BOOK TWENTY-SECOND.

Argument

THIS BOOK TREATS OF THE END OF THE CITY OF GOD, THAT IS TO SAY, OF THE
ETERNAL HAPPINESS OF THE SAINTS; THE FAITH OF THE RESURRECTION
OF THE BODY IS ESTABLISHED AND EXPLAINED; AND THE WORK CONCLUDES
BY SHOWING HOW THE SAINTS, CLOTHED IN IMMORTAL AND SPIRITUAL
BODIES, SHALL BE EMPLOYED.

1. Of the creation of angels and men.

As we promised in the immediately preceding book, this,
the last of the whole work, shall contain a discussion
of the eternal blessedness of the city of God. This blessedness
is named eternal, not because it shall endure for many
ages, though at last it shall come to an end, but because,
according to the words of the gospel, “of His kingdom there
shall be no end.”[961] Neither shall it enjoy the mere appearance
of perpetuity which is maintained by the rise of fresh
generations to occupy the place of those that have died out, as
in an evergreen the same freshness seems to continue permanently,
and the same appearance of dense foliage is preserved
by the growth of fresh leaves in the room of those that have
withered and fallen; but in that city all the citizens shall be
immortal, men now for the first time enjoying what the holy
angels have never lost. And this shall be accomplished by
God, the most almighty Founder of the city. For He has
promised it, and cannot lie, and has already performed many
of His promises, and has done many unpromised kindnesses
to those whom He now asks to believe that He will do this
also.

For it is He who in the beginning created the world full
of all visible and intelligible beings, among which He created
nothing better than those spirits whom He endowed with intelligence,
and made capable of contemplating and enjoying Him,[Pg 473]
and united in our society, which we call the holy and heavenly
city, and in which the material of their sustenance and blessedness
is God Himself, as it were their common food and nourishment.
It is He who gave to this intellectual nature free-will
of such a kind, that if he wished to forsake God his blessedness,
misery should forthwith result. It is He who, when
He foreknew that certain angels would in their pride desire
to suffice for their own blessedness, and would forsake their
great good, did not deprive them of this power, deeming it to
be more befitting His power and goodness to bring good out
of evil than to prevent the evil from coming into existence.
And indeed evil had never been, had not the mutable nature—mutable,
though good, and created by the most high God
and immutable Good, who created all things good—brought
evil upon itself by sin. And this its sin is itself proof that
its nature was originally good. For had it not been very good,
though not equal to its Creator, the desertion of God as its
light could not have been an evil to it. For as blindness is
a vice of the eye, and this very fact indicates that the eye
was created to see the light, and as, consequently, vice itself
proves that the eye is more excellent than the other members,
because it is capable of light (for on no other supposition
would it be a vice of the eye to want light), so the nature
which once enjoyed God teaches, even by its very vice, that
it was created the best of all, since it is now miserable because
it does not enjoy God. It is He who with very just punishment
doomed the angels who voluntarily fell to everlasting
misery, and rewarded those who continued in their attachment
to the supreme good with the assurance of endless stability
as the meed of their fidelity. It is He who made also man
himself upright, with the same freedom of will,—an earthly
animal, indeed, but fit for heaven if he remained faithful to
his Creator, but destined to the misery appropriate to such a
nature if he forsook Him. It is He who, when He foreknew
that man would in his turn sin by abandoning God and
breaking His law, did not deprive him of the power of free-will,
because He at the same time foresaw what good He
Himself would bring out of the evil, and how from this
mortal race, deservedly and justly condemned, He would by[Pg 474]
His grace collect, as now He does, a people so numerous, that
He thus fills up and repairs the blank made by the fallen
angels, and that thus that beloved and heavenly city is not
defrauded of the full number of its citizens, but perhaps may
even rejoice in a still more overflowing population.

2. Of the eternal and unchangeable will of God.

It is true that wicked men do many things contrary to God’s
will; but so great is His wisdom and power, that all things
which seem adverse to His purpose do still tend towards those
just and good ends and issues which He Himself has foreknown.
And consequently, when God is said to change His
will, as when, e.g., He becomes angry with those to whom He
was gentle, it is rather they than He who are changed, and
they find Him changed in so far as their experience of suffering
at His hand is new, as the sun is changed to injured eyes, and
becomes as it were fierce from being mild, and hurtful from
being delightful, though in itself it remains the same as it
was. That also is called the will of God which He does in
the hearts of those who obey His commandments; and of this
the apostle says, “For it is God that worketh in you both
to will.”[962] As God’s “righteousness” is used not only of the
righteousness wherewith He Himself is righteous, but also of
that which He produces in the man whom He justifies, so also
that is called His law, which, though given by God, is rather
the law of men. For certainly they were men to whom Jesus
said, “It is written in your law,”[963] though in another place
we read, “The law of his God is in his heart.”[964] According
to this will which God works in men, He is said also to will
what He Himself does not will, but causes His people to will;
as He is said to know what He has caused those to know who
were ignorant of it. For when the apostle says, “But now,
after that ye have known God, or rather are known of God,”[965]
we cannot suppose that God there for the first time knew
those who were foreknown by Him before the foundation of
the world; but He is said to have known them then, because
then He caused them to know. But I remember that I discussed[Pg 475]
these modes of expression in the preceding books.
According to this will, then, by which we say that God wills
what He causes to be willed by others, from whom the future
is hidden, He wills many things which He does not perform.

Thus His saints, inspired by His holy will, desire many
things which never happen. They pray, e.g., for certain individuals—they
pray in a pious and holy manner—but what
they request He does not perform, though He Himself by His
own Holy Spirit has wrought in them this will to pray. And
consequently, when the saints, in conformity with God’s mind,
will and pray that all men be saved, we can use this mode of
expression: God wills and does not perform,—meaning that
He who causes them to will these things Himself wills them.
But if we speak of that will of His which is eternal as His
foreknowledge, certainly He has already done all things in
heaven and on earth that He has willed,—not only past and
present things, but even things still future. But before the
arrival of that time in which He has willed the occurrence of
what He foreknew and arranged before all time, we say, It
will happen when God wills. But if we are ignorant not
only of the time in which it is to be, but even whether it shall
be at all, we say, It will happen if God wills,—not because
God will then have a new will which He had not before, but
because that event, which from eternity has been prepared in
His unchangeable will, shall then come to pass.

3. Of the promise of eternal blessedness to the saints, and everlasting
punishment to the wicked.

Wherefore, not to mention many other instances besides, as
we now see in Christ the fulfilment of that which God promised
to Abraham when He said, “In thy seed shall all
nations be blessed,”[966] so this also shall be fulfilled which He
promised to the same race, when He said by the prophet,
“They that are in their sepulchres shall rise again;”[967] and
also, “There shall be a new heaven and a new earth: and the
former shall not be mentioned, nor come into mind; but they
shall find joy and rejoicing in it: for I will make Jerusalem
a rejoicing, and my people a joy. And I will rejoice in Jerusalem,
and joy in my people, and the voice of weeping shall[Pg 476]
be no more heard in her.”[968] And by another prophet He
uttered the same prediction: “At that time thy people shall
be delivered, every one that shall be found written in the book.
And many of them that sleep in the dust” (or, as some interpret
it, “in the mound”) “of the earth shall awake, some to
everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.”[969]
And in another place by the same prophet: “The saints of
the Most High shall take the kingdom, and shall possess the
kingdom for ever, even for ever and ever.”[970] And a little
after he says, “His kingdom is an everlasting kingdom.”[971]
Other prophecies referring to the same subject I have advanced
in the twentieth book, and others still which I have
not advanced are found written in the same Scriptures; and
these predictions shall be fulfilled, as those also have been
which unbelieving men supposed would be frustrate. For it
is the same God who promised both, and predicted that both
would come to pass,—the God whom the pagan deities tremble
before, as even Porphyry, the noblest of pagan philosophers,
testifies.

4. Against the wise men of the world, who fancy that the earthly bodies of men
cannot be transferred to a heavenly habitation.

But men who use their learning and intellectual ability to
resist the force of that great authority which, in fulfilment of
what was so long before predicted, has converted all races of
men to faith and hope in its promises, seem to themselves to
argue acutely against the resurrection of the body while they
cite what Cicero mentions in the third book De Republica.
For when he was asserting the apotheosis of Hercules and
Romulus, he says: “Whose bodies were not taken up into
heaven; for nature would not permit a body of earth to exist
anywhere except upon earth.” This, forsooth, is the profound
reasoning of the wise men, whose thoughts God knows that
they are vain. For if we were only souls, that is, spirits
without any body, and if we dwelt in heaven and had no
knowledge of earthly animals, and were told that we should
be bound to earthly bodies by some wonderful bond of union,
and should animate them, should we not much more vigorously[Pg 477]
refuse to believe this, and maintain that nature would
not permit an incorporeal substance to be held by a corporeal
bond? And yet the earth is full of living spirits, to which
terrestrial bodies are bound, and with which they are in a
wonderful way implicated. If, then, the same God who has
created such beings wills this also, what is to hinder the
earthly body from being raised to a heavenly body, since a
spirit, which is more excellent than all bodies, and consequently
than even a heavenly body, has been tied to an earthly
body? If so small an earthly particle has been able to hold
in union with itself something better than a heavenly body,
so as to receive sensation and life, will heaven disdain to
receive, or at least to retain, this sentient and living particle,
which derives its life and sensation from a substance more
excellent than any heavenly body? If this does not happen
now, it is because the time is not yet come which has been
determined by Him who has already done a much more marvellous
thing than that which these men refuse to believe.
For why do we not more intensely wonder that incorporeal
souls, which are of higher rank than heavenly bodies, are
bound to earthly bodies, rather than that bodies, although
earthly, are exalted to an abode which, though heavenly, is yet
corporeal, except because we have been accustomed to see
this, and indeed are this, while we are not as yet that other
marvel, nor have as yet ever seen it? Certainly, if we consult
sober reason, the more wonderful of the two divine works
is found to be to attach somehow corporeal things to incorporeal,
and not to connect earthly things with heavenly,
which, though diverse, are yet both of them corporeal.

5. Of the resurrection of the flesh, which some refuse to believe, though the
world at large believes it.

But granting that this was once incredible, behold, now, the
world has come to the belief that the earthly body of Christ
was received up into heaven. Already both the learned and
unlearned have believed in the resurrection of the flesh and
its ascension to the heavenly places, while only a very few
either of the educated or uneducated are still staggered by it.
If this is a credible thing which is believed, then let those
who do not believe see how stolid they are; and if it is incredible,[Pg 478]
then this also is an incredible thing, that what is
incredible should have received such credit. Here then we
have two incredibles,—to wit, the resurrection of our body to
eternity, and that the world should believe so incredible a
thing; and both these incredibles the same God predicted
should come to pass before either had as yet occurred. We
see that already one of the two has come to pass, for the world
has believed what was incredible; why should we despair
that the remaining one shall also come to pass, and that this
which the world believed, though it was incredible, shall itself
occur? For already that which was equally incredible has
come to pass, in the world’s believing an incredible thing.
Both were incredible: the one we see accomplished, the other
we believe shall be; for both were predicted in those same
Scriptures by means of which the world believed. And the
very manner in which the world’s faith was won is found to
be even more incredible, if we consider it. Men uninstructed
in any branch of a liberal education, without any of the refinement
of heathen learning, unskilled in grammar, not armed
with dialectic, not adorned with rhetoric, but plain fishermen,
and very few in number,—these were the men whom Christ
sent with the nets of faith to the sea of this world, and thus
took out of every race so many fishes, and even the philosophers
themselves, wonderful as they are rare. Let us add, if
you please, or because you ought to be pleased, this third
incredible thing to the two former. And now we have three
incredibles, all of which have yet come to pass. It is incredible
that Jesus Christ should have risen in the flesh and
ascended with flesh into heaven; it is incredible that the
world should have believed so incredible a thing; it is incredible
that a very few men, of mean birth and the lowest
rank, and no education, should have been able so effectually
to persuade the world, and even its learned men, of so incredible
a thing. Of these three incredibles, the parties with
whom we are debating refuse to believe the first; they cannot
refuse to see the second, which they are unable to account for
if they do not believe the third. It is indubitable that the
resurrection of Christ, and His ascension into heaven with the
flesh in which He rose, is already preached and believed in[Pg 479]
the whole world. If it is not credible, how is it that it has
already received credence in the whole world? If a number
of noble, exalted, and learned men had said that they had
witnessed it, and had been at pains to publish what they had
witnessed, it were not wonderful that the world should have
believed it, but it were very stubborn to refuse credence; but
if, as is true, the world has believed a few obscure, inconsiderable,
uneducated persons, who state and write that they
witnessed it, is it not unreasonable that a handful of wrong-headed
men should oppose themselves to the creed of the
whole world, and refuse their belief? And if the world has
put faith in a small number of men, of mean birth and the
lowest rank, and no education, it is because the divinity of the
thing itself appeared all the more manifestly in such contemptible
witnesses. The eloquence, indeed, which lent persuasion
to their message, consisted of wonderful works, not
words. For they who had not seen Christ risen in the flesh,
nor ascending into heaven with His risen body, believed those
who related how they had seen these things, and who testified
not only with words but wonderful signs. For men whom they
knew to be acquainted with only one, or at most two languages,
they marvelled to hear speaking in the tongues of all nations.
They saw a man, lame from his mother’s womb, after forty
years stand up sound at their word in the name of Christ;
that handkerchiefs taken from their bodies had virtue to heal
the sick; that countless persons, sick of various diseases, were
laid in a row in the road where they were to pass, that their
shadow might fall on them as they walked, and that they
forthwith received health; that many other stupendous
miracles were wrought by them in the name of Christ; and,
finally, that they even raised the dead. If it be admitted
that these things occurred as they are related, then we have
a multitude of incredible things to add to those three incredibles.
That the one incredibility of the resurrection and
ascension of Jesus Christ may be believed, we accumulate the
testimonies of countless incredible miracles, but even so we
do not bend the frightful obstinacy of these sceptics. But if
they do not believe that these miracles were wrought by
Christ’s apostles to gain credence to their preaching of His[Pg 480]
resurrection and ascension, this one grand miracle suffices for
us, that the whole world has believed without any miracles.

6. That Rome made its founder Romulus a god because it loved him; but the
Church loved Christ because it believed Him to be God.

Let us here recite the passage in which Tully expresses his
astonishment that the apotheosis of Romulus should have been
credited. I shall insert his words as they stand: “It is most
worthy of remark in Romulus, that other men who are said to
have become gods lived in less educated ages, when there was
a greater propensity to the fabulous, and when the uninstructed
were easily persuaded to believe anything. But the age of
Romulus was barely six hundred years ago, and already literature
and science had dispelled the errors that attach to an
uncultured age.” And a little after he says of the same
Romulus words to this effect: “From this we may perceive
that Homer had flourished long before Romulus, and that there
was now so much learning in individuals, and so generally
diffused an enlightenment, that scarcely any room was left for
fable. For antiquity admitted fables, and sometimes even
very clumsy ones; but this age [of Romulus] was sufficiently
enlightened to reject whatever had not the air of truth.” Thus
one of the most learned men, and certainly the most eloquent,
M. Tullius Cicero, says that it is surprising that the divinity
of Romulus was believed in, because the times were already so
enlightened that they would not accept a fabulous fiction. But
who believed that Romulus was a god except Rome, which was
itself small and in its infancy? Then afterwards it was necessary
that succeeding generations should preserve the tradition
of their ancestors; that, drinking in this superstition with their
mother’s milk, the state might grow and come to such power
that it might dictate this belief, as from a point of vantage,
to all the nations over whom its sway extended. And these
nations, though they might not believe that Romulus was a
god, at least said so, that they might not give offence to their
sovereign state by refusing to give its founder that title which
was given him by Rome, which had adopted this belief, not by
a love of error, but an error of love. But though Christ is the
founder of the heavenly and eternal city, yet it did not believe
Him to be God because it was founded by Him, but rather it[Pg 481]
is founded by Him, in virtue of its belief. Rome, after it
had been built and dedicated, worshipped its founder in a
temple as a god; but this Jerusalem laid Christ, its God,
as its foundation, that the building and dedication might
proceed. The former city loved its founder, and therefore
believed him to be a god; the latter believed Christ to be God,
and therefore loved Him. There was an antecedent cause for
the love of the former city, and for its believing that even a
false dignity attached to the object of its love; so there was
an antecedent cause for the belief of the latter, and for its
loving the true dignity which a proper faith, not a rash surmise,
ascribed to its object. For, not to mention the multitude of
very striking miracles which proved that Christ is God, there
were also divine prophecies heralding Him, prophecies most
worthy of belief, which being already accomplished, we have
not, like the fathers, to wait for their verification. Of Romulus,
on the other hand, and of his building Rome and reigning in
it, we read or hear the narrative of what did take place, not
prediction which beforehand said that such things should be.
And so far as his reception among the gods is concerned, history
only records that this was believed, and does not state it
as a fact; for no miraculous signs testified to the truth of
this. For as to that wolf which is said to have nursed the
twin-brothers, and which is considered a great marvel, how
does this prove him to have been divine? For even supposing
that this nurse was a real wolf and not a mere courtezan,
yet she nursed both brothers, and Remus is not reckoned a
god. Besides, what was there to hinder any one from asserting
that Romulus or Hercules, or any such man, was a god?
Or who would rather choose to die than profess belief in his
divinity? And did a single nation worship Romulus among
its gods, unless it were forced through fear of the Roman
name? But who can number the multitudes who have chosen
death in the most cruel shapes rather than deny the divinity
of Christ? And thus the dread of some slight indignation,
which it was supposed, perhaps groundlessly, might exist in the
minds of the Romans, constrained some states who were subject
to Rome to worship Romulus as a god; whereas the dread,
not of a slight mental shock, but of severe and various punishments,[Pg 482]
and of death itself, the most formidable of all, could not
prevent an immense multitude of martyrs throughout the world
from not merely worshipping but also confessing Christ as God.
The city of Christ, which, although as yet a stranger upon
earth, had countless hosts of citizens, did not make war upon
its godless persecutors for the sake of temporal security, but
preferred to win eternal salvation by abstaining from war.
They were bound, imprisoned, beaten, tortured, burned, torn
in pieces, massacred, and yet they multiplied. It was not
given to them to fight for their eternal salvation except by
despising their temporal salvation for their Saviour’s sake.

I am aware that Cicero, in the third book of his De Republica,
if I mistake not, argues that a first-rate power will not
engage in war except either for honour or for safety. What
he has to say about the question of safety, and what he means
by safety, he explains in another place, saying, “Private persons
frequently evade, by a speedy death, destitution, exile,
bonds, the scourge, and the other pains which even the most
insensible feel. But to states, death, which seems to emancipate
individuals from all punishments, is itself a punishment;
for a state should be so constituted as to be eternal. And
thus death is not natural to a republic as to a man, to whom
death is not only necessary, but often even desirable. But
when a state is destroyed, obliterated, annihilated, it is as if
(to compare great things with small) this whole world perished
and collapsed.” Cicero said this because he, with the Platonists,
believed that the world would not perish. It is therefore
agreed that, according to Cicero, a state should engage in
war for the safety which preserves the state permanently in
existence, though its citizens change; as the foliage of an olive
or laurel, or any tree of this kind, is perennial, the old leaves
being replaced by fresh ones. For death, as he says, is no
punishment to individuals, but rather delivers them from all
other punishments, but it is a punishment to the state. And
therefore it is reasonably asked whether the Saguntines did
right when they chose that their whole state should perish
rather than that they should break faith with the Roman
republic; for this deed of theirs is applauded by the citizens
of the earthly republic. But I do not see how they could[Pg 483]
follow the advice of Cicero, who tells us that no war is to be
undertaken save for safety or for honour; neither does he say
which of these two is to be preferred, if a case should occur
in which the one could not be preserved without the loss of
the other. For manifestly, if the Saguntines chose safety, they
must break faith; if they kept faith, they must reject safety;
as also it fell out. But the safety of the city of God is such
that it can be retained, or rather acquired, by faith and with
faith; but if faith be abandoned, no one can attain it. It is
this thought of a most stedfast and patient spirit that has
made so many noble martyrs, while Romulus has not had, and
could not have, so much as one to die for his divinity.

7. That the world’s belief in Christ is the result of divine power, not of human
persuasion.

But it is thoroughly ridiculous to make mention of the false
divinity of Romulus as any way comparable to that of Christ.
Nevertheless, if Romulus lived about six hundred years before
Cicero, in an age which already was so enlightened that it
rejected all impossibilities, how much more, in an age which
certainly was more enlightened, being six hundred years later,
the age of Cicero himself, and of the emperors Augustus and
Tiberius, would the human mind have refused to listen to or
believe in the resurrection of Christ’s body and its ascension
into heaven, and have scouted it as an impossibility, had not
the divinity of the truth itself, or the truth of the divinity, and
corroborating miraculous signs, proved that it could happen
and had happened? Through virtue of these testimonies, and
notwithstanding the opposition and terror of so many cruel
persecutions, the resurrection and immortality of the flesh,
first in Christ, and subsequently in all in the new world, was
believed, was intrepidly proclaimed, and was sown over the
whole world, to be fertilized richly with the blood of the
martyrs. For the predictions of the prophets that had preceded
the events were read, they were corroborated by powerful
signs, and the truth was seen to be not contradictory to
reason, but only different from customary ideas, so that at
length the world embraced the faith it had furiously persecuted.

[Pg 484]

8. Of miracles which were wrought that the world might believe in Christ,
and which have not ceased since the world believed.

Why, they say, are those miracles, which you affirm were
wrought formerly, wrought no longer? I might, indeed, reply
that miracles were necessary before the world believed, in order
that it might believe. And whoever now-a-days demands to
see prodigies that he may believe, is himself a great prodigy,
because he does not believe, though the whole world does.
But they make these objections for the sole purpose of insinuating
that even those former miracles were never wrought.
How, then, is it that everywhere Christ is celebrated with
such firm belief in His resurrection and ascension? How is it
that in enlightened times, in which every impossibility is rejected,
the world has, without any miracles, believed things
marvellously incredible? Or will they say that these things
were credible, and therefore were credited? Why then do
they themselves not believe? Our argument, therefore, is a
summary one—either incredible things which were not witnessed
have caused the world to believe other incredible things
which both occurred and were witnessed, or this matter was
so credible that it needed no miracles in proof of it, and therefore
convicts these unbelievers of unpardonable scepticism.
This I might say for the sake of refuting these most frivolous
objectors. But we cannot deny that many miracles were
wrought to confirm that one grand and health-giving miracle
of Christ’s ascension to heaven with the flesh in which He
rose. For these most trustworthy books of ours contain in
one narrative both the miracles that were wrought and the
creed which they were wrought to confirm. The miracles
were published that they might produce faith, and the faith
which they produced brought them into greater prominence.
For they are read in congregations that they may be believed,
and yet they would not be so read unless they were believed.
For even now miracles are wrought in the name of Christ,
whether by His sacraments or by the prayers or relics of His
saints; but they are not so brilliant and conspicuous as to
cause them to be published with such glory as accompanied
the former miracles. For the canon of the sacred writings,[Pg 485]
which behoved to be closed,[972] causes those to be everywhere
recited, and to sink into the memory of all the congregations;
but these modern miracles are scarcely known even to the
whole population in the midst of which they are wrought, and
at the best are confined to one spot. For frequently they are
known only to a very few persons, while all the rest are ignorant
of them, especially if the state is a large one; and when
they are reported to other persons in other localities, there is
no sufficient authority to give them prompt and unwavering
credence, although they are reported to the faithful by the
faithful.

The miracle which was wrought at Milan when I was there,
and by which a blind man was restored to sight, could come
to the knowledge of many; for not only is the city a large one,
but also the emperor was there at the time, and the occurrence
was witnessed by an immense concourse of people that had
gathered to the bodies of the martyrs Protasius and Gervasius,
which had long lain concealed and unknown, but were now
made known to the bishop Ambrose in a dream, and discovered
by him. By virtue of these remains the darkness of that blind
man was scattered, and he saw the light of day.[973]

But who but a very small number are aware of the cure
which was wrought 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[Pg 486]
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[Pg 487]
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[Pg 488]
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[Pg 489]
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[Pg 490]
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[Pg 491]
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[Pg 492]
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[Pg 493]
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[Pg 494]
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.

[Pg 495]

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[Pg 496]
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[Pg 497]
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[Pg 498]
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[Pg 499]
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[Pg 500]
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[Pg 501]
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[Pg 502]
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[Pg 503]
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[Pg 504]
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[Pg 505]
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[Pg 506]
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[Pg 507]
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[Pg 508]
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[Pg 509]
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[Pg 510]
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.

[Pg 511]

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[Pg 512]
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[Pg 513]
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[Pg 514]
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.

[Pg 515]

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[Pg 516]
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[Pg 517]
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[Pg 518]
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[Pg 519]
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?[Pg 520]
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[Pg 521]
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[Pg 522]
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[Pg 523]
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,[Pg 524]
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[Pg 525]
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![Pg 526]
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?[Pg 527]
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[Pg 528]
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[Pg 529]
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[Pg 530]
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[Pg 531]
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[Pg 532]
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[Pg 533]
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[Pg 534]
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[Pg 535]
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[Pg 536]
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[Pg 537]
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[Pg 538]
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[Pg 539]
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[Pg 540]
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,[Pg 541]
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[Pg 542]
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[Pg 543]
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[Pg 544]
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.[Pg 545]
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.

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