upon Innocentius, ex-advocate of the deputy prefecture, a cure wrought
at Carthage, in my presence, and under my own eyes? For when I and my
brother Alypius,[974] who were not yet clergymen,[975] though already
servants of God, came from abroad, this man received us, and made us
live with him, for he and all his household were devotedly pious. He
was being treated by medical men for fistulæ, of which he had a large
number intricately seated in the rectum. He had already undergone an
operation, and the surgeons were using every means at their command
for his relief. In that operation he had suffered long-continued and
acute pain; yet, among the many folds of the gut, one had escaped the
operators so entirely, that, though they ought to have laid it open
with the knife, they never touched it. And thus, though all those that
had been opened were cured, this one remained as it was, and frustrated
all their labour. The patient, having his suspicions awakened by the
delay thus occasioned, and fearing greatly a second operation, which
another medical man--one of his own domestics--had told him he must
undergo, though this man had not even been allowed to witness the first
operation, and had been banished from the house, and with difficulty
allowed to come back to his enraged master's presence,--the patient,
I say, broke out to the surgeons, saying, "Are you going to cut me
again? Are you, after all, to fulfil the prediction of that man whom
you would not allow even to be present?" The surgeons laughed at the
unskilful doctor, and soothed their patient's fears with fair words
and promises. So several days passed, and yet nothing they tried did
him good. Still they persisted in promising that they would cure that
fistula by drugs, without the knife. They called in also another old
practitioner of great repute in that department, Ammonius (for he was
still alive at that time); and he, after examining the part, promised
the same result as themselves from their care and skill. On this great
authority, the patient became confident, and, as if already well,
vented his good spirits in facetious remarks at the expense of his
domestic physician, who had predicted a second operation. To make a
long story short, after a number of days had thus uselessly elapsed,
the surgeons, wearied and confused, had at last to confess that he
could only be cured by the knife. Agitated with excessive fear, he was
terrified, and grew pale with dread; and when he collected himself and
was able to speak, he ordered them to go away and never to return. Worn
out with weeping, and driven by necessity, it occurred to him to call
in an Alexandrian, who was at that time esteemed a wonderfully skilful
operator, that he might perform the operation his rage would not suffer
them to do. But when he had come, and examined with a professional eye
the traces of their careful work, he acted the part of a good man, and
persuaded his patient to allow those same hands the satisfaction of
finishing his cure which had begun it with a skill that excited his
admiration, adding that there was no doubt his only hope of a cure
was by an operation, but that it was thoroughly inconsistent with his
nature to win the credit of the cure by doing the little that remained
to be done, and rob of their reward men whose consummate skill, care,
and diligence he could not but admire when he saw the traces of their
work. They were therefore again received to favour; and it was agreed
that, in the presence of the Alexandrian, they should operate on the
fistula, which, by the consent of all, could now only be cured by the
knife. The operation was deferred till the following day. But when
they had left, there arose in the house such a wailing, in sympathy
with the excessive despondency of the master, that it seemed to us
like the mourning at a funeral, and we could scarcely repress it. Holy
men were in the habit of visiting him daily; Saturninus of blessed
memory, at that time bishop of Uzali, and the presbyter Gelosus, and
the deacons of the church of Carthage; and among these was the bishop
Aurelius, who alone of them all survives,--a man to be named by us with
due reverence,--and with him I have often spoken of this affair, as we
conversed together about the wonderful works of God, and I have found
that he distinctly remembers what I am now relating. When these persons
visited him that evening according to their custom, he besought them,
with pitiable tears, that they would do him the honour of being present
next day at what he judged his funeral rather than his suffering. For
such was the terror his former pains had produced, that he made no
doubt he would die in the hands of the surgeons. They comforted him,
and exhorted him to put his trust in God, and nerve his will like a
man. Then we went to prayer; but while we, in the usual way, were
kneeling and bending to the ground, he cast himself down, as if some
one were hurling him violently to the earth, and began to pray; but
in what a manner, with what earnestness and emotion, with what a flood
of tears, with what groans and sobs, that shook his whole body, and
almost prevented him speaking, who can describe! Whether the others
prayed, and had not their attention wholly diverted by this conduct, I
do not know. For myself, I could not pray at all. This only I briefly
said in my heart: "O Lord, what prayers of Thy people dost Thou hear
if Thou hearest not these?" For it seemed to me that nothing could be
added to this prayer, unless he expired in praying. We rose from our
knees, and, receiving the blessing of the bishop, departed, the patient
beseeching his visitors to be present next morning, they exhorting
him to keep up his heart. The dreaded day dawned. The servants of God
were present, as they had promised to be; the surgeons arrived; all
that the circumstances required was ready; the frightful instruments
are produced; all look on in wonder and suspense. While those who have
most influence with the patient are cheering his fainting spirit, his
limbs are arranged on the couch so as to suit the hand of the operator;
the knots of the bandages are untied; the part is bared; the surgeon
examines it, and, with knife in hand, eagerly looks for the sinus that
is to be cut. He searches for it with his eyes; he feels for it with
his finger; he applies every kind of scrutiny: he finds a perfectly
firm cicatrix! No words of mine can describe the joy, and praise, and
thanksgiving to the merciful and almighty God which was poured from the
lips of all, with tears of gladness. Let the scene be imagined rather
than described!
In the same city of Carthage lived Innocentia, a very devout woman of
the highest rank in the state. She had cancer in one of her breasts,
a disease which, as physicians say, is incurable. Ordinarily,
therefore, they either amputate, and so separate from the body the
member on which the disease has seized, or, that the patient's
life may be prolonged a little, though death is inevitable even if
somewhat delayed, they abandon all remedies, following, as they
say, the advice of Hippocrates. This the lady we speak of had been
advised to by a skilful physician, who was intimate with her family;
and she betook herself to God alone by prayer. On the approach of
Easter, she was instructed in a dream to wait for the first woman
that came out from the baptistery[976] after being baptized, and to
ask her to make the sign of Christ upon her sore. She did so, and
was immediately cured. The physician who had advised her to apply no
remedy if she wished to live a little longer, when he had examined
her after this, and found that she who, on his former examination,
was afflicted with that disease was now perfectly cured, eagerly
asked her what remedy she had used, anxious, as we may well believe,
to discover the drug which should defeat the decision of Hippocrates.
But when she told him what had happened, he is said to have replied,
with religious politeness, though with a contemptuous tone, and an
expression which made her fear he would utter some blasphemy against
Christ, "I thought you would make some great discovery to me." She,
shuddering at his indifference, quickly replied, "What great thing
was it for Christ to heal a cancer, who raised one who had been
four days dead?" When, therefore, I had heard this, I was extremely
indignant that so great a miracle, wrought in that well-known
city, and on a person who was certainly not obscure, should not be
divulged, and I considered that she should be spoken to, if not
reprimanded on this score. And when she replied to me that she had
not kept silence on the subject, I asked the women with whom she was
best acquainted whether they had ever heard of this before. They told
me they knew nothing of it. "See," I said, "what your not keeping
silence amounts to, since not even those who are so familiar with you
know of it." And as I had only briefly heard the story, I made her
tell how the whole thing happened, from beginning to end, while the
other women listened in great astonishment, and glorified God.
A gouty doctor of the same city, when he had given in his name for
baptism, and had been prohibited the day before his baptism from
being baptized that year, by black woolly-haired boys who appeared to
him in his dreams, and whom he understood to be devils, and when,
though they trod on his feet, and inflicted the acutest pain he had
ever yet experienced, he refused to obey them, but overcame them,
and would not defer being washed in the laver of regeneration, was
relieved in the very act of baptism, not only of the extraordinary
pain he was tortured with, but also of the disease itself, so that,
though he lived a long time afterwards, he never suffered from gout;
and yet who knows of this miracle? We, however, do know it, and so,
too, do the small number of brethren who were in the neighbourhood,
and to whose ears it might come.
An old comedian of Curubis[977] was cured at baptism not only of
paralysis, but also of hernia, and, being delivered from both
afflictions, came up out of the font of regeneration as if he had had
nothing wrong with his body. Who outside of Curubis knows of this,
or who but a very few who might hear it elsewhere? But we, when we
heard of it, made the man come to Carthage, by order of the holy
bishop Aurelius, although we had already ascertained the fact on the
information of persons whose word we could not doubt.
Hesperius, of a tribunitian family, and a neighbour of our own,[978]
has a farm called Zubedi in the Fussalian district;[979] and, finding
that his family, his cattle, and his servants were suffering from
the malice of evil spirits, he asked our presbyters, during my
absence, that one of them would go with him and banish the spirits
by his prayers. One went, offered there the sacrifice of the body of
Christ, praying with all his might that that vexation might cease.
It did cease forthwith, through God's mercy. Now he had received
from a friend of his own some holy earth brought from Jerusalem,
where Christ, having been buried, rose again the third day. This
earth he had hung up in his bedroom to preserve himself from harm.
But when his house was purged of that demoniacal invasion, he began
to consider what should be done with the earth; for his reverence
for it made him unwilling to have it any longer in his bedroom. It
so happened that I and Maximinus bishop of Synita, and then my
colleague, were in the neighbourhood. Hesperius asked us to visit
him, and we did so. When he had related all the circumstances, he
begged that the earth might be buried somewhere, and that the spot
should be made a place of prayer where Christians might assemble for
the worship of God. We made no objection: it was done as he desired.
There was in that neighbourhood a young countryman who was paralytic,
who, when he heard of this, begged his parents to take him without
delay to that holy place. When he had been brought there, he prayed,
and forthwith went away on his own feet perfectly cured.
There is a country-seat called Victoriana, less than thirty miles
from Hippo-regius. At it there is a monument to the Milanese martyrs,
Protasius and Gervasius. Thither a young man was carried, who, when
he was watering his horse one summer day at noon in a pool of a
river, had been taken possession of by a devil. As he lay at the
monument, near death, or even quite like a dead person, the lady of
the manor, with her maids and religious attendants, entered the place
for evening prayer and praise, as her custom was, and they began
to sing hymns. At this sound the young man, as if electrified, was
thoroughly aroused, and with frightful screaming seized the altar,
and held it as if he did not dare or were not able to let it go, and
as if he were fixed or tied to it; and the devil in him, with loud
lamentation, besought that he might be spared, and confessed where
and when and how he took possession of the youth. At last, declaring
that he would go out of him, he named one by one the parts of his
body which he threatened to mutilate as he went out; and with these
words he departed from the man. But his eye, falling out on his
cheek, hung by a slender vein as by a root, and the whole of the
pupil which had been black became white. When this was witnessed by
those present (others too had now gathered to his cries, and had
all joined in prayer for him), although they were delighted that he
had recovered his sanity of mind, yet, on the other hand, they were
grieved about his eye, and said he should seek medical advice. But
his sister's husband, who had brought him there, said, "God, who has
banished the devil, is able to restore his eye at the prayers of
His saints." Therewith he replaced the eye that was fallen out and
hanging, and bound it in its place with his handkerchief as well as
he could, and advised him not to loose the bandage for seven days.
When he did so, he found it quite healthy. Others also were cured
there, but of them it were tedious to speak.
I know that a young woman of Hippo was immediately dispossessed of
a devil, on anointing herself with oil mixed with the tears of the
presbyter who had been praying for her. I know also that a bishop
once prayed for a demoniac young man whom he never saw, and that he
was cured on the spot.
There was a fellow-townsman of ours at Hippo, Florentius, an old man,
religious and poor, who supported himself as a tailor. Having lost his
coat, and not having means to buy another, he prayed to the Twenty
Martyrs,[980] who have a very celebrated memorial shrine in our town,
begging in a distinct voice that he might be clothed. Some scoffing
young men, who happened to be present, heard him, and followed him with
their sarcasm as he went away, as if he had asked the martyrs for fifty
pence to buy a coat. But he, walking on in silence, saw on the shore a
great fish, gasping as if just cast up, and having secured it with the
good-natured assistance of the youths, he sold it for curing to a cook
of the name of Catosus, a good Christian man, telling him how he had
come by it, and receiving for it three hundred pence, which he laid out
in wool, that his wife might exercise her skill upon, and make into a
coat for him. But, on cutting up the fish, the cook found a gold ring
in its belly; and forthwith, moved with compassion, and influenced,
too, by religious fear, gave it up to the man, saying, "See how the
Twenty Martyrs have clothed you."
When the bishop Projectus was bringing the relics of the most
glorious martyr Stephen to the waters of Tibilis, a great concourse
of people came to meet him at the shrine. There a blind woman
entreated that she might be led to the bishop who was carrying the
relics. He gave her the flowers he was carrying. She took them,
applied them to her eyes, and forthwith saw. Those who were present
were astounded, while she, with every expression of joy, preceded
them, pursuing her way without further need of a guide.
Lucillus bishop of Sinita, in the neighbourhood of the colonial
town of Hippo, was carrying in procession some relics of the same
martyr, which had been deposited in the castle of Sinita. A fistula
under which he had long laboured, and which his private physician
was watching an opportunity to cut, was suddenly cured by the mere
carrying of that sacred fardel,[981]--at least, afterwards there was
no trace of it in his body.
Eucharius, a Spanish priest, residing at Calama, was for a long
time a sufferer from stone. By the relics of the same martyr, which
the bishop Possidius brought him, he was cured. Afterwards the same
priest, sinking under another disease, was lying dead, and already
they were binding his hands. By the succour of the same martyr he
was raised to life, the priest's cloak having been brought from the
oratory and laid upon the corpse.
There was there an old nobleman named Martial, who had a great
aversion to the Christian religion, but whose daughter was a
Christian, while her husband had been baptized that same year. When
he was ill, they besought him with tears and prayers to become a
Christian, but he positively refused, and dismissed them from his
presence in a storm of indignation. It occurred to the son-in-law to
go to the oratory of St. Stephen, and there pray for him with all
earnestness that God might give him a right mind, so that he should
not delay believing in Christ. This he did with great groaning and
tears, and the burning fervour of sincere piety; then, as he left the
place, he took some of the flowers that were lying there, and, as it
was already night, laid them by his father's head, who so slept. And
lo! before dawn, he cries out for some one to run for the bishop; but
he happened at that time to be with me at Hippo. So when he had heard
that he was from home, he asked the presbyters to come. They came. To
the joy and amazement of all, he declared that he believed, and he
was baptized. As long as he remained in life, these words were ever
on his lips: "Christ, receive my spirit," though he was not aware
that these were the last words of the most blessed Stephen when he
was stoned by the Jews. They were his last words also, for not long
after he himself also gave up the ghost.
There, too, by the same martyr, two men, one a citizen, the other a
stranger, were cured of gout; but while the citizen was absolutely
cured, the stranger was only informed what he should apply when the
pain returned; and when he followed this advice, the pain was at once
relieved.
Audurus is the name of an estate, where there is a church that contains
a memorial shrine of the martyr Stephen. It happened that, as a little
boy was playing in the court, the oxen drawing a waggon went out of the
track and crushed him with the wheel, so that immediately he seemed at
his last gasp. His mother snatched him up, and laid him at the shrine,
and not only did he revive, but also appeared uninjured.
A religious female, who lived at Caspalium, a neighbouring estate,
when she was so ill as to be despaired of, had her dress brought to
this shrine, but before it was brought back she was gone. However,
her parents wrapped her corpse in the dress, and, her breath
returning, she became quite well.
At Hippo a Syrian called Bassus was praying at the relics of the same
martyr for his daughter, who was dangerously ill. He too had brought
her dress with him to the shrine. But as he prayed, behold, his
servants ran from the house to tell him she was dead. His friends,
however, intercepted them, and forbade them to tell him, lest he should
bewail her in public. And when he had returned to his house, which was
already ringing with the lamentations of his family, and had thrown on
his daughter's body the dress he was carrying, she was restored to life.
There, too, the son of a man, Irenæus, one of our tax-gatherers, took
ill and died. And while his body was lying lifeless, and the last rites
were being prepared, amidst the weeping and mourning of all, one of the
friends who were consoling the father suggested that the body should be
anointed with the oil of the same martyr. It was done, and he revived.
Likewise Eleusinus, a man of tribunitian rank among us, laid his
infant son, who had died, on the shrine of the martyr, which is in
the suburb where he lived, and, after prayer, which he poured out
there with many tears, he took up his child alive.
What am I to do? I am so pressed by the promise of finishing this work,
that I cannot record all the miracles I know; and doubtless several of
our adherents, when they read what I have narrated, will regret that
I have omitted so many which they, as well as I, certainly know. Even
now I beg these persons to excuse me, and to consider how long it would
take me to relate all those miracles, which the necessity of finishing
the work I have undertaken forces me to omit. For were I to be silent
of all others, and to record exclusively the miracles of healing which
were wrought in the district of Calama and of Hippo by means of this
martyr--I mean the most glorious Stephen--they would fill many volumes;
and yet all even of these could not be collected, but only those of
which narratives have been written for public recital. For when I saw,
in our own times, frequent signs of the presence of divine powers
similar to those which had been given of old, I desired that narratives
might be written, judging that the multitude should not remain ignorant
of these things. It is not yet two years since these relics were
first brought to Hippo-regius, and though many of the miracles which
have been wrought by it have not, as I have the most certain means
of knowing, been recorded, those which have been published amount to
almost seventy at the hour at which I write. But at Calama, where these
relics have been for a longer time, and where more of the miracles were
narrated for public information, there are incomparably more.
At Uzali, too, a colony near Utica, many signal miracles were, to my
knowledge, wrought by the same martyr, whose relics had found a place
there by direction of the bishop Evodius, long before we had them at
Hippo. But there the custom of publishing narratives does not obtain,
or, I should say, did not obtain, for possibly it may now have been
begun. For, when I was there recently, a woman of rank, Petronia,
had been miraculously cured of a serious illness of long standing,
in which all medical appliances had failed, and, with the consent of
the above-named bishop of the place, I exhorted her to publish an
account of it that might be read to the people. She most promptly
obeyed, and inserted in her narrative a circumstance which I cannot
omit to mention, though I am compelled to hasten on to the subjects
which this work requires me to treat. She said that she had been
persuaded by a Jew to wear next her skin, under all her clothes, a
hair girdle, and on this girdle a ring, which, instead of a gem, had
a stone which had been found in the kidneys of an ox. Girt with this
charm, she was making her way to the threshold of the holy martyr.
But, after leaving Carthage, and when she had been lodging in her
own demesne on the river Bagrada, and was now rising to continue her
journey, she saw her ring lying before her feet. In great surprise
she examined the hair girdle, and when she found it bound, as it had
been, quite firmly with knots, she conjectured that the ring had been
worn through and dropped off; but when she found that the ring was
itself also perfectly whole, she presumed that by this great miracle
she had received somehow a pledge of her cure, whereupon she untied
the girdle, and cast it into the river, and the ring along with it.
This is not credited by those who do not believe either that the Lord
Jesus Christ came forth from His mother's womb without destroying her
virginity, and entered among His disciples when the doors were shut;
but let them make strict inquiry into this miracle, and if they find
it true, let them believe those others. The lady is of distinction,
nobly born, married to a nobleman. She resides at Carthage. The city
is distinguished, the person is distinguished, so that they who make
inquiries cannot fail to find satisfaction. Certainly the martyr
himself, by whose prayers she was healed, believed on the Son of her
who remained a virgin; on Him who came in among the disciples when
the doors were shut; in fine,--and to this tends all that we have
been retailing,--on Him who ascended into heaven with the flesh in
which He had risen; and it is because he laid down his life for this
faith that such miracles were done by his means.
Even now, therefore, many miracles are wrought, the same God who
wrought those we read of still performing them, by whom He will and as
He will; but they are not as well known, nor are they beaten into the
memory, like gravel, by frequent reading, so that they cannot fall out
of mind. For even where, as is now done among ourselves, care is taken
that the pamphlets of those who receive benefit be read publicly, yet
those who are present hear the narrative but once, and many are absent;
and so it comes to pass that even those who are present forget in a few
days what they heard, and scarcely one of them can be found who will
tell what he heard to one who he knows was not present.
One miracle was wrought among ourselves, which, though no greater
than those I have mentioned, was yet so signal and conspicuous, that
I suppose there is no inhabitant of Hippo who did not either see
or hear of it, none who could possibly forget it. There were seven
brothers and three sisters of a noble family of the Cappadocian
Cæsarea, who were cursed by their mother, a new-made widow, on
account of some wrong they had done her, and which she bitterly
resented, and who were visited with so severe a punishment from
Heaven, that all of them were seized with a hideous shaking in all
their limbs. Unable, while presenting this loathsome appearance, to
endure the eyes of their fellow-citizens, they wandered over almost
the whole Roman world, each following his own direction. Two of them
came to Hippo, a brother and a sister, Paulus and Palladia, already
known in many other places by the fame of their wretched lot. Now it
was about fifteen days before Easter when they came, and they came
daily to church, and specially to the relics of the most glorious
Stephen, praying that God might now be appeased, and restore their
former health. There, and wherever they went, they attracted the
attention of every one. Some who had seen them elsewhere, and knew
the cause of their trembling, told others as occasion offered. Easter
arrived, and on the Lord's day, in the morning, when there was now
a large crowd present, and the young man was holding the bars of
the holy place where the relics were, and praying, suddenly he fell
down, and lay precisely as if asleep, but not trembling as he was
wont to do even in sleep. All present were astonished. Some were
alarmed, some were moved with pity; and while some were for lifting
him up, others prevented them, and said they should rather wait
and see what would result. And behold! he rose up, and trembled no
more, for he was healed, and stood quite well, scanning those who
were scanning him. Who then refrained himself from praising God? The
whole church was filled with the voices of those who were shouting
and congratulating him. Then they came running to me, where I was
sitting ready to come into the church. One after another they throng
in, the last comer telling me as news what the first had told me
already; and while I rejoiced and inwardly gave God thanks, the young
man himself also enters, with a number of others, falls at my knees,
is raised up to receive my kiss. We go in to the congregation: the
church was full, and ringing with the shouts of joy, "Thanks to God!
Praised be God!" every one joining and shouting on all sides, "I
have healed the people," and then with still louder voice shouting
again. Silence being at last obtained, the customary lessons of the
divine Scriptures were read. And when I came to my sermon, I made
a few remarks suitable to the occasion and the happy and joyful
feeling, not desiring them to listen to me, but rather to consider
the eloquence of God in this divine work. The man dined with us, and
gave us a careful account of his own, his mother's, and his family's
calamity. Accordingly, on the following day, after delivering my
sermon, I promised that next day I would read his narrative to the
people.[982] And when I did so, the third day after Easter Sunday,
I made the brother and sister both stand on the steps of the raised
place from which I used to speak; and while they stood there their
pamphlet was read.[983] The whole congregation, men and women alike,
saw the one standing without any unnatural movement, the other
trembling in all her limbs; so that those who had not before seen the
man himself saw in his sister what the divine compassion had removed
from him. In him they saw matter of congratulation, in her subject
for prayer. Meanwhile, their pamphlet being finished, I instructed
them to withdraw from the gaze of the people; and I had begun to
discuss the whole matter somewhat more carefully, when lo! as I
was proceeding, other voices are heard from the tomb of the martyr,
shouting new congratulations. My audience turned round, and began to
run to the tomb. The young woman, when she had come down from the
steps where she had been standing, went to pray at the holy relics,
and no sooner had she touched the bars than she, in the same way as
her brother, collapsed, as if falling asleep, and rose up cured.
While, then, we were asking what had happened, and what occasioned
this noise of joy, they came into the basilica where we were,
leading her from the martyr's tomb in perfect health. Then, indeed,
such a shout of wonder rose from men and women together, that the
exclamations and the tears seemed like never to come to an end. She
was led to the place where she had a little before stood trembling.
They now rejoiced that she was like her brother, as before they had
mourned that she remained unlike him; and as they had not yet uttered
their prayers in her behalf, they perceived that their intention of
doing so had been speedily heard. They shouted God's praises without
words, but with such a noise that our ears could scarcely bear it.
What was there in the hearts of these exultant people but the faith
of Christ, for which Stephen had shed his blood?
9. _That all the miracles which are done by means of the martyrs
in the name of Christ testify to that faith which the martyrs
had in Christ._
To what do these miracles witness, but to this faith which preaches
Christ risen in the flesh, and ascended with the same into heaven? For
the martyrs themselves were martyrs, that is to say, witnesses of this
faith, drawing upon themselves by their testimony the hatred of the
world, and conquering the world not by resisting it, but by dying. For
this faith they died, and can now ask these benefits from the Lord in
whose name they were slain. For this faith their marvellous constancy
was exercised, so that in these miracles great power was manifested
as the result. For if the resurrection of the flesh to eternal life
had not taken place in Christ, and were not to be accomplished in His
people, as predicted by Christ, or by the prophets who foretold that
Christ was to come, why do the martyrs who were slain for this faith
which proclaims the resurrection possess such power? For whether God
Himself wrought these miracles by that wonderful manner of working
by which, though Himself eternal, He produces effects in time; or
whether He wrought them by servants, and if so, whether He made use
of the spirits of martyrs as He uses men who are still in the body,
or effects all these marvels by means of angels, over whom He exerts
an invisible, immutable, incorporeal sway, so that what is said to
be done by the martyrs is done not by their operation, but only by
their prayer and request; or whether, finally, some things are done in
one way, others in another, and so that man cannot at all comprehend
them,--nevertheless these miracles attest this faith which preaches the
resurrection of the flesh to eternal life.
10. _That the martyrs who obtain many miracles in order that the
true God may be worshipped, are worthy of much greater honour
than the demons, who do some marvels that they themselves may
be supposed to be God._
Here perhaps our adversaries will say that their gods also have done
some wonderful things, if now they begin to compare their gods to
our dead men. Or will they also say that they have gods taken from
among dead men, such as Hercules, Romulus, and many others whom
they fancy to have been received into the number of the gods? But
our martyrs are not our gods; for we know that the martyrs and we
have both but one God, and that the same. Nor yet are the miracles
which they maintain to have been done by means of their temples at
all comparable to those which are done by the tombs of our martyrs.
If they seem similar, their gods have been defeated by our martyrs
as Pharaoh's magi were by Moses. In reality, the demons wrought
these marvels with the same impure pride with which they aspired to
be the gods of the nations; but the martyrs do these wonders, or
rather God does them while they pray and assist, in order that an
impulse may be given to the faith by which we believe that they are
not our gods, but have, together with ourselves, one God. In fine,
they built temples to these gods of theirs, and set up altars, and
ordained priests, and appointed sacrifices; but to our martyrs we
build, not temples as if they were gods, but monuments as to dead
men whose spirits live with God. Neither do we erect altars at these
monuments that we may sacrifice to the martyrs, but to the one God
of the martyrs and of ourselves; and in this sacrifice they are
named in their own place and rank as men of God who conquered the
world by confessing Him, but they are not invoked by the sacrificing
priest. For it is to God, not to them, he sacrifices, though he
sacrifices at their monument; for he is God's priest, not theirs. The
sacrifice itself, too, is the body of Christ, which is not offered
to them, because they themselves are this body. Which then can more
readily be believed to work miracles? They who wish themselves to be
reckoned gods by those on whom they work miracles, or those whose
sole object in working any miracle is to induce faith in God, and in
Christ also as God? They who wished to turn even their crimes into
sacred rites, or those who are unwilling that even their own praises
be consecrated, and seek that everything for which they are justly
praised be ascribed to the glory of Him in whom they are praised?
For in the Lord their souls are praised. Let us therefore believe
those who both speak the truth and work wonders. For by speaking the
truth they suffered, and so won the power of working wonders. And the
leading truth they professed is that Christ rose from the dead, and
first showed in His own flesh the immortality of the resurrection
which He promised should be ours, either in the beginning of the
world to come, or in the end of this world.
11. _Against the Platonists, who argue from the physical weight of
the elements that an earthly body cannot inhabit heaven._
But against this great gift of God, these reasoners, "whose thoughts
the Lord knows that they are vain,"[984] bring arguments from
the weights of the elements; for they have been taught by their
master Plato that the two greatest elements of the world, and the
furthest removed from one another, are coupled and united by the
two intermediate, air and water. And consequently they say, since
the earth is the first of the elements, beginning from the base of
the series, the second the water above the earth, the third the air
above the water, the fourth the heaven above the air, it follows
that a body of earth cannot live in the heaven; for each element is
poised by its own weight so as to preserve its own place and rank.
Behold with what arguments human infirmity, possessed with vanity,
contradicts the omnipotence of God! What, then, do so many earthly
bodies do in the air, since the air is the third element from the
earth? Unless perhaps He who has granted to the earthly bodies of
birds that they be carried through the air by the lightness of
feathers and wings, has not been able to confer upon the bodies of
men made immortal the power to abide in the highest heaven. The
earthly animals, too, which cannot fly, among which are men, ought on
these terms to live under the earth, as fishes, which are the animals
of the water, live under the water. Why, then, can an animal of earth
not live in the second element, that is, in water, while it can in
the third? Why, though it belongs to the earth, is it forthwith
suffocated if it is forced to live in the second element next above
earth, while it lives in the third, and cannot live out of it? Is
there a mistake here in the order of the elements, or is not the
mistake rather in their reasonings, and not in the nature of things?
I will not repeat what I said in the thirteenth book,[985] that many
earthly bodies, though heavy like lead, receive from the workman's
hand a form which enables them to swim in water; and yet it is denied
that the omnipotent Worker can confer on the human body a property
which shall enable it to pass into heaven and dwell there.
But against what I have formerly said they can find nothing to say,
even though they introduce and make the most of this order of the
elements in which they confide. For if the order be that the earth
is first, the water second, the air third, the heaven fourth, then
the soul is above all. For Aristotle said that the soul was a fifth
body, while Plato denied that it was a body at all. If it were a
fifth body, then certainly it would be above the rest; and if it is
not a body at all, so much the more does it rise above all. What,
then, does it do in an earthly body? What does this soul, which is
finer than all else, do in such a mass of matter as this? What does
the lightest of substances do in this ponderosity? this swiftest
substance in such sluggishness? Will not the body be raised to
heaven by virtue of so excellent a nature as this? and if now earthly
bodies can retain the souls below, shall not the souls be one day
able to raise the earthly bodies above?
If we pass now to their miracles which they oppose to our martyrs as
wrought by their gods, shall not even these be found to make for us,
and help out our argument? For if any of the miracles of their gods
are great, certainly that is a great one which Varro mentions of a
vestal virgin, who, when she was endangered by a false accusation of
unchastity, filled a sieve with water from the Tiber, and carried it
to her judges without any part of it leaking. Who kept the weight
of water in the sieve? Who prevented any drop from falling from it
through so many open holes? They will answer, Some god or some demon.
If a god, is he greater than the God who made the world? If a demon,
is he mightier than an angel who serves the God by whom the world
was made? If, then, a lesser god, angel, or demon could so sustain
the weight of this liquid element that the water might seem to have
changed its nature, shall not Almighty God, who Himself created
all the elements, be able to eliminate from the earthly body its
heaviness, so that the quickened body shall dwell in whatever element
the quickening spirit pleases?
Then, again, since they give the air a middle place between the fire
above and the water beneath, how is it that we often find it between
water and water, and between the water and the earth? For what do
they make of those watery clouds, between which and the seas air is
constantly found intervening? I should like to know by what weight
and order of the elements it comes to pass that very violent and
stormy torrents are suspended in the clouds above the earth before
they rush along upon the earth under the air? In fine, why is it that
throughout the whole globe the air is between the highest heaven and
the earth, if its place is between the sky and the water, as the
place of the water is between the sky and the earth?
Finally, if the order of the elements is so disposed that, as Plato
thinks, the two extremes, fire and earth, are united by the two
means, air and water, and that the fire occupies the highest part of
the sky, and the earth the lowest part, or as it were the foundation
of the world, and that therefore earth cannot be in the heavens, how
is fire in the earth? For, according to this reasoning, these two
elements, earth and fire, ought to be so restricted to their own
places, the highest and the lowest, that neither the lowest can rise
to the place of the highest, nor the highest sink to that of the
lowest. Thus, as they think that no particle of earth is or shall
ever be in the sky, so we ought to see no particle of fire on the
earth. But the fact is that it exists to such an extent, not only on
but even under the earth, that the tops of mountains vomit it forth;
besides that we see it to exist on earth for human uses, and even to
be produced from the earth, since it is kindled from wood and stones,
which are without doubt earthly bodies. But that [upper] fire, they
say, is tranquil, pure, harmless, eternal; but this [earthly] fire is
turbid, smoky, corruptible, and corrupting. But it does not corrupt
the mountains and caverns of the earth in which it rages continually.
But grant that the earthly fire is so unlike the other as to suit its
earthly position, why then do they object to our believing that the
nature of earthly bodies shall some day be made incorruptible and fit
for the sky, even as now fire is corruptible and suited to the earth?
They therefore adduce from their weights and order of the elements
nothing from which they can prove that it is impossible for Almighty
God to make our bodies such that they can dwell in the skies.
12. _Against the calumnies with which unbelievers throw ridicule
upon the Christian faith in the resurrection of the flesh._
But their way is to feign a scrupulous anxiety in investigating this
question, and to cast ridicule on our faith in the resurrection of the
body, by asking, Whether abortions shall rise? And as the Lord says,
"Verily I say unto you, not a hair of your head shall perish,"[986]
shall all bodies have an equal stature and strength, or shall there be
differences in size? For if there is to be equality, where shall those
abortions, supposing that they rise again, get that bulk which they
had not here? Or if they shall not rise because they were not born but
cast out, they raise the same question about children who have died
in childhood, asking us whence they get the stature which we see they
had not here; for we will not say that those who have been not only
born, but born again, shall not rise again. Then, further, they ask of
what size these equal bodies shall be. For if all shall be as tall and
large as were the tallest and largest in this world, they ask us how
it is that not only children but many full-grown persons shall receive
what they here did not possess, if each one is to receive what he had
here. And if the saying of the apostle, that we are all to come to
the "measure of the age of the fulness of Christ,"[987] or that other
saying, "Whom He predestinated to be conformed to the image of His
Son,"[988] is to be understood to mean that the stature and size of
Christ's body shall be the measure of the bodies of all those who shall
be in His kingdom, then, say they, the size and height of many must be
diminished; and if so much of the bodily frame itself be lost, what
becomes of the saying, "Not a hair of your head shall perish?" Besides,
it might be asked regarding the hair itself, whether all that the
barber has cut off shall be restored? And if it is to be restored, who
would not shrink from such deformity? For as the same restoration will
be made of what has been pared off the nails, much will be replaced
on the body which a regard for its appearance had cut off. And where,
then, will be its beauty, which assuredly ought to be much greater in
that immortal condition than it could be in this corruptible state?
On the other hand, if such things are not restored to the body, they
must perish; how, then, they say, shall not a hair of the head perish?
In like manner they reason about fatness and leanness; for if all are
to be equal, then certainly there shall not be some fat, others lean.
Some, therefore, shall gain, others lose something. Consequently there
will not be a simple restoration of what formerly existed, but, on the
one hand, an addition of what had no existence, and, on the other, a
loss of what did before exist.
The difficulties, too, about the corruption and dissolution of dead
bodies,--that one is turned into dust, while another evaporates into
the air; that some are devoured by beasts, some by fire, while some
perish by shipwreck or by drowning in one shape or other, so that their
bodies decay into liquid,--these difficulties give them immoderate
alarm, and they believe that all those dissolved elements cannot be
gathered again and reconstructed into a body. They also make eager
use of all the deformities and blemishes which either accident or
birth has produced, and accordingly, with horror and derision, cite
monstrous births, and ask if every deformity will be preserved in the
resurrection. For if we say that no such thing shall be reproduced
in the body of a man, they suppose that they confute us by citing
the marks of the wounds which we assert were found in the risen body
of the Lord Christ. But of all these, the most difficult question
is, into whose body that flesh shall return which has been eaten and
assimilated by another man constrained by hunger to use it so; for
it has been converted into the flesh of the man who used it as his
nutriment, and it filled up those losses of flesh which famine had
produced. For the sake, then, of ridiculing the resurrection, they ask,
Shall this return to the man whose flesh it first was, or to him whose
flesh it afterwards became? And thus, too, they seek to give promise
to the human soul of alternations of true misery and false happiness,
in accordance with Plato's theory; or, in accordance with Porphyry's,
that, after many transmigrations into different bodies, it ends its
miseries, and never more returns to them, not, however, by obtaining an
immortal body, but by escaping from every kind of body.
13. _Whether abortions, if they are numbered among the dead,
shall not also have a part in the resurrection._
To these objections, then, of our adversaries which I have thus
detailed, I will now reply, trusting that God will mercifully assist
my endeavours. That abortions, which, even supposing they were alive
in the womb, did also die there, shall rise again, I make bold
neither to affirm nor to deny, although I fail to see why, if they
are not excluded from the number of the dead, they should not attain
to the resurrection of the dead. For either all the dead shall not
rise, and there will be to all eternity some souls without bodies,
though they once had them,--only in their mother's womb, indeed; or,
if all human souls shall receive again the bodies which they had
wherever they lived, and which they left when they died, then I do
not see how I can say that even those who died in their mother's womb
shall have no resurrection. But whichever of these opinions any one
may adopt concerning them, we must at least apply to them, if they
rise again, all that we have to say of infants who have been born.
14. _Whether infants shall rise in that body which they would
have had had they grown up._
What, then, are we to say of infants, if not that they will not
rise in that diminutive body in which they died, but shall receive
by the marvellous and rapid operation of God that body which time
by a slower process would have given them? For in the Lord's words,
where He says, "Not a hair of your head shall perish,"[989] it is
asserted that nothing which was possessed shall be wanting; but it
is not said that nothing which was not possessed shall be given. To
the dead infant there was wanting the perfect stature of its body;
for even the perfect infant lacks the perfection of bodily size,
being capable of further growth. This perfect stature is, in a sense,
so possessed by all that they are conceived and born with it,--that
is, they have it potentially, though not yet in actual bulk; just
as all the members of the body are potentially in the seed, though,
even after the child is born, some of them, the teeth for example,
may be wanting. In this seminal principle of every substance, there
seems to be, as it were, the beginning of everything which does not
yet exist, or rather does not appear, but which in process of time
will come into being, or rather into sight. In this, therefore, the
child who is to be tall or short is already tall or short. And in
the resurrection of the body, we need, for the same reason, fear
no bodily loss; for though all should be of equal size, and reach
gigantic proportions, lest the men who were largest here should lose
anything of their bulk and it should perish, in contradiction to
the words of Christ, who said that not a hair of their head should
perish, yet why should there lack the means by which that wonderful
Worker should make such additions, seeing that He is the Creator, who
Himself created all things out of nothing?
15. _Whether the bodies of all the dead shall rise the same size
as the Lord's body._
It is certain that Christ rose in the same bodily stature in which He
died, and that it is wrong to say that, when the general resurrection
shall have arrived, His body shall, for the sake of equalling the
tallest, assume proportions which it had not when He appeared to the
disciples in the figure with which they were familiar. But if we say
that even the bodies of taller men are to be reduced to the size of
the Lord's body, there will be a great loss in many bodies, though
He promised that not a hair of their head should perish. It remains,
therefore, that we conclude that every man shall receive his own size
which he had in youth, though he died an old man, or which he would
have had, supposing he died before his prime. As for what the apostle
said of the measure of the age of the fulness of Christ, we must
either understand him to refer to something else, viz. to the fact
that the measure of Christ will be completed when all the members
among the Christian communities are added to the Head; or if we are
to refer it to the resurrection of the body, the meaning is that all
shall rise neither beyond nor under youth, but in that vigour and age
to which we know that Christ had arrived. For even the world's wisest
men have fixed the bloom of youth at about the age of thirty; and
when this period has been passed, the man begins to decline towards
the defective and duller period of old age. And therefore the apostle
did not speak of the measure of the body, nor of the measure of the
stature, but of "the measure of the age of the fulness of Christ."
16. _What is meant by the conforming of the saints to the image
of the Son of God._
Then, again, these words, "Predestinate to be conformed to the image
of the Son of God,"[990] may be understood of the inner man. So in
another place He says to us, "Be not conformed to this world, but
be ye transformed in the renewing of your mind."[991] In so far,
then, as we are transformed so as not to be conformed to the world,
we are conformed to the Son of God. It may also be understood thus,
that as He was conformed to us by assuming mortality, we shall be
conformed to Him by immortality; and this indeed is connected with
the resurrection of the body. But if we are also taught in these
words what form our bodies shall rise in, as the measure we spoke
of before, so also this conformity is to be understood not of size,
but of age. Accordingly all shall rise in the stature they either
had attained or would have attained had they lived to their prime,
although it will be no great disadvantage even if the form of the
body be infantine or aged, while no infirmity shall remain in the
mind nor in the body itself. So that even if any one contends that
every person will rise again in the same bodily form in which he
died, we need not spend much labour in disputing with him.
17. _Whether the bodies of women shall retain their own sex in
the resurrection._
From the words, "Till we all come to a perfect man, to the measure of
the age of the fulness of Christ,"[992] and from the words, "Conformed
to the image of the Son of God,"[993] some conclude that women shall
not rise women, but that all shall be men, because God made man only
of earth, and woman of the man. For my part, they seem to be wiser who
make no doubt that both sexes shall rise. For there shall be no lust,
which is now the cause of confusion. For before they sinned, the man
and the woman were naked, and were not ashamed. From those bodies,
then, vice shall be withdrawn, while nature shall be preserved. And
the sex of woman is not a vice, but nature. It shall then indeed be
superior to carnal intercourse and child-bearing; nevertheless the
female members shall remain adapted not to the old uses, but to a new
beauty, which, so far from provoking lust, now extinct, shall excite
praise to the wisdom and clemency of God, who both made what was not
and delivered from corruption what He made. For at the beginning of
the human race the woman was made of a rib taken from the side of the
man while he slept; for it seemed fit that even then Christ and His
Church should be foreshadowed in this event. For that sleep of the
man was the death of Christ, whose side, as He hung lifeless upon the
cross, was pierced with a spear, and there flowed from it blood and
water, and these we know to be the sacraments by which the Church is
"built up." For Scripture used this very word, not saying "He formed"
or "framed," but "built her up into a woman;"[994] whence also the
apostle speaks of the _edification_ of the body of Christ,[995] which
is the Church. The woman, therefore, is a creature of God even as the
man; but by her creation from man unity is commended; and the manner
of her creation prefigured, as has been said, Christ and the Church.
He, then, who created both sexes will restore both. Jesus Himself also,
when asked by the Sadducees, who denied the resurrection, which of the
seven brothers should have to wife the woman whom all in succession had
taken to raise up seed to their brother, as the law enjoined, says,
"Ye do err, not knowing the Scriptures nor the power of God."[996] And
though it was a fit opportunity for His saying, She about whom you make
inquiries shall herself be a man, and not a woman, He said nothing of
the kind; but "In the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in
marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven."[997] They shall be
equal to the angels in immortality and happiness, not in flesh, nor in
resurrection, which the angels did not need, because they could not
die. The Lord then denied that there would be in the resurrection,
not women, but marriages; and He uttered this denial in circumstances
in which the question mooted would have been more easily and speedily
solved by denying that the female sex would exist, if this had in truth
been foreknown by Him. But, indeed, He even affirmed that the sex
should exist by saying, "They shall not be given in marriage," which
can only apply to females; "Neither shall they marry," which applies to
males. There shall therefore be those who are in this world accustomed
to marry and be given in marriage, only they shall there make no such
marriages.
18. _Of the perfect Man, that is, Christ; and of His body, that is,
the Church, which is His fulness._
To understand what the apostle means when he says that we shall all
come to a perfect man, we must consider the connection of the whole
passage, which runs thus: "He that descended is the same also that
ascended up far above all heavens, that He might fill all things. And
He gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists;
and some, pastors and teachers; for the perfecting of the saints, for
the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ:
till we all come to the unity of the faith and knowledge of the Son
of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the age of the fulness of
Christ: that we henceforth be no more children, tossed and carried
about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, and cunning
craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive; but, speaking the
truth in love, may grow up in Him in all things, which is the Head,
even Christ: from whom the whole body fitly joined together and
compacted by that which every joint supplieth, according to the
effectual working in the measure of every part, maketh increase of
the body, unto the edifying of itself in love."[998] Behold what
the perfect man is--the head and the body, which is made up of all
the members, which in their own time shall be perfected. But new
additions are daily being made to this body while the Church is being
built up, to which it is said, "Ye are the body of Christ and His
members;"[999] and again, "For His body's sake," he says, "which
is the Church;"[1000] and again, "We being many are one head, one
body."[1001] It is of the edification of this body that it is here,
too, said, "For the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the
ministry, for the edification of the body of Christ;" and then that
passage of which we are now speaking is added, "Till we all come to
the unity of the faith and knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect
man, to the measure of the age of the fulness of Christ," and so
on. And he shows of what body we are to understand this to be the
measure, when he says, "That we may grow up into Him in all things,
which is the Head, even Christ: from whom the whole body fitly
joined together and compacted by that which every joint supplieth,
according to the effectual working in the measure of every part." As,
therefore, there is a measure of every part, so there is a measure of
the fulness of the whole body which is made up of all its parts, and
it is of this measure it is said, "To the measure of the age of the
fulness of Christ." This fulness he spoke of also in the place where
he says of Christ, "And gave Him to be the Head over all things to
the Church,[1002] which is His body, the fulness of Him that filleth
all in all."[1003] But even if this should be referred to the form
in which each one shall rise, what should hinder us from applying to
the woman what is expressly said of the man, understanding both sexes
to be included under the general term "man?" For certainly in the
saying, "Blessed is he who feareth the Lord,"[1004] women also who
fear the Lord are included.
19. _That all bodily blemishes which mar human beauty in this life
shall be removed in the resurrection, the natural substance of
the body remaining, but the quality and quantity of it being
altered so as to produce beauty._
What am I to say now about the hair and nails? Once it is understood
that no part of the body shall so perish as to produce deformity in
the body, it is at the same time understood that such things as would
have produced a deformity by their excessive proportions shall be
added to the total bulk of the body, not to parts in which the beauty
of the proportion would thus be marred. Just as if, after making a
vessel of clay, one wished to make it over again of the same clay, it
would not be necessary that the same portion of the clay which had
formed the handle should again form the new handle, or that what had
formed the bottom should again do so, but only that the whole clay
should go to make up the whole new vessel, and that no part of it
should be left unused. Wherefore, if the hair that has been cropped
and the nails that have been cut would cause a deformity were they
to be restored to their places, they shall not be restored; and yet
no one will lose these parts at the resurrection, for they shall be
changed into the same flesh, their substance being so altered as to
preserve the proportion of the various parts of the body. However,
what our Lord said, "Not a hair of your head shall perish," might
more suitably be interpreted of the number, and not of the length
of the hairs, as He elsewhere says, "The hairs of your head are all
numbered."[1005] Nor would I say this because I suppose that any
part naturally belonging to the body can perish, but that whatever
deformity was in it, and served to exhibit the penal condition in
which we mortals are, should be restored in such a way that, while
the substance is entirely preserved, the deformity shall perish.
For if even a human workman, who has, for some reason, made a
deformed statue, can recast it and make it very beautiful, and this
without suffering any part of the substance, but only the deformity
to be lost,--if he can, for example, remove some unbecoming or
disproportionate part, not by cutting off and separating this part
from the whole, but by so breaking down and mixing up the whole as
to get rid of the blemish without diminishing the quantity of his
material,--shall we not think as highly of the almighty Worker? Shall
He not be able to remove and abolish all deformities of the human
body, whether common ones or rare and monstrous, which, though in
keeping with this miserable life, are yet not to be thought of in
connection with that future blessedness; and shall He not be able so
to remove them that, while the natural but unseemly blemishes are put
an end to, the natural substance shall suffer no diminution?
And consequently overgrown and emaciated persons need not fear that
they shall be in heaven of such a figure as they would not be even in
this world if they could help it. For all bodily beauty consists in
the proportion of the parts, together with a certain agreeableness
of colour. Where there is no proportion, the eye is offended, either
because there is something awanting, or too small, or too large. And
thus there shall be no deformity resulting from want of proportion
in that state in which all that is wrong is corrected, and all that
is defective supplied from resources the Creator wots of, and all
that is excessive removed without destroying the integrity of the
substance. And as for the pleasant colour, how conspicuous shall it
be where "the just shall shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of
their Father!"[1006] This brightness we must rather believe to have
been concealed from the eyes of the disciples when Christ rose, than
to have been awanting. For weak human eyesight could not bear it,
and it was necessary that they should so look upon Him as to be able
to recognise Him. For this purpose also He allowed them to touch the
marks of His wounds, and also ate and drank,--not because He needed
nourishment, but because He could take it if He wished. Now, when an
object, though present, is invisible to persons who see other things
which are present, as we say that that brightness was present but
invisible by those who saw other things, this is called in Greek
ἀορασία; and our Latin translators, for want of a better word, have
rendered this _cæcitas_ (blindness) in the book of Genesis. This
blindness the men of Sodom suffered when they sought the just Lot's
gate and could not find it. But if it had been blindness, that is
to say, if they could see nothing, then they would not have asked
for the gate by which they might enter the house, but for guides who
might lead them away.
But the love we bear to the blessed martyrs causes us, I know not
how, to desire to see in the heavenly kingdom the marks of the wounds
which they received for the name of Christ, and possibly we shall
see them. For this will not be a deformity, but a mark of honour,
and will add lustre to their appearance, and a spiritual, if not a
bodily beauty. And yet we need not believe that they to whom it has
been said, "Not a hair of your head shall perish," shall, in the
resurrection, want such of their members as they have been deprived
of in their martyrdom. But if it will be seemly in that new kingdom
to have some marks of these wounds still visible in that immortal
flesh, the places where they have been wounded or mutilated shall
retain the scars without any of the members being lost. While,
therefore, it is quite true that no blemishes which the body has
sustained shall appear in the resurrection, yet we are not to reckon
or name these marks of virtue blemishes.
20. _That, in the resurrection, the substance of our bodies,
however disintegrated, shall be entirely reunited._
Far be it from us to fear that the omnipotence of the Creator cannot,
for the resuscitation and reanimation of our bodies, recall all the
portions which have been consumed by beasts or fire, or have been
dissolved into dust or ashes, or have decomposed into water, or
evaporated into the air. Far from us be the thought, that anything
which escapes our observation in any most hidden recess of nature
either evades the knowledge or transcends the power of the Creator of
all things. Cicero, the great authority of our adversaries, wishing
to define God as accurately as possible, says, "God is a mind free
and independent, without materiality, perceiving and moving all
things, and itself endowed with eternal movement."[1007] This he
found in the systems of the greatest philosophers. Let me ask, then,
in their own language, how anything can either lie hid from Him who
perceives all things, or irrevocably escape Him who moves all things?
This leads me to reply to that question which seems the most difficult
of all,--To whom, in the resurrection, will belong the flesh of a
dead man which has become the flesh of a living man? For if some
one, famishing for want and pressed with hunger, use human flesh
as food,--an extremity not unknown, as both ancient history and
the unhappy experience of our own days have taught us,--can it be
contended, with any show of reason, that all the flesh eaten has been
evacuated, and that none of it has been assimilated to the substance
of the eater, though the very emaciation which existed before, and has
now disappeared, sufficiently indicates what large deficiencies have
been filled up with this food? But I have already made some remarks
which will suffice for the solution of this difficulty also. For all
the flesh which hunger has consumed finds its way into the air by
evaporation, whence, as we have said, God Almighty can recall it.
That flesh, therefore, shall be restored to the man in whom it first
became human flesh. For it must be looked upon as borrowed by the other
person, and, like a pecuniary loan, must be returned to the lender. His
own flesh, however, which he lost by famine, shall be restored to him
by Him who can recover even what has evaporated. And though it had been
absolutely annihilated, so that no part of its substance remained in
any secret spot of nature, the Almighty could restore it by such means
as He saw fit. For this sentence, uttered by the Truth, "Not a hair of
your head shall perish," forbids us to suppose that, though no hair of
a man's head can perish, yet the large portions of his flesh eaten and
consumed by the famishing can perish.
From all that we have thus considered, and discussed with such
poor ability as we can command, we gather this conclusion, that in
the resurrection of the flesh the body shall be of that size which
it either had attained or should have attained in the flower of
its youth, and shall enjoy the beauty that arises from preserving
symmetry and proportion in all its members. And it is reasonable
to suppose that, for the preservation of this beauty, any part of
the body's substance, which, if placed in one spot, would produce
a deformity, shall be distributed through the whole of it, so that
neither any part, nor the symmetry of the whole, may be lost, but
only the general stature of the body somewhat increased by the
distribution in all the parts of that which, in one place, would have
been unsightly. Or if it is contended that each will rise with the
same stature as that of the body he died in, we shall not obstinately
dispute this, provided only there be no deformity, no infirmity, no
languor, no corruption,--nothing of any kind which would ill become
that kingdom in which the children of the resurrection and of the
promise shall be equal to the angels of God, if not in body and age,
at least in happiness.
21. _Of the new spiritual body into which the flesh of the saints
shall be transformed._
Whatever, therefore, has been taken from the body, either during life
or after death, shall be restored to it, and, in conjunction with what
has remained in the grave, shall rise again, transformed from the
oldness of the animal body into the newness of the spiritual body, and
clothed in incorruption and immortality. But even though the body has
been all quite ground to powder by some severe accident, or by the
ruthlessness of enemies, and though it has been so diligently scattered
to the winds, or into the water, that there is no trace of it left,
yet it shall not be beyond the omnipotence of the Creator,--no, not
a hair of its head shall perish. The flesh shall then be spiritual,
and subject to the spirit, but still flesh, not spirit, as the spirit
itself, when subject to the flesh, was fleshly, but still spirit and
not flesh. And of this we have experimental proof in the deformity of
our penal condition. For those persons were carnal, not in a fleshly,
but in a spiritual way, to whom the apostle said, "I could not speak to
you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal."[1008] And a man is in this
life spiritual in such a way, that he is yet carnal with respect to
his body, and sees another law in his members warring against the law
of his mind; but even in his body he will be spiritual when the same
flesh shall have had that resurrection of which these words speak, "It
is sown an animal body, it shall rise a spiritual body."[1009] But what
this spiritual body shall be, and how great its grace, I fear it were
but rash to pronounce, seeing that we have as yet no experience of it.
Nevertheless, since it is fit that the joyfulness of our hope should
utter itself, and so show forth God's praise, and since it was from the
profoundest sentiment of ardent and holy love that the Psalmist cried,
"O Lord, I have loved the beauty of Thy house,"[1010] we may, with
God's help, speak of the gifts He lavishes on men, good and bad alike,
in this most wretched life, and may do our best to conjecture the
great glory of that state which we cannot worthily speak of, because
we have not yet experienced it. For I say nothing of the time when God
made man upright; I say nothing of the happy life of "the man and his
wife" in the fruitful garden, since it was so short that none of their
children experienced it: I speak only of this life which we know, and
in which we now are, from the temptations of which we cannot escape so
long as we are in it, no matter what progress we make, for it is all
temptation, and I ask, Who can describe the tokens of God's goodness
that are extended to the human race even in this life?
22. _Of the miseries and ills to which the human race is justly
exposed through the first sin, and from which none can be
delivered save by Christ's grace._
That the whole human race has been condemned in its first origin,
this life itself, if life it is to be called, bears witness by the
host of cruel ills with which it is filled. Is not this proved by
the profound and dreadful ignorance which produces all the errors
that enfold the children of Adam, and from which no man can be
delivered without toil, pain, and fear? Is it not proved by his love
of so many vain and hurtful things, which produces gnawing cares,
disquiet, griefs, fears, wild joys, quarrels, law-suits, wars,
treasons, angers, hatreds, deceit, flattery, fraud, theft, robbery,
perfidy, pride, ambition, envy, murders, parricides, cruelty,
ferocity, wickedness, luxury, insolence, impudence, shamelessness,
fornications, adulteries, incests, and the numberless uncleannesses
and unnatural acts of both sexes, which it is shameful so much as to
mention; sacrileges, heresies, blasphemies, perjuries, oppression
of the innocent, calumnies, plots, falsehoods, false witnessings,
unrighteous judgments, violent deeds, plunderings, and whatever
similar wickedness has found its way into the lives of men, though
it cannot find its way into the conception of pure minds? These are
indeed the crimes of wicked men, yet they spring from that root of
error and misplaced love which is born with every son of Adam. For
who is there that has not observed with what profound ignorance,
manifesting itself even in infancy, and with what superfluity of
foolish desires, beginning to appear in boyhood, man comes into this
life, so that, were he left to live as he pleased, and to do whatever
he pleased, he would plunge into all, or certainly into many of those
crimes and iniquities which I mentioned, and could not mention?
But because God does not wholly desert those whom He condemns,
nor shuts up in His anger His tender mercies, the human race is
restrained by law and instruction, which keep guard against the
ignorance that besets us, and oppose the assaults of vice, but
are themselves full of labour and sorrow. For what mean those
multifarious threats which are used to restrain the folly of
children? What mean pedagogues, masters, the birch, the strap, the
cane, the schooling which Scripture says must be given a child,
"beating him on the sides lest he wax stubborn,"[1011] and it be
hardly possible or not possible at all to subdue him? Why all
these punishments, save to overcome ignorance and bridle evil
desires--these evils with which we come into the world? For why is
it that we remember with difficulty, and without difficulty forget?
learn with difficulty, and without difficulty remain ignorant? are
diligent with difficulty, and without difficulty are indolent? Does
not this show what vitiated nature inclines and tends to by its
own weight, and what succour it needs if it is to be delivered?
Inactivity, sloth, laziness, negligence, are vices which shun labour,
since labour, though useful, is itself a punishment.
But, besides the punishments of childhood, without which there
would be no learning of what the parents wish,--and the parents
rarely wish anything useful to be taught,--who can describe, who can
conceive the number and severity of the punishments which afflict
the human race,--pains which are not only the accompaniment of the
wickedness of godless men, but are a part of the human condition
and the common misery,--what fear and what grief are caused by
bereavement and mourning, by losses and condemnations, by fraud
and falsehood, by false suspicions, and all the crimes and wicked
deeds of other men? For at their hands we suffer robbery, captivity,
chains, imprisonment, exile, torture, mutilation, loss of sight,
the violation of chastity to satisfy the lust of the oppressor, and
many other dreadful evils. What numberless casualties threaten our
bodies from without,--extremes of heat and cold, storms, floods,
inundations, lightning, thunder, hail, earthquakes, houses falling;
or from the stumbling, or shying, or vice of horses; from countless
poisons in fruits, water, air, animals; from the painful or even
deadly bites of wild animals; from the madness which a mad dog
communicates, so that even the animal which of all others is most
gentle and friendly to its own master, becomes an object of intenser
fear than a lion or dragon, and the man whom it has by chance
infected with this pestilential contagion becomes so rabid, that his
parents, wife, children, dread him more than any wild beast! What
disasters are suffered by those who travel by land or sea! What man
can go out of his own house without being exposed on all hands to
unforeseen accidents? Returning home sound in limb, he slips on his
own door-step, breaks his leg, and never recovers. What can seem
safer than a man sitting in his chair? Eli the priest fell from his,
and broke his neck. How many accidents do farmers, or rather all men,
fear that the crops may suffer from the weather, or the soil, or the
ravages of destructive animals? Commonly they feel safe when the
crops are gathered and housed. Yet, to my certain knowledge, sudden
floods have driven the labourers away, and swept the barns clean of
the finest harvest. Is innocence a sufficient protection against the
various assaults of demons? That no man might think so, even baptized
infants, who are certainly unsurpassed in innocence, are sometimes
so tormented, that God, who permits it, teaches us hereby to bewail
the calamities of this life, and to desire the felicity of the life
to come. As to bodily diseases, they are so numerous that they cannot
all be contained even in medical books. And in very many, or almost
all of them, the cures and remedies are themselves tortures, so that
men are delivered from a pain that destroys by a cure that pains. Has
not the madness of thirst driven men to drink human urine, and even
their own? Has not hunger driven men to eat human flesh, and that the
flesh not of bodies found dead, but of bodies slain for the purpose?
Have not the fierce pangs of famine driven mothers to eat their own
children, incredibly savage as it seems? In line, sleep itself, which
is justly called repose, how little of repose there sometimes is in
it when disturbed with dreams and visions; and with what terror is
the wretched mind overwhelmed by the appearances of things which are
so presented, and which, as it were, so stand out before the senses,
that we cannot distinguish them from realities! How wretchedly
do false appearances distract men in certain diseases! With what
astonishing variety of appearances are even healthy men sometimes
deceived by evil spirits, who produce these delusions for the sake
of perplexing the senses of their victims, if they cannot succeed in
seducing them to their side!
From this hell upon earth there is no escape, save through the grace
of the Saviour Christ, our God and Lord. The very name Jesus shows
this, for it means Saviour; and He saves us especially from passing
out of this life into a more wretched and eternal state, which is
rather a death than a life. For in this life, though holy men and
holy pursuits afford us great consolations, yet the blessings which
men crave are not invariably bestowed upon them, lest religion should
be cultivated for the sake of these temporal advantages, while it
ought rather to be cultivated for the sake of that other life from
which all evil is excluded. Therefore, also, does grace aid good
men in the midst of present calamities, so that they are enabled to
endure them with a constancy proportioned to their faith. The world's
sages affirm that philosophy contributes something to this,--that
philosophy which, according to Cicero, the gods have bestowed in its
purity only on a few men. They have never given, he says, nor can
ever give, a greater gift to men. So that even those against whom we
are disputing have been compelled to acknowledge, in some fashion,
that the grace of God is necessary for the acquisition, not, indeed,
of any philosophy, but of the true philosophy. And if the true
philosophy--this sole support against the miseries of this life--has
been given by Heaven only to a few, it sufficiently appears from
this that the human race has been condemned to pay this penalty of
wretchedness. And as, according to their acknowledgment, no greater
gift has been bestowed by God, so it must be believed that it could
be given only by that God whom they themselves recognise as greater
than all the gods they worship.
23. _Of the miseries of this life which attach peculiarly to the
toil of good men, irrespective of those which are common to the
good and bad._
But, irrespective of the miseries which in this life are common
to the good and bad, the righteous undergo labours peculiar to
themselves, in so far as they make war upon their vices, and are
involved in the temptations and perils of such a contest. For though
sometimes more violent and at other times slacker, yet without
intermission does the flesh lust against the spirit and the spirit
against the flesh, so that we cannot do the things we would,[1012]
and extirpate all lust, but can only refuse consent to it, as God
gives us ability, and so keep it under, vigilantly keeping watch
lest a semblance of truth deceive us, lest a subtle discourse blind
us, lest error involve us in darkness, lest we should take good for
evil or evil for good, lest fear should hinder us from doing what we
ought, or desire precipitate us into doing what we ought not, lest
the sun go down upon our wrath, lest hatred provoke us to render
evil for evil, lest unseemly or immoderate grief consume us, lest an
ungrateful disposition make us slow to recognise benefits received,
lest calumnies fret our conscience, lest rash suspicion on our part
deceive us regarding a friend, or false suspicion of us on the part
of others give us too much uneasiness, lest sin reign in our mortal
body to obey its desires, lest our members be used as the instruments
of unrighteousness, lest the eye follow lust, lest thirst for revenge
carry us away, lest sight or thought dwell too long on some evil
thing which gives us pleasure, lest wicked or indecent language be
willingly listened to, lest we do what is pleasant but unlawful, and
lest in this warfare, filled so abundantly with toil and peril, we
either hope to secure victory by our own strength, or attribute it
when secured to our own strength, and not to His grace of whom the
apostle says, "Thanks be unto God, who giveth us the victory through
our Lord Jesus Christ;"[1013] and in another place he says, "In all
these things we are more than conquerors through Him that loved
us."[1014] But yet we are to know this, that however valorously we
resist our vices, and however successful we are in overcoming them,
yet as long as we are in this body we have always reason to say to
God, "Forgive us our debts."[1015] But in that kingdom where we shall
dwell for ever, clothed in immortal bodies, we shall no longer have
either conflicts or debts,--as indeed we should not have had at any
time or in any condition, had our nature continued upright as it was
created. Consequently even this our conflict, in which we are exposed
to peril, and from which we hope to be delivered by a final victory,
belongs to the ills of this life, which is proved by the witness of
so many grave evils to be a life under condemnation.
24. _Of the blessings with which the Creator has filled this life,
obnoxious though it be to the curse._
But we must now contemplate the rich and countless blessings with
which the goodness of God, who cares for all He has created, has filled
this very misery of the human race, which reflects His retributive
justice. That first blessing which He pronounced before the fall, when
He said, "Increase, and multiply, and replenish the earth,"[1016] He
did not inhibit after man had sinned, but the fecundity originally
bestowed remained in the condemned stock; and the vice of sin, which
has involved us in the necessity of dying, has yet not deprived us of
that wonderful power of seed, or rather of that still more marvellous
power by which seed is produced, and which seems to be as it were
inwrought and inwoven in the human body. But in this river, as I may
call it, or torrent of the human race, both elements are carried along
together,--both the evil which is derived from him who begets, and
the good which is bestowed by Him who creates us. In the original
evil there are two things, sin and punishment; in the original good,
there are two other things, propagation and conformation. But of the
evils, of which the one, sin, arose from our audacity, and the other,
punishment, from God's judgment, we have already said as much as suits
our present purpose. I mean now to speak of the blessings which God has
conferred or still confers upon our nature, vitiated and condemned as
it is. For in condemning it He did not withdraw all that He had given
it, else it had been annihilated; neither did He, in penally subjecting
it to the devil, remove it beyond His own power; for not even the
devil himself is outside of God's government, since the devil's nature
subsists only by the supreme Creator, who gives being to all that in
any form exists.
Of these two blessings, then, which we have said flow from God's
goodness, as from a fountain, towards our nature, vitiated by sin
and condemned to punishment, the one, propagation, was conferred
by God's benediction when He made those first works, from which He
rested on the seventh day. But the other, conformation, is conferred
in that work of His wherein "He worketh hitherto."[1017] For were He
to withdraw His efficacious power from things, they should neither
be able to go on and complete the periods assigned to their measured
movements, nor should they even continue in possession of that
nature they were created in. God, then, so created man that He gave
him what we may call fertility, whereby he might propagate other
men, giving them a congenital capacity to propagate their kind,
but not imposing on them any necessity to do so. This capacity God
withdraws at pleasure from individuals, making them barren; but from
the whole race He has not withdrawn the blessing of propagation once
conferred. But though not withdrawn on account of sin, this power
of propagation is not what it would have been had there been no
sin. For since "man placed in honour fell, he has become like the
beasts,"[1018] and generates as they do, though the little spark
of reason, which was the image of God in him, has not been quite
quenched. But if conformation were not added to propagation, there
would be no reproduction of one's kind. For even though there were no
such thing as copulation, and God wished to fill the earth with human
inhabitants, He might create all these as He created one without
the help of human generation. And, indeed, even as it is, those who
copulate can generate nothing save by the creative energy of God.
As, therefore, in respect of that spiritual growth whereby a man is
formed to piety and righteousness, the apostle says, "Neither is
he that planteth anything, neither he that watereth, but God that
giveth the increase,"[1019] so also it must be said that it is not he
that generates that is anything, but God that giveth the essential
form; that it is not the mother who carries and nurses the fruit of
her womb that is anything, but God that giveth the increase. For He
alone, by that energy wherewith "He worketh hitherto," causes the
seed to develope, and to evolve from certain secret and invisible
folds into the visible forms of beauty which we see. He alone,
coupling and connecting in some wonderful fashion the spiritual and
corporeal natures, the one to command, the other to obey, makes
a living being. And this work of His is so great and wonderful,
that not only man, who is a rational animal, and consequently
more excellent than all other animals of the earth, but even the
most diminutive insect, cannot be considered attentively without
astonishment and without praising the Creator.
It is He, then, who has given to the human soul a mind, in which
reason and understanding lie as it were asleep during infancy, and as
if they were not, destined, however, to be awakened and exercised as
years increase, so as to become capable of knowledge and of receiving
instruction, fit to understand what is true and to love what is good.
It is by this capacity the soul drinks in wisdom, and becomes endowed
with those virtues by which, in prudence, fortitude, temperance,
and righteousness, it makes war upon error and the other inborn
vices, and conquers them by fixing its desires upon no other object
than the supreme and unchangeable Good. And even though this be not
uniformly the result, yet who can competently utter or even conceive
the grandeur of this work of the Almighty, and the unspeakable boon
He has conferred upon our rational nature, by giving us even the
capacity of such attainment? For over and above those arts which
are called virtues, and which teach us how we may spend our life
well, and attain to endless happiness,--arts which are given to the
children of the promise and the kingdom by the sole grace of God
which is in Christ,--has not the genius of man invented and applied
countless astonishing arts, partly the result of necessity, partly
the result of exuberant invention, so that this vigour of mind, which
is so active in the discovery not merely of superfluous but even of
dangerous and destructive things, betokens an inexhaustible wealth
in the nature which can invent, learn, or employ such arts? What
wonderful--one might say stupefying--advances has human industry made
in the arts of weaving and building, of agriculture and navigation!
With what endless variety are designs in pottery, painting, and
sculpture produced, and with what skill executed! What wonderful
spectacles are exhibited in the theatres, which those who have not
seen them cannot credit! How skilful the contrivances for catching,
killing, or taming wild beasts! And for the injury of men, also,
how many kinds of poisons, weapons, engines of destruction, have
been invented, while for the preservation or restoration of health
the appliances and remedies are infinite! To provoke appetite and
please the palate, what a variety of seasonings have been concocted!
To express and gain entrance for thoughts, what a multitude and
variety of signs there are, among which speaking and writing hold the
first place! what ornaments has eloquence at command to delight the
mind! what wealth of song is there to captivate the ear! how many
musical instruments and strains of harmony have been devised! What
skill has been attained in measures and numbers! with what sagacity
have the movements and connections of the stars been discovered!
Who could tell the thought that has been spent upon nature, even
though, despairing of recounting it in detail, he endeavoured only
to give a general view of it? In fine, even the defence of errors
and misapprehensions, which has illustrated the genius of heretics
and philosophers, cannot be sufficiently declared. For at present
it is the nature of the human mind which adorns this mortal life
which we are extolling, and not the faith and the way of truth which
lead to immortality. And since this great nature has certainly been
created by the true and supreme God, who administers all things
He has made with absolute power and justice, it could never have
fallen into these miseries, nor have gone out of them to miseries
eternal,--saving only those who are redeemed,--had not an exceeding
great sin been found in the first man from whom the rest have sprung.
Moreover, even in the body, though it dies like that of the beasts,
and is in many ways weaker than theirs, what goodness of God, what
providence of the great Creator, is apparent! The organs of sense and
the rest of the members, are not they so placed, the appearance, and
form, and stature of the body as a whole, is it not so fashioned,
as to indicate that it was made for the service of a reasonable
soul? Man has not been created stooping towards the earth, like
the irrational animals; but his bodily form, erect and looking
heavenwards, admonishes him to mind the things that are above. Then
the marvellous nimbleness which has been given to the tongue and the
hands, fitting them to speak, and write, and execute so many duties,
and practise so many arts, does it not prove the excellence of the
soul for which such an assistant was provided? And even apart from
its adaptation to the work required of it, there is such a symmetry
in its various parts, and so beautiful a proportion maintained, that
one is at a loss to decide whether, in creating the body, greater
regard was paid to utility or to beauty. Assuredly no part of the
body has been created for the sake of utility which does not also
contribute something to its beauty. And this would be all the more
apparent, if we knew more precisely how all its parts are connected
and adapted to one another, and were not limited in our observations
to what appears on the surface; for as to what is covered up and
hidden from our view, the intricate web of veins and nerves, the
vital parts of all that lies under the skin, no one can discover
it. For although, with a cruel zeal for science, some medical men,
who are called anatomists, have dissected the bodies of the dead,
and sometimes even of sick persons who died under their knives, and
have inhumanly pried into the secrets of the human body to learn
the nature of the disease and its exact seat, and how it might be
cured, yet those relations of which I speak, and which form the
concord,[1020] or, as the Greeks call it, "harmony," of the whole
body outside and in, as of some instrument, no one has been able to
discover, because no one has been audacious enough to seek for them.
But if these could be known, then even the inward parts, which seem
to have no beauty, would so delight us with their exquisite fitness,
as to afford a profounder satisfaction to the mind--and the eyes are
but its ministers--than the obvious beauty which gratifies the eye.
There are some things, too, which have such a place in the body, that
they obviously serve no useful purpose, but are solely for beauty,
as _e.g._ the teats on a man's breast, or the beard on his face; for
that this is for ornament, and not for protection, is proved by the
bare faces of women, who ought rather, as the weaker sex, to enjoy
such a defence. If, therefore, of all those members which are exposed
to our view, there is certainly not one in which beauty is sacrificed
to utility, while there are some which serve no purpose but only
beauty, I think it can readily be concluded that in the creation of
the human body comeliness was more regarded than necessity. In truth,
necessity is a transitory thing; and the time is coming when we shall
enjoy one another's beauty without any lust,--a condition which will
specially redound to the praise of the Creator, who, as it is said in
the psalm, has "put on praise and comeliness."[1021]
How can I tell of the rest of creation, with all its beauty and
utility, which the divine goodness has given to man to please his
eye and serve his purposes, condemned though he is, and hurled into
these labours and miseries? Shall I speak of the manifold and various
loveliness of sky, and earth, and sea; of the plentiful supply
and wonderful qualities of the light; of sun, moon, and stars; of
the shade of trees; of the colours and perfume of flowers; of the
multitude of birds, all differing in plumage and in song; of the
variety of animals, of which the smallest in size are often the
most wonderful,--the works of ants and bees astonishing us more
than the huge bodies of whales? Shall I speak of the sea, which
itself is so grand a spectacle, when it arrays itself as it were
in vestures of various colours, now running through every shade of
green, and again becoming purple or blue? Is it not delightful to
look at it in storm, and experience the soothing complacency which
it inspires, by suggesting that we ourselves are not tossed and
shipwrecked?[1022] What shall I say of the numberless kinds of food
to alleviate hunger, and the variety of seasonings to stimulate
appetite which are scattered everywhere by nature, and for which we
are not indebted to the art of cookery? How many natural appliances
are there for preserving and restoring health! How grateful is the
alternation of day and night! how pleasant the breezes that cool the
air! how abundant the supply of clothing furnished us by trees and
animals! Who can enumerate all the blessings we enjoy? If I were to
attempt to detail and unfold only these few which I have indicated
in the mass, such an enumeration would fill a volume. And all these
are but the solace of the wretched and condemned, not the rewards
of the blessed. What then shall these rewards be, if such be the
blessings of a condemned state? What will He give to those whom He
has predestined to life, who has given such things even to those whom
He has predestined to death? What blessings will He in the blessed
life shower upon those for whom, even in this state of misery, He has
been willing that His only-begotten Son should endure such sufferings
even to death? Thus the apostle reasons concerning those who are
predestined to that kingdom: "He that spared not His own Son, but
delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also give us
all things?"[1023] When this promise is fulfilled, what shall we be?
What blessings shall we receive in that kingdom, since already we
have received as the pledge of them Christ's dying? In what condition
shall the spirit of man be, when it has no longer any vice at all;
when it neither yields to any, nor is in bondage to any, nor has to
make war against any, but is perfected, and enjoys undisturbed peace
with itself? Shall it not then know all things with certainty, and
without any labour or error, when unhindered and joyfully it drinks
the wisdom of God at the fountainhead? What shall the body be, when
it is in every respect subject to the spirit, from which it shall
draw a life so sufficient, as to stand in need of no other nutriment?
For it shall no longer be animal, but spiritual, having indeed the
substance of flesh, but without any fleshly corruption.
25. _Of the obstinacy of those individuals who impugn the
resurrection of the body, though, as was predicted, the whole
world believes it._
The foremost of the philosophers agree with us about the spiritual
felicity enjoyed by the blessed in the life to come; it is only
the resurrection of the flesh they call in question, and with all
their might deny. But the mass of men, learned and unlearned, the
world's wise men and its fools, have believed, and have left in
meagre isolation the unbelievers, and have turned to Christ, who in
His own resurrection demonstrated the reality of that which seems to
our adversaries absurd. For the world has believed this which God
predicted, as it was also predicted that the world would believe,--a
prediction not due to the sorceries of Peter,[1024] since it was
uttered so long before. He who has predicted these things, as I have
already said, and am not ashamed to repeat, is the God before whom
all other divinities tremble, as Porphyry himself owns, and seeks to
prove, by testimonies from the oracles of these gods, and goes so far
as to call Him God the Father and King. Far be it from us to interpret
these predictions as they do who have not believed, along with the
whole world, in that which it was predicted the world would believe in.
For why should we not rather understand them as the world does, whose
belief was predicted, and leave that handful of unbelievers to their
idle talk and obstinate and solitary infidelity? For if they maintain
that they interpret them differently only to avoid charging Scripture
with folly, and so doing an injury to that God to whom they bear so
notable a testimony, is it not a much greater injury they do Him when
they say that His predictions must be understood otherwise than the
world believed them, though He Himself praised, promised, accomplished
this belief on the world's part? And why cannot He cause the body to
rise again, and live for ever? or is it not to be believed that He
will do this, because it is an undesirable thing, and unworthy of God?
Of His omnipotence, which effects so many great miracles, we have
already said enough. If they wish to know what the Almighty cannot do,
I shall tell them He cannot lie. Let us therefore believe what He can
do, by refusing to believe what He cannot do. Refusing to believe that
He can lie, let them believe that He will do what He has promised to
do; and let them believe it as the world has believed it, whose faith
He predicted, whose faith He praised, whose faith He promised, whose
faith He now points to. But how do they prove that the resurrection is
an undesirable thing? There shall then be no corruption, which is the
only evil thing about the body. I have already said enough about the
order of the elements, and the other fanciful objections men raise;
and in the thirteenth book I have, in my own judgment, sufficiently
illustrated the facility of movement which the incorruptible body shall
enjoy, judging from the ease and vigour we experience even now, when
the body is in good health. Those who have either not read the former
books, or wish to refresh their memory, may read them for themselves.
26. _That the opinion of Porphyry, that the soul, in order to
be blessed, must be separated from every kind of body, is
demolished by Plato, who says that the supreme God promised the
gods that they should never be ousted from their bodies._
But, say they, Porphyry tells us that the soul, in order to be
blessed, must escape connection with every kind of body. It does not
avail, therefore, to say that the future body shall be incorruptible,
if the soul cannot be blessed till delivered from every kind of
body. But in the book above mentioned I have already sufficiently
discussed this. This one thing only will I repeat,--let Plato, their
master, correct his writings, and say that their gods, in order to be
blessed, must quit their bodies, or, in other words, die; for he said
that they were shut up in celestial bodies, and that, nevertheless,
the God who made them promised them immortality,--that is to say, an
eternal tenure of these same bodies, such as was not provided for
them naturally, but only by the further intervention of His will,
that thus they might be assured of felicity. In this he obviously
overturns their assertion that the resurrection of the body cannot be
believed because it is impossible; for, according to him, when the
uncreated God promised immortality to the created gods, He expressly
said that He would do what was impossible. For Plato tells us that
He said, "As ye have had a beginning, so you cannot be immortal and
incorruptible; yet ye shall not decay, nor shall any fate destroy
you or prove stronger than my will, which more effectually binds
you to immortality than the bond of your nature keeps you from it."
If they who hear these words have, we do not say understanding, but
ears, they cannot doubt that Plato believed that God promised to the
gods He had made that He would effect an impossibility. For He who
says, "Ye cannot be immortal, but by my will ye shall be immortal,"
what else does He say than this, "I shall make you what ye cannot
be?" The body, therefore, shall be raised incorruptible, immortal,
spiritual, by Him who, according to Plato, has promised to do that
which is impossible. Why then do they still exclaim that this which
God has promised, which the world has believed on God's promise as
was predicted, is an impossibility? For what we say is, that the God
who, even according to Plato, does impossible things, will do this.
It is not, then, necessary to the blessedness of the soul that it be
detached from a body of any kind whatever, but that it receive an
incorruptible body. And in what incorruptible body will they more
suitably rejoice than in that in which they groaned when it was
corruptible? For thus they shall not feel that dire craving which
Virgil, in imitation of Plato, has ascribed to them when he says that
they wish to return again to their bodies.[1025] They shall not, I
say, feel this desire to return to their bodies, since they shall
have those bodies to which a return was desired, and shall, indeed,
be in such thorough possession of them, that they shall never lose
them even for the briefest moment, nor ever lay them down in death.
27. _Of the apparently conflicting opinions of Plato and Porphyry,
which would have conducted them both to the truth if they could
have yielded to one another._
Statements were made by Plato and Porphyry singly, which if they
could have seen their way to hold in common, they might possibly
have become Christians. Plato said that souls could not exist
eternally without bodies; for it was on this account, he said, that
the souls even of wise men must some time or other return to their
bodies. Porphyry, again, said that the purified soul, when it has
returned to the Father, shall never return to the ills of this
world. Consequently, if Plato had communicated to Porphyry that
which he saw to be true, that souls, though perfectly purified, and
belonging to the wise and righteous, must return to human bodies; and
if Porphyry, again, had imparted to Plato the truth which he saw,
that holy souls shall never return to the miseries of a corruptible
body, so that they should not have each held only his own opinion,
but should both have held both truths, I think they would have seen
that it follows that the souls return to their bodies, and also that
these bodies shall be such as to afford them a blessed and immortal
life. For, according to Plato, even holy souls shall return to the
body; according to Porphyry, holy souls shall not return to the ills
of this world. Let Porphyry then say with Plato, they shall return
to the body; let Plato say with Porphyry, they shall not return to
their old misery: and they will agree that they return to bodies in
which they shall suffer no more. And this is nothing else than what
God has promised,--that He will give eternal felicity to souls joined
to their own bodies. For this, I presume, both of them would readily
concede, that if the souls of the saints are to be reunited to
bodies, it shall be to their own bodies, in which they have endured
the miseries of this life, and in which, to escape these miseries,
they served God with piety and fidelity.
28. _What Plato or Labeo, or even Varro, might have contributed to
the true faith of the resurrection, if they had adopted one
another's opinions into one scheme._
Some Christians, who have a liking for Plato on account of his
magnificent style and the truths which he now and then uttered,
say that he even held an opinion similar to our own regarding the
resurrection of the dead. Cicero, however, alluding to this in his
_Republic_, asserts that Plato meant it rather as a playful fancy
than as a reality; for he introduces a man[1026] who had come to
life again, and gave a narrative of his experience in corroboration
of the doctrines of Plato. Labeo, too, says that two men died on one
day, and met at a cross-road, and that, being afterwards ordered to
return to their bodies, they agreed to be friends for life, and were
so till they died again. But the resurrection which these writers
instance resembles that of those persons whom we have ourselves known
to rise again, and who came back indeed to this life, but not so as
never to die again. Marcus Varro, however, in his work _On the Origin
of the Roman People_, records something more remarkable; I think his
own words should be given. "Certain astrologers," he says, "have
written that men are destined to a new birth, which the Greeks call
_palingenesy_. This will take place after four hundred and forty
years have elapsed; and then the same soul and the same body, which
were formerly united in the person, shall again be reunited." This
Varro, indeed, or those nameless astrologers,--for he does not give
us the names of the men whose statement he cites,--have affirmed
what is indeed not altogether true; for once the souls have returned
to the bodies they wore, they shall never afterwards leave them. Yet
what they say upsets and demolishes much of that idle talk of our
adversaries about the impossibility of the resurrection. For those
who have been or are of this opinion, have not thought it possible
that bodies which have dissolved into air, or dust, or ashes, or
water, or into the bodies of the beasts or even of the men that fed
on them, should be restored again to that which they formerly were.
And therefore, if Plato and Porphyry, or rather, if their disciples
now living, agree with us that holy souls shall return to the body,
as Plato says, and that, nevertheless, they shall not return to
misery, as Porphyry maintains,--if they accept the consequence of
these two propositions which is taught by the Christian faith, that
they shall receive bodies in which they may live eternally without
suffering any misery,--let them also adopt from Varro the opinion
that they shall return to the same bodies as they were formerly in,
and thus the whole question of the eternal resurrection of the body
shall be resolved out of their own mouths.
29. _Of the beatific vision._
And now let us consider, with such ability as God may vouchsafe, how
the saints shall be employed when they are clothed in immortal and
spiritual bodies, and when the flesh shall live no longer in a fleshly
but a spiritual fashion. And indeed, to tell the truth, I am at a
loss to understand the nature of that employment, or, shall I rather
say, repose and ease, for it has never come within the range of my
bodily senses. And if I should speak of my mind or understanding,
what is our understanding in comparison of its excellence? For then
shall be that "peace of God which," as the apostle says, "passeth all
understanding,"[1027]--that is to say, all human, and perhaps all
angelic understanding, but certainly not the divine. That it passeth
ours there is no doubt; but if it passeth that of the angels,--and he
who says "_all_ understanding" seems to make no exception in their
favour,--then we must understand him to mean that neither we nor the
angels can understand, as God understands, the peace which God Himself
enjoys. Doubtless this passeth all understanding but His own. But as
we shall one day be made to participate, according to our slender
capacity, in His peace, both in ourselves, and with our neighbour, and
with God our chief good, in this respect the angels understand the
peace of God in their own measure, and men too, though now far behind
them, whatever spiritual advance they have made. For we must remember
how great a man he was who said, "We know in part, and we prophesy
in part, until that which is perfect is come;"[1028] and "Now we see
through a glass, darkly; but then face to face."[1029] Such also is now
the vision of the holy angels, who are also called our angels, because
we, being rescued out of the power of darkness, and receiving the
earnest of the Spirit, are translated into the kingdom of Christ, and
already begin to belong to those angels with whom we shall enjoy that
holy and most delightful city of God of which we have now written so
much. Thus, then, the angels of God are our angels, as Christ is God's
and also ours. They are God's, because they have not abandoned Him;
they are ours, because we are their fellow-citizens. The Lord Jesus
also said, "See that ye despise not one of these little ones: for I
say unto you, That in heaven their angels do always see the face of my
Father which is in heaven."[1030] As, then, they see, so shall we also
see; but not yet do we thus see. Wherefore the apostle uses the words
cited a little ago, "Now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face
to face." This vision is reserved as the reward of our faith; and of
it the Apostle John also says, "When He shall appear, we shall be like
Him, for we shall see Him as He is."[1031] By "the face" of God we are
to understand His manifestation, and not a part of the body similar to
that which in our bodies we call by that name.
And so, when I am asked how the saints shall be employed in that
spiritual body, I do not say what I see, but I say what I believe,
according to that which I read in the psalm, "I believed, therefore
have I spoken."[1032] I say, then, they shall in the body see God;
but whether they shall see Him by means of the body, as now we see
the sun, moon, stars, sea, earth, and all that is in it, that is a
difficult question. For it is hard to say that the saints shall then
have such bodies that they shall not be able to shut and open their
eyes as they please; while it is harder still to say that every
one who shuts his eyes shall lose the vision of God. For if the
prophet Elisha, though at a distance, saw his servant Gehazi, who
thought that his wickedness would escape his master's observation
and accepted gifts from Naaman the Syrian, whom the prophet had
cleansed from his foul leprosy, how much more shall the saints in the
spiritual body see all things, not only though their eyes be shut,
but though they themselves be at a great distance? For then shall
be "that which is perfect," of which the apostle says, "We know in
part, and we prophesy in part; but when that which is perfect is
come, then that which is in part shall be done away." Then, that he
may illustrate as well as possible, by a simile, how superior the
future life is to the life now lived, not only by ordinary men, but
even by the foremost of the saints, he says, "When I was a child,
I understood as a child, I spake as a child, I thought as a child;
but when I became a man, I put away childish things. Now we see
through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part;
but then shall I know even as also I am known."[1033] If, then, even
in this life, in which the prophetic power of remarkable men is no
more worthy to be compared to the vision of the future life than
childhood is to manhood, Elisha, though distant from his servant, saw
him accepting gifts, shall we say that when that which is perfect
is come, and the corruptible body no longer oppresses the soul, but
is incorruptible and offers no impediment to it, the saints shall
need bodily eyes to see, though Elisha had no need of them to see
his servant? For, following the Septuagint version, these are the
prophet's words: "Did not my heart go with thee, when the man came
out of his chariot to meet thee, and thou tookedst his gifts?"[1034]
Or, as the presbyter Jerome rendered it from the Hebrew, "Was not my
heart present when the man turned from his chariot to meet thee?" The
prophet said that he saw this with his heart, miraculously aided
by God, as no one can doubt. But how much more abundantly shall the
saints enjoy this gift when God shall be all in all? Nevertheless the
bodily eyes also shall have their office and their place, and shall
be used by the spirit through the spiritual body. For the prophet
did not forego the use of his eyes for seeing what was before them,
though he did not need them to see his absent servant, and though he
could have seen these present objects in spirit, and with his eyes
shut, as he saw things far distant in a place where he himself was
not. Far be it, then, from us to say that in the life to come the
saints shall not see God when their eyes are shut, since they shall
always see Him with the spirit.
But the question arises, whether, when their eyes are open, they
shall see Him with the bodily eye? If the eyes of the spiritual body
have no more power than the eyes which we now possess, manifestly
God cannot be seen with them. They must be of a very different power
if they can look upon that incorporeal nature which is not contained
in any place, but is all in every place. For though we say that God
is in heaven and on earth, as He Himself says by the prophet, "I
fill heaven and earth,"[1035] we do not mean that there is one part
of God in heaven and another part on earth; but He is all in heaven
and all on earth, not at alternate intervals of time, but both at
once, as no bodily nature can be. The eye, then, shall have a vastly
superior power,--the power not of keen sight, such as is ascribed
to serpents or eagles, for however keenly these animals see, they
can discern nothing but bodily substances,--but the power of seeing
things incorporeal. Possibly it was this great power of vision which
was temporarily communicated to the eyes of the holy Job while yet
in this mortal body, when he says to God, "I have heard of Thee by
the hearing of the ear; but now mine eye seeth Thee: wherefore I
abhor myself, and melt away, and count myself dust and ashes;"[1036]
although there is no reason why we should not understand this of the
eye of the heart, of which the apostle says, "Having the eyes of your
heart illuminated."[1037] But that God shall be seen with these eyes
no Christian doubts who believingly accepts what our God and Master
says, "Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God."[1038]
But whether in the future life God shall also be seen with the bodily
eye, this is now our question.
The expression of Scripture, "And all flesh shall see the salvation
of God,"[1039] may without difficulty be understood as if it were
said, "And every man shall see the Christ of God." And He certainly
was seen in the body, and shall be seen in the body when He judges
quick and dead. And that Christ is the salvation of God, many
other passages of Scripture witness, but especially the words of
the venerable Simeon, who, when he had received into his hands the
infant Christ, said, "Now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace,
according to Thy word: for mine eyes have seen Thy salvation."[1040]
As for the words of the above-mentioned Job, as they are found in the
Hebrew manuscripts, "And in my flesh I shall see God,"[1041] no doubt
they were a prophecy of the resurrection of the flesh; yet he does
not say "_by_ the flesh." And indeed, if he had said this, it would
still be possible that Christ was meant by "God;" for Christ shall be
seen by the flesh in the flesh. But even understanding it of God, it
is only equivalent to saying, I shall be in the flesh when I see God.
Then the apostle's expression, "face to face,"[1042] does not oblige
us to believe that we shall see God by the bodily face in which are
the eyes of the body, for we shall see Him without intermission in
spirit. And if the apostle had not referred to the face of the inner
man, he would not have said, "But we, with unveiled face beholding
as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are transformed into the same
image, from glory to glory, as by the Spirit of the Lord."[1043] In
the same sense we understand what the Psalmist sings, "Draw near unto
Him, and be enlightened; and your faces shall not be ashamed."[1044]
For it is by faith we draw near to God, and faith is an act of
the spirit, not of the body. But as we do not know what degree of
perfection the spiritual body shall attain,--for here we speak of a
matter of which we have no experience, and upon which the authority
of Scripture does not definitely pronounce,--it is necessary that
the words of the Book of Wisdom be illustrated in us: "The thoughts
of mortal men are timid, and our forecastings uncertain."[1045]
For if that reasoning of the philosophers, by which they attempt
to make out that intelligible or mental objects are so seen by the
mind, and sensible or bodily objects so seen by the body, that the
former cannot be discerned by the mind through the body, nor the
latter by the mind itself without the body,--if this reasoning were
trustworthy, then it would certainly follow that God could not be
seen by the eye even of a spiritual body. But this reasoning is
exploded both by true reason and by prophetic authority. For who
is so little acquainted with the truth as to say that God has no
cognisance of sensible objects? Has He therefore a body, the eyes
of which give Him this knowledge? Moreover, what we have just been
relating of the prophet Elisha, does this not sufficiently show that
bodily things can be discerned by the spirit without the help of the
body? For when that servant received the gifts, certainly this was
a bodily or material transaction, yet the prophet saw it not by the
body, but by the spirit. As, therefore, it is agreed that bodies are
seen by the spirit, what if the power of the spiritual body shall be
so great that spirit also is seen by the body? For God is a spirit.
Besides, each man recognises his own life--that life by which he
now lives in the body, and which vivifies these earthly members and
causes them to grow--by an interior sense, and not by his bodily eye;
but the life of other men, though it is invisible, he sees with the
bodily eye. For how do we distinguish between living and dead bodies,
except by seeing at once both the body and the life which we cannot
see save by the eye? But a life without a body we cannot see thus.
Wherefore it may very well be, and it is thoroughly credible, that
we shall in the future world see the material forms of the new
heavens and the new earth in such a way that we shall most distinctly
recognise God everywhere present and governing all things, material
as well as spiritual, and shall see Him, not as now we understand the
invisible things of God, by the things which are made,[1046] and see
Him darkly, as in a mirror, and in part, and rather by faith than
by bodily vision of material appearances, but by means of the bodies
we shall wear and which we shall see wherever we turn our eyes. As
we do not believe, but see that the living men around us who are
exercising vital functions are alive, though we cannot see their life
without their bodies, but see it most distinctly by means of their
bodies, so, wherever we shall look with those spiritual eyes of our
future bodies, we shall then, too, by means of bodily substances
behold God, though a spirit, ruling all things. Either, therefore,
the eyes shall possess some quality similar to that of the mind, by
which they may be able to discern spiritual things, and among these
God,--a supposition for which it is difficult or even impossible to
find any support in Scripture,--or, which is more easy to comprehend,
God will be so known by us, and shall be so much before us, that we
shall see Him by the spirit in ourselves, in one another, in Himself,
in the new heavens and the new earth, in every created thing which
shall then exist; and also by the body we shall see Him in every
body which the keen vision of the eye of the spiritual body shall
reach. Our thoughts also shall be visible to all, for then shall be
fulfilled the words of the apostle, "Judge nothing before the time,
until the Lord come, who both will bring to light the hidden things
of darkness, and will make manifest the thoughts of the heart, and
then shall every one have praise of God."[1047]
30. _Of the eternal felicity of the city of God, and of the
perpetual Sabbath._
How great shall be that felicity, which shall be tainted with no evil,
which shall lack no good, and which shall afford leisure for the
praises of God, who shall be all in all! For I know not what other
employment there can be where no lassitude shall slacken activity, nor
any want stimulate to labour. I am admonished also by the sacred song,
in which I read or hear the words, "Blessed are they that dwell in Thy
house, O Lord; they will be still praising Thee."[1048] All the members
and organs of the incorruptible body, which now we see to be suited to
various necessary uses, shall contribute to the praises of God; for in
that life necessity shall have no place, but full, certain, secure,
everlasting felicity. For all those parts[1049] of the bodily harmony,
which are distributed through the whole body, within and without,
and of which I have just been saying that they at present elude our
observation, shall then be discerned; and, along with the other great
and marvellous discoveries which shall then kindle rational minds in
praise of the great Artificer, there shall be the enjoyment of a beauty
which appeals to the reason. What power of movement such bodies shall
possess, I have not the audacity rashly to define, as I have not the
ability to conceive. Nevertheless I will say that in any case, both in
motion and at rest, they shall be, as in their appearance, seemly; for
into that state nothing which is unseemly shall be admitted. One thing
is certain, the body shall forthwith be wherever the spirit wills, and
the spirit shall will nothing which is unbecoming either to the spirit
or to the body. True honour shall be there, for it shall be denied
to none who is worthy, nor yielded to any unworthy; neither shall
any unworthy person so much as sue for it, for none but the worthy
shall be there. True peace shall be there, where no one shall suffer
opposition either from himself or any other. God Himself, who is the
Author of virtue, shall there be its reward; for, as there is nothing
greater or better, He has promised Himself. What else was meant by
His word through the prophet, "I will be your God, and ye shall be my
people,"[1050] than, I shall be their satisfaction, I shall be all that
men honourably desire,--life, and health, and nourishment, and plenty,
and glory, and honour, and peace, and all good things? This, too, is
the right interpretation of the saying of the apostle, "That God may
be all in all."[1051] He shall be the end of our desires who shall
be seen without end, loved without cloy, praised without weariness.
This outgoing of affection, this employment, shall certainly be, like
eternal life itself, common to all.
But who can conceive, not to say describe, what degrees of honour
and glory shall be awarded to the various degrees of merit? Yet it
cannot be doubted that there shall be degrees. And in that blessed
city there shall be this great blessing, that no inferior shall envy
any superior, as now the archangels are not envied by the angels,
because no one will wish to be what he has not received, though
bound in strictest concord with him who has received; as in the body
the finger does not seek to be the eye, though both members are
harmoniously included in the complete structure of the body. And
thus, along with his gift, greater or less, each shall receive this
further gift of contentment to desire no more than he has.
Neither are we to suppose that because sin shall have no power to
delight them, free will must be withdrawn. It will, on the contrary,
be all the more truly free, because set free from delight in sinning
to take unfailing delight in not sinning. For the first freedom of
will which man received when he was created upright consisted in an
ability not to sin, but also in an ability to sin; whereas this last
freedom of will shall be superior, inasmuch as it shall not be able
to sin. This, indeed, shall not be a natural ability, but the gift of
God. For it is one thing to be God, another thing to be a partaker
of God. God by nature cannot sin, but the partaker of God receives
this inability from God. And in this divine gift there was to be
observed this gradation, that man should first receive a free will
by which he was able not to sin, and at last a free will by which he
was not able to sin,--the former being adapted to the acquiring of
merit, the latter to the enjoying of the reward.[1052] But the nature
thus constituted, having sinned when it had the ability to do so,
it is by a more abundant grace that it is delivered so as to reach
that freedom in which it cannot sin. For as the first immortality
which Adam lost by sinning consisted in his being able not to die,
while the last shall consist in his not being able to die; so the
first free will consisted in his being able not to sin, the last in
his not being able to sin. And thus piety and justice shall be as
indefeasible as happiness. For certainly by sinning we lost both
piety and happiness; but when we lost happiness, we did not lose the
love of it. Are we to say that God Himself is not free because He
cannot sin? In that city, then, there shall be free will, one in all
the citizens, and indivisible in each, delivered from all ill, Filled
with all good, enjoying indefeasibly the delights of eternal joys,
oblivious of sins, oblivious of sufferings, and yet not so oblivious
of its deliverance as to be ungrateful to its Deliverer.
The soul, then, shall have an intellectual remembrance of its past
ills; but, so far as regards sensible experience, they shall be quite
forgotten. For a skilful physician knows, indeed, professionally
almost all diseases; but experimentally he is ignorant of a great
number which he himself has never suffered from. As, therefore, there
are two ways of knowing evil things,--one by mental insight, the
other by sensible experience, for it is one thing to understand all
vices by the wisdom of a cultivated mind, another to understand them
by the foolishness of an abandoned life,--so also there are two ways
of forgetting evils. For a well-instructed and learned man forgets
them one way, and he who has experimentally suffered from them
forgets them another,--the former by neglecting what he has learned,
the latter by escaping what he has suffered. And in this latter way
the saints shall forget their past ills, for they shall have so
thoroughly escaped them all, that they shall be quite blotted out of
their experience. But their intellectual knowledge, which shall be
great, shall keep them acquainted not only with their own past woes,
but with the eternal sufferings of the lost. For if they were not to
know that they had been miserable, how could they, as the Psalmist
says, for ever sing the mercies of God? Certainly that city shall
have no greater joy than the celebration of the grace of Christ, who
redeemed us by His blood. There shall be accomplished the words of
the psalm, "Be still, and know that I am God."[1053] There shall be
the great Sabbath which has no evening, which God celebrated among
His first works, as it is written, "And God rested on the seventh day
from all His works which He had made. And God blessed the seventh
day, and sanctified it; because that in it He had rested from all
His work which God began to make."[1054] For we shall ourselves be
the seventh day, when we shall be filled and replenished with God's
blessing and sanctification. There shall we be still, and know that
He is God; that He is that which we ourselves aspired to be when we
fell away from Him, and listened to the voice of the seducer, "Ye
shall be as gods,"[1055] and so abandoned God, who would have made
us as gods, not by deserting Him, but by participating in Him. For
without Him what have we accomplished, save to perish in His anger?
But when we are restored by Him, and perfected with greater grace,
we shall have eternal leisure to see that He is God, for we shall be
full of Him when He shall be all in all. For even our good works,
when they are understood to be rather His than ours, are imputed to
us that we may enjoy this Sabbath rest. For if we attribute them to
ourselves, they shall be servile; for it is said of the Sabbath, "Ye
shall do no servile work in it."[1056] Wherefore also it is said
by Ezekiel the prophet, "And I gave them my Sabbaths to be a sign
between me and them, that they might know that I am the Lord who
sanctify them."[1057] This knowledge shall be perfected when we shall
be perfectly at rest, and shall perfectly know that He is God.
This Sabbath shall appear still more clearly if we count the ages as
days, in accordance with the periods of time defined in Scripture,
for that period will be found to be the seventh. The first age, as
the first day, extends from Adam to the deluge; the second from the
deluge to Abraham, equalling the first, not in length of time, but in
the number of generations, there being ten in each. From Abraham to
the advent of Christ there are, as the evangelist Matthew calculates,
three periods, in each of which are fourteen generations,--one period
from Abraham to David, a second from David to the captivity, a
third from the captivity to the birth of Christ in the flesh. There
are thus five ages in all. The sixth is now passing, and cannot be
measured by any number of generations, as it has been said, "It is
not for you to know the times, which the Father hath put in His own
power."[1058] After this period God shall rest as on the seventh
day, when He shall give us (who shall be the seventh day) rest in
Himself. But there is not now space to treat of these ages; suffice
it to say that the seventh shall be our Sabbath, which shall be
brought to a close, not by an evening, but by the Lord's day, as an
eighth and eternal day, consecrated by the resurrection of Christ,
and prefiguring the eternal repose not only of the spirit, but also
of the body. There we shall rest and see, see and love, love and
praise. This is what shall be in the end without end. For what other
end do we propose to ourselves than to attain to the kingdom of which
there is no end?
I think I have now, by God's help, discharged my obligation in writing
this large work. Let those who think I have said too little, or those
who think I have said too much, forgive me; and let those who think I
have said just enough join me in giving thanks to God. Amen.
FOOTNOTES:
[961] Luke i. 33.
[962] Phil. ii. 13.
[963] John viii. 17.
[964] Ps. xxxvii. 31.
[965] Gal. iv. 9.
[966] Gen. xxii. 18.
[967] Isa. xxvi. 19.
[968] Isa. lxv. 17-19.
[969] Dan. xii. 1, 2.
[970] Dan. vii. 18.
[971] Dan. vii. 27.
[972] Another reading has _diffamatum_, "published."
[973] A somewhat fuller account of this miracle is given by Augustine
in the _Confessions_, ix. 16. See also _Serm._ 286, and Ambrose,
_Ep._. 22. A translation of this epistle in full is given in Isaac
Taylor's _Ancient Christianity_, ii. 242, where this miracle is taken
as a specimen of the so-called miracles of that age, and submitted
to a detailed examination. The result arrived at will be gathered
from the following sentence: "In the Nicene Church, so lax were the
notions of common morality, and in so feeble a manner did the fear of
God influence the conduct of leading men, that, on occasions when the
Church was to be served, and her assailants to be confounded, they did
not scruple to take upon themselves the contrivance and execution of
the most degrading impostures."--P. 270. It is to be observed, however,
that Augustine was, at least in this instance, one of the deceived.
[974] Alypius was a countryman of Augustine, and one of his most
attached friends. See the _Confessions_, passim.
[975] Cleros.
[976] Easter and Whitsuntide were the common seasons for
administering baptism, though no rule was laid down till towards
the end of the sixth century. Tertullian thinks these the most
appropriate times, but says that every time is suitable. See Tertull.
_de Baptismo_, c. 19.
[977] A town near Carthage.
[978] This may possibly mean a Christian.
[979] Near Hippo.
[980] Augustine's 325th sermon is in honour of these martyrs.
[981] See Isaac Taylor's _Ancient Christianity_, ii. 354.
[982] See Augustine's _Sermons_, 321.
[983] _Sermon_ 322.
[984] Ps. xciv. 11.
[985] C. 18.
[986] Luke xxi. 18.
[987] Eph. iv. 13.
[988] Rom. viii. 29.
[989] Luke xxi. 18.
[990] Rom. viii. 29.
[991] Rom. xii. 2.
[992] Eph. iv. 13.
[993] Rom. viii. 29.
[994] Gen. ii. 22.
[995] Eph. iv. 12.
[996] Matt. xxii. 29.
[997] Matt. xxii. 30.
[998] Eph. iv. 10-16.
[999] 1 Cor. xii. 27.
[1000] Col. i. 24.
[1001] 1 Cor. x. 17.
[1002] Another reading is, "Head over all the Church."
[1003] Eph. i. 22, 23.
[1004] Ps. cxii. 1.
[1005] Luke xii. 7.
[1006] Matt. xiii. 43.
[1007] Cic. _Tusc. Quæst._ i. 27.
[1008] 1 Cor. iii. 1.
[1009] 1 Cor. xv. 44.
[1010] Ps. xxvi. 8.
[1011] Ecclus. xxx. 12.
[1012] Gal. v. 17.
[1013] 1 Cor. xv. 57.
[1014] Rom. viii. 37.
[1015] Matt. vi. 12.
[1016] Gen. i. 28.
[1017] John v. 17.
[1018] Ps. xlix. 20.
[1019] 1 Cor. iii. 7.
[1020] _Coaptatio_, a word coined by Augustine, and used by him again
in the _De Trin._ iv. 2.
[1021] Ps. civ. 1.
[1022] He apparently has in view the celebrated passage in the
opening of the second book of Lucretius. The uses made of this
passage are referred to by Lecky, _Hist. of European Morals_, i. 74.
[1023] Rom. viii. 32.
[1024] _Vide_ Book xviii. c. 53.
[1025] Virg. _Æn._ vi. 751.
[1026] In the _Republic_, x.
[1027] Phil. iv. 7.
[1028] 1 Cor. xiii. 9, 10.
[1029] 1 Cor. xiii. 12.
[1030] Matt. xviii. 10.
[1031] 1 John iii. 2.
[1032] Ps. cxvi. 10.
[1033] 1 Cor. xiii. 11, 12.
[1034] 2 Kings v. 26.
[1035] Jer. xxiii. 24.
[1036] Job xlii. 5, 6.
[1037] Eph. i. 18.
[1038] Matt. v. 8.
[1039] Luke iii. 6.
[1040] Luke ii. 29, 30.
[1041] Job xix. 26.
[1042] 1 Cor. xiii. 12.
[1043] 2 Cor. iii. 18.
[1044] Ps. xxxiv. 5.
[1045] Wisd. ix. 14.
[1046] Rom. i. 20.
[1047] 1 Cor. iv. 5.
[1048] Ps. lxxxiv. 4.
[1049] Numbers.
[1050] Lev. xxvi. 12.
[1051] 1 Cor. xv. 28.
[1052] Or, the former to a state of probation, the latter to a state
of reward.
[1053] Ps. xlvi. 10.
[1054] Gen. ii. 2, 3.
[1055] Gen. iii. 5.
[1056] Deut. v. 14.
[1057] Ezek. xx. 12.
[1058] Acts i. 7.
INDEXES.
I.--INDEX OF TEXTS OF SCRIPTURE.
GENESIS.
VOL. PAGE
i. 1, i. 439, 446, 501
i. 1, 2, i. 322
i. 6, i. 479
i. 14, i. 502
i. 14-18, i. 458
i. 24, i. 544; ii. 116
i. 26, ii. 114, 323
i. 27, 28, ii. 38
i. 28, ii. 21, 37, 523
i. 31, i. 464
ii. 2, 3, ii. 543
ii. 6, i. 552
ii. 7, i. 549
ii. 17, i. 533, 535, 548; ii. 142
ii. 22, ii. 510
ii. 25, ii. 32
iii. 5, ii. 27, 543
iii. 6, ii. 32
iii. 7, ii. 32, 33
iii. 9, i. 535
iii. 12, ii. 24
iii. 12, 13, ii. 28
iii. 16, ii. 60
iii. 19, i. 535, 548; ii. 385
iv. 6, 7, ii. 57
iv. 17, ii. 51, 62
iv. 18-22, ii. 82
iv. 25, ii. 63
iv. 26, ii. 82
v. 1, ii. 89
v. 2, ii. 81
v. 6, ii. 77
v. 8, ii. 77
vi. 1-4, ii. 94
vi. 3, ii. 290
vi. 5-7, ii. 97
vi. 6, ii. 22
vi. 19, 20, ii. 103
vi. 10, 11, ii. 73
viii. 4, 5, ii. 73
ix. 25, i. 104
ix. 26, 27, ii. 104
x. 21, ii. 109
x. 25, ii. 119, 122
xi. 1, ii. 128
xi. 1-9, ii. 112
xi. 6, ii. 115
xi. 27-29, ii. 125
xi. 31, ii. 125
xi. 32, ii. 126, 138
xii. 1, ii. 127, 128, 129
xii. 1, 2, ii. 166
xii. 1-3, ii. 130
xii. 3, ii. 166
xii. 4, ii. 127
xii. 7, ii. 132
xiii. 8, 9, ii. 133
xiii. 14-17, ii. 133
xv. 4, ii. 140
xv. 6, ii. 135
xv. 7, ii. 136
xv. 17, i. 392
xv. 19, 21, ii. 136