BOOK EIGHTEENTH.

Argument

AUGUSTINE TRACES THE PARALLEL COURSES OF THE EARTHLY AND HEAVENLY
CITIES FROM THE TIME OF ABRAHAM TO THE END OF THE WORLD; AND
ALLUDES TO THE ORACLES REGARDING CHRIST, BOTH THOSE UTTERED BY
THE SIBYLS, AND THOSE OF THE SACRED PROPHETS WHO WROTE AFTER
THE FOUNDATION OF ROME, HOSEA, AMOS, ISAIAH, MICAH, AND THEIR SUCCESSORS.

1. Of those things down to the times of the Saviour which have been discussed
in the seventeen books.

I promised to write of the rise, progress, and appointed
end of the two cities, one of which is God’s, the other
this world’s, in which, so far as mankind is concerned, the
former is now a stranger. But first of all I undertook, so far
as His grace should enable me, to refute the enemies of the
city of God, who prefer their gods to Christ its founder, and
fiercely hate Christians with the most deadly malice. And
this I have done in the first ten books. Then, as regards my
threefold promise which I have just mentioned, I have treated
distinctly, in the four books which follow the tenth, of the
rise of both cities. After that, I have proceeded from the
first man down to the flood in one book, which is the fifteenth
of this work; and from that again down to Abraham our
work has followed both in chronological order. From the
patriarch Abraham down to the time of the Israelite kings, at
which we close our sixteenth book, and thence down to the
advent of Christ Himself in the flesh, to which period the
seventeenth book reaches, the city of God appears from my
way of writing to have run its course alone; whereas it did
not run its course alone in this age, for both cities, in their
course amid mankind, certainly experienced chequered times
together just as from the beginning. But I did this in order
that, first of all, from the time when the promises of God
began to be more clear, down to the virgin birth of Him
in whom those things promised from the first were to be fulfilled,[Pg 218]
the course of that city which is God’s might be made
more distinctly apparent, without interpolation of foreign
matter from the history of the other city, although down to
the revelation of the new covenant it ran its course, not in
light, but in shadow. Now, therefore, I think fit to do what I
passed by, and show, so far as seems necessary, how that other
city ran its course from the times of Abraham, so that attentive
readers may compare the two.

2. Of the kings and times of the earthly city which were synchronous with the
times of the saints, reckoning from the rise of Abraham.

The society of mortals spread abroad through the earth
everywhere, and in the most diverse places, although bound
together by a certain fellowship of our common nature, is yet
for the most part divided against itself, and the strongest
oppress the others, because all follow after their own interests
and lusts, while what is longed for either suffices for none,
or not for all, because it is not the very thing. For the vanquished
succumb to the victorious, preferring any sort of peace
and safety to freedom itself; so that they who chose to die
rather than be slaves have been greatly wondered at. For in
almost all nations the very voice of nature somehow proclaims,
that those who happen to be conquered should choose rather
to be subject to their conquerors than to be killed by all kinds
of warlike destruction. This does not take place without the
providence of God, in whose power it lies that any one either
subdues or is subdued in war; that some are endowed with
kingdoms, others made subject to kings. Now, among the
very many kingdoms of the earth into which, by earthly interest
or lust, society is divided (which we call by the general
name of the city of this world), we see that two, settled and
kept distinct from each other both in time and place, have
grown far more famous than the rest, first that of the Assyrians,
then that of the Romans. First came the one, then the other.
The former arose in the east, and, immediately on its close, the
latter in the west. I may speak of other kingdoms and other
kings as appendages of these.

Ninus, then, who succeeded his father Belus, the first king
of Assyria, was already the second king of that kingdom when
Abraham was born in the land of the Chaldees. There was[Pg 219]
also at that time a very small kingdom of Sicyon, with which,
as from an ancient date, that most universally learned man
Marcus Varro begins, in writing of the Roman race. For
from these kings of Sicyon he passes to the Athenians, from
them to the Latins, and from these to the Romans. Yet very
little is related about these kingdoms, before the foundation of
Rome, in comparison with that of Assyria. For although
even Sallust, the Roman historian, admits that the Athenians
were very famous in Greece, yet he thinks they were greater
in fame than in fact. For in speaking of them he says,
“The deeds of the Athenians, as I think, were very great and
magnificent, but yet somewhat less than reported by fame.
But because writers of great genius arose among them, the
deeds of the Athenians were celebrated throughout the world
as very great. Thus the virtue of those who did them was
held to be as great as men of transcendent genius could represent
it to be by the power of laudatory words.”[497] This city
also derived no small glory from literature and philosophy, the
study of which chiefly flourished there. But as regards empire,
none in the earliest times was greater than the Assyrian,
or so widely extended. For when Ninus the son of Belus was
king, he is reported to have subdued the whole of Asia, even
to the boundaries of Libya, which as to number is called the
third part, but as to size is found to be the half of the whole
world. The Indians in the eastern regions were the only
people over whom he did not reign; but after his death Semiramis
his wife made war on them. Thus it came to pass
that all the people and kings in those countries were subject
to the kingdom and authority of the Assyrians, and did whatever
they were commanded. Now Abraham was born in that
kingdom among the Chaldees, in the time of Ninus. But
since Grecian affairs are much better known to us than
Assyrian, and those who have diligently investigated the antiquity
of the Roman nation’s origin have followed the order of
time through the Greeks to the Latins, and from them to the
Romans, who themselves are Latins, we ought on this account,
where it is needful, to mention the Assyrian kings, that it may
appear how Babylon, like a first Rome, ran its course along[Pg 220]
with the city of God, which is a stranger in this world. But
the things proper for insertion in this work in comparing the
two cities, that is, the earthly and heavenly, ought to be taken
mostly from the Greek and Latin kingdoms, where Rome
herself is like a second Babylon.

At Abraham’s birth, then, the second kings of Assyria and
Sicyon respectively were Ninus and Europs, the first having
been Belus and Ægialeus. But when God promised Abraham,
on his departure from Babylonia, that he should become a
great nation, and that in his seed all nations of the earth
should be blessed, the Assyrians had their seventh king, the
Sicyons their fifth; for the son of Ninus reigned among them
after his mother Semiramis, who is said to have been put to
death by him for attempting to defile him by incestuously
lying with him. Some think that she founded Babylon, and
indeed she may have founded it anew. But we have told, in
the sixteenth book, when or by whom it was founded. Now
the son of Ninus and Semiramis, who succeeded his mother
in the kingdom, is also called Ninus by some, but by others
Ninias, a patronymic word. Telexion then held the kingdom
of the Sicyons. In his reign times were quiet and joyful to
such a degree, that after his death they worshipped him as a
god by offering sacrifices and by celebrating games, which are
said to have been first instituted on this occasion.

3. What kings reigned in Assyria and Sicyon when, according to the promise,
Isaac was born to Abraham in his hundredth year, and when the twins
Esau and Jacob were born of Rebecca to Isaac in his sixtieth year.

In his times also, by the promise of God, Isaac, the son of
Abraham, was born to his father when he was a hundred
years old, of Sarah his wife, who, being barren and old, had
already lost hope of issue. Aralius was then the fifth king
of the Assyrians. To Isaac himself, in his sixtieth year, were
born twin-sons, Esau and Jacob, whom Rebecca his wife bore
to him, their grandfather Abraham, who died on completing
a hundred and seventy years, being still alive, and reckoning
his hundred and sixtieth year.[498] At that time there reigned
as the seventh kings,—among the Assyrians, that more ancient
Xerxes, who was also called Balæus; and among the Sicyons,[Pg 221]
Thuriachus, or, as some write his name, Thurimachus. The
kingdom of Argos, in which Inachus reigned first, arose in
the time of Abraham’s grandchildren. And I must not
omit what Varro relates, that the Sicyons were also wont to
sacrifice at the tomb of their seventh king Thuriachus. In
the reign of Armamitres in Assyria and Leucippus in Sicyon
as the eighth kings, and of Inachus as the first in Argos, God
spoke to Isaac, and promised the same two things to him as
to his father,—namely, the land of Canaan to his seed, and
the blessing of all nations in his seed. These same things
were promised to his son, Abraham’s grandson, who was at
first called Jacob, afterwards Israel, when Belocus was the
ninth king of Assyria, and Phoroneus, the son of Inachus,
reigned as the second king of Argos, Leucippus still continuing
king of Sicyon. In those times, under the Argive king
Phoroneus, Greece was made more famous by the institution
of certain laws and judges. On the death of Phoroneus, his
younger brother Phegous built a temple at his tomb, in which
he was worshipped as God, and oxen were sacrificed to him. I
believe they thought him worthy of so great honour, because
in his part of the kingdom (for their father had divided his
territories between them, in which they reigned during his
life) he had founded chapels for the worship of the gods, and
had taught them to measure time by months and years, and
to that extent to keep count and reckoning of events. Men
still uncultivated, admiring him for these novelties, either
fancied he was, or resolved that he should be made, a god
after his death. Io also is said to have been the daughter
of Inachus, who was afterwards called Isis, when she was
worshipped in Egypt as a great goddess; although others
write that she came as a queen out of Ethiopia, and because
she ruled extensively and justly, and instituted for her subjects
letters and many useful things, such divine honour was
given her there after she died, that if any one said she had
been human, he was charged with a capital crime.

4. Of the times of Jacob and his son Joseph.

In the reign of Balæus, the ninth king of Assyria, and
Mesappus, the eighth of Sicyon, who is said by some to have[Pg 222]
been also called Cephisos (if indeed the same man had both
names, and those who put the other name in their writings
have not rather confounded him with another man), while
Apis was third king of Argos, Isaac died, a hundred and
eighty years old, and left his twin-sons a hundred and twenty
years old. Jacob, the younger of these, belonged to the
city of God about which we write (the elder being wholly
rejected), and had twelve sons, one of whom, called Joseph,
was sold by his brothers to merchants going down to Egypt,
while his grandfather Isaac was still alive. But when he
was thirty years of age, Joseph stood before Pharaoh, being
exalted out of the humiliation he endured, because, in divinely
interpreting the king’s dreams, he foretold that there would
be seven years of plenty, the very rich abundance of which
would be consumed by seven other years of famine that
should follow. On this account the king made him ruler
over Egypt, liberating him from prison, into which he had
been thrown for keeping his chastity intact; for he bravely
preserved it from his mistress, who wickedly loved him, and
told lies to his weakly credulous master, and did not consent
to commit adultery with her, but fled from her, leaving his
garment in her hands when she laid hold of him. In the
second of the seven years of famine Jacob came down into
Egypt to his son with all he had, being a hundred and thirty
years old, as he himself said in answer to the king’s question.
Joseph was then thirty-nine, if we add seven years of plenty
and two of famine to the thirty he reckoned when honoured
by the king.

5. Of Apis king of Argos, whom the Egyptians called Serapis, and worshipped
with divine honours.

In these times Apis king of Argos crossed over into
Egypt in ships, and, on dying there, was made Serapis, the
chief god of all the Egyptians. Now Varro gives this very
ready reason why, after his death, he was called, not Apis, but
Serapis. The ark in which he was placed when dead, which
every one now calls a sarcophagus, was then called in Greek
σορὸς, and they began to worship him when buried in it before
his temple was built; and from Soros and Apis he was called
first [Sorosapis, or] Sorapis, and then Serapis, by changing a[Pg 223]
letter, as easily happens. It was decreed regarding him also,
that whoever should say he had been a man should be capitally
punished. And since in every temple where Isis and
Serapis were worshipped there was also an image which, with
finger pressed on the lips, seemed to warn men to keep silence,
Varro thinks this signifies that it should be kept secret that
they had been human. But that bull which, with wonderful
folly, deluded Egypt nourished with abundant delicacies in
honour of him, was not called Serapis, but Apis, because they
worshipped him alive without a sarcophagus. On the death
of that bull, when they sought and found a calf of the same
colour,—that is, similarly marked with certain white spots,—they
believed it was something miraculous, and divinely provided
for them. Yet it was no great thing for the demons,
in order to deceive them, to show to a cow when she was
conceiving and pregnant the image of such a bull, which she
alone could see, and by it attract the breeding passion of the
mother, so that it might appear in a bodily shape in her
young, just as Jacob so managed with the spotted rods that
the sheep and goats were born spotted. For what men can
do with real colours and substances, the demons can very
easily do by showing unreal forms to breeding animals.

6. Who were kings of Argos, and of Assyria, when Jacob died in Egypt.

Apis, then, who died in Egypt, was not the king of Egypt,
but of Argos. He was succeeded by his son Argus, from
whose name the land was called Argos and the people Argives,
for under the earlier kings neither the place nor the nation
as yet had this name. While he then reigned over Argos,
and Eratus over Sicyon, and Balæus still remained king of
Assyria, Jacob died in Egypt a hundred and forty-seven years
old, after he had, when dying, blessed his sons and his grandsons
by Joseph, and prophesied most plainly of Christ, saying
in the blessing of Judah, “A prince shall not fail out of
Judah, nor a leader from his thighs, until those things come
which are laid up for him; and He is the expectation of the
nations.”[499] In the reign of Argus Greece began to use fruits,
and to have crops of corn in cultivated fields, the seed having[Pg 224]
been brought from other countries. Argus also began to be
accounted a god after his death, and was honoured with a
temple and sacrifices. This honour was conferred in his reign,
before being given to him, on a private individual for being
the first to yoke oxen in the plough. This was one Homogyrus,
who was struck by lightning.

7. Who were kings when Joseph died in Egypt.

In the reign of Mamitus, the twelfth king of Assyria, and
Plemnæus, the eleventh of Sicyon, while Argus still reigned
over the Argives, Joseph died in Egypt a hundred and ten
years old. After his death, the people of God, increasing
wonderfully, remained in Egypt a hundred and forty-five
years, in tranquillity at first, until those who knew Joseph were
dead. Afterward, through envy of their increase, and the
suspicion that they would at length gain their freedom, they
were oppressed with persecutions and the labours of intolerable
servitude, amid which, however, they still grew, being
multiplied with God-given fertility. During this period the
same kingdoms continued in Assyria and Greece.

8. Who were kings when Moses was born, and what gods began to be worshipped
then.

When Saphrus reigned as the fourteenth king of Assyria,
and Orthopolis as the twelfth of Sicyon, and Criasus as the
fifth of Argos, Moses was born in Egypt, by whom the
people of God were liberated from the Egyptian slavery, in
which they behoved to be thus tried that they might desire
the help of their Creator. Some have thought that Prometheus
lived during the reign of the kings now named. He
is reported to have formed men out of clay, because he was
esteemed the best teacher of wisdom; yet it does not appear
what wise men there were in his days. His brother Atlas is
said to have been a great astrologer; and this gave occasion
for the fable that he held up the sky, although the vulgar
opinion about his holding up the sky appears rather to have
been suggested by a high mountain named after him. Indeed,
from those times many other fabulous things began to
be invented in Greece; yet, down to Cecrops king of Athens,
in whose reign that city received its name, and in whose reign[Pg 225]
God brought His people out of Egypt by Moses, only a few
dead heroes are reported to have been deified according to the
vain superstition of the Greeks. Among these were Melantomice,
the wife of king Criasus, and Phorbas their son, who
succeeded his father as sixth king of the Argives, and Iasus,
son of Triopas, their seventh king, and their ninth king,
Sthenelas, or Stheneleus, or Sthenelus,—for his name is given
differently by different authors. In those times also, Mercury,
the grandson of Atlas by his daughter Maia, is said to
have lived, according to the common report in books. He
was famous for his skill in many arts, and taught them to
men, for which they resolved to make him, and even believed
that he deserved to be, a god after death. Hercules is
said to have been later, yet belonging to the same period;
although some, whom I think mistaken, assign him an earlier
date than Mercury. But at whatever time they were born,
it is agreed among grave historians, who have committed these
ancient things to writing, that both were men, and that they
merited divine honours from mortals because they conferred
on them many benefits to make this life more pleasant to
them. Minerva was far more ancient than these; for she
is reported to have appeared in virgin age in the times of
Ogyges at the lake called Triton, from which she is also
styled Tritonia, the inventress truly of many works, and the
more readily believed to be a goddess because her origin was
so little known. For what is sung about her having sprung
from the head of Jupiter belongs to the region of poetry and
fable, and not to that of history and real fact. And historical
writers are not agreed when Ogyges flourished, in whose time
also a great flood occurred,—not that greatest one from which
no man escaped except those who could get into the ark, for
neither Greek nor Latin history knew of it, yet a greater
flood than that which happened afterward in Deucalion’s
time. For Varro begins the book I have already mentioned
at this date, and does not propose to himself, as the starting-point
from which he may arrive at Roman affairs, anything
more ancient than the flood of Ogyges, that is, which happened
in the time of Ogyges. Now our writers of chronicles—first
Eusebius, and afterwards Jerome, who entirely follow[Pg 226]
some earlier historians in this opinion—relate that the flood
of Ogyges happened more than three hundred years after,
during the reign of Phoroneus, the second king of Argos.
But whenever he may have lived, Minerva was already worshipped
as a goddess when Cecrops reigned in Athens, in
whose reign the city itself is reported to have been rebuilt
or founded.

9. When the city of Athens was founded, and what reason Varro assigns for its
name.

Athens certainly derived its name from Minerva, who in
Greek is called Ἀθηνη, and Varro points out the following
reason why it was so called. When an olive-tree suddenly
appeared there, and water burst forth in another place, these
prodigies moved the king to send to the Delphic Apollo to
inquire what they meant and what he should do. He answered
that the olive signified Minerva, the water Neptune,
and that the citizens had it in their power to name their
city as they chose, after either of these two gods whose signs
these were. On receiving this oracle, Cecrops convoked all
the citizens of either sex to give their vote, for it was then
the custom in those parts for the women also to take part in
public deliberations. When the multitude was consulted, the
men gave their votes for Neptune, the women for Minerva;
and as the women had a majority of one, Minerva conquered.
Then Neptune, being enraged, laid waste the lands of the
Athenians, by casting up the waves of the sea; for the
demons have no difficulty in scattering any waters more
widely. The same authority said, that to appease his wrath
the women should be visited by the Athenians with the threefold
punishment—that they should no longer have any vote;
that none of their children should be named after their
mothers; and that no one should call them Athenians. Thus
that city, the mother and nurse of liberal doctrines, and of
so many and so great philosophers, than whom Greece had
nothing more famous and noble, by the mockery of demons
about the strife of their gods, a male and female, and from
the victory of the female one through the women, received
the name of Athens; and, on being damaged by the vanquished
god, was compelled to punish the very victory of the[Pg 227]
victress, fearing the waters of Neptune more than the arms
of Minerva. For in the women who were thus punished,
Minerva, who had conquered, was conquered too, and could
not even help her voters so far that, although the right of
voting was henceforth lost, and the mothers could not give
their names to the children, they might at least be allowed to
be called Athenians, and to merit the name of that goddess
whom they had made victorious over a male god by giving
her their votes. What and how much could be said about
this, if we had not to hasten to other things in our discourse,
is obvious.

10. What Varro reports about the term Areopagus, and about Deucalion’s
flood.

Marcus Varro, however, is not willing to credit lying fables
against the gods, lest he should find something dishonouring
to their majesty; and therefore he will not admit that the
Areopagus, the place where the Apostle Paul disputed with
the Athenians, got this name because Mars, who in Greek is
called Ἄρης, when he was charged with the crime of homicide,
and was judged by twelve gods in that field, was acquitted
by the sentence of six; because it was the custom,
when the votes were equal, to acquit rather than condemn.
Against this opinion, which is much most widely published,
he tries, from the notices of obscure books, to support
another reason for this name, lest the Athenians should be
thought to have called it Areopagus from the words “Mars” and
“field,”[500] as if it were the field of Mars, to the dishonour of the
gods, forsooth, from whom he thinks lawsuits and judgments
far removed. And he asserts that this which is said about
Mars is not less false than what is said about the three
goddesses, to wit, Juno, Minerva, and Venus, whose contest
for the palm of beauty, before Paris as judge, in order to obtain
the golden apple, is not only related, but is celebrated in
songs and dances amid the applause of the theatres, in plays
meant to please the gods who take pleasure in these crimes of
their own, whether real or fabled. Varro does not believe
these things, because they are incompatible with the nature
of the gods and of morality; and yet, in giving not a fabulous[Pg 228]
but a historic reason for the name of Athens, he inserts in his
books the strife between Neptune and Minerva as to whose
name should be given to that city, which was so great that,
when they contended by the display of prodigies, even Apollo
dared not judge between them when consulted; but, in order to
end the strife of the gods, just as Jupiter sent the three goddesses
we have named to Paris, so he sent them to men, when
Minerva won by the vote, and yet was defeated by the punishment
of her own voters, for she was unable to confer the title
of Athenians on the women who were her friends, although she
could impose it on the men who were her opponents. In
these times, when Cranaos reigned at Athens as the successor
of Cecrops, as Varro writes, but, according to our Eusebius and
Jerome, while Cecrops himself still remained, the flood occurred
which is called Deucalion’s, because it occurred chiefly
in those parts of the earth in which he reigned. But this
flood did not at all reach Egypt or its vicinity.

11. When Moses led the people out of Egypt; and who were kings when his
successor Joshua the son of Nun died.

Moses led the people out of Egypt in the last time of
Cecrops king of Athens, when Ascatades reigned in Assyria,
Marathus in Sicyon, Triopas in Argos; and having led forth
the people, he gave them at Mount Sinai the law he received
from God, which is called the Old Testament, because it has
earthly promises, and because, through Jesus Christ, there
was to be a New Testament, in which the kingdom of heaven
should be promised. For the same order behoved to be
observed in this as is observed in each man who prospers
in God, according to the saying of the apostle, “That is not
first which is spiritual, but that which is natural,” since, as
he says, and that truly, “The first man of the earth, is earthly;
the second man, from heaven, is heavenly.”[501] Now Moses
ruled the people for forty years in the wilderness, and died a
hundred and twenty years old, after he had prophesied of
Christ by the types of carnal observances in the tabernacle,
priesthood, and sacrifices, and many other mystic ordinances.
Joshua the son of Nun succeeded Moses, and settled in the
land of promise the people he had brought in, having by[Pg 229]
divine authority conquered the people by whom it was
formerly possessed. He also died, after ruling the people
twenty-seven years after the death of Moses, when Amyntas
reigned in Assyria as the eighteenth king, Coracos as the sixteenth
in Sicyon, Danaos as the tenth in Argos, Ericthonius
as the fourth in Athens.

12. Of the rituals of false gods instituted by the kings of Greece in the period
from Israel’s exodus from Egypt down to the death of Joshua the son
of Nun.

During this period, that is, from Israel’s exodus from Egypt
down to the death of Joshua the son of Nun, through whom
that people received the land of promise, rituals were instituted
to the false gods by the kings of Greece, which, by
stated celebration, recalled the memory of the flood, and of
men’s deliverance from it, and of that troublous life they then
led in migrating to and fro between the heights and the
plains. For even the Luperci,[502] when they ascend and descend
the sacred path, are said to represent the men who sought
the mountain summits because of the inundation of water,
and returned to the lowlands on its subsidence. In those
times, Dionysus, who was also called Father Liber, and was
esteemed a god after death, is said to have shown the vine
to his host in Attica. Then the musical games were instituted
for the Delphic Apollo, to appease his anger, through
which they thought the regions of Greece were afflicted with
barrenness, because they had not defended his temple which
Danaos burnt when he invaded those lands; for they were
warned by his oracle to institute these games. But king
Ericthonius first instituted games to him in Attica, and not to
him only, but also to Minerva, in which games the olive was
given as the prize to the victors, because they relate that
Minerva was the discoverer of that fruit, as Liber was of the
grape. In those years Europa is alleged to have been carried
off by Xanthus king of Crete (to whom we find some
give another name), and to have borne him Rhadamanthus,
Sarpedon, and Minos, who are more commonly reported to
have been the sons of Jupiter by the same woman. Now
those who worship such gods regard what we have said about[Pg 230]
Xanthus king of Crete as true history; but this about
Jupiter, which the poets sing, the theatres applaud, and the
people celebrate, as empty fable got up as a reason for games
to appease the deities, even with the false ascription of crimes
to them. In those times Hercules was held in honour in
Tyre, but that was not the same one as he whom we spoke of
above. In the more secret history there are said to have been
several who were called Father Liber and Hercules. This
Hercules, whose great deeds are reckoned as twelve (not including
the slaughter of Antæus the African, because that
affair pertains to another Hercules), is declared in their books
to have burned himself on Mount Œta, because he was not
able, by that strength with which he had subdued monsters,
to endure the disease under which he languished. At that
time the king, or rather tyrant Busiris, who is alleged to have
been the son of Neptune by Libya the daughter of Epaphus,
is said to have offered up his guests in sacrifice to the gods.
Now it must not be believed that Neptune committed this
adultery, lest the gods should be criminated; yet such things
must be ascribed to them by the poets and in the theatres,
that they may be pleased with them. Vulcan and Minerva
are said to have been the parents of Ericthonius king of
Athens, in whose last years Joshua the son of Nun is found
to have died. But since they will have it that Minerva is
a virgin, they say that Vulcan, being disturbed in the struggle
between them, poured out his seed into the earth, and on that
account the man born of it received that name; for in the
Greek language ἔρις is “strife,” and χθὼν “earth,” of which two
words Ericthonius is a compound. Yet it must be admitted
that the more learned disprove and disown such things concerning
their gods, and declare that this fabulous belief originated
in the fact that in the temple at Athens, which Vulcan
and Minerva had in common, a boy who had been exposed
was found wrapped up in the coils of a dragon, which signified
that he would become great, and, as his parents were unknown,
he was called the son of Vulcan and Minerva, because
they had the temple in common. Yet that fable accounts for
the origin of his name better than this history. But what
does it matter to us? Let the one in books that speak the[Pg 231]
truth edify religious men, and the other in lying fables delight
impure demons. Yet these religious men worship them as
gods. Still, while they deny these things concerning them,
they cannot clear them of all crime, because at their demand
they exhibit plays in which the very things they wisely deny
are basely done, and the gods are appeased by these false and
base things. Now, even although the play celebrates an unreal
crime of the gods, yet to delight in the ascription of an unreal
crime is a real one.

13. What fables were invented at the time when judges began to rule the
Hebrews.

After the death of Joshua the son of Nun, the people of
God had judges, in whose times they were alternately humbled
by afflictions on account of their sins, and consoled by prosperity
through the compassion of God. In those times were
invented the fables about Triptolemus, who, at the command
of Ceres, borne by winged snakes, bestowed corn on the needy
lands in flying over them; about that beast the Minotaur,
which was shut up in the Labyrinth, from which men who
entered its inextricable mazes could find no exit; about the
Centaurs, whose form was a compound of horse and man;
about Cerberus, the three-headed dog of hell; about Phryxus
and his sister Hellas, who fled, borne by a winged ram; about
the Gorgon, whose hair was composed of serpents, and who
turned those who looked on her into stone; about Bellerophon,
who was carried by a winged horse called Pegasus;
about Amphion, who charmed and attracted the stones by the
sweetness of his harp; about the artificer Dædalus and his
son Icarus, who flew on wings they had fitted on; about
Œdipus, who compelled a certain four-footed monster with a
human face, called a sphynx, to destroy herself by casting
herself headlong, having solved the riddle she was wont to
propose as insoluble; about Antæus, who was the son of the
earth, for which reason, on falling on the earth, he was wont
to rise up stronger, whom Hercules slew; and perhaps there
are others which I have forgotten. These fables, easily found
in histories containing a true account of events, bring us down
to the Trojan war, at which Marcus Varro has closed his
second book about the race of the Roman people; and they[Pg 232]
are so skilfully invented by men as to involve no scandal to
the gods. But whoever have pretended as to Jupiter’s rape
of Ganymede, a very beautiful boy, that king Tantalus committed
the crime, and the fable ascribed it to Jupiter; or as
to his impregnating Danäe as a golden shower, that it means
that the woman’s virtue was corrupted by gold: whether these
things were really done or only fabled in those days, or were
really done by others and falsely ascribed to Jupiter, it is
impossible to tell how much wickedness must have been taken
for granted in men’s hearts that they should be thought able
to listen to such lies with patience. And yet they willingly
accepted them, when, indeed, the more devotedly they worshipped
Jupiter, they ought the more severely to have
punished those who durst say such things of him. But they
not only were not angry at those who invented these things,
but were afraid that the gods would be angry at them if they
did not act such fictions even in the theatres. In those times
Latona bore Apollo, not him of whose oracle we have spoken
above as so often consulted, but him who is said, along with
Hercules, to have fed the flocks of king Admetus; yet he was
so believed to be a god, that very many, indeed almost all, have
believed him to be the selfsame Apollo. Then also Father
Liber made war in India, and led in his army many women
called Bacchæ, who were notable not so much for valour as for
fury. Some, indeed, write that this Liber was both conquered
and bound; and some that he was slain in Persia, even telling
where he was buried; and yet in his name, as that of a god,
the unclean demons have instituted the sacred, or rather the
sacrilegious, Bacchanalia, of the outrageous vileness of which
the senate, after many years, became so much ashamed as to
prohibit them in the city of Rome. Men believed that in
those times Perseus and his wife Andromeda were raised into
heaven after their death, so that they were not ashamed or
afraid to mark out their images by constellations, and call
them by their names.

14. Of the theological poets.

During the same period of time arose the poets, who were
also called theologues, because they made hymns about the[Pg 233]
gods; yet about such gods as, although great men, were yet
but men, or the elements of this world which the true God
made, or creatures who were ordained as principalities and
powers according to the will of the Creator and their own
merit. And if, among much that was vain and false, they
sang anything of the one true God, yet, by worshipping Him
along with others who are not gods, and showing them the
service that is due to Him alone, they did not serve Him at
all rightly; and even such poets as Orpheus, Musæus, and
Linus, were unable to abstain from dishonouring their gods by
fables. But yet these theologues worshipped the gods, and
were not worshipped as gods, although the city of the ungodly
is wont, I know not how, to set Orpheus over the sacred, or
rather sacrilegious, rites of hell. The wife of king Athamas,
who was called Ino, and her son Melicertes, perished by
throwing themselves into the sea, and were, according to popular
belief, reckoned among the gods, like other men of the same
times, [among whom were] Castor and Pollux. The Greeks,
indeed, called her who was the mother of Melicertes, Leucothea,
the Latins Matuta; but both thought her a goddess.

15. Of the fall of the kingdom of Argos, when Picus the son of Saturn first
received his father’s kingdom of Laurentum.

During those times the kingdom of Argos came to an end,
being transferred to Mycene, from which Agamemnon came,
and the kingdom of Laurentum arose, of which Picus son of
Saturn was the first king, when the woman Deborah judged
the Hebrews; but it was the Spirit of God who used her as
His agent, for she was also a prophetess, although her prophecy
is so obscure that we could not demonstrate, without a
long discussion, that it was uttered concerning Christ. Now
the Laurentes already reigned in Italy, from whom the origin
of the Roman people is quite evidently derived after the
Greeks; yet the kingdom of Assyria still lasted, in which
Lampares was the twenty-third king when Picus first began
to reign at Laurentum. The worshippers of such gods may
see what they are to think of Saturn the father of Picus, who
deny that he was a man; of whom some also have written
that he himself reigned in Italy before Picus his son; and
Virgil in his well-known book says,—

[Pg 234]

“That race indocile, and through mountains high

Dispersed, he settled, and endowed with laws,

And named their country Latium, because

Latent within their coasts he dwelt secure.

Tradition says the golden ages pure

Began when he was king.”[503]

But they regard these as poetic fancies, and assert that the
father of Picus was Sterces rather, and relate that, being a
most skilful husbandman, he discovered that the fields could
be fertilized by the dung of animals, which is called stercus
from his name. Some say he was called Stercutius. But
for whatever reason they chose to call him Saturn, it is
yet certain they made this Sterces or Stercutius a god for
his merit in agriculture; and they likewise received into the
number of these gods Picus his son, whom they affirm to
have been a famous augur and warrior. Picus begot Faunus,
the second king of Laurentum; and he too is, or was, a god
with them. These divine honours they gave to dead men
before the Trojan war.

16. Of Diomede, who after the destruction of Troy was placed among the gods,
while his companions are said to have been changed into birds.

Troy was overthrown, and its destruction was everywhere
sung and made well known even to boys; for it was signally
published and spread abroad, both by its own greatness and
by writers of excellent style. And this was done in the
reign of Latinus the son of Faunus, from whom the kingdom
began to be called Latium instead of Laurentum. The victorious
Greeks, on leaving Troy destroyed and returning to
their own countries, were torn and crushed by divers and
horrible calamities. Yet even from among them they increased
the number of their gods, for they made Diomede a
god. They allege that his return home was prevented by a
divinely imposed punishment, and they prove, not by fabulous
and poetic falsehood, but by historic attestation, that his companions
were turned into birds. Yet they think that, even
although he was made a god, he could neither restore them
to the human form by his own power, nor yet obtain it from
Jupiter his king, as a favour granted to a new inhabitant of
heaven. They also say that his temple is in the island of[Pg 235]
Diomedæa, not far from Mount Garganus in Apulia, and that
these birds fly round about this temple, and worship in it
with such wonderful obedience, that they fill their beaks with
water and sprinkle it; and if Greeks, or those born of the
Greek race, come there, they are not only still, but fly to meet
them; but if they are foreigners, they fly up at their heads,
and wound them with such severe strokes as even to kill
them. For they are said to be well enough armed for these
combats with their hard and large beaks.

17. What Varro says of the incredible transformations of men.

In support of this story, Varro relates others no less incredible
about that most famous sorceress Circe, who changed
the companions of Ulysses into beasts, and about the Arcadians,
who, by lot, swam across a certain pool, and were turned into
wolves there, and lived in the deserts of that region with
wild beasts like themselves. But if they never fed on human
flesh for nine years, they were restored to the human form
on swimming back again through the same pool. Finally, he
expressly names one Demænetus, who, on tasting a boy offered
up in sacrifice by the Arcadians to their god Lycæus according
to their custom, was changed into a wolf, and, being restored
to his proper form in the tenth year, trained himself as a
pugilist, and was victorious at the Olympic games. And the
same historian thinks that the epithet Lycæus was applied
in Arcadia to Pan and Jupiter for no other reason than this
metamorphosis of men into wolves, because it was thought it
could not be wrought except by a divine power. For a wolf
is called in Greek λυκὸς, from which the name Lycæus appears
to be formed. He says also that the Roman Luperci
were as it were sprung of the seed of these mysteries.

18. What we should believe concerning the transformations which seem to
happen to men through the art of demons.

Perhaps our readers expect us to say something about this
so great delusion wrought by the demons; and what shall we
say but that men must fly out of the midst of Babylon?[504] For
this prophetic precept is to be understood spiritually in this
sense, that by going forward in the living God, by the steps of[Pg 236]
faith, which worketh by love, we must flee out of the city of
this world, which is altogether a society of ungodly angels and
men. Yea, the greater we see the power of the demons to be
in these depths, so much the more tenaciously must we cleave
to the Mediator through whom we ascend from these lowest
to the highest places. For if we should say these things are
not to be credited, there are not wanting even now some
who would affirm that they had either heard on the best
authority, or even themselves experienced, something of that
kind. Indeed we ourselves, when in Italy, heard such things
about a certain region there, where landladies of inns, imbued
with these wicked arts, were said to be in the habit of giving
to such travellers as they chose, or could manage, something
in a piece of cheese by which they were changed on the spot
into beasts of burden, and carried whatever was necessary,
and were restored to their own form when the work was
done. Yet their mind did not become bestial, but remained
rational and human, just as Apuleius, in the books he wrote
with the title of The Golden Ass, has told, or feigned, that it
happened to his own self that, on taking poison, he became
an ass, while retaining his human mind.

These things are either false, or so extraordinary as to be
with good reason disbelieved. But it is to be most firmly
believed that Almighty God can do whatever He pleases,
whether in punishing or favouring, and that the demons can
accomplish nothing by their natural power (for their created
being is itself angelic, although made malign by their own
fault), except what He may permit, whose judgments are often
hidden, but never unrighteous. And indeed the demons, if
they really do such things as these on which this discussion
turns, do not create real substances, but only change the
appearance of things created by the true God so as to make
them seem to be what they are not. I cannot therefore
believe that even the body, much less the mind, can really be
changed into bestial forms and lineaments by any reason, art,
or power of the demons; but the phantasm of a man, which
even in thought or dreams goes through innumerable changes,
may, when the man’s senses are laid asleep or overpowered,
be presented to the senses of others in a corporeal form, in[Pg 237]
some indescribable way unknown to me, so that men’s bodies
themselves may lie somewhere, alive, indeed, yet with their
senses locked up much more heavily and firmly than by
sleep, while that phantasm, as it were embodied in the shape
of some animal, may appear to the senses of others, and may
even seem to the man himself to be changed, just as he may
seem to himself in sleep to be so changed, and to bear burdens;
and these burdens, if they are real substances, are borne by
the demons, that men may be deceived by beholding at the
same time the real substance of the burdens and the simulated
bodies of the beasts of burden. For a certain man called
Præstantius used to tell that it had happened to his father in
his own house, that he took that poison in a piece of cheese,
and lay in his bed as if sleeping, yet could by no means be
aroused. But he said that after a few days he as it were
woke up and related the things he had suffered as if they
had been dreams, namely, that he had been made a sumpter
horse, and, along with other beasts of burden, had carried
provisions for the soldiers of what is called the Rhœtian
Legion, because it was sent to Rhœtia. And all this was
found to have taken place just as he told, yet it had seemed
to him to be his own dream. And another man declared
that in his own house at night, before he slept, he saw a
certain philosopher, whom he knew very well, come to him
and explain to him some things in the Platonic philosophy
which he had previously declined to explain when asked.
And when he had asked this philosopher why he did in his
house what he had refused to do at home, he said, “I did not
do it, but I dreamed I had done it.” And thus what the
one saw when sleeping was shown to the other when awake
by a phantasmal image.

These things have not come to us from persons we might
deem unworthy of credit, but from informants we could not
suppose to be deceiving us. Therefore what men say and
have committed to writing about the Arcadians being often
changed into wolves by the Arcadian gods, or demons rather,
and what is told in song about Circe transforming the companions
of Ulysses,[505] if they were really done, may, in my[Pg 238]
opinion, have been done in the way I have said. As for
Diomede’s birds, since their race is alleged to have been perpetuated
by constant propagation, I believe they were not
made through the metamorphosis of men, but were slyly
substituted for them on their removal, just as the hind was
for Iphigenia, the daughter of king Agamemnon. For juggleries
of this kind could not be difficult for the demons if
permitted by the judgment of God; and since that virgin
was afterward found alive, it is easy to see that a hind had
been slyly substituted for her. But because the companions
of Diomede were of a sudden nowhere to be seen, and afterward
could nowhere be found, being destroyed by bad avenging
angels, they were believed to have been changed into
those birds, which were secretly brought there from other
places where such birds were, and suddenly substituted for
them by fraud. But that they bring water in their beaks
and sprinkle it on the temple of Diomede, and that they
fawn on men of Greek race and persecute aliens, is no wonderful
thing to be done by the inward influence of the demons,
whose interest it is to persuade men that Diomede was made
a god, and thus to beguile them into worshipping many false
gods, to the great dishonour of the true God; and to serve
dead men, who even in their lifetime did not truly live,
with temples, altars, sacrifices, and priests, all which, when
of the right kind, are due only to the one living and true
God.

19. That Æneas came into Italy when Abdon the judge ruled over the Hebrews.

After the capture and destruction of Troy, Æneas, with
twenty ships laden with the Trojan relics, came into Italy,
when Latinus reigned there, Menestheus in Athens, Polyphidos
in Sicyon, and Tautanos in Assyria, and Abdon was
judge of the Hebrews. On the death of Latinus, Æneas
reigned three years, the same kings continuing in the above-named
places, except that Pelasgus was now king in Sicyon,
and Sampson was judge of the Hebrews, who is thought to be
Hercules, because of his wonderful strength. Now the Latins
made Æneas one of their gods, because at his death he was
nowhere to be found. The Sabines also placed among the
gods their first king, Sancus, [Sangus], or Sanctus, as some[Pg 239]
call him. At that time Codrus king of Athens exposed
himself incognito to be slain by the Peloponnesian foes of
that city, and so was slain. In this way, they say, he delivered
his country. For the Peloponnesians had received a
response from the oracle, that they should overcome the
Athenians only on condition that they did not slay their
king. Therefore he deceived them by appearing in a poor
man’s dress, and provoking them, by quarrelling, to murder
him. Whence Virgil says, “Or the quarrels of Codrus.”[506]
And the Athenians worshipped this man as a god with
sacrificial honours. The fourth king of the Latins was
Silvius the son of Æneas, not by Creüsa, of whom Ascanius
the third king was born, but by Lavinia the daughter of
Latinus, and he is said to have been his posthumous child.
Oneus was the twenty-ninth king of Assyria, Melanthus the
sixteenth of the Athenians, and Eli the priest was judge of the
Hebrews; and the kingdom of Sicyon then came to an end,
after lasting, it is said, for nine hundred and fifty-nine years.

20. Of the succession of the line of kings among the Israelites after the times
of the judges.

While these kings reigned in the places mentioned, the
period of the judges being ended, the kingdom of Israel next
began with king Saul, when Samuel the prophet lived. At
that date those Latin kings began who were surnamed Silvii,
having that surname, in addition to their proper name, from
their predecessor, that son of Æneas who was called Silvius;
just as, long afterward, the successors of Cæsar Augustus
were surnamed Cæsars. Saul being rejected, so that none
of his issue should reign, on his death David succeeded him
in the kingdom, after he had reigned forty years. Then the
Athenians ceased to have kings after the death of Codrus,
and began to have a magistracy to rule the republic. After
David, who also reigned forty years, his son Solomon was
king of Israel, who built that most noble temple of God at
Jerusalem. In his time Alba was built among the Latins,
from which thereafter the kings began to be styled kings
not of the Latins, but of the Albans, although in the same
Latium. Solomon was succeeded by his son Rehoboam,[Pg 240]
under whom that people was divided into two kingdoms, and
its separate parts began to have separate kings.

21. Of the kings of Latium, the first and twelfth of whom, Æneas and
Aventinus, were made gods.

After Æneas, whom they deified, Latium had eleven kings,
none of whom was deified. But Aventinus, who was the
twelfth after Æneas, having been laid low in war, and buried
in that hill still called by his name, was added to the number
of such gods as they made for themselves. Some, indeed,
were unwilling to write that he was slain in battle, but said
he was nowhere to be found, and that it was not from his
name, but from the alighting of birds, that hill was called
Aventinus.[507] After this no god was made in Latium except
Romulus the founder of Rome. But two kings are found
between these two, the first of whom I shall describe in the
Virgilian verse:

“Next came that Procas, glory of the Trojan race.”[508]

That greatest of all kingdoms, the Assyrian, had its long
duration brought to a close in his time, the time of Rome’s
birth drawing nigh. For the Assyrian empire was transferred
to the Medes after nearly thirteen hundred and five
years, if we include the reign of Belus, who begot Ninus,
and, content with a small kingdom, was the first king there.
Now Procas reigned before Amulius. And Amulius had
made his brother Numitor’s daughter, Rhea by name, who
was also called Ilia, a vestal virgin, who conceived twin
sons by Mars, as they will have it, in that way honouring
or excusing her adultery, adding as a proof that a she-wolf
nursed the infants when exposed. For they think this kind
of beast belongs to Mars, so that the she-wolf is believed to
have given her teats to the infants, because she knew they
were the sons of Mars her lord; although there are not wanting
persons who say that when the crying babes lay exposed,
they were first of all picked up by I know not what harlot,
and sucked her breasts first (now harlots were called lupæ, she-wolves,
from which their vile abodes are even yet called lupanaria),
and that afterwards they came into the hands of the
shepherd Faustulus, and were nursed by Acca his wife. Yet[Pg 241]
what wonder is it, if, to rebuke the king who had cruelly
ordered them to be thrown into the water, God was pleased, after
divinely delivering them from the water, to succour, by means
of a wild beast giving milk, these infants by whom so great a
city was to be founded? Amulius was succeeded in the Latian
kingdom by his brother Numitor, the grandfather of Romulus;
and Rome was founded in the first year of this Numitor, who
from that time reigned along with his grandson Romulus.

22. That Rome was founded when the Assyrian kingdom perished, at which
time Hezekiah reigned in Judah.

To be brief, the city of Rome was founded, like another
Babylon, and as it were the daughter of the former Babylon,
by which God was pleased to conquer the whole world, and
subdue it far and wide by bringing it into one fellowship of
government and laws. For there were already powerful and
brave peoples and nations trained to arms, who did not easily
yield, and whose subjugation necessarily involved great danger
and destruction as well as great and horrible labour. For
when the Assyrian kingdom subdued almost all Asia, although
this was done by fighting, yet the wars could not be very
fierce or difficult, because the nations were as yet untrained to
resist, and neither so many nor so great as afterward; forasmuch
as, after that greatest and indeed universal flood, when
only eight men escaped in Noah’s ark, not much more than a
thousand years had passed when Ninus subdued all Asia with
the exception of India. But Rome did not with the same
quickness and facility wholly subdue all those nations of the
east and west which we see brought under the Roman empire,
because, in its gradual increase, in whatever direction it was extended,
it found them strong and warlike. At the time when
Rome was founded, then, the people of Israel had been in the
land of promise seven hundred and eighteen years. Of these
years twenty-seven belong to Joshua the son of Nun, and
after that three hundred and twenty-nine to the period of the
judges. But from the time when the kings began to reign
there, three hundred and sixty-two years had passed. And
at that time there was a king in Judah called Ahaz, or,
as others compute, Hezekiah his successor, the best and
most pious king, who it is admitted reigned in the times of[Pg 242]
Romulus. And in that part of the Hebrew nation called
Israel, Hoshea had begun to reign.

23. Of the Erythræan sibyl, who is known to have sung many things about
Christ more plainly than the other sibyls.

Some say the Erythræan sibyl prophesied at this time.
Now Varro declares there were many sibyls, and not merely
one. This sibyl of Erythræ certainly wrote some things
concerning Christ which are quite manifest, and we first read
them in the Latin tongue in verses of bad Latin, and unrhythmical,
through the unskilfulness, as we afterward learned, of
some interpreter unknown to me. For Flaccianus, a very
famous man, who was also a proconsul, a man of most ready
eloquence and much learning, when we were speaking about
Christ, produced a Greek manuscript, saying that it was the
prophecies of the Erythræan sibyl, in which he pointed out a
certain passage which had the initial letters of the lines so
arranged that these words could be read in them: Ἰησοῦς
Χριστὸς Θεοῦ υἱὸς σωτήρ, which mean, “Jesus Christ the Son
of God, the Saviour.” And these verses, of which the initial
letters yield that meaning, contain what follows as translated
by some one into Latin in good rhythm:

Ι Judgment shall moisten the earth with the sweat of its standard,

Η Ever enduring, behold the King shall come through the ages,

Σ Sent to be here in the flesh, and Judge at the last of the world.

Ο O God, the believing and faithless alike shall behold Thee

Υ Uplifted with saints, when at last the ages are ended.

Σ Sisted before Him are souls in the flesh for His judgment.

Χ Hid in thick vapours, the while desolate lieth the earth.

Ρ Rejected by men are the idols and long hidden treasures;

Ε Earth is consumed by the fire, and it searcheth the ocean and heaven;

Ι Issuing forth, it destroyeth the terrible portals of hell.

Σ Saints in their body and soul freedom and light shall inherit;

Τ Those who are guilty shall burn in fire and brimstone for ever.

Ο Occult actions revealing, each one shall publish his secrets;

Σ Secrets of every man’s heart God shall reveal in the light.

Θ Then shall be weeping and wailing, yea; and gnashing of teeth;

Ε Eclipsed is the sun, and silenced the stars in their chorus.

Ο Over and gone is the splendour of moonlight, melted the heaven.

Υ Uplifted by Him are the valleys, and cast down the mountains.

Υ Utterly gone among men are distinctions of lofty and lowly.

Ι Into the plains rush the hills, the skies and oceans are mingled.

Ο Oh, what an end of all things! earth broken in pieces shall perish;

Σ Swelling together at once shall the waters and flames flow in rivers.
[Pg 243]

Σ Sounding the archangel’s trumpet shall peal down from heaven,

Ω Over the wicked who groan in their guilt and their manifold sorrows.

Τ Trembling, the earth shall be opened, revealing chaos and hell.

Η Every king before God shall stand in that day to be judged.

Ρ Rivers of fire and of brimstone shall fall from the heavens.

In these Latin verses the meaning of the Greek is correctly
given, although not in the exact order of the lines as connected
with the initial letters; for in three of them, the fifth,
eighteenth, and nineteenth, where the Greek letter Υ occurs,
Latin words could not be found beginning with the corresponding
letter, and yielding a suitable meaning. So that, if
we note down together the initial letters of all the lines in
our Latin translation except those three in which we retain
the letter Υ in the proper place, they will express in five
Greek words this meaning, “Jesus Christ the Son of God, the
Saviour.” And the verses are twenty-seven, which is the cube
of three. For three times three are nine; and nine itself, if
tripled, so as to rise from the superficial square to the cube,
comes to twenty-seven. But if you join the initial letters of
these five Greek words, Ἰησοῦς Χριστὸς Θεοῦ υἱὸς σωτήρ,
which mean, “Jesus Christ the Son of God, the Saviour,” they
will make the word ἰχθὺς, that is, “fish,” in which word Christ
is mystically understood, because He was able to live, that is,
to exist, without sin in the abyss of this mortality as in the
depth of waters.

But this sibyl, whether she is the Erythræan, or, as some
rather believe, the Cumæan, in her whole poem, of which this
is a very small portion, not only has nothing that can relate
to the worship of the false or feigned gods, but rather speaks
against them and their worshippers in such a way that we
might even think she ought to be reckoned among those who
belong to the city of God. Lactantius also inserted in his
work the prophecies about Christ of a certain sibyl, he does
not say which. But I have thought fit to combine in a single
extract, which may seem long, what he has set down in many
short quotations. She says, “Afterward He shall come into
the injurious hands of the unbelieving, and they will give
God buffets with profane hands, and with impure mouth will
spit out envenomed spittle; but He will with simplicity[Pg 244]
yield His holy back to stripes. And He will hold His peace
when struck with the fist, that no one may find out what
word, or whence, He comes to speak to hell; and He shall be
crowned with a crown of thorns. And they gave Him gall
for meat, and vinegar for His thirst: they will spread this
table of inhospitality. For thou thyself, being foolish, hast not
understood thy God, deluding the minds of mortals, but hast
both crowned Him with thorns and mingled for Him bitter
gall. But the veil of the temple shall be rent; and at midday
it shall be darker than night for three hours. And He shall
die the death, taking sleep for three days; and then returning
from hell, He first shall come to the light, the beginning of
the resurrection being shown to the recalled.” Lactantius
made use of these sibylline testimonies, introducing them bit
by bit in the course of his discussion as the things he intended
to prove seemed to require, and we have set them down in one
connected series, uninterrupted by comment, only taking care
to mark them by capitals, if only the transcribers do not neglect
to preserve them hereafter. Some writers, indeed, say that the
Erythræan sibyl was not in the time of Romulus, but of the
Trojan war.

24. That the seven sages flourished in the reign of Romulus, when the ten tribes
which were called Israel were led into captivity by the Chaldeans, and
Romulus, when dead, had divine honours conferred on him.

While Romulus reigned, Thales the Milesian is said to have
lived, being one of the seven sages, who succeeded the theological
poets, of whom Orpheus was the most renowned, and
were called Σοφοί, that is, sages. During that time the ten
tribes, which on the division of the people were called Israel,
were conquered by the Chaldeans and led captive into their
lands, while the two tribes which were called Judah, and had
the seat of their kingdom in Jerusalem, remained in the land
of Judea. As Romulus, when dead, could nowhere be found,
the Romans, as is everywhere notorious, placed him among
the gods,—a thing which by that time had already ceased to
be done, and which was not done afterwards till the time of the
Cæsars, and then not through error, but in flattery; so that
Cicero ascribes great praises to Romulus, because he merited
such honours not in rude and unlearned times, when men[Pg 245]
were easily deceived, but in times already polished and learned,
although the subtle and acute loquacity of the philosophers
had not yet culminated. But although the later times did
not deify dead men, still they did not cease to hold and worship
as gods those deified of old; nay, by images, which the
ancients never had, they even increased the allurements of
vain and impious superstition, the unclean demons effecting
this in their heart, and also deceiving them by lying oracles,
so that even the fabulous crimes of the gods, which were not
once imagined by a more polite age, were yet basely acted in
the plays in honour of these same false deities. Numa reigned
after Romulus; and although he had thought that Rome would
be better defended the more gods there were, yet on his death
he himself was not counted worthy of a place among them, as
if it were supposed that he had so crowded heaven that a place
could not be found for him there. They report that the Samian
sibyl lived while he reigned at Rome, and when Manasseh
began to reign over the Hebrews,—an impious king, by whom
the prophet Isaiah is said to have been slain.

25. What philosophers were famous when Tarquinius Priscus reigned over the
Romans, and Zedekiah over the Hebrews, when Jerusalem was taken and
the temple overthrown.

When Zedekiah reigned over the Hebrews, and Tarquinius
Priscus, the successor of Ancus Martius, over the Romans, the
Jewish people was led captive into Babylon, Jerusalem and
the temple built by Solomon being overthrown. For the prophets,
in chiding them for their iniquity and impiety, predicted
that these things should come to pass, especially Jeremiah,
who even stated the number of years. Pittacus of Mitylene,
another of the sages, is reported to have lived at that time.
And Eusebius writes that, while the people of God were held
captive in Babylon, the five other sages lived, who must be
added to Thales, whom we mentioned above, and Pittacus, in
order to make up the seven. These are Solon of Athens, Chilo
of Lacedæmon, Periander of Corinth, Cleobulus of Lindus, and
Bias of Priene. These flourished after the theological poets, and
were called sages, because they excelled other men in a certain
laudable line of life, and summed up some moral precepts
in epigrammatic sayings. But they left posterity no literary[Pg 246]
monuments, except that Solon is alleged to have given certain
laws to the Athenians, and Thales was a natural philosopher,
and left books of his doctrine in short proverbs. In that time
of the Jewish captivity, Anaximander, Anaximenes, and Xenophanes,
the natural philosophers, flourished. Pythagoras also
lived then, and at this time the name philosopher was first used.

26. That at the time when the captivity of the Jews was brought to an end, on the
completion of seventy years, the Romans also were freed from kingly rule.

At this time, Cyrus king of Persia, who also ruled the Chaldeans
and Assyrians, having somewhat relaxed the captivity
of the Jews, made fifty thousand of them return in order to
rebuild the temple. They only began the first foundations
and built the altar; but, owing to hostile invasions, they were
unable to go on, and the work was put off to the time of Darius.
During the same time also those things were done which are
written in the book of Judith, which, indeed, the Jews are
said not to have received into the canon of the Scriptures.
Under Darius king of Persia, then, on the completion of the
seventy years predicted by Jeremiah the prophet, the captivity
of the Jews was brought to an end, and they were restored
to liberty. Tarquin then reigned as the seventh king of the
Romans. On his expulsion, they also began to be free from
the rule of their kings. Down to this time the people of
Israel had prophets; but, although they were numerous, the
canonical writings of only a few of them have been preserved
among the Jews and among us. In closing the previous book,
I promised to set down something in this one about them, and
I shall now do so.

27. Of the times of the prophets whose oracles are contained in books, and who
sang many things about the call of the Gentiles at the time when the Roman
kingdom began and the Assyrian came to an end.

In order that we may be able to consider these times, let us
go back a little to earlier times. At the beginning of the book
of the prophet Hosea, who is placed first of twelve, it is written,
“The word of the Lord which came to Hosea in the days of
Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah.”[509] Amos
also writes that he prophesied in the days of Uzziah, and adds
the name of Jeroboam king of Israel, who lived at the same[Pg 247]
time.[510] Isaiah the son of Amos—either the above-named prophet,
or, as is rather affirmed, another who was not a prophet, but
was called by the same name—also puts at the head of his book
these four kings named by Hosea, saying by way of preface
that he prophesied in their days.[511] Micah also names the same
times as those of his prophecy, after the days of Uzziah;[512] for
he names the same three kings as Hosea named,—Jotham,
Ahaz, and Hezekiah. We find from their own writings that
these men prophesied contemporaneously. To these are added
Jonah in the reign of Uzziah, and Joel in that of Jotham, who
succeeded Uzziah. But we can find the date of these two
prophets in the chronicles,[513] not in their own writings, for they
say nothing about it themselves. Now these days extend from
Procas king of the Latins, or his predecessor Aventinus, down
to Romulus king of the Romans, or even to the beginning of
the reign of his successor, Numa Pompilius. Hezekiah king
of Judah certainly reigned till then. So that thus these fountains
of prophecy, as I may call them, burst forth at once during
those times when the Assyrian kingdom failed and the Roman
began; so that, just as in the first period of the Assyrian kingdom
Abraham arose, to whom the most distinct promises were
made that all nations should be blessed in his seed, so at the
beginning of the western Babylon, in the time of whose government
Christ was to come in whom these promises were to be
fulfilled, the oracles of the prophets were given not only in
spoken but in written words, for a testimony that so great a
thing should come to pass. For although the people of Israel
hardly ever lacked prophets from the time when they began to
have kings, these were only for their own use, not for that of
the nations. But when the more manifestly prophetic Scripture
began to be formed, which was to benefit the nations
too, it was fitting that it should begin when this city was
founded which was to rule the nations.

28. Of the things pertaining to the gospel of Christ which Hosea and Amos
prophesied.

The prophet Hosea speaks so very profoundly that it is
laborious work to penetrate his meaning. But, according to[Pg 248]
promise, we must insert something from his book. He says,
“And it shall come to pass that in the place where it was
said unto them, Ye are not my people, there they shall be
called the sons of the living God.”[514] Even the apostles understood
this as a prophetic testimony of the calling of the nations
who did not formerly belong to God; and because this same
people of the Gentiles is itself spiritually among the children
of Abraham, and for that reason is rightly called Israel, therefore
he goes on to say, “And the children of Judah and the
children of Israel shall be gathered together in one, and shall
appoint themselves one headship, and shall ascend from the
earth.”[515] We should but weaken the savour of this prophetic
oracle if we set ourselves to expound it. Let the reader but
call to mind that corner-stone and those two walls of partition,
the one of the Jews, the other of the Gentiles,[516] and he will recognise
them, the one under the term sons of Judah, the other
as sons of Israel, supporting themselves by one and the same
headship, and ascending from the earth. But that those carnal
Israelites who are now unwilling to believe in Christ shall
afterward believe, that is, their children shall (for they themselves,
of course, shall go to their own place by dying), this
same prophet testifies, saying, “For the children of Israel shall
abide many days without a king, without a prince, without a
sacrifice, without an altar, without a priesthood, without manifestations.”[517]
Who does not see that the Jews are now thus?
But let us hear what he adds: “And afterward shall the children
of Israel return, and seek the Lord their God, and David
their king, and shall be amazed at the Lord and at His goodness
in the latter days.”[518] Nothing is clearer than this prophecy,
in which by David, as distinguished by the title of king,
Christ is to be understood, “who is made,” as the apostle says,
“of the seed of David according to the flesh.”[519] This prophet
has also foretold the resurrection of Christ on the third day,
as it behoved to be foretold, with prophetic loftiness, when he
says, “He will heal us after two days, and in the third day we
shall rise again.”[520] In agreement with this the apostle says
to us, “If ye be risen with Christ, seek those things which are[Pg 249]
above.”[521] Amos also prophesies thus concerning such things:
“Prepare thee, that thou mayst invoke thy God, O Israel; for
lo, I am binding the thunder, and creating the spirit, and announcing
to men their Christ.”[522] And in another place he
says, “In that day will I raise up the tabernacle of David that
is fallen, and build up the breaches thereof; and I will raise
up his ruins, and will build them up again as in the days of
old: that the residue of men may inquire for me, and all the
nations upon whom my name is invoked, saith the Lord that
doeth this.”[523]

29. What things are predicted by Isaiah concerning Christ and the Church.

The prophecy of Isaiah is not in the book of the twelve
prophets, who are called the minor from the brevity of their
writings, as compared with those who are called the greater
prophets because they published larger volumes. Isaiah belongs
to the latter, yet I connect him with the two above
named, because he prophesied at the same time. Isaiah, then,
together with his rebukes of wickedness, precepts of righteousness,
and predictions of evil, also prophesied much more than
the rest about Christ and the Church, that is, about the King
and that city which he founded; so that some say he should
be called an evangelist rather than a prophet. But, in order
to finish this work, I quote only one out of many in this
place. Speaking in the person of the Father, he says, “Behold,
my servant shall understand, and shall be exalted and glorified
very much. As many shall be astonished at Thee.”[524] This is
about Christ.

But let us now hear what follows about the Church. He
says, “Rejoice, O barren, thou that barest not; break forth
and cry, thou that didst not travail with child: for many more
are the children of the desolate than of her that has an husband.”[525]
But these must suffice; and some things in them
ought to be expounded; yet I think those parts sufficient which
are so plain that even enemies must be compelled against their
will to understand them.

[Pg 250]

30. What Micah, Jonah, and Joel prophesied in accordance with the New
Testament.

The prophet Micah, representing Christ under the figure of
a great mountain, speaks thus: “It shall come to pass in the
last days, that the manifested mountain of the Lord shall be
prepared on the tops of the mountains, and it shall be exalted
above the hills; and people shall hasten unto it. Many nations
shall go, and shall say, Come, let us go up into the mountain of
the Lord, and into the house of the God of Jacob; and He
will show us His way, and we will go in His paths: for out
of Zion shall proceed the law, and the word of the Lord out
of Jerusalem. And He shall judge among many people, and
rebuke strong nations afar off.”[526] This prophet predicts the
very place in which Christ was born, saying, “And thou,
Bethlehem, of the house of Ephratah, art the least that can
be reckoned among the thousands of Judah; out of thee shall
come forth unto me a leader, to be the prince in Israel; and His
going forth is from the beginning, even from the days of eternity.
Therefore will He give them [up] even until the time
when she that travaileth shall bring forth; and the remnant
of His brethren shall be converted to the sons of Israel. And
He shall stand, and see, and feed His flock in the strength of
the Lord, and in the dignity of the name of the Lord His
God: for now shall He be magnified even to the utmost of
the earth.”[527]

The prophet Jonah, not so much by speech as by his own
painful experience, prophesied Christ’s death and resurrection
much more clearly than if he had proclaimed them with his
voice. For why was he taken into the whale’s belly and restored
on the third day, but that he might be a sign that
Christ should return from the depths of hell on the third
day?

I should be obliged to use many words in explaining all
that Joel prophesies in order to make clear those that pertain
to Christ and the Church. But there is one passage I must
not pass by, which the apostles also quoted when the Holy
Spirit came down from above on the assembled believers according
to Christ’s promise. He says, “And it shall come to[Pg 251]
pass after these things, that I will pour out my Spirit upon
all flesh; and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
and your old men shall dream, and your young men shall see
visions: and even on my servants and mine handmaids in
those days will I pour out my Spirit.”[528]

31. Of the predictions concerning the salvation of the world in Christ, in
Obadiah, Nahum, and Habakkuk.

The date of three of the minor prophets, Obadiah, Nahum,
and Habakkuk, is neither mentioned by themselves nor given
in the chronicles of Eusebius and Jerome. For although
they put Obadiah with Micah, yet when Micah prophesied
does not appear from that part of their writings in which the
dates are noted. And this, I think, has happened through
their error in negligently copying the works of others. But we
could not find the two others now mentioned in the copies of
the chronicles which we have; yet because they are contained
in the canon, we ought not to pass them by.

Obadiah, so far as his writings are concerned, the briefest
of all the prophets, speaks against Idumea, that is, the nation
of Esau, that reprobate elder of the twin sons of Isaac and
grandsons of Abraham. Now if, by that form of speech in
which a part is put for the whole, we take Idumea as put
for the nations, we may understand of Christ what he says
among other things, “But upon Mount Sion shall be safety,
and there shall be a Holy One.”[529] And a little after, at the
end of the same prophecy, he says, “And those who are saved
again shall come up out of Mount Sion, that they may defend
Mount Esau, and it shall be a kingdom to the Lord.”[530] It is
quite evident this was fulfilled when those saved again out of
Mount Sion—that is, the believers in Christ from Judea, of
whom the apostles are chiefly to be acknowledged—went up
to defend Mount Esau. How could they defend it except by
making safe, through the preaching of the gospel, those who
believed that they might be “delivered from the power of
darkness and translated into the kingdom of God?”[531] This
he expressed as an inference, adding, “And it shall be to the
Lord a kingdom.” For Mount Sion signifies Judea, where
it is predicted there shall be safety, and a Holy One, that is,[Pg 252]
Christ Jesus. But Mount Esau is Idumea, which signifies
the Church of the Gentiles, which, as I have expounded, those
saved again out of Sion have defended that it should be a
kingdom to the Lord. This was obscure before it took place;
but what believer does not find it out now that it is done?

As for the prophet Nahum, through him God says, “I will
exterminate the graven and the molten things: I will make
thy burial. For lo, the feet of Him that bringeth good tidings
and announceth peace are swift upon the mountains! O
Judah, celebrate thy festival days, and perform thy vows; for
now they shall not go on any more so as to become antiquated.
It is completed, it is consumed, it is taken away.
He ascendeth who breathes in thy face, delivering thee out of
tribulation.”[532] Let him that remembers the gospel call to
mind who hath ascended from hell and breathed the Holy
Spirit in the face of Judah, that is, of the Jewish disciples;
for they belong to the New Testament, whose festival days are
so spiritually renewed that they cannot become antiquated.
Moreover, we already see the graven and molten things, that
is, the idols of the false gods, exterminated through the
gospel, and given up to oblivion as of the grave, and we
know that this prophecy is fulfilled in this very thing.

Of what else than the advent of Christ, who was to come,
is Habakkuk understood to say, “And the Lord answered me,
and said, Write the vision openly on a tablet of boxwood, that
he that readeth these things may understand. For the vision
is yet for a time appointed, and it will arise in the end, and
will not become void: if it tarry, wait for it; because it will
surely come, and will not be delayed?”[533]

32. Of the prophecy that is contained in the prayer and song of Habakkuk.

In his prayer, with a song, to whom but the Lord Christ
does he say, “O Lord, I have heard Thy hearing, and was
afraid: O Lord, I have considered Thy works, and was greatly
afraid?”[534] What is this but the inexpressible admiration of
the foreknown, new, and sudden salvation of men? “In the
midst of two living creatures thou shalt be recognised.” What
is this but either between the two testaments, or between the[Pg 253]
two thieves, or between Moses and Elias talking with Him on
the mount? “While the years draw nigh, Thou wilt be recognised;
at the coming of the time Thou wilt be shown,”
does not even need exposition. “While my soul shall be
troubled at Him, in wrath Thou wilt be mindful of mercy.”
What is this but that He puts Himself for the Jews, of whose
nation He was, who were troubled with great anger and crucified
Christ, when He, mindful of mercy, said, “Father, forgive
them, for they know not what they do?”[535] “God shall come
from Teman, and the Holy One from the shady and close mountain.”[536]
What is said here, “He shall come from Teman,” some
interpret “from the south,” or “from the south-west,” by which
is signified the noonday, that is, the fervour of charity and the
splendour of truth. “The shady and close mountain” might be
understood in many ways, yet I prefer to take it as meaning
the depth of the divine Scriptures, in which Christ is prophesied:
for in the Scriptures there are many things shady and close
which exercise the mind of the reader; and Christ comes
thence when he who has understanding finds Him there.
“His power covereth up the heavens, and the earth is full of
His praise.” What is this but what is also said in the psalm,
“Be Thou exalted, O God, above the heavens; and Thy glory
above all the earth?”[537] “His splendour shall be as the light.”
What is it but that the fame of Him shall illuminate believers?
“Horns are in His hands.” What is this but the
trophy of the cross? “And He hath placed the firm charity
of His strength”[538] needs no exposition. “Before His face
shall go the word, and it shall go forth into the field after
His feet.” What is this but that He should both be announced
before His coming hither and after His return
hence? “He stood, and the earth was moved.” What is
this but that “He stood” for succour, “and the earth was
moved” to believe? “He regarded, and the nations melted;”
that is, He had compassion, and made the people penitent.
“The mountains are broken with violence;” that is, through
the power of those who work miracles the pride of the
haughty is broken. “The everlasting hills flowed down;”[Pg 254]
that is, they are humbled in time that they may be lifted
up for eternity. “I saw His goings [made] eternal for His
labours;” that is, I beheld His labour of love not left without
the reward of eternity. “The tents of Ethiopia shall be greatly
afraid, and the tents of the land of Midian;” that is, even
those nations which are not under the Roman authority, being
suddenly terrified by the news of Thy wonderful works, shall
become a Christian people. “Wert Thou angry at the rivers,
O Lord? or was Thy fury against the rivers? or was Thy rage
against the sea?” This is said because He does not now
come to condemn the world, but that the world through Him
might be saved.[539] “For Thou shalt mount upon Thy horses,
and Thy riding shall be salvation;” that is, Thine evangelists
shall carry Thee, for they are guided by Thee, and Thy
gospel is salvation to them that believe in Thee. “Bending,
Thou wilt bend Thy bow against the sceptres, saith the Lord;”
that is, Thou wilt threaten even the kings of the earth with
Thy judgment. “The earth shall be cleft with rivers;” that
is, by the sermons of those who preach Thee flowing in upon
them, men’s hearts shall be opened to make confession, to
whom it is said, “Rend your hearts and not your garments.”[540]
What does “The people shall see Thee and grieve”
mean, but that in mourning they shall be blessed?[541] What
is “Scattering the waters in marching,” but that by walking in
those who everywhere proclaim Thee, Thou wilt scatter hither
and thither the streams of Thy doctrine? What is “The
abyss uttered its voice?” Is it not that the depth of the
human heart expressed what it perceived? The words, “The
depth of its phantasy,” are an explanation of the previous verse,
for the depth is the abyss; and “Uttered its voice” is to be
understood before them, that is, as we have said, it expressed
what it perceived. Now the phantasy is the vision, which it
did not hold or conceal, but poured forth in confession. “The
sun was raised up, and the moon stood still in her course;”
that is, Christ ascended into heaven, and the Church was
established under her King. “Thy darts shall go in the
light;” that is, Thy words shall not be sent in secret, but
openly. For He had said to His own disciples, “What I tell[Pg 255]
you in darkness, that speak ye in the light.”[542] “By threatening
thou shalt diminish the earth;” that is, by that threatening
Thou shalt humble men. “And in fury Thou shalt cast down
the nations;” for in punishing those who exalt themselves Thou
dashest them one against another. “Thou wentest forth for
the salvation of Thy people, that Thou mightest save Thy
Christ; Thou hast sent death on the heads of the wicked.”
None of these words require exposition. “Thou hast lifted
up the bonds, even to the neck.” This may be understood
even of the good bonds of wisdom, that the feet may be put
into its fetters, and the neck into its collar. “Thou hast
struck off in amazement of mind the bonds” must be understood
for, He lifts up the good and strikes off the bad, about
which it is said to Him, “Thou hast broken asunder my
bonds,”[543] and that “in amazement of mind,” that is, wonderfully.
“The heads of the mighty shall be moved in it;” to
wit, in that wonder. “They shall open their teeth like a poor
man eating secretly.” For some of the mighty among the
Jews shall come to the Lord, admiring His works and words,
and shall greedily eat the bread of His doctrine in secret for
fear of the Jews, just as the Gospel has shown they did.
“And Thou hast sent into the sea Thy horses, troubling many
waters,” which are nothing else than many people; for unless
all were troubled, some would not be converted with fear,
others pursued with fury. “I gave heed, and my belly
trembled at the voice of the prayer of my lips; and trembling
entered into my bones, and my habit of body was
troubled under me.” He gave heed to those things which he
said, and was himself terrified at his own prayer, which he
had poured forth prophetically, and in which he discerned
things to come. For when many people are troubled, he saw
the threatening tribulation of the Church, and at once acknowledged
himself a member of it, and said, “I shall rest in the
day of tribulation,” as being one of those who are rejoicing in
hope, patient in tribulation.[544] “That I may ascend,” he says,
“among the people of my pilgrimage,” departing quite from the
wicked people of his carnal kinship, who are not pilgrims in
this earth, and do not seek the country above.[545] “Although[Pg 256]
the fig-tree,” he says, “shall not blossom, neither shall fruit
be in the vines; the labour of the olive shall lie, and the fields
shall yield no meat; the sheep shall be cut off from the
meat, and there shall be no oxen in the stalls.” He sees that
nation which was to slay Christ about to lose the abundance
of spiritual supplies, which, in prophetic fashion, he has set
forth by the figure of earthly plenty. And because that
nation was to suffer such wrath of God, because, being ignorant
of the righteousness of God, it wished to establish its
own,[546] he immediately says, “Yet will I rejoice in the Lord; I
will joy in God my salvation. The Lord God is my strength,
and He will set my feet in completion; He will place me
above the heights, that I may conquer in His song,” to wit,
in that song of which something similar is said in the psalm,
“He set my feet upon a rock, and directed my goings, and put
in my mouth a new song, a hymn to our God.”[547] He therefore
conquers in the song of the Lord, who takes pleasure in
His praise, not in his own; that “He that glorieth, let him
glory in the Lord.”[548] But some copies have, “I will joy in God
my Jesus,” which seems to me better than the version of those
who, wishing to put it in Latin, have not set down that very
name which for us it is dearer and sweeter to name.

33. What Jeremiah and Zephaniah have, by the prophetic Spirit, spoken before
concerning Christ and the calling of the nations.

Jeremiah, like Isaiah, is one of the greater prophets, not of
the minor, like the others from whose writings I have just
given extracts. He prophesied when Josiah reigned in Jerusalem,
and Ancus Martius at Rome, when the captivity of the
Jews was already at hand; and he continued to prophesy
down to the fifth month of the captivity, as we find from his
writings. Zephaniah, one of the minor prophets, is put along
with him, because he himself says that he prophesied in the
days of Josiah; but he does not say till when. Jeremiah thus
prophesied not only in the times of Ancus Martius, but also
in those of Tarquinius Priscus, whom the Romans had for
their fifth king. For he had already begun to reign when
that captivity took place. Jeremiah, in prophesying of Christ,
says, “The breath of our mouth, the Lord Christ, was taken in[Pg 257]
our sins,”[549] thus briefly showing both that Christ is our Lord
and that He suffered for us. Also in another place he says,
“This is my God, and there shall none other be accounted of
in comparison of Him; who hath found out all the way of
prudence, and hath given it to Jacob His servant, and to
Israel His beloved: afterward He was seen on the earth, and
conversed with men.”[550] Some attribute this testimony not to
Jeremiah, but to his secretary, who was called Baruch; but it
is more commonly ascribed to Jeremiah. Again the same
prophet says concerning Him, “Behold the days come, saith
the Lord, that I will raise up unto David a righteous shoot,
and a King shall reign and shall be wise, and shall do judgment
and justice in the earth. In those days Judah shall be
saved, and Israel shall dwell confidently: and this is the
name which they shall call Him, Our righteous Lord.”[551] And
of the calling of the nations which was to come to pass, and
which we now see fulfilled, he thus spoke: “O Lord my God,
and my refuge in the day of evils, to Thee shall the nations
come from the utmost end of the earth, saying, Truly our
fathers have worshipped lying images, wherein there is no
profit.”[552] But that the Jews, by whom He behoved even to be
slain, were not going to acknowledge Him, this prophet thus
intimates: “Heavy is the heart through all; and He is a man,
and who shall know Him?”[553] That passage also is his which
I have quoted in the seventeenth book concerning the new
testament, of which Christ is the Mediator. For Jeremiah
himself says, “Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I
will complete over the house of Jacob a new testament,” and
the rest, which may be read there.[554]

For the present I shall put down those predictions about
Christ by the prophet Zephaniah, who prophesied with Jeremiah.
“Wait ye upon me, saith the Lord, in the day of my
resurrection, in the future; because it is my determination to
assemble the nations, and gather together the kingdoms.”[555]
And again he says, “The Lord will be terrible upon them,
and will exterminate all the gods of the earth; and they shall[Pg 258]
worship Him every man from his place, even all the isles of
the nations.”[556] And a little after he says, “Then will I turn
to the people a tongue, and to His offspring, that they may
call upon the name of the Lord, and serve Him under one
yoke. From the borders of the rivers of Ethiopia shall they
bring sacrifices unto me. In that day thou shalt not be confounded
for all thy curious inventions, which thou hast done
impiously against me: for then I will take away from thee
the naughtiness of thy trespass; and thou shalt no more
magnify thyself above thy holy mountain. And I will leave
in thee a meek and humble people, and they who shall be left
of Israel shall fear the name of the Lord.”[557] These are the
remnant of whom the apostle quotes that which is elsewhere
prophesied: “Though the number of the children of Israel be
as the sand of the sea, a remnant shall be saved.”[558] These
are the remnant of that nation who have believed in Christ.

34. Of the prophecy of Daniel and Ezekiel, other two of the greater prophets.

Daniel and Ezekiel, other two of the greater prophets, also
first prophesied in the very captivity of Babylon. Daniel even
defined the time when Christ was to come and suffer by the
exact date. It would take too long to show this by computation,
and it has been done often by others before us. But of
His power and glory he has thus spoken: “I saw in a night
vision, and, behold, one like the Son of man was coming with
the clouds of heaven, and He came even to the Ancient of
days, and He was brought into His presence. And to Him
there was given dominion, and honour, and a kingdom: and
all people, tribes, and tongues shall serve Him. His power is
an everlasting power, which shall not pass away, and His
kingdom shall not be destroyed.”[559]

Ezekiel also, speaking prophetically in the person of God
the Father, thus foretells Christ, speaking of Him in the prophetic
manner as David because He assumed flesh of the
seed of David, and on account of that form of a servant in
which He was made man, He who is the Son of God is also
called the servant of God. He says, “And I will set up over[Pg 259]
my sheep one Shepherd, who will feed them, even my servant
David; and He shall feed them, and He shall be their shepherd.
And I the Lord will be their God, and my servant
David a prince in the midst of them. I the Lord have
spoken.”[560] And in another place he says, “And one King
shall be over them all: and they shall no more be two
nations, neither shall they be divided any more into two
kingdoms: neither shall they defile themselves any more with
their idols, and their abominations, and all their iniquities.
And I will save them out of all their dwelling-places wherein
they have sinned, and will cleanse them; and they shall be
my people, and I will be their God. And my servant David
shall be king over them, and there shall be one Shepherd for
them all.”[561]

35. Of the prophecy of the three prophets, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi.

There remain three minor prophets, Haggai, Zechariah,
and Malachi, who prophesied at the close of the captivity.
Of these Haggai more openly prophesies of Christ and the
Church thus briefly: “Thus saith the Lord of hosts, Yet one
little while, and I will shake the heaven, and the earth, and
the sea, and the dry land; and I will move all nations, and
the desired of all nations shall come.”[562] The fulfilment of
this prophecy is in part already seen, and in part hoped for
in the end. For He moved the heaven by the testimony of
the angels and the stars, when Christ became incarnate. He
moved the earth by the great miracle of His birth of the
virgin. He moved the sea and the dry land, when Christ
was proclaimed both in the isles and in the whole world. So
we see all nations moved to the faith; and the fulfilment of
what follows, “And the desired of all nations shall come,” is
looked for at His last coming. For ere men can desire and
wait for Him, they must believe and love Him.

Zechariah says of Christ and the Church, “Rejoice greatly,
O daughter of Sion; shout joyfully, O daughter of Jerusalem:
behold, thy King shall come unto thee, just and the Saviour;
Himself poor, and mounting an ass, and a colt the foal of an
ass: and His dominion shall be from sea to sea, and from the
river even to the ends of the earth.”[563] How this was done,[Pg 260]
when the Lord Christ on His journey used a beast of burden
of this kind, we read in the Gospel, where, also, as much of
this prophecy is quoted as appears sufficient for the context.
In another place, speaking in the Spirit of prophecy to Christ
Himself of the remission of sins through His blood, he says,
“Thou also, by the blood of Thy testament, hast sent forth
Thy prisoners from the lake wherein is no water.”[564] Different
opinions may be held, consistently with right belief, as
to what he meant by this lake. Yet it seems to me that no
meaning suits better than that of the depth of human misery,
which is, as it were, dry and barren, where there are no
streams of righteousness, but only the mire of iniquity. For
it is said of it in the Psalms, “And He led me forth out of
the lake of misery, and from the miry clay.”[565]

Malachi, foretelling the Church which we now behold propagated
through Christ, says most openly to the Jews, in the
person of God, “I have no pleasure in you, and I will not
accept a gift at your hand. For from the rising even to the
going down of the sun, my name is great among the nations;
and in every place sacrifice shall be made, and a pure oblation
shall be offered unto my name: for my name shall be great
among the nations, saith the Lord.”[566] Since we can already
see this sacrifice offered to God in every place, from the rising
of the sun to his going down, through Christ’s priesthood after
the order of Melchisedec, while the Jews, to whom it was
said, “I have no pleasure in you, neither will I accept a gift
at your hand,” cannot deny that their sacrifice has ceased, why
do they still look for another Christ, when they read this in
the prophecy, and see it fulfilled, which could not be fulfilled
except through Him? And a little after he says of Him, in
the person of God, “My covenant was with Him of life and
peace; and I gave to Him that He might fear me with fear,
and be afraid before my name. The law of truth was in His
mouth: directing in peace He hath walked with me, and hath
turned many away from iniquity. For the Priest’s lips shall
keep knowledge, and they shall seek the law at His mouth:
for He is the Angel of the Lord Almighty.”[567] Nor is it to be
wondered at that Christ Jesus is called the Angel of the[Pg 261]
Almighty God. For just as He is called a servant on account
of the form of a servant in which He came to men, so He is
called an angel on account of the evangel which He proclaimed
to men. For if we interpret these Greek words, evangel is
“good news,” and angel is “messenger.” Again he says of Him,
“Behold I will send mine angel, and He will look out the
way before my face: and the Lord, whom ye seek, shall suddenly
come into His temple, even the Angel of the testament,
whom ye desire. Behold, He cometh, saith the Lord Almighty,
and who shall abide the day of His entry, or who shall stand
at His appearing?”[568] In this place he has foretold both the
first and second advent of Christ: the first, to wit, of which he
says, “And He shall come suddenly into His temple;” that
is, into His flesh, of which He said in the Gospel, “Destroy
this temple, and in three days I will raise it up again.”[569] And
of the second advent he says, “Behold, He cometh, saith the
Lord Almighty, and who shall abide the day of His entry, or
who shall stand at His appearing?” But what he says, “The
Lord whom ye seek, and the Angel of the testament whom ye
desire,” just means that even the Jews, according to the Scriptures
which they read, shall seek and desire Christ. But
many of them did not acknowledge that He whom they
sought and desired had come, being blinded in their hearts,
which were preoccupied with their own merits. Now what
he here calls the testament, either above, where he says, “My
testament had been with Him,” or here, where he has called
Him the Angel of the testament, we ought, beyond a doubt, to
take to be the new testament, in which the things promised
are eternal, and not the old, in which they are only temporal.
Yet many who are weak are troubled when they see the
wicked abound in such temporal things, because they value
them greatly, and serve the true God to be rewarded with
them. On this account, to distinguish the eternal blessedness
of the new testament, which shall be given only to the
good, from the earthly felicity of the old, which for the
most part is given to the bad as well, the same prophet says,
“Ye have made your words burdensome to me: yet ye have
said, In what have we spoken ill of Thee? Ye have said,[Pg 262]
Foolish is every one who serves God; and what profit is it
that we have kept His observances, and that we have walked
as suppliants before the face of the Lord Almighty? And
now we call the aliens blessed; yea, all that do wicked things
are built up again; yea, they are opposed to God and are
saved. They that feared the Lord uttered these reproaches
every one to his neighbour: and the Lord hearkened and
heard; and He wrote a book of remembrance before Him, for
them that fear the Lord and that revere His name.”[570] By that
book is meant the New Testament. Finally, let us hear what
follows: “And they shall be an acquisition for me, saith the
Lord Almighty, in the day which I make; and I will choose
them as a man chooseth his son that serveth him. And ye
shall return, and shall discern between the just and the unjust,
and between him that serveth God and him that serveth
Him not. For, behold, the day cometh burning as an oven,
and it shall burn them up; and all the aliens and all that do
wickedly shall be stubble: and the day that shall come will
set them on fire, saith the Lord Almighty, and shall leave
neither root nor branch. And unto you that fear my name
shall the Sun of Righteousness arise, and health shall be in
His wings; and ye shall go forth, and exult as calves let loose
from bonds. And ye shall tread down the wicked, and they
shall be ashes under your feet, in the day in which I shall do
[this], saith the Lord Almighty.”[571] This day is the day of judgment,
of which, if God will, we shall speak more fully in its
own place.

36. About Esdras and the books of the Maccabees.

After these three prophets, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi,
during the same period of the liberation of the people from
the Babylonian servitude Esdras also wrote, who is historical
rather than prophetical, as is also the book called Esther, which
is found to relate, for the praise of God, events not far from
those times; unless, perhaps, Esdras is to be understood as
prophesying of Christ in that passage where, on a question
having arisen among certain young men as to what is the
strongest thing, when one had said kings, another wine, the
third women, who for the most part rule kings, yet that[Pg 263]
same third youth demonstrated that the truth is victorious
over all.[572] For by consulting the Gospel we learn that Christ
is the Truth. From this time, when the temple was rebuilt,
down to the time of Aristobulus, the Jews had not kings but
princes; and the reckoning of their dates is found, not in the
Holy Scriptures which are called canonical, but in others,
among which are also the books of the Maccabees. These
are held as canonical, not by the Jews, but by the Church, on
account of the extreme and wonderful sufferings of certain
martyrs, who, before Christ had come in the flesh, contended
for the law of God even unto death, and endured most grievous
and horrible evils.

37. That prophetic records are found which are more ancient than any fountain
of the Gentile philosophy.

In the time of our prophets, then, whose writings had
already come to the knowledge of almost all nations, the
philosophers of the nations had not yet arisen,—at least, not
those who were called by that name, which originated with
Pythagoras the Samian, who was becoming famous at the
time when the Jewish captivity ended. Much more, then,
are the other philosophers found to be later than the prophets.
For even Socrates the Athenian, the master of all who were
then most famous, holding the pre-eminence in that department
that is called the moral or active, is found after Esdras
in the chronicles. Plato also was born not much later, who
far outwent the other disciples of Socrates. If, besides these,
we take their predecessors, who had not yet been styled
philosophers, to wit, the seven sages, and then the physicists,
who succeeded Thales, and imitated his studious search into
the nature of things, namely, Anaximander, Anaximenes, and
Anaxagoras, and some others, before Pythagoras first professed
himself a philosopher, even these did not precede the
whole of our prophets in antiquity of time, since Thales,
whom the others succeeded, is said to have flourished in the
reign of Romulus, when the stream of prophecy burst forth
from the fountains of Israel in those writings which spread
over the whole world. So that only those theological poets,
Orpheus, Linus, and Musæus, and, it may be, some others[Pg 264]
among the Greeks, are found earlier in date than the Hebrew
prophets whose writings we hold as authoritative. But not
even these preceded in time our true divine, Moses, who
authentically preached the one true God, and whose writings
are first in the authoritative canon; and therefore the Greeks,
in whose tongue the literature of this age chiefly appears, have
no ground for boasting of their wisdom, in which our religion,
wherein is true wisdom, is not evidently more ancient at
least, if not superior. Yet it must be confessed that before
Moses there had already been, not indeed among the Greeks,
but among barbarous nations, as in Egypt, some doctrine
which might be called their wisdom, else it would not have
been written in the holy books that Moses was learned in all
the wisdom of the Egyptians,[573] as he was, when, being born
there, and adopted and nursed by Pharaoh’s daughter, he was
also liberally educated. Yet not even the wisdom of the
Egyptians could be antecedent in time to the wisdom of our
prophets, because even Abraham was a prophet. And what
wisdom could there be in Egypt before Isis had given them
letters, whom they thought fit to worship as a goddess after
her death? Now Isis is declared to have been the daughter
of Inachus, who first began to reign in Argos when the grandsons
of Abraham are known to have been already born.

38. That the ecclesiastical canon has not admitted certain writings on account
of their too great antiquity, lest through them false things should be inserted
instead of true.

If I may recall far more ancient times, our patriarch Noah
was certainly even before that great deluge, and I might not
undeservedly call him a prophet, forasmuch as the ark he made,
in which he escaped with his family, was itself a prophecy of
our times.[574] What of Enoch, the seventh from Adam? Does
not the canonical epistle of the Apostle Jude declare that he
prophesied?[575] But the writings of these men could not be
held as authoritative either among the Jews or us, on account
of their too great antiquity, which made it seem needful to
regard them with suspicion, lest false things should be set
forth instead of true. For some writings which are said to
be theirs are quoted by those who, according to their own[Pg 265]
humour, loosely believe what they please. But the purity of
the canon has not admitted these writings, not because the
authority of these men who pleased God is rejected, but because
they are not believed to be theirs. Nor ought it to
appear strange if writings for which so great antiquity is
claimed are held in suspicion, seeing that in the very history
of the kings of Judah and Israel containing their acts, which
we believe to belong to the canonical Scripture, very many
things are mentioned which are not explained there, but are
said to be found in other books which the prophets wrote, the
very names of these prophets being sometimes given, and yet
they are not found in the canon which the people of God received.
Now I confess the reason of this is hidden from me;
only I think that even those men, to whom certainly the Holy
Spirit revealed those things which ought to be held as of religious
authority, might write some things as men by historical
diligence, and others as prophets by divine inspiration; and
these things were so distinct, that it was judged that the
former should be ascribed to themselves, but the latter to
God speaking through them: and so the one pertained to the
abundance of knowledge, the other to the authority of religion.
In that authority the canon is guarded. So that, if any writings
outside of it are now brought forward under the name of
the ancient prophets, they cannot serve even as an aid to
knowledge, because it is uncertain whether they are genuine;
and on this account they are not trusted, especially those of
them in which some things are found that are even contrary
to the truth of the canonical books, so that it is quite apparent
they do not belong to them.

39. About the Hebrew written characters which that language always possessed.

Now we must not believe that Heber, from whose name
the word Hebrew is derived, preserved and transmitted the
Hebrew language to Abraham only as a spoken language, and
that the Hebrew letters began with the giving of the law
through Moses; but rather that this language, along with its
letters, was preserved by that succession of fathers. Moses,
indeed, appointed some among the people of God to teach
letters, before they could know any letters of the divine law.[Pg 266]
The Scripture calls these men γραμματεισαγωγεῖς, who may
be called in Latin inductores or introductores of letters, because
they, as it were, introduce them into the hearts of the
learners, or rather lead those whom they teach into them.
Therefore no nation could vaunt itself over our patriarchs and
prophets by any wicked vanity for the antiquity of its wisdom;
since not even Egypt, which is wont falsely and vainly to
glory in the antiquity of her doctrines, is found to have preceded
in time the wisdom of our patriarchs in her own wisdom,
such as it is. Neither will any one dare to say that they
were most skilful in wonderful sciences before they knew letters,
that is, before Isis came and taught them there. Besides, what,
for the most part, was that memorable doctrine of theirs which
was called wisdom but astronomy, and it may be some other
sciences of that kind, which usually have more power to exercise
men’s wit than to enlighten their minds with true wisdom?
As regards philosophy, which professes to teach men something
which shall make them happy, studies of that kind flourished
in those lands about the times of Mercury whom they called
Trismegistus, long before the sages and philosophers of Greece,
but yet after Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph, and even
after Moses himself. At that time, indeed, when Moses was
born, Atlas is found to have lived, that great astronomer, the
brother of Prometheus, and maternal grandson of the elder
Mercury, of whom that Mercury Trismegistus was the grandson.

40. About the most mendacious vanity of the Egyptians, in which they ascribe to
their science an antiquity of a hundred thousand years.

In vain, then, do some babble with most empty presumption,
saying that Egypt has understood the reckoning of the
stars for more than a hundred thousand years. For in what
books have they collected that number who learned letters
from Isis their mistress, not much more than two thousand
years ago? Varro, who has declared this, is no small authority
in history, and it does not disagree with the truth of the
divine books. For as it is not yet six thousand years since
the first man, who is called Adam, are not those to be ridiculed
rather than refuted who try to persuade us of anything regarding
a space of time so different from, and contrary to, the[Pg 267]
ascertained truth? For what historian of the past should
we credit more than him who has also predicted things to
come which we now see fulfilled? And the very disagreement
of the historians among themselves furnishes a good
reason why we ought rather to believe him who does not
contradict the divine history which we hold. But, on the
other hand, the citizens of the impious city, scattered everywhere
through the earth, when they read the most learned
writers, none of whom seems to be of contemptible authority,
and find them disagreeing among themselves about affairs
most remote from the memory of our age, cannot find out
whom they ought to trust. But we, being sustained by divine
authority in the history of our religion, have no doubt that
whatever is opposed to it is most false, whatever may be the
case regarding other things in secular books, which, whether
true or false, yield nothing of moment to our living rightly
and happily.

41. About the discord of philosophic opinion, and the concord of the Scriptures
that are held as canonical by the Church.

But let us omit further examination of history, and return
to the philosophers from whom we digressed to these things.
They seem to have laboured in their studies for no other
end than to find out how to live in a way proper for laying
hold of blessedness. Why, then, have the disciples dissented
from their masters, and the fellow-disciples from one
another, except because as men they have sought after these
things by human sense and human reasonings? Now,
although there might be among them a desire of glory, so
that each wished to be thought wiser and more acute than
another, and in no way addicted to the judgment of others,
but the inventor of his own dogma and opinion, yet I may
grant that there were some, or even very many of them,
whose love of truth severed them from their teachers or fellow-disciples,
that they might strive for what they thought
was the truth, whether it was so or not. But what can
human misery do, or how or where can it reach forth, so as
to attain blessedness, if divine authority does not lead it?
Finally, let our authors, among whom the canon of the sacred
books is fixed and bounded, be far from disagreeing in any[Pg 268]
respect. It is not without good reason, then, that not merely
a few people prating in the schools and gymnasia in captious
disputations, but so many and great people, both learned and
unlearned, in countries and cities, have believed that God
spoke to them or by them, i.e. the canonical writers, when
they wrote these books. There ought, indeed, to be but few of
them, lest on account of their multitude what ought to be
religiously esteemed should grow cheap; and yet not so few
that their agreement should not be wonderful. For among
the multitude of philosophers, who in their works have left
behind them the monuments of their dogmas, no one will
easily find any who agree in all their opinions. But to show
this is too long a task for this work.

But what author of any sect is so approved in this demon-worshipping
city, that the rest who have differed from or opposed
him in opinion have been disapproved? The Epicureans
asserted that human affairs were not under the providence of
the gods; and the Stoics, holding the opposite opinion, agreed
that they were ruled and defended by favourable and tutelary
gods. Yet were not both sects famous among the Athenians?
I wonder, then, why Anaxagoras was accused of a crime for
saying that the sun was a burning stone, and denying that it
was a god at all; while in the same city Epicurus flourished
gloriously and lived securely, although he not only did not
believe that the sun or any star was a god, but contended
that neither Jupiter nor any of the gods dwelt in the world
at all, so that the prayers and supplications of men might
reach them! Were not both Aristippus and Antisthenes there,
two noble philosophers and both Socratic? yet they placed the
chief end of life within bounds so diverse and contradictory,
that the first made the delight of the body the chief good,
while the other asserted that man was made happy mainly
by the virtue of the mind. The one also said that the wise
man should flee from the republic; the other, that he should
administer its affairs. Yet did not each gather disciples to
follow his own sect? Indeed, in the conspicuous and well-known
porch, in gymnasia, in gardens, in places public and
private, they openly strove in bands each for his own opinion,
some asserting there was one world, others innumerable worlds;[Pg 269]
some that this world had a beginning, others that it had
not; some that it would perish, others that it would exist
always; some that it was governed by the divine mind,
others by chance and accident; some that souls are immortal,
others that they are mortal,—and of those who asserted their
immortality, some said they transmigrated through beasts,
others that it was by no means so, while of those who asserted
their mortality, some said they perished immediately after the
body, others that they survived either a little while or a longer
time, but not always; some fixing supreme good in the body,
some in the mind, some in both; others adding to the mind
and body external good things; some thinking that the bodily
senses ought to be trusted always, some not always, others
never. Now what people, senate, power, or public dignity of
the impious city has ever taken care to judge between all
these and other well-nigh innumerable dissensions of the
philosophers, approving and accepting some, and disapproving
and rejecting others? Has it not held in its bosom at random,
without any judgment, and confusedly, so many controversies
of men at variance, not about fields, houses, or anything of
a pecuniary nature, but about those things which make life
either miserable or happy? Even if some true things were
said in it, yet falsehoods were uttered with the same licence;
so that such a city has not amiss received the title of the
mystic Babylon. For Babylon means confusion, as we remember
we have already explained. Nor does it matter to
the devil, its king, how they wrangle among themselves in
contradictory errors, since all alike deservedly belong to him
on account of their great and varied impiety.

But that nation, that people, that city, that republic, these
Israelites, to whom the oracles of God were entrusted, by no
means confounded with similar licence false prophets with the
true prophets; but, agreeing together, and differing in nothing,
acknowledged and upheld the authentic authors of their sacred
books. These were their philosophers, these were their sages,
divines, prophets, and teachers of probity and piety. Whoever
was wise and lived according to them was wise and lived
not according to men, but according to God who hath spoken
by them. If sacrilege is forbidden there, God hath forbidden[Pg 270]
it. If it is said, “Honour thy father and thy mother,”[576] God
hath commanded it. If it is said, “Thou shalt not commit
adultery, Thou shalt not kill, Thou shalt not steal,”[577] and other
similar commandments, not human lips but the divine oracles
have enounced them. Whatever truth certain philosophers,
amid their false opinions, were able to see, and strove by
laborious discussions to persuade men of,—such as that God
has made this world, and Himself most providently governs
it, or of the nobility of the virtues, of the love of country, of
fidelity in friendship, of good works and everything pertaining
to virtuous manners, although they knew not to what end
and what rule all these things were to be referred,—all these, by
words prophetic, that is, divine, although spoken by men, were
commended to the people in that city, and not inculcated by
contention in arguments, so that he who should know them
might be afraid of contemning, not the wit of men, but the
oracle of God.

42. By what dispensation of God’s providence the sacred Scriptures of the Old
Testament were translated out of Hebrew into Greek, that they might be
made known to all the nations.

One of the Ptolemies, kings of Egypt, desired to know and
have these sacred books. For after Alexander of Macedon,
who is also styled the Great, had by his most wonderful, but
by no means enduring power, subdued the whole of Asia, yea,
almost the whole world, partly by force of arms, partly by
terror, and, among other kingdoms of the East, had entered and
obtained Judea also, on his death his generals did not peaceably
divide that most ample kingdom among them for a possession,
but rather dissipated it, wasting all things by wars.
Then Egypt began to have the Ptolemies as her kings. The
first of them, the son of Lagus, carried many captive out of
Judea into Egypt. But another Ptolemy, called Philadelphus,
who succeeded him, permitted all whom he had brought under
the yoke to return free; and, more than that, sent kingly gifts
to the temple of God, and begged Eleazar, who was the high
priest, to give him the Scriptures, which he had heard by
report were truly divine, and therefore greatly desired to have
in that most noble library he had made. When the high[Pg 271]
priest had sent them to him in Hebrew, he afterwards demanded
interpreters of him, and there were given him seventy-two,
out of each of the twelve tribes six men, most learned in
both languages, to wit, the Hebrew and Greek; and their
translation is now by custom called the Septuagint. It is
reported, indeed, that there was an agreement in their words
so wonderful, stupendous, and plainly divine, that when they
had sat at this work, each one apart (for so it pleased Ptolemy
to test their fidelity), they differed from each other in no word
which had the same meaning and force, or in the order of the
words; but, as if the translators had been one, so what all had
translated was one, because in very deed the one Spirit had
been in them all. And they received so wonderful a gift of
God, in order that the authority of these Scriptures might be
commended not as human but divine, as indeed it was, for the
benefit of the nations who should at some time believe, as we
now see them doing.

43. Of the authority of the Septuagint translation, which, saving the honour
of the Hebrew original, is to be preferred to all translations.

For while there were other interpreters who translated these
sacred oracles out of the Hebrew tongue into Greek, as Aquila,
Symmachus, and Theodotion, and also that translation which,
as the name of the author is unknown, is quoted as the fifth
edition, yet the Church has received this Septuagint translation
just as if it were the only one; and it has been used by
the Greek Christian people, most of whom are not aware that
there is any other. From this translation there has also been
made a translation in the Latin tongue, which the Latin
churches use. Our times, however, have enjoyed the advantage
of the presbyter Jerome, a man most learned, and skilled
in all three languages, who translated these same Scriptures
into the Latin speech, not from the Greek, but from the
Hebrew. But although the Jews acknowledge this very
learned labour of his to be faithful, while they contend that
the Septuagint translators have erred in many places, still the
churches of Christ judge that no one should be preferred to
the authority of so many men, chosen for this very great work
by Eleazar, who was then high priest; for even if there had
not appeared in them one spirit, without doubt divine, and[Pg 272]
the seventy learned men had, after the manner of men, compared
together the words of their translation, that what pleased
them all might stand, no single translator ought to be preferred
to them; but since so great a sign of divinity has
appeared in them, certainly, if any other translator of their
Scriptures from the Hebrew into any other tongue is faithful,
in that case he agrees with these seventy translators, and if
he is not found to agree with them, then we ought to believe
that the prophetic gift is with them. For the same Spirit
who was in the prophets when they spoke these things was
also in the seventy men when they translated them, so that
assuredly they could also say something else, just as if the
prophet himself had said both, because it would be the same
Spirit who said both; and could say the same thing differently,
so that, although the words were not the same, yet the same
meaning should shine forth to those of good understanding;
and could omit or add something, so that even by this it
might be shown that there was in that work not human
bondage, which the translator owed to the words, but rather
divine power, which filled and ruled the mind of the translator.
Some, however, have thought that the Greek copies of
the Septuagint version should be emended from the Hebrew
copies; yet they did not dare to take away what the Hebrew
lacked and the Septuagint had, but only added what was
found in the Hebrew copies and was lacking in the Septuagint,
and noted them by placing at the beginning of the verses
certain marks in the form of stars which they call asterisks.
And those things which the Hebrew copies have not, but the
Septuagint have, they have in like manner marked at the
beginning of the verses by horizontal spit-shaped marks like
those by which we denote ounces; and many copies having
these marks are circulated even in Latin.[578] But we cannot,
without inspecting both kinds of copies, find out those things
which are neither omitted nor added, but expressed differently,
whether they yield another meaning not in itself unsuitable,
or can be shown to explain the same meaning in another way.
If, then, as it behoves us, we behold nothing else in these
Scriptures than what the Spirit of God has spoken through[Pg 273]
men, if anything is in the Hebrew copies and is not in the
version of the Seventy, the Spirit of God did not choose to
say it through them, but only through the prophets. But
whatever is in the Septuagint and not in the Hebrew copies,
the same Spirit chose rather to say through the latter, thus
showing that both were prophets. For in that manner He
spoke as He chose, some things through Isaiah, some through
Jeremiah, some through several prophets, or else the same
thing through this prophet and through that. Further, whatever
is found in both editions, that one and the same Spirit
willed to say through both, but so as that the former preceded
in prophesying, and the latter followed in prophetically
interpreting them; because, as the one Spirit of peace was in
the former when they spoke true and concordant words, so the
selfsame one Spirit hath appeared in the latter, when, without
mutual conference, they yet interpreted all things as if with
one mouth.

44. How the threat of the destruction of the Ninevites is to be understood, which
in the Hebrew extends to forty days, while in the Septuagint it is contracted
to three.

But some one may say, “How shall I know whether the
prophet Jonah said to the Ninevites, ‘Yet three days and Nineveh
shall be overthrown,’ or forty days?”[579] For who does not see
that the prophet could not say both, when he was sent to
terrify the city by the threat of imminent ruin? For if its
destruction was to take place on the third day, it certainly
could not be on the fortieth; but if on the fortieth, then certainly
not on the third. If, then, I am asked which of these
Jonah may have said, I rather think what is read in the
Hebrew, “Yet forty days and Nineveh shall be overthrown.”
Yet the Seventy, interpreting long afterward, could say what
was different and yet pertinent to the matter, and agree in
the selfsame meaning, although under a different signification.
And this may admonish the reader not to despise the authority
of either, but to raise himself above the history, and search for
those things which the history itself was written to set forth.
These things, indeed, took place in the city of Nineveh, but
they also signified something else too great to apply to that[Pg 274]
city; just as, when it happened that the prophet himself was
three days in the whale’s belly, it signified besides, that He
who is Lord of all the prophets should be three days in the
depths of hell. Wherefore, if that city is rightly held as
prophetically representing the Church of the Gentiles, to wit,
as brought down by penitence, so as no longer to be what it
had been, since this was done by Christ in the Church of
the Gentiles, which Nineveh represented, Christ Himself was
signified both by the forty and by the three days: by the
forty, because He spent that number of days with His disciples
after the resurrection, and then ascended into heaven, but by
the three days, because He rose on the third day. So that, if
the reader desires nothing else than to adhere to the history
of events, he may be aroused from his sleep by the Septuagint
interpreters, as well as the prophets, to search into the depth
of the prophecy, as if they had said, In the forty days seek
Him in whom thou mayest also find the three days,—the one
thou wilt find in His ascension, the other in His resurrection.
Because that which could be most suitably signified by both
numbers, of which one is used by Jonah the prophet, the other
by the prophecy of the Septuagint version, the one and selfsame
Spirit hath spoken. I dread prolixity, so that I must
not demonstrate this by many instances in which the seventy
interpreters may be thought to differ from the Hebrew, and
yet, when well understood, are found to agree. For which
reason I also, according to my capacity, following the footsteps
of the apostles, who themselves have quoted prophetic
testimonies from both, that is, from the Hebrew and the
Septuagint, have thought that both should be used as authoritative,
since both are one, and divine. But let us now follow
out as we can what remains.

45. That the Jews ceased to have prophets after the rebuilding of the temple,
and from that time until the birth of Christ were afflicted with continual
adversity, to prove that the building of another temple had been promised
by prophetic voices.

The Jewish nation no doubt became worse after it ceased
to have prophets, just at the very time when, on the rebuilding
of the temple after the captivity in Babylon, it hoped to
become better. For so, indeed, did that carnal people understand[Pg 275]
what was foretold by Haggai the prophet, saying, “The
glory of this latter house shall be greater than that of the
former.”[580] Now, that this is said of the new testament, he
showed a little above, where he says, evidently promising
Christ, “And I will move all nations, and the desired One shall
come to all nations.”[581] In this passage the Septuagint translators,
giving another sense more suitable to the body than
the Head, that is, to the Church than to Christ, have said by
prophetic authority, “The things shall come that are chosen
of the Lord from all nations,” that is, men, of whom Jesus
saith in the Gospel, “Many are called, but few are chosen.”[582]
For by such chosen ones of the nations there is built, through
the new testament, with living stones, a house of God far
more glorious than that temple was which was constructed
by king Solomon, and rebuilt after the captivity. For this
reason, then, that nation had no prophets from that time,
but was afflicted with many plagues by kings of alien race,
and by the Romans themselves, lest they should fancy that
this prophecy of Haggai was fulfilled by that rebuilding of
the temple.

For not long after, on the arrival of Alexander, it was subdued,
when, although there was no pillaging, because they dared
not resist him, and thus, being very easily subdued, received
him peaceably, yet the glory of that house was not so great
as it was when under the free power of their own kings.
Alexander, indeed, offered up sacrifices in the temple of God,
not as a convert to His worship in true piety, but thinking,
with impious folly, that He was to be worshipped along with
false gods. Then Ptolemy son of Lagus, whom I have already
mentioned, after Alexander’s death carried them captive into
Egypt. His successor, Ptolemy Philadelphus, most benevolently
dismissed them; and by him it was brought about,
as I have narrated a little before, that we should have the
Septuagint version of the Scriptures. Then they were crushed
by the wars which are explained in the books of the Maccabees.
Afterward they were taken captive by Ptolemy king of Alexandria,
who was called Epiphanes. Then Antiochus king of
Syria compelled them by many and most grievous evils to[Pg 276]
worship idols, and filled the temple itself with the sacrilegious
superstitions of the Gentiles. Yet their most vigorous leader
Judas, who is also called Maccabæus, after beating the generals
of Antiochus, cleansed it from all that defilement of idolatry.

But not long after, one Alcimus, although an alien from the
sacerdotal tribe, was, through ambition, made pontiff, which
was an impious thing. After almost fifty years, during which
they never had peace, although they prospered in some affairs,
Aristobulus first assumed the diadem among them, and was
made both king and pontiff. Before that, indeed, from the
time of their return from the Babylonish captivity and the
rebuilding of the temple, they had not kings, but generals or
principes. Although a king himself may be called a prince,
from his principality in governing, and a leader, because he
leads the army, but it does not follow that all who are princes
and leaders may also be called kings, as that Aristobulus was.
He was succeeded by Alexander, also both king and pontiff,
who is reported to have reigned over them cruelly. After
him his wife Alexandra was queen of the Jews, and from her
time downwards more grievous evils pursued them; for this
Alexandra’s sons, Aristobulus and Hyrcanus, when contending
with each other for the kingdom, called in the Roman
forces against the nation of Israel. For Hyrcanus asked
assistance from them against his brother. At that time
Rome had already subdued Africa and Greece, and ruled
extensively in other parts of the world also, and yet, as if
unable to bear her own weight, had, in a manner, broken
herself by her own size. For indeed she had come to grave
domestic seditions, and from that to social wars, and by and
by to civil wars, and had enfeebled and worn herself out so
much, that the changed state of the republic, in which she
should be governed by kings, was now imminent. Pompey
then, a most illustrious prince of the Roman people, having
entered Judea with an army, took the city, threw open the
temple, not with the devotion of a suppliant, but with the
authority of a conqueror, and went, not reverently, but profanely,
into the holy of holies, where it was lawful for none
but the pontiff to enter. Having established Hyrcanus in the
pontificate, and set Antipater over the subjugated nation as[Pg 277]
guardian or procurator, as they were then called, he led
Aristobulus with him bound. From that time the Jews also
began to be Roman tributaries. Afterward Cassius plundered
the very temple. Then after a few years it was their desert
to have Herod, a king of foreign birth, in whose reign Christ
was born. For the time had now come signified by the
prophetic Spirit through the mouth of the patriarch Jacob,
when he says, “There shall not be lacking a prince out of
Judah, nor a teacher from his loins, until He shall come for
whom it is reserved; and He is the expectation of the nations.”[583]
There lacked not therefore a Jewish prince of the Jews until
that Herod, who was the first king of a foreign race received
by them. Therefore it was now the time when He should
come for whom that was reserved which is promised in the
New Testament, that He should be the expectation of the
nations. But it was not possible that the nations should
expect He would come, as we see they did, to do judgment in
the splendour of power, unless they should first believe in
Him when He came to suffer judgment in the humility of
patience.

46. Of the birth of our Saviour, whereby the Word was made flesh; and of the
dispersion of the Jews among all nations, as had been prophesied.

While Herod, therefore, reigned in Judea, and Cæsar
Augustus was emperor at Rome, the state of the republic
being already changed, and the world being set at peace by
him, Christ was born in Bethlehem of Judah, man manifest out
of a human virgin, God hidden out of God the Father. For so
had the prophet foretold: “Behold, a virgin shall conceive in
the womb, and bring forth a Son, and they shall call His name
Immanuel, which, being interpreted, is, God with us.”[584] He
did many miracles that He might commend God in Himself,
some of which, even as many as seemed sufficient to proclaim
Him, are contained in the evangelic Scripture. The first of
these is, that He was so wonderfully born, and the last, that
with His body raised up again from the dead He ascended
into heaven. But the Jews who slew Him, and would not
believe in Him, because it behoved Him to die and rise again,
were yet more miserably wasted by the Romans, and utterly[Pg 278]
rooted out from their kingdom, where aliens had already
ruled over them, and were dispersed through the lands (so
that indeed there is no place where they are not), and are
thus by their own Scriptures a testimony to us that we have
not forged the prophecies about Christ. And very many of
them, considering this, even before His passion, but chiefly
after His resurrection, believed on Him, of whom it was predicted,
“Though the number of the children of Israel be as
the sand of the sea, the remnant shall be saved.”[585] But the
rest are blinded, of whom it was predicted, “Let their table
be made before them a trap, and a retribution, and a stumbling-block.
Let their eyes be darkened lest they see, and bow
down their back alway.”[586] Therefore, when they do not believe
our Scriptures, their own, which they blindly read, are
fulfilled in them, lest perchance any one should say that the
Christians have forged these prophecies about Christ which
are quoted under the name of the sibyl, or of others, if such
there be, who do not belong to the Jewish people. For us,
indeed, those suffice which are quoted from the books of our
enemies, to whom we make our acknowledgment, on account
of this testimony which, in spite of themselves, they contribute
by their possession of these books, while they themselves are
dispersed among all nations, wherever the Church of Christ
is spread abroad. For a prophecy about this thing was sent
before in the Psalms, which they also read, where it is written,
“My God, His mercy shall prevent me. My God hath shown
me concerning mine enemies, that Thou shalt not slay them,
lest they should at last forget Thy law: disperse them in Thy
might.”[587] Therefore God has shown the Church in her enemies
the Jews the grace of His compassion, since, as saith the
apostle, “their offence is the salvation of the Gentiles.”[588]
And therefore He has not slain them, that is, He has not let
the knowledge that they are Jews be lost in them, although
they have been conquered by the Romans, lest they should
forget the law of God, and their testimony should be of no
avail in this matter of which we treat. But it was not
enough that he should say, “Slay them not, lest they should[Pg 279]
at last forget Thy law,” unless he had also added, “Disperse
them;” because if they had only been in their own land with
that testimony of the Scriptures, and not everywhere, certainly
the Church which is everywhere could not have had them as
witnesses among all nations to the prophecies which were
sent before concerning Christ.

47. Whether before Christian times there were any outside of the Israelite
race who belonged to the fellowship of the heavenly city.

Wherefore if we read of any foreigner—that is, one neither
born of Israel nor received by that people into the canon of
the sacred books—having prophesied something about Christ,
if it has come or shall come to our knowledge, we can refer
to it over and above; not that this is necessary, even if
wanting, but because it is not incongruous to believe that
even in other nations there may have been men to whom this
mystery was revealed, and who were also impelled to proclaim
it, whether they were partakers of the same grace or had no
experience of it, but were taught by bad angels, who, as we
know, even confessed the present Christ, whom the Jews did
not acknowledge. Nor do I think the Jews themselves dare
contend that no one has belonged to God except the Israelites,
since the increase of Israel began on the rejection of his elder
brother. For in very deed there was no other people who
were specially called the people of God; but they cannot
deny that there have been certain men even of other nations
who belonged, not by earthly but heavenly fellowship, to the
true Israelites, the citizens of the country that is above. Because,
if they deny this, they can be most easily confuted by
the case of the holy and wonderful man Job, who was neither
a native nor a proselyte, that is, a stranger joining the people
of Israel, but, being bred of the Idumean race, arose there
and died there too, and who is so praised by the divine oracle,
that no man of his times is put on a level with him as regards
justice and piety. And although we do not find his date in
the chronicles, yet from his book, which for its merit the
Israelites have received as of canonical authority, we gather
that he was in the third generation after Israel. And I
doubt not it was divinely provided, that from this one case
we might know that among other nations also there might be[Pg 280]
men pertaining to the spiritual Jerusalem who have lived
according to God and have pleased Him. And it is not to
be supposed that this was granted to any one, unless the one
Mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus,[589] was
divinely revealed to him; who was pre-announced to the saints
of old as yet to come in the flesh, even as He is announced
to us as having come, that the selfsame faith through Him
may lead all to God who are predestinated to be the city of
God, the house of God, and the temple of God. But whatever
prophecies concerning the grace of God through Christ
Jesus are quoted, they may be thought to have been forged
by the Christians. So that there is nothing of more weight
for confuting all sorts of aliens, if they contend about this
matter, and for supporting our friends, if they are truly wise,
than to quote those divine predictions about Christ which
are written in the books of the Jews, who have been torn from
their native abode and dispersed over the whole world in
order to bear this testimony, so that the Church of Christ has
everywhere increased.

48. That Haggai’s prophecy, in which he said that the glory of the house of
God would be greater than that of the first had been,[590] was really fulfilled,
not in the rebuilding of the temple, but in the Church of Christ.

This house of God is more glorious than that first one
which was constructed of wood and stone, metals, and other
precious things. Therefore the prophecy of Haggai was not
fulfilled in the rebuilding of that temple. For it can never
be shown to have had so much glory after it was rebuilt as
it had in the time of Solomon; yea, rather, the glory of that
house is shown to have been diminished, first by the ceasing
of prophecy, and then by the nation itself suffering so great
calamities, even to the final destruction made by the Romans,
as the things above-mentioned prove. But this house which
pertains to the new testament is just as much more glorious
as the living stones, even believing, renewed men, of which it
is constructed are better. But it was typified by the rebuilding
of that temple for this reason, because the very renovation
of that edifice typifies in the prophetic oracle another testament
which is called the new. When, therefore, God said by[Pg 281]
the prophet just named, “And I will give peace in this
place,”[591] He is to be understood who is typified by that typical
place; for since by that rebuilt place is typified the Church
which was to be built by Christ, nothing else can be accepted
as the meaning of the saying, “I will give peace in this
place,” except I will give peace in the place which that place
signifies. For all typical things seem in some way to personate
those whom they typify, as it is said by the apostle,
“That Rock was Christ.”[592] Therefore the glory of this new
testament house is greater than the glory of the old testament
house; and it will show itself as greater when it shall
be dedicated. For then “shall come the desired of all nations,”[593]
as we read in the Hebrew. For before His advent
He had not yet been desired by all nations. For they knew
not Him whom they ought to desire, in whom they had not
believed. Then, also, according to the Septuagint interpretation
(for it also is a prophetic meaning), “shall come those
who are elected of the Lord out of all nations.” For then
indeed there shall come only those who are elected, whereof
the apostle saith, “According as He hath chosen us in Him
before the foundation of the world.”[594] For the Master
Builder who said, “Many are called, but few are chosen,”[595]
did not say this of those who, on being called, came in such
a way as to be cast out from the feast, but would point out
the house built up of the elect, which henceforth shall dread
no ruin. Yet because the churches are also full of those who
shall be separated by the winnowing as in the threshing-floor,
the glory of this house is not so apparent now as it shall be
when every one who is there shall be there always.

49. Of the indiscriminate increase of the Church, wherein many reprobate are in
this world mixed with the elect.

In this wicked world, in these evil days, when the Church
measures her future loftiness by her present humility, and is
exercised by goading fears, tormenting sorrows, disquieting
labours, and dangerous temptations, when she soberly rejoices,
rejoicing only in hope, there are many reprobate mingled with
the good, and both are gathered together by the gospel as in[Pg 282]
a drag net;[596] and in this world, as in a sea, both swim enclosed
without distinction in the net, until it is brought ashore, when
the wicked must be separated from the good, that in the good,
as in His temple, God may be all in all. We acknowledge,
indeed, that His word is now fulfilled who spake in the psalm,
and said, “I have announced and spoken; they are multiplied
above number.”[597] This takes place now, since He has spoken,
first by the mouth of his forerunner John, and afterward by
His own mouth, saying, “Repent: for the kingdom of heaven
is at hand.”[598] He chose disciples, whom He also called apostles,[599]
of lowly birth, unhonoured, and illiterate, so that whatever
great thing they might be or do, He might be and do it in
them. He had one among them whose wickedness He could
use well in order to accomplish His appointed passion, and
furnish His Church an example of bearing with the wicked.
Having sown the holy gospel as much as that behoved to be
done by His bodily presence, He suffered, died, and rose again,
showing by His passion what we ought to suffer for the truth,
and by His resurrection what we ought to hope for in adversity;
saving always the mystery of the sacrament, by which
His blood was shed for the remission of sins. He held converse
on the earth forty days with His disciples, and in their
sight ascended into heaven, and after ten days sent the promised
Holy Spirit. It was given as the chief and most necessary
sign of His coming on those who had believed, that every
one of them spoke in the tongues of all nations; thus signifying
that the unity of the catholic Church would embrace all
nations, and would in like manner speak in all tongues.

50. Of the preaching of the gospel, which is made more famous and powerful
by the sufferings of its preachers.

Then was fulfilled that prophecy, “Out of Sion shall go
forth the law, and the word of the Lord out of Jerusalem;”[600]
and the prediction of the Lord Christ Himself, when, after the
resurrection, “He opened the understanding” of His amazed
disciples “that they might understand the Scriptures, and
said unto them that thus it is written, and thus it behoved
Christ to suffer, and to rise from the dead the third day, and[Pg 283]
that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in
His name among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem.”[601] And
again, when, in reply to their questioning about the day of
His last coming, He said, “It is not for you to know the
times or the seasons which the Father hath put in His own
power; but ye shall receive the power of the Holy Ghost
coming upon you, and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in
Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and Samaria, and even unto the
ends of the earth.”[602] First of all, the Church spread herself
abroad from Jerusalem; and when very many in Judea and
Samaria had believed, she also went into other nations by
those who announced the gospel, whom, as lights, He Himself
had both prepared by His word and kindled by His Holy
Spirit. For He had said to them, “Fear ye not them which
kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul.”[603] And that
they might not be frozen with fear, they burned with the fire
of charity. Finally, the gospel of Christ was preached in the
whole world, not only by those who had seen and heard Him
both before His passion and after His resurrection, but also after
their death by their successors, amid the horrible persecutions,
diverse torments and deaths of the martyrs, God also bearing
them witness, both with signs and wonders, and divers miracles
and gifts of the Holy Ghost,[604] that the people of the nations,
believing in Him who was crucified for their redemption, might
venerate with Christian love the blood of the martyrs which
they had poured forth with devilish fury, and the very kings
by whose laws the Church had been laid waste might become
profitably subject to that name they had cruelly striven to
take away from the earth, and might begin to persecute the
false gods for whose sake the worshippers of the true God had
formerly been persecuted.

51. That the catholic faith may be confirmed even by the dissensions of the
heretics.

But the devil, seeing the temples of the demons deserted,
and the human race running to the name of the liberating
Mediator, has moved the heretics under the Christian name
to resist the Christian doctrine, as if they could be kept in[Pg 284]
the city of God indifferently without any correction, just as
the city of confusion indifferently held the philosophers who
were of diverse and adverse opinions. Those, therefore, in
the Church of Christ who savour anything morbid and depraved,
and, on being corrected that they may savour what
is wholesome and right, contumaciously resist, and will not
amend their pestiferous and deadly dogmas, but persist in defending
them, become heretics, and, going without, are to be
reckoned as enemies who serve for her discipline. For even
thus they profit by their wickedness those true catholic members
of Christ, since God makes a good use even of the wicked,
and all things work together for good to them that love Him.[605]
For all the enemies of the Church, whatever error blinds or
malice depraves them, exercise her patience if they receive
the power to afflict her corporally; and if they only oppose
her by wicked thought, they exercise her wisdom: but at
the same time, if these enemies are loved, they exercise her
benevolence, or even her beneficence, whether she deals with
them by persuasive doctrine or by terrible discipline. And
thus the devil, the prince of the impious city, when he stirs
up his own vessels against the city of God that sojourns in
this world, is permitted to do her no harm. For without
doubt the divine providence procures for her both consolation
through prosperity, that she may not be broken by adversity,
and trial through adversity, that she may not be corrupted by
prosperity; and thus each is tempered by the other, as we
recognise in the Psalms that voice which arises from no other
cause, “According to the multitude of my griefs in my heart,
Thy consolations have delighted my soul.”[606] Hence also is
that saying of the apostle, “Rejoicing in hope, patient in
tribulation.”[607]

For it is not to be thought that what the same teacher
says can at any time fail, “Whoever will live piously in
Christ shall suffer persecution.”[608] Because even when those
who are without do not rage, and thus there seems to be, and
really is, tranquillity, which brings very much consolation,
especially to the weak, yet there are not wanting, yea, there[Pg 285]
are many within who by their abandoned manners torment
the hearts of those who live piously, since by them the
Christian and catholic name is blasphemed; and the dearer
that name is to those who will live piously in Christ, the
more do they grieve that through the wicked, who have a
place within, it comes to be less loved than pious minds
desire. The heretics themselves also, since they are thought
to have the Christian name and sacraments, Scriptures, and
profession, cause great grief in the hearts of the pious, both
because many who wish to be Christians are compelled by
their dissensions to hesitate, and many evil-speakers also find
in them matter for blaspheming the Christian name, because
they too are at any rate called Christians. By these and
similar depraved manners and errors of men, those who will
live piously in Christ suffer persecution, even when no one
molests or vexes their body; for they suffer this persecution,
not in their bodies, but in their hearts. Whence is that word,
“According to the multitude of my griefs in my heart;” for
he does not say, in my body. Yet, on the other hand, none
of them can perish, because the immutable divine promises
are thought of. And because the apostle says, “The Lord
knoweth them that are His;[609] for whom He did foreknow, He
also predestinated [to be] conformed to the image of His
Son,”[610] none of them can perish; therefore it follows in that
psalm, “Thy consolations have delighted my soul.”[611] But
that grief which arises in the hearts of the pious, who are
persecuted by the manners of bad or false Christians, is profitable
to the sufferers, because it proceeds from the charity
in which they do not wish them either to perish or to hinder
the salvation of others. Finally, great consolations grow out
of their chastisement, which imbue the souls of the pious
with a fecundity as great as the pains with which they were
troubled concerning their own perdition. Thus in this world,
in these evil days, not only from the time of the bodily presence
of Christ and His apostles, but even from that of Abel,
whom first his wicked brother slew because he was righteous,[612]
and thenceforth even to the end of this world, the Church has[Pg 286]
gone forward on pilgrimage amid the persecutions of the
world and the consolations of God.

52. Whether we should believe what some think, that, as the ten persecutions which
are past have been fulfilled, there remains no other beyond the eleventh,
which must happen in the very time of Antichrist.

I do not think, indeed, that what some have thought or
may think is rashly said or believed, that until the time of
Antichrist the Church of Christ is not to suffer any persecutions
besides those she has already suffered,—that is, ten,—and
that the eleventh and last shall be inflicted by Antichrist.
They reckon as the first that made by Nero, the second by
Domitian, the third by Trajan, the fourth by Antoninus, the
fifth by Severus, the sixth by Maximin, the seventh by Decius,
the eighth by Valerian, the ninth by Aurelian, the tenth by
Diocletian and Maximian. For as there were ten plagues
in Egypt before the people of God could begin to go out,
they think this is to be referred to as showing that the last
persecution by Antichrist must be like the eleventh plague,
in which the Egyptians, while following the Hebrews with
hostility, perished in the Red Sea when the people of God
passed through on dry land. Yet I do not think persecutions
were prophetically signified by what was done in Egypt, however
nicely and ingeniously those who think so may seem to
have compared the two in detail, not by the prophetic Spirit,
but by the conjecture of the human mind, which sometimes
hits the truth, and sometimes is deceived. But what can
those who think this say of the persecution in which the
Lord Himself was crucified? In which number will they
put it? And if they think the reckoning is to be made exclusive
of this one, as if those must be counted which pertain
to the body, and not that in which the Head Himself was set
upon and slain, what can they make of that one which, after
Christ ascended into heaven, took place in Jerusalem, when
the blessed Stephen was stoned; when James the brother of
John was slaughtered with the sword; when the Apostle
Peter was imprisoned to be killed, and was set free by the
angel; when the brethren were driven away and scattered
from Jerusalem; when Saul, who afterward became the
Apostle Paul, wasted the Church; and when he himself, publishing[Pg 287]
the glad tidings of the faith he had persecuted, suffered
such things as he had inflicted, either from the Jews or from
other nations, where he most fervently preached Christ everywhere?
Why, then, do they think fit to start with Nero,
when the Church in her growth had reached the times of
Nero amid the most cruel persecutions, about which it would
be too long to say anything? But if they think that only
the persecutions made by kings ought to be reckoned, it was
king Herod who also made a most grievous one after the
ascension of the Lord. And what account do they give of
Julian, whom they do not number in the ten? Did not he
persecute the Church, who forbade the Christians to teach or
learn liberal letters? Under him, the elder Valentinian, who
was the third emperor after him, stood forth as a confessor of
the Christian faith, and was dismissed from his command in
the army. I shall say nothing of what he did at Antioch,
except to mention his being struck with wonder at the freedom
and cheerfulness of one most faithful and stedfast young
man, who, when many were seized to be tortured, was tortured
during a whole day, and sang under the instrument of torture,
until the emperor feared lest he should succumb under the
continued cruelties and put him to shame at last, which made
him dread and fear that he would be yet more dishonourably
put to the blush by the rest. Lastly, within our own recollection,
did not Valens the Arian, brother of the foresaid
Valentinian, waste the catholic Church by great persecution
throughout the East? But how unreasonable it is not to
consider that the Church, which bears fruit and grows through
the whole world, may suffer persecution from kings in some
nations even when she does not suffer it in others! Perhaps,
however, it was not to be reckoned a persecution when the
king of the Goths, in Gothia itself, persecuted the Christians
with wonderful cruelty, when there were none but catholics
there, of whom very many were crowned with martyrdom, as we
have heard from certain brethren who had been there at that
time as boys, and unhesitatingly called to mind that they had
seen these things? And what took place in Persia of late?
Was not persecution so hot against the Christians (if even yet
it is allayed) that some of the fugitives from it came even to[Pg 288]
Roman towns? When I think of these and the like things,
it does not seem to me that the number of persecutions with
which the Church is to be tried can be definitely stated. But,
on the other hand, it is no less rash to affirm that there will
be some persecutions by kings besides that last one, about
which no Christian is in doubt. Therefore we leave this undecided,
supporting or refuting neither side of this question,
but only restraining men from the audacious presumption of
affirming either of them.

53. Of the hidden time of the final persecution.

Truly Jesus Himself shall extinguish by His presence that
last persecution which is to be made by Antichrist. For so
it is written, that “He shall slay him with the breath of His
mouth, and empty him with the brightness of His presence.”[613]
It is customary to ask, When shall that be? But this is
quite unreasonable. For had it been profitable for us to
know this, by whom could it better have been told than by
God Himself, the Master, when the disciples questioned Him?
For they were not silent when with Him, but inquired of
Him, saying, “Lord, wilt Thou at this time present the kingdom
to Israel, or when?”[614] But He said, “It is not for you
to know the times, which the Father hath put in His own
power.” When they got that answer, they had not at all
questioned Him about the hour, or day, or year, but about the
time. In vain, then, do we attempt to compute definitely the
years that may remain to this world, when we may hear from
the mouth of the Truth that it is not for us to know this.
Yet some have said that four hundred, some five hundred,
others a thousand years, may be completed from the ascension
of the Lord up to His final coming. But to point out how
each of them supports his own opinion would take too long,
and is not necessary; for indeed they use human conjectures,
and bring forward nothing certain from the authority of the
canonical Scriptures. But on this subject He puts aside the
figures of the calculators, and orders silence, who says, “It is
not for you to know the times, which the Father hath put in
His own power.”

[Pg 289]

But because this sentence is in the Gospel, it is no wonder
that the worshippers of the many and false gods have been
none the less restrained from feigning that by the responses
of the demons, whom they worship as gods, it has been fixed
how long the Christian religion is to last. For when they
saw that it could not be consumed by so many and great persecutions,
but rather drew from them wonderful enlargements,
they invented I know not what Greek verses, as if poured
forth by a divine oracle to some one consulting it, in which,
indeed, they make Christ innocent of this, as it were, sacrilegious
crime, but add that Peter by enchantments brought it
about that the name of Christ should be worshipped for three
hundred and sixty-five years, and, after the completion of
that number of years, should at once take end. Oh the hearts
of learned men! Oh, learned wits, meet to believe such things
about Christ as you are not willing to believe in Christ, that
His disciple Peter did not learn magic arts from Him, yet
that, although He was innocent, His disciple was an enchanter,
and chose that His name rather than his own should be worshipped
through his magic arts, his great labours and perils,
and at last even the shedding of his blood! If Peter the
enchanter made the world so love Christ, what did Christ the
innocent do to make Peter so love Him? Let them answer
themselves then, and, if they can, let them understand that
the world, for the sake of eternal life, was made to love Christ
by that same supernal grace which made Peter also love
Christ for the sake of the eternal life to be received from
Him, and that even to the extent of suffering temporal death
for Him. And then, what kind of gods are these who are
able to predict such things, yet are not able to avert them,
succumbing in such a way to a single enchanter and wicked
magician (who, as they say, having slain a yearling boy and
torn him to pieces, buried him with nefarious rites), that
they permitted the sect hostile to themselves to gain strength
for so great a time, and to surmount the horrid cruelties of so
many great persecutions, not by resisting but by suffering, and
to procure the overthrow of their own images, temples, rituals,
and oracles? Finally, what god was it—not ours, certainly,
but one of their own—who was either enticed or compelled[Pg 290]
by so great wickedness to perform these things? For those
verses say that Peter bound, not any demon, but a god to do
these things. Such a god have they who have not Christ.

54. Of the very foolish lie of the pagans, in feigning that the Christian religion
was not to last beyond three hundred and sixty-five years.

I might collect these and many similar arguments, if that
year had not already passed by which lying divination has
promised, and deceived vanity has believed. But as a few
years ago three hundred and sixty-five years were completed
since the time when the worship of the name of Christ was
established by His presence in the flesh, and by the apostles,
what other proof need we seek to refute that falsehood? For,
not to place the beginning of this period at the nativity of
Christ, because as an infant and boy He had no disciples, yet,
when He began to have them, beyond doubt the Christian
doctrine and religion then became known through His bodily
presence, that is, after He was baptized in the river Jordan
by the ministry of John. For on this account that prophecy
went before concerning Him: “He shall reign from sea even
to sea, and from the river even to the ends of the earth.”[615]
But since, before He suffered and rose from the dead, the faith
had not yet been defined to all, but was defined in the resurrection
of Christ (for so the Apostle Paul speaks to the
Athenians, saying, “But now He announces to men that all
everywhere should repent, because He hath appointed a day
in which to judge the world in equity, by the Man in whom
He hath defined the faith to all men, raising Him from the
dead”[616]), it is better that, in settling this question, we should
start from that point, especially because the Holy Spirit was
then given, just as He behoved to be given after the resurrection
of Christ in that city from which the second law, that
is, the new testament, ought to begin. For the first, which
is called the old testament, was given from Mount Sinai
through Moses. But concerning this which was to be given
by Christ it was predicted, “Out of Sion shall go forth the
law, and the word of the Lord out of Jerusalem;”[617] whence
He Himself said, that repentance in His name behoved to be
preached among all nations, but yet beginning at Jerusalem.[Pg 291][618]
There, therefore, the worship of this name took its rise, that
Jesus should be believed in, who died and rose again. There
this faith blazed up with such noble beginnings, that several
thousand men, being converted to the name of Christ with
wonderful alacrity, sold their goods for distribution among the
needy, thus, by a holy resolution and most ardent charity,
coming to voluntary poverty, and prepared themselves, amid
the Jews who raged and thirsted for their blood, to contend
for the truth even to death, not with armed power, but with
more powerful patience. If this was accomplished by no
magic arts, why do they hesitate to believe that the other
could be done throughout the whole world by the same divine
power by which this was done? But supposing Peter wrought
that enchantment so that so great a multitude of men at
Jerusalem was thus kindled to worship the name of Christ,
who had either seized and fastened Him to the cross, or reviled
Him when fastened there, we must still inquire when
the three hundred and sixty-five years must be completed,
counting from that year. Now Christ died when the Gemini
were consuls, on the eighth day before the kalends of April.
He rose the third day, as the apostles have proved by the
evidence of their own senses. Then forty days after, He
ascended into heaven. Ten days after, that is, on the fiftieth
after His resurrection, He sent the Holy Spirit; then three
thousand men believed when the apostles preached Him.
Then, therefore, arose the worship of that name, as we believe,
and according to the real truth, by the efficacy of the
Holy Spirit, but, as impious vanity has feigned or thought,
by the magic arts of Peter. A little afterward, too, on a
wonderful sign being wrought, when at Peter’s own word a
certain beggar, so lame from his mother’s womb that he was
carried by others and laid down at the gate of the temple,
where he begged alms, was made whole in the name of Jesus
Christ, and leaped up, five thousand men believed, and thenceforth
the Church grew by sundry accessions of believers. Thus
we gather the very day with which that year began, namely,
that on which the Holy Spirit was sent, that is, during the
ides of May. And, on counting the consuls, the three hundred
and sixty-five years are found completed on the same[Pg 292]
ides in the consulate of Honorius and Eutychianus. Now, in
the following year, in the consulate of Mallius Theodorus,
when, according to that oracle of the demons or figment of
men, there ought already to have been no Christian religion,
it was not necessary to inquire what perchance was done in
other parts of the earth. But, as we know, in the most noted
and eminent city Carthage, in Africa, Gaudentius and Jovius,
officers of the Emperor Honorius, on the fourteenth day before
the kalends of April, overthrew the temples and broke the
images of the false gods. And from that time to the present,
during almost thirty years, who does not see how much the
worship of the name of Christ has increased, especially after
many of those became Christians who had been kept back from
the faith by thinking that divination true, but saw when that
same number of years was completed that it was empty and
ridiculous? We, therefore, who are called and are Christians,
do not believe in Peter, but in Him whom Peter believed,—being
edified by Peter’s sermons about Christ, not poisoned by
his incantations; and not deceived by his enchantments, but
aided by his good deeds. Christ Himself, who was Peter’s
Master in the doctrine which leads to eternal life, is our
Master too.

But let us now at last finish this book, after thus far treating
of, and showing as far as seemed sufficient, what is the
mortal course of the two cities, the heavenly and the earthly,
which are mingled together from the beginning down to the
end. Of these, the earthly one has made to herself of whom
she would, either from any other quarter, or even from among
men, false gods whom she might serve by sacrifice; but she
which is heavenly, and is a pilgrim on the earth, does not
make false gods, but is herself made by the true God, of
whom she herself must be the true sacrifice. Yet both alike
either enjoy temporal good things, or are afflicted with temporal
evils, but with diverse faith, diverse hope, and diverse
love, until they must be separated by the last judgment, and
each must receive her own end, of which there is no end.
About these ends of both we must next treat.

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[Pg 293]