so that what is now moved in his body only by lust should have been
moved only at will.
We know, too, that some men are differently constituted from others,
and have some rare and remarkable faculty of doing with their body
what other men can by no effort do, and, indeed, scarcely believe
when they hear of others doing. There are persons who can move their
ears, either one at a time, or both together. There are some who,
without moving the head, can bring the hair down upon the forehead,
and move the whole scalp backwards and forwards at pleasure. Some,
by lightly pressing their stomach, bring up an incredible quantity
and variety of things they have swallowed, and produce whatever they
please, quite whole, as if out of a bag. Some so accurately mimic
the voices of birds and beasts and other men, that, unless they
are seen, the difference cannot be told. Some have such command of
their bowels, that they can break wind continuously at pleasure,
so as to produce the effect of singing. I myself have known a man
who was accustomed to sweat whenever he wished. It is well known
that some weep when they please, and shed a flood of tears. But
far more incredible is that which some of our brethren saw quite
recently. There was a presbyter called Restitutus, in the parish of
the Calamensian[121] Church, who, as often as he pleased (and he
was asked to do this by those who desired to witness so remarkable
a phenomenon), on some one imitating the wailings of mourners,
became so insensible, and lay in a state so like death, that not
only had he no feeling when they pinched and pricked him, but even
when fire was applied to him, and he was burned by it, he had no
sense of pain except afterwards from the wound. And that his body
remained motionless, not by reason of his self-command, but because
he was insensible, was proved by the fact that he breathed no more
than a dead man; and yet he said that, when any one spoke with more
than ordinary distinctness, he heard the voice, but as if it were a
long way off. Seeing, then, that even in this mortal and miserable
life the body serves some men by many remarkable movements and
moods beyond the ordinary course of nature, what reason is there
for doubting that, before man was involved by his sin in this weak
and corruptible condition, his members might have served his will
for the propagation of offspring without lust? Man has been given
over to himself because he abandoned God, while he sought to be
self-satisfying; and disobeying God, he could not obey even himself.
Hence it is that he is involved in the obvious misery of being unable
to live as he wishes. For if he lived as he wished, he would think
himself blessed; but he could not be so if he lived wickedly.
25. _Of true blessedness, which this present life cannot enjoy._
However, if we look at this a little more closely, we see that no one
lives as he wishes but the blessed, and that no one is blessed but the
righteous. But even the righteous himself does not live as he wishes,
until he has arrived where he cannot die, be deceived, or injured, and
until he is assured that this shall be his eternal condition. For this
nature demands; and nature is not fully and perfectly blessed till it
attains what it seeks. But what man is at present able to live as he
wishes, when it is not in his power so much as to live? He wishes to
live, he is compelled to die. How, then, does he live as he wishes who
does not live as long as he wishes? or if he wishes to die, how can
he live as he wishes, since he does not wish even to live? Or if he
wishes to die, not because he dislikes life, but that after death he
may live better, still he is not yet living as he wishes, but only has
the prospect of so living when, through death, he reaches that which
he wishes. But admit that he lives as he wishes, because he has done
violence to himself, and forced himself not to wish what he cannot
obtain, and to wish only what he can (as Terence has it, "Since you
cannot do what you will, will what you can"[122]), is he therefore
blessed because he is patiently wretched? For a blessed life is
possessed only by the man who loves it. If it is loved and possessed,
it must necessarily be more ardently loved than all besides; for
whatever else is loved must be loved for the sake of the blessed life.
And if it is loved as it deserves to be,--and the man is not blessed
who does not love the blessed life as it deserves,--then he who so
loves it cannot but wish it to be eternal. Therefore it shall then only
be blessed when it is eternal.
26. _That we are to believe that in Paradise our first parents
begat offspring without blushing._
In Paradise, then, man lived as he desired so long as he desired
what God had commanded. He lived in the enjoyment of God, and was
good by God's goodness; he lived without any want, and had it in his
power so to live eternally. He had food that he might not hunger,
drink that he might not thirst, the tree of life that old age might
not waste him. There was in his body no corruption, nor seed of
corruption, which could produce in him any unpleasant sensation.
He feared no inward disease, no outward accident. Soundest health
blessed his body, absolute tranquillity his soul. As in Paradise
there was no excessive heat or cold, so its inhabitants were exempt
from the vicissitudes of fear and desire. No sadness of any kind was
there, nor any foolish joy; true gladness ceaselessly flowed from
the presence of God, who was loved "out of a pure heart, and a good
conscience, and faith unfeigned."[123] The honest love of husband
and wife made a sure harmony between them. Body and spirit worked
harmoniously together, and the commandment was kept without labour.
No languor made their leisure wearisome; no sleepiness interrupted
their desire to labour.[124] In tanta facilitate rerum et felicitate
hominum, absit ut suspicemur, non potuisse prolem seri sine libidinis
morbo: sed eo voluntatis nutu moverentur illa membra quo cætera, et
sine ardoris illecebroso stimulo cum tranquillitate animi et corporis
nulla corruptione integritatis infunderetur gremio maritus uxoris.
Neque enim quia experientia probari non potest, ideo credendum non
est; quando illas corporis partes non ageret turbidus calor, sed
spontanea potestas, sicut opus esset, adhiberet; ita tunc potuisse
utero conjugis salva integritate feminei genitalis virile semen
immitti, sicut nunc potest eadem integritate salva ex utero virginis
fluxus menstrui cruoris emitti. Eadem quippe via posset illud injici,
qua hoc potest ejici. Ut enim ad pariendum non doloris gemitus, sed
maturitatis impulsus feminea viscera relaxaret: sic ad fœtandum et
concipiendum non libidinis appetitus, sed voluntarius usus naturam
utramque conjungeret. We speak of things which are now shameful, and
although we try, as well as we are able, to conceive them as they
were before they became shameful, yet necessity compels us rather to
limit our discussion to the bounds set by modesty than to extend it
as our moderate faculty of discourse might suggest. For since that
which I have been speaking of was not experienced even by those who
might have experienced it,--I mean our first parents (for sin and
its merited banishment from Paradise anticipated this passionless
generation on their part),--when sexual intercourse is spoken of now,
it suggests to men's thoughts not such a placid obedience to the will
as is conceivable in our first parents, but such violent acting of
lust as they themselves have experienced. And therefore modesty shuts
my mouth, although my mind conceives the matter clearly. But Almighty
God, the supreme and supremely good Creator of all natures, who aids
and rewards good wills, while He abandons and condemns the bad, and
rules both, was not destitute of a plan by which He might people
His city with the fixed number of citizens which His wisdom had
foreordained even out of the condemned human race, discriminating
them not now by merits, since the whole mass was condemned as if in a
vitiated root, but by grace, and showing, not only in the case of the
redeemed, but also in those who were not delivered, how much grace He
has bestowed upon them. For every one acknowledges that he has been
rescued from evil, not by deserved, but by gratuitous goodness, when
he is singled out from the company of those with whom he might justly
have borne a common punishment, and is allowed to go scathless.
Why, then, should God not have created those whom He foresaw would
sin, since He was able to show in and by them both what their guilt
merited, and what His grace bestowed, and since, under His creating
and disposing hand, even the perverse disorder of the wicked could
not pervert the right order of things?
27. _Of the angels and men who sinned, and that their wickedness
did not disturb the order of God's providence._
The sins of men and angels do nothing to impede the "great works
of the Lord which accomplish His will."[125] For He who by His
providence and omnipotence distributes to every one his own portion,
is able to make good use not only of the good, but also of the
wicked. And thus making a good use of the wicked angel, who, in
punishment of his first wicked volition, was doomed to an obduracy
that prevents him now from willing any good, why should not God have
permitted him to tempt the first man, who had been created upright,
that is to say, with a good will? For he had been so constituted,
that if he looked to God for help, man's goodness should defeat
the angel's wickedness; but if by proud self-pleasing he abandoned
God, his Creator and Sustainer, he should be conquered. If his
will remained upright, through leaning on God's help, he should
be rewarded; if it became wicked, by forsaking God, he should be
punished. But even this trusting in God's help could not itself
be accomplished without God's help, although man had it in his
own power to relinquish the benefits of divine grace by pleasing
himself. For as it is not in our power to live in this world without
sustaining ourselves by food, while it is in our power to refuse this
nourishment and cease to live, as those do who kill themselves, so
it was not in man's power, even in Paradise, to live as he ought
without God's help; but it was in his power to live wickedly,
though thus he should cut short his happiness, and incur very just
punishment. Since, then, God was not ignorant that man would fall,
why should He not have suffered him to be tempted by an angel who
hated and envied him? It was not, indeed, that He was unaware that he
should be conquered, but because He foresaw that by the man's seed,
aided by divine grace, this same devil himself should be conquered,
to the greater glory of the saints. All was brought about in such a
manner, that neither did any future event escape God's foreknowledge,
nor did His foreknowledge compel any one to sin, and so as to
demonstrate in the experience of the intelligent creation, human
and angelic, how great a difference there is between the private
presumption of the creature and the Creator's protection. For who
will dare to believe or say that it was not in God's power to prevent
both angels and men from sinning? But God preferred to leave this
in their power, and thus to show both what evil could be wrought by
their pride, and what good by His grace.
28. _Of the nature of the two cities, the earthly and the
heavenly._
Accordingly, two cities have been formed by two loves: the earthly
by the love of self, even to the contempt of God; the heavenly by
the love of God, even to the contempt of self. The former, in a
word, glories in itself, the latter in the Lord. For the one seeks
glory from men; but the greatest glory of the other is God, the
witness of conscience. The one lifts up its head in its own glory;
the other says to its God, "Thou art my glory, and the lifter up of
mine head."[126] In the one, the princes and the nations it subdues
are ruled by the love of ruling; in the other, the princes and the
subjects serve one another in love, the latter obeying, while the
former take thought for all. The one delights in its own strength,
represented in the persons of its rulers; the other says to its God,
"I will love Thee, O Lord, my strength."[127] And therefore the wise
men of the one city, living according to man, have sought for profit
to their own bodies or souls, or both, and those who have known God
"glorified Him not as God, neither were thankful, but became vain in
their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened; professing
themselves to be wise,"--that is, glorying in their own wisdom, and
being possessed by pride,--"they became fools, and changed the glory
of the incorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man,
and to birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things." For they
were either leaders or followers of the people in adoring images,
"and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who
is blessed for ever."[128] But in the other city there is no human
wisdom, but only godliness, which offers due worship to the true God,
and looks for its reward in the society of the saints, of holy angels
as well as holy men, "that God may be all in all."[129]
FOOTNOTES:
[1] This book is referred to in another work of Augustine's (_contra
Advers. Legis et Prophet._ i. 18), which was written about the year 420.
[2] 1 Cor. xv. 39.
[3] Rom. iii. 20.
[4] Gal. iii. 11.
[5] John. i. 14.
[6] The Apollinarians.
[7] John. xx. 13.
[8] Gal. v. 19-21.
[9] Wisd. ix. 15.
[10] 2 Cor. iv. 16.
[11] 2 Cor. v. 1-4.
[12] _Æneid_, vi. 730-32.
[13] _Ib._ 733, 734.
[14] On the punishment of the devil, see the _De Agone Christi_, 3-5,
and _De Nat. Boni_, 33.
[15] Rom. iii. 7.
[16] John xiv. 6.
[17] 1 Cor. iii. 3.
[18] 1 Cor. ii. 11-14.
[19] 1 Cor. iii. 1.
[20] Rom. iii. 20.
[21] Gen. xlvi. 27.
[22] See Augustine, _De Hæres._ 46.
[23] _Tusc. Quæst._ iv. 6.
[24] _Æneid_, vi. 719-21.
[25] Tit. i. 8, according to Greek and Vulgate.
[26] John xxi. 15-17. On these synonyms see the commentaries _in loc._
[27] Ps. xi. 5.
[28] 1 John ii. 15
[29] 2 Tim. iii. 2.
[30] Phil. i. 23.
[31] Ps. cxix. 20.
[32] Wisd. vi. 20.
[33] Ps. xxxii. 11.
[34] Ps. iv. 7.
[35] Ps. xvi. 11.
[36] Phil. ii. 12.
[37] Rom. xi. 20.
[38] 2 Cor. xi. 3.
[39] _Æneid_, vi. 733.
[40] Isa. lvii. 21.
[41] Matt. vii. 12.
[42] Ecclus. vii. 13.
[43] Luke ii. 14.
[44] _Cat._ i. 2.
[45] Ter. _Andr._ ii. 1, 6.
[46] _Æneid_, vi. 733.
[47] _Æneid_, v. 278.
[48] 2 Cor. vii. 8-11.
[49] _Tusc. Disp._ iii. 32.
[50] C. 4, 5.
[51] Rom. viii. 23.
[52] 1 Cor. xv. 54.
[53] Matt. xxiv. 12.
[54] Matt. x. 22.
[55] 1 John i. 8.
[56] 2 Cor. ix. 7.
[57] Gal. vi. 1.
[58] Ps. xxvi. 2.
[59] Matt. xxvi. 75.
[60] Jas. i. 2.
[61] 1 Cor. iv. 9.
[62] Phil. iii. 14.
[63] Rom. xii. 15.
[64] 2 Cor. vii. 5.
[65] Phil. i. 23.
[66] Rom. i. 11-13.
[67] 2 Cor. xi. 1-3.
[68] Rom. ix. 2.
[69] Rom. x. 3.
[70] 2 Cor. xii. 21.
[71] Mark iii. 5.
[72] John xi. 15.
[73] John xi. 35.
[74] Luke xxii. 15.
[75] Matt. xxvi. 38.
[76] Rom. i. 31.
[77] Ps. lxix. 20.
[78] Crantor, an Academic philosopher quoted by Cicero, _Tusc.
Quæst._ iii. 6.
[79] 1 John i. 8.
[80] 1 John iv. 18.
[81] Rom. viii. 15.
[82] Ps. xix. 9.
[83] Ps. ix. 18.
[84] Matt. v. 28.
[85] Gen. i. 28.
[86] Gen. vi. 6, and 1 Sam. xv. 11.
[87] Eccles. vii. 29.
[88] John viii. 36.
[89] 1 Tim. ii. 14.
[90] Rom. v. 12.
[91] Gen. iii. 12.
[92] Ecclus. x. 13.
[93] Matt. vii. 18.
[94] _Defecit._
[95] Ps. lxxiii. 18.
[96] Gen. iii. 5.
[97] Prov. xviii. 12.
[98] That is to say, it was an obvious and indisputable transgression.
[99] Ps. lxxxiii. 16.
[100] Gen. iii. 12, 13.
[101] Phil. ii. 8.
[102] Ps. cxliv. 4.
[103] Cicero, _Tusc. Quæst._ iii. 6 and iv. 9. So Aristotle.
[104] 1 Thess. iv. 4.
[105] Gen. ii. 25.
[106] An error which arose from the words, "The eyes of them both
were opened," Gen. iii. 7.--See _De Genesi ad lit._ ii. 40.
[107] Gen. iii. 6.
[108] This doctrine and phraseology of Augustine being important in
connection with his whole theory of the fall, we give some parallel
passages to show that the words are not used at random: _De Genesi ad
lit._ xi. 41; _De Corrept. et Gratia_, xi. 31; and especially _Cont.
Julian._ iv. 82.
[109] Gen. iii. 7.
[110] See Plato's _Republic_, book iv.
[111] The one word being the Latin form, the other the Greek, of the
same adjective.
[112] By Diogenes Laertius, vi. 69, and Cicero, _De Offic._ i. 41.
[113] Gen. i. 28.
[114] Ps. cxxxviii. 3.
[115] Gen. i. 27, 28.
[116] Matt. xix. 4, 5.
[117] Eph. v. 25.
[118] Luke xx. 34.
[119] See Virgil, _Georg._ iii. 136.
[120] Rom. i. 26.
[121] The position of Calama is described by Augustine as between
Constantine and Hippo, but nearer Hippo.--_Contra Lit. Petil._ ii.
228. A full description of it is given in Poujoulat's _Histoire de
S. Augustin_, i. 340, who says it was one of the most important
towns of Numidia, eighteen leagues south of Hippo, and represented
by the modern Ghelma. It is to its bishop, Possidius, we owe the
contemporary _Life of Augustine_.
[122] _Andr._ ii. 1, 5.
[123] 1 Tim. i. 5.
[124] Compare Basil's _Homily on Paradise_, and John Damascene, _De
Fide Orthod._ ii. 11.
[125] Ps. cxi. 2.
[126] Ps. iii. 3.
[127] Ps. xviii. 1.
[128] Rom. i. 21-25.
[129] 1 Cor. xv. 28.
BOOK FIFTEENTH.
ARGUMENT.
HAVING TREATED IN THE FOUR PRECEDING BOOKS OF THE ORIGIN OF THE TWO
CITIES, THE EARTHLY AND THE HEAVENLY, AUGUSTINE EXPLAINS THEIR
GROWTH AND PROGRESS IN THE FOUR BOOKS WHICH FOLLOW; AND, IN
ORDER TO DO SO, HE EXPLAINS THE CHIEF PASSAGES OF THE SACRED
HISTORY WHICH BEAR UPON THIS SUBJECT. IN THIS FIFTEENTH BOOK HE
OPENS THIS PART OF HIS WORK BY EXPLAINING THE EVENTS RECORDED
IN GENESIS FROM THE TIME OF CAIN AND ABEL TO THE DELUGE.
1. _Of the two lines of the human race which from first to last
divide it._
OF the bliss of Paradise, of Paradise itself, and of the life of
our first parents there, and of their sin and punishment, many
have thought much, spoken much, written much. We ourselves, too,
have spoken of these things in the foregoing books, and have
written either what we read in the Holy Scriptures, or what we
could reasonably deduce from them. And were we to enter into a more
detailed investigation of these matters, an endless number of endless
questions would arise, which would involve us in a larger work than
the present occasion admits. We cannot be expected to find room for
replying to every question that may be started by unoccupied and
captious men, who are ever more ready to ask questions than capable
of understanding the answer. Yet I trust we have already done justice
to these great and difficult questions regarding the beginning of
the world, or of the soul, or of the human race itself. This race we
have distributed into two parts, the one consisting of those who live
according to man, the other of those who live according to God. And
these we also mystically call the two cities, or the two communities
of men, of which the one is predestined to reign eternally with God,
and the other to suffer eternal punishment with the devil. This,
however, is their end, and of it we are to speak afterwards. At
present, as we have said enough about their origin, whether among
the angels, whose numbers we know not, or in the two first human
beings, it seems suitable to attempt an account of their career, from
the time when our two first parents began to propagate the race until
all human generation shall cease. For this whole time or world-age,
in which the dying give place and those who are born succeed, is the
career of these two cities concerning which we treat.
Of these two first parents of the human race, then, Cain was the
first-born, and he belonged to the city of men; after him was born
Abel, who belonged to the city of God. For as in the individual the
truth of the apostle's statement is discerned, "that is not first
which is spiritual, but that which is natural, and afterward that
which is spiritual,"[130] whence it comes to pass that each man,
being derived from a condemned stock, is first of all born of Adam
evil and carnal, and becomes good and spiritual only afterwards, when
he is grafted into Christ by regeneration: so was it in the human
race as a whole. When these two cities began to run their course by
a series of deaths and births, the citizen of this world was the
first-born, and after him the stranger in this world, the citizen
of the city of God, predestinated by grace, elected by grace, by
grace a stranger below, and by grace a citizen above. By grace,--for
so far as regards himself he is sprung from the same mass, all of
which is condemned in its origin; but God, like a potter (for this
comparison is introduced by the apostle judiciously, and not without
thought), of the same lump made one vessel to honour, another to
dishonour.[131] But first the vessel to dishonour was made, and after
it another to honour. For in each individual, as I have already said,
there is first of all that which is reprobate, that from which we
must begin, but in which we need not necessarily remain; afterwards
is that which is well-approved, to which we may by advancing attain,
and in which, when we have reached it, we may abide. Not, indeed,
that every wicked man shall be good, but that no one will be good
who was not first of all wicked; but the sooner any one becomes a
good man, the more speedily does he receive this title, and abolish
the old name in the new. Accordingly, it is recorded of Cain that he
built a city,[132] but Abel, being a sojourner, built none. For the
city of the saints is above, although here below it begets citizens,
in whom it sojourns till the time of its reign arrives, when it shall
gather together all in the day of the resurrection; and then shall
the promised kingdom be given to them, in which they shall reign with
their Prince, the King of the ages, time without end.
2. _Of the children of the flesh and the children of the promise._
There was indeed on earth, so long as it was needed, a symbol and
foreshadowing image of this city, which served the purpose of
reminding men that such a city was to be, rather than of making it
present; and this image was itself called the holy city, as a symbol
of the future city, though not itself the reality. Of this city
which served as an image, and of that free city it typified, Paul
writes to the Galatians in these terms: "Tell me, ye that desire
to be under the law, do ye not hear the law? For it is written,
that Abraham had two sons, the one by a bond maid, the other by a
free woman. But he who was of the bond woman was born after the
flesh, but he of the free woman was by promise. Which things are an
allegory:[133] for these are the two covenants; the one from the
mount Sinai, which gendereth to bondage, which is Agar. For this
Agar is mount Sinai in Arabia, and answereth to Jerusalem which now
is, and is in bondage with her children. But Jerusalem which is
above is free, which is the mother of us all. For it is written,
Rejoice, thou barren that bearest not; break forth and cry, thou
that travailest not: for the desolate hath many more children than
she which hath an husband. Now we, brethren, as Isaac was, are the
children of promise. But as then he that was born after the flesh
persecuted him that was born after the Spirit, even so it is now.
Nevertheless, what saith the Scripture? Cast out the bond woman and
her son: for the son of the bond woman shall not be heir with the son
of the free woman. And we, brethren, are not children of the bond
woman, but of the free, in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made
us free."[134] This interpretation of the passage, handed down to
us with apostolic authority, shows how we ought to understand the
Scriptures of the two covenants--the old and the new. One portion of
the earthly city became an image of the heavenly city, not having a
significance of its own, but signifying another city, and therefore
serving, or "being in bondage." For it was founded not for its own
sake, but to prefigure another city; and this shadow of a city was
also itself foreshadowed by another preceding figure. For Sarah's
handmaid Agar, and her son, were an image of this image. And as the
shadows were to pass away when the full light came, Sarah, the free
woman, who prefigured the free city (which again was also prefigured
in another way by that shadow of a city Jerusalem), therefore said,
"Cast out the bond woman and her son; for the son of the bond woman
shall not be heir with my son Isaac," or, as the apostle says, "with
the son of the free woman." In the earthly city, then, we find two
things--its own obvious presence, and its symbolic presentation of
the heavenly city. Now citizens are begotten to the earthly city by
nature vitiated by sin, but to the heavenly city by grace freeing
nature from sin; whence the former are called "vessels of wrath,"
the latter "vessels of mercy."[135] And this was typified in the two
sons of Abraham,--Ishmael, the son of Agar the handmaid, being born
according to the flesh, while Isaac was born of the free woman Sarah,
according to the promise. Both, indeed, were of Abraham's seed; but
the one was begotten by natural law, the other was given by gracious
promise. In the one birth, human action is revealed; in the other, a
divine kindness comes to light.
3. _That Sarah's barrenness was made productive by God's grace._
Sarah, in fact, was barren; and, despairing of offspring, and being
resolved that she would have at least through her handmaid that
blessing she saw she could not in her own person procure, she gave her
handmaid to her husband, to whom she herself had been unable to bear
children. From him she required this conjugal duty, exercising her own
right in another's womb. And thus Ishmael was born according to the
common law of human generation, by sexual intercourse. Therefore it
is said that he was born "according to the flesh,"--not because such
births are not the gifts of God, nor His handiwork, whose creative
wisdom "reaches," as it is written, "from one end to another mightily,
and sweetly doth she order all things,"[136] but because, in a case in
which the gift of God, which was not due to men and was the gratuitous
largess of grace, was to be conspicuous, it was requisite that a son
be given in a way which no effort of nature could compass. Nature
denies children to persons of the age which Abraham and Sarah had now
reached; besides that, in Sarah's case, she was barren even in her
prime. This nature, so constituted that offspring could not be looked
for, symbolized the nature of the human race vitiated by sin and by
just consequence condemned, which deserves no future felicity. Fitly,
therefore, does Isaac, the child of promise, typify the children of
grace, the citizens of the free city, who dwell together in everlasting
peace, in which self-love and self-will have no place, but a
ministering love that rejoices in the common joy of all, of many hearts
makes one, that is to say, secures a perfect concord.
4. _Of the conflict and peace of the earthly city._
But the earthly city, which shall not be everlasting (for it will no
longer be a city when it has been committed to the extreme penalty),
has its good in this world, and rejoices in it with such joy as such
things can afford. But as this is not a good which can discharge its
devotees of all distresses, this city is often divided against itself
by litigations, wars, quarrels, and such victories as are either
life-destroying or short-lived. For each part of it that arms against
another part of it seeks to triumph over the nations through itself
in bondage to vice. If, when it has conquered, it is inflated with
pride, its victory is life-destroying; but if it turns its thoughts
upon the common casualties of our mortal condition, and is rather
anxious concerning the disasters that may befall it than elated with
the successes already achieved, this victory, though of a higher
kind, is still only short-lived; for it cannot abidingly rule over
those whom it has victoriously subjugated. But the things which this
city desires cannot justly be said to be evil, for it is itself,
in its own kind, better than all other human good. For it desires
earthly peace for the sake of enjoying earthly goods, and it makes
war in order to attain to this peace; since, if it has conquered, and
there remains no one to resist it, it enjoys a peace which it had not
while there were opposing parties who contested for the enjoyment
of those things which were too small to satisfy both. This peace
is purchased by toilsome wars; it is obtained by what they style a
glorious victory. Now, when victory remains with the party which
had the juster cause, who hesitates to congratulate the victor, and
style it a desirable peace? These things, then, are good things, and
without doubt the gifts of God. But if they neglect the better things
of the heavenly city, which are secured by eternal victory and peace
never-ending, and so inordinately covet these present good things
that they believe them to be the only desirable things, or love them
better than those things which are believed to be better,--if this be
so, then it is necessary that misery follow and ever increase.
5. _Of the fratricidal act of the founder of the earthly city, and
the corresponding crime of the founder of Rome._
Thus the founder of the earthly city was a fratricide. Overcome with
envy, he slew his own brother, a citizen of the eternal city, and a
sojourner on earth. So that we cannot be surprised that this first
specimen, or, as the Greeks say, archetype of crime, should, long
afterwards, find a corresponding crime at the foundation of that
city which was destined to reign over so many nations, and be the
head of this earthly city of which we speak. For of that city also,
as one of their poets has mentioned, "the first walls were stained
with a brother's blood,"[137] or, as Roman history records, Remus
was slain by his brother Romulus. And thus there is no difference
between the foundation of this city and of the earthly city, unless
it be that Romulus and Remus were both citizens of the earthly city.
Both desired to have the glory of founding the Roman republic, but
both could not have as much glory as if one only claimed it; for he
who wished to have the glory of ruling would certainly rule less if
his power were shared by a living consort. In order, therefore, that
the whole glory might be enjoyed by one, his consort was removed;
and by this crime the empire was made larger indeed, but inferior,
while otherwise it would have been less, but better. Now these
brothers, Cain and Abel, were not both animated by the same earthly
desires, nor did the murderer envy the other because he feared that,
by both ruling, his own dominion would be curtailed,--for Abel was
not solicitous to rule in that city which his brother built,--he
was moved by that diabolical, envious hatred with which the evil
regard the good, for no other reason than because they are good
while themselves are evil. For the possession of goodness is by no
means diminished by being shared with a partner either permanent or
temporarily assumed; on the contrary, the possession of goodness is
increased in proportion to the concord and charity of each of those
who share it. In short, he who is unwilling to share this possession
cannot have it; and he who is most willing to admit others to a share
of it will have the greatest abundance to himself. The quarrel, then,
between Romulus and Remus shows how the earthly city is divided
against itself; that which fell out between Cain and Abel illustrated
the hatred that subsists between the two cities, that of God and
that of men. The wicked war with the wicked; the good also war with
the wicked. But with the good, good men, or at least perfectly good
men, cannot war; though, while only going on towards perfection,
they war to this extent, that every good man resists others in those
points in which he resists himself. And in each individual "the flesh
lusteth against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh."[138]
This spiritual lusting, therefore, can be at war with the carnal
lust of another man; or carnal lust may be at war with the spiritual
desires of another, in some such way as good and wicked men are at
war; or, still more certainly, the carnal lusts of two men, good but
not yet perfect, contend together, just as the wicked contend with
the wicked, until the health of those who are under the treatment of
grace attains final victory.
6. _Of the weaknesses which even the citizens of the city of God
suffer during this earthly pilgrimage in punishment of sin, and
of which they are healed by God's care._
This sickliness--that is to say, that disobedience of which we spoke
in the fourteenth book--is the punishment of the first disobedience.
It is therefore not nature, but vice; and therefore it is said to
the good who are growing in grace, and living in this pilgrimage
by faith, "Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfil the law
of Christ."[139] In like manner it is said elsewhere, "Warn them
that are unruly, comfort the feeble-minded, support the weak, be
patient toward all men. See that none render evil for evil unto any
man."[140] And in another place, "If a man be overtaken in a fault,
ye which are spiritual restore such an one in the spirit of meekness;
considering thyself, lest thou also be tempted."[141] And elsewhere,
"Let not the sun go down upon your wrath."[142] And in the Gospel,
"If thy brother shall trespass against thee, go and tell him his
fault between thee and him alone."[143] So too of sins which may
create scandal the apostle says, "Them that sin rebuke before all,
that others also may fear."[144] For this purpose, and that we may
keep that peace without which no man can see the Lord,[145] many
precepts are given which carefully inculcate mutual forgiveness;
among which we may number that terrible word in which the servant is
ordered to pay his formerly remitted debt of ten thousand talents,
because he did not remit to his fellow-servant his debt of two
hundred pence. To which parable the Lord Jesus added the words,
"So likewise shall my heavenly Father do also unto you, if ye from
your hearts forgive not every one his brother."[146] It is thus the
citizens of the city of God are healed while still they sojourn in
this earth and sigh for the peace of their heavenly country. The Holy
Spirit, too, works within, that the medicine externally applied may
have some good result. Otherwise, even though God Himself make use of
the creatures that are subject to Him, and in some human form address
our human senses, whether we receive those impressions in sleep or
in some external appearance, still, if He does not by His own inward
grace sway and act upon the mind, no preaching of the truth is of
any avail. But this God does, distinguishing between the vessels
of wrath and the vessels of mercy, by His own very secret but very
just providence. When He Himself aids the soul in His own hidden and
wonderful ways, and the sin which dwells in our members, and is, as
the apostle teaches, rather the punishment of sin, does not reign in
our mortal body to obey the lusts of it, and when we no longer yield
our members as instruments of unrighteousness,[147] then the soul is
converted from its own evil and selfish desires, and, God possessing
it, it possesses itself in peace even in this life, and afterwards,
with perfected health and endowed with immortality, will reign
without sin in peace everlasting.
7. _Of the cause of Cain's crime and his obstinacy, which not even
the word of God could subdue._
But though God made use of this very mode of address which we have
been endeavouring to explain, and spoke to Cain in that form by
which He was wont to accommodate Himself to our first parents and
converse with them as a companion, what good influence had it on
Cain? Did he not fulfil his wicked intention of killing his brother
even after he was warned by God's voice? For when God had made a
distinction between their sacrifices, neglecting Cain's, regarding
Abel's, which was doubtless intimated by some visible sign to that
effect; and when God had done so because the works of the one were
evil but those of his brother good, Cain was very wroth, and his
countenance fell. For thus it is written: "And the Lord said unto
Cain, Why art thou wroth, and why is thy countenance fallen? If thou
offerest rightly, but dost not rightly distinguish, hast thou not
sinned? Fret not thyself, for unto thee shall be his turning, and
thou shalt rule over him."[148] In this admonition administered by
God to Cain, that clause indeed, "If thou offerest rightly, but dost
not rightly distinguish, hast thou not sinned?" is obscure, inasmuch
as it is not apparent for what reason or purpose it was spoken, and
many meanings have been put upon it, as each one who discusses it
attempts to interpret it according to the rule of faith. The truth
is, that a sacrifice is "rightly offered" when it is offered to the
true God, to whom alone we must sacrifice. And it is "not rightly
distinguished" when we do not rightly distinguish the places or
seasons or materials of the offering, or the person offering, or the
person to whom it is presented, or those to whom it is distributed
for food after the oblation. Distinguishing[149] is here used for
discriminating,--whether when an offering is made in a place where
it ought not or of a material which ought to be offered not there
but elsewhere; or when an offering is made at a wrong time, or of a
material suitable not then but at some other time; or when that is
offered which in no place nor any time ought to be offered; or when
a man keeps to himself choicer specimens of the same kind than he
offers to God; or when he or any other who may not lawfully partake
profanely eats of the oblation. In which of these particulars Cain
displeased God, it is difficult to determine. But the Apostle John,
speaking of these brothers, says, "Not as Cain, who was of that
wicked one, and slew his brother. And wherefore slew he him? Because
his own works were evil, and his brother's righteous."[150] He
thus gives us to understand that God did not respect his offering
because it was not rightly "distinguished" in this, that he gave to
God something of his own but kept himself to himself. For this all
do who follow not God's will but their own, who live not with an
upright but a crooked heart, and yet offer to God such gifts as they
suppose will procure from Him that He aid them not by healing but
by gratifying their evil passions. And this is the characteristic
of the earthly city, that it worships God or gods who may aid it in
reigning victoriously and peacefully on earth not through love of
doing good, but through lust of rule. The good use the world that
they may enjoy God: the wicked, on the contrary, that they may enjoy
the world would fain use God,--those of them, at least, who have
attained to the belief that He is and takes an interest in human
affairs. For they who have not yet attained even to this belief are
still at a much lower level. Cain, then, when he saw that God had
respect to his brother's sacrifice, but not to his own, should have
humbly chosen his good brother as his example, and not proudly
counted him his rival. But he was wroth, and his countenance fell.
This angry regret for another person's goodness, even his brother's,
was charged upon him by God as a great sin. And He accused him of it
in the interrogation, "Why art thou wroth, and why is thy countenance
fallen?" For God saw that he envied his brother, and of this He
accused him. For to men, from whom the heart of their fellow is
hid, it might be doubtful and quite uncertain whether that sadness
bewailed his own wickedness by which, as he had learned, he had
displeased God, or his brother's goodness, which had pleased God, and
won His favourable regard to his sacrifice. But God, in giving the
reason why He refused to accept Cain's offering and why Cain should
rather have been displeased at himself than at his brother, shows him
that though he was unjust in "not rightly distinguishing," that is,
not rightly living and being unworthy to have his offering received,
he was more unjust by far in hating his just brother without a cause.
Yet He does not dismiss him without counsel, holy, just, and good.
"Fret not thyself," He says, "for unto thee shall be his turning,
and thou shalt rule over him." Over his brother, does He mean? Most
certainly not. Over what, then, but sin? For He had said, "Thou
hast sinned," and then He added, "Fret not thyself, for to thee
shall be its turning, and thou shalt rule over it."[151] And the
"turning" of sin to the man can be understood of his conviction that
the guilt of sin can be laid at no other man's door but his own.
For this is the health-giving medicine of penitence, and the fit
plea for pardon; so that, when it is said, "To thee its turning,"
we must not supply "shall be," but we must read, "To thee let its
turning be," understanding it as a command, not as a prediction.
For then shall a man rule over his sin when he does not prefer it
to himself and defend it, but subjects it by repentance; otherwise
he that becomes protector of it shall surely become its prisoner.
But if we understand this sin to be that carnal concupiscence of
which the apostle says, "The flesh lusteth against the spirit,"[152]
among the fruits of which lust he names envy, by which assuredly
Cain was stung and excited to destroy his brother, then we may
properly supply the words "shall be," and read, "To thee shall be
its turning, and thou shalt rule over it." For when the carnal part
which the apostle calls sin, in that place where he says, "It is
not I who do it, but sin that dwelleth in me,"[153] that part which
the philosophers also call vicious, and which ought not to lead the
mind, but which the mind ought to rule and restrain by reason from
illicit motions,--when, then, this part has been moved to perpetrate
any wickedness, if it be curbed and if it obey the word of the
apostle, "Yield not your members instruments of unrighteousness unto
sin,"[154] it is turned towards the mind and subdued and conquered
by it, so that reason rules over it as a subject. It was this which
God enjoined on him who was kindled with the fire of envy against his
brother, so that he sought to put out of the way him whom he should
have set as an example. "Fret not thyself," or compose thyself, He
says: withhold thy hand from crime; let not sin reign in your mortal
body to fulfil it in the lusts thereof, nor yield your members
instruments of unrighteousness unto sin. "For to thee shall be its
turning," so long as you do not encourage it by giving it the rein,
but bridle it by quenching its fire. "And thou shalt rule over it;"
for when it is not allowed any external actings, it yields itself to
the rule of the governing mind and righteous will, and ceases from
even internal motions. There is something similar said in the same
divine book of the woman, when God questioned and judged them after
their sin, and pronounced sentence on them all,--the devil in the
form of the serpent, the woman and her husband in their own persons.
For when He had said to her, "I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and
thy conception; in sorrow shalt thou bring forth children," then He
added, "and thy turning shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule
over thee."[155] What is said to Cain about his sin, or about the
vicious concupiscence of his flesh, is here said of the woman who
had sinned; and we are to understand that the husband is to rule his
wife as the soul rules the flesh. And therefore, says the apostle,
"He that loveth his wife, loveth himself; for no man ever yet hated
his own flesh."[156] This flesh, then, is to be healed, because it
belongs to ourselves: is not to be abandoned to destruction as if
it were alien to our nature. But Cain received that counsel of God
in the spirit of one who did not wish to amend. In fact, the vice
of envy grew stronger in him; and, having entrapped his brother,
he slew him. Such was the founder of the earthly city. He was also
a figure of the Jews who slew Christ the Shepherd of the flock of
men, prefigured by Abel the shepherd of sheep: but as this is an
allegorical and prophetical matter, I forbear to explain it now;
besides, I remember that I have made some remarks upon it in writing
against Faustus the Manichæan.[157]
8. _What Cain's reason was for building a city so early in the
history of the human race._