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ST. AUGUSTIN

THE CITY OF GOD, BOOKS XX-XI

[Translated by Rev. Marcus Dods, D.D.]


BOOK XX.

ARGUMENT: CONCERNING THE LAST JUDGMENT, AND THE DECLARATIONS REGARDING IT
IN THE OLD AND NEW TESTAMENTS.

CHAP. I.--THAT ALTHOUGH GOD IS ALWAYS JUDGING, IT IS NEVERTHELESS
REASONABLE TO CONFINE OUR ATTENTION IN THIS BOOK TO HIS LAST JUDGMENT.

   INTENDING to speak, in dependence on God's grace, of the day of His
final judgment, and to affirm it against the ungodly and incredulous, we
must first of all lay, as it were, in the foundation of the edifice the
divine declarations. Those persons who do not believe such declarations do
their best to oppose to them false and illusive sophisms of their own,
either contending that what is adduced from Scripture has another meaning,
or altogether denying that it is an utterance of God's. For I suppose no
man who understands what is written, and believes it to be communicated by
the supreme and true God through holy men, refuses to yield and consent to
these declarations, whether he orally confesses his consent, or is from
some evil influence ashamed or afraid to do so; or even, with an
opinionativeness closely resembling madness, makes strenuous efforts to
defend what he knows and believes to be false against what he knows and
believes to be true.

   That, therefore, which the whole Church of the true God holds and
professes as its creed, that Christ shall come from heaven to judge quick
and dead, this we call the last day, or last time, of the divine judgment.
For we do not know how many days this judgment may occupy; but no one who
reads the Scriptures, however negligently, need be told that in them "day"
is customarily used for "time." And when we speak of the day of God's
judgment, we add the word last or final for this reason, because even now
God judges, and has judged from the beginning of human history, banishing
from paradise, and excluding from the tree of life, those first men who
perpetrated so great a sin. Yea, He was certainly exercising judgment also
when He did not spare the angels who sinned, whose prince, overcome by
envy, seduced men after being himself seduced. Neither is it without God's
profound and just judgment that the life of demons and men, the one in the
air, the other on earth, is filled with misery, calamities, and mistakes.
And even though no one had sinned, it could only have been by the good and
right judgment of God that the whole rational creation could have been
maintained in eternal blessedness by a persevering adherence to its Lord.
He judges, too, not only in the mass, condemning the race of devils and the
race of men to be miserable on account of the original sin of these races,
but He also judges the voluntary and personal acts of individuals. For even
the devils pray that they may not be tormented,(1) which proves that
without injustice they might either be spared or tormented according to
their deserts. And men are punished by God for their sins often visibly,
always secretly, either in this life or after death, although no man acts
rightly save by the assistance of divine aid; and no man or devil acts
unrighteously save by the permission of the divine and most just judgment.
For, as the apostle says, "There is no unrighteousness with God;"(2) and as
he elsewhere says, "His judgments are inscrutable, and His ways past
finding out"(3) In this book, then, I shall speak, as God permits, not of
those first judgments, nor of these intervening judgments of God, but of
the last judgment, when Christ is to come from heaven to judge the quick
and the dead. For that day is properly called the day of judgment, because
in it there shall be no room left for the ignorant questioning why this
wicked person is happy and that righteous man unhappy. In that day true and
full happiness shall be the lot of none but the good, while deserved and
supreme misery shall be the portion of the wicked, and of them only.

CHAP. 2.--THAT IN THE MINGLED WEB OF HUMAN AFFAIRS GOD'S JUDGMENT IS
PRESENT, THOUGH IT CANNOT BE DISCERNED.

   In this present time we learn to bear with equanimity the ills to which
even good men are subject, and to hold cheap the blessings which even the
wicked enjoy. And consequently, even in those conditions of life in which
the justice of God is not apparent, His teaching is salutary. For we do not
know by what judgment of God this good man is poor and that bad man rich;
why he who, in our opinion, ought to suffer acutely for his abandoned life
enjoys himself, while sorrow pursues him whose praiseworthy life leads us
to suppose he should be happy; why the innocent man is dismissed from the
bar not only unavenged, but even condemned, being either wronged by the
iniquity of the judge, or overwhelmed by false evidence, while his guilty
adversary, on the other hand, is not only discharged with impunity, but
even has his claims admitted; why the ungodly enjoys good health, while the
godly pines in sickness; why ruffians are of the soundest constitution,
while they who could not hurt any one even with a word are from infancy
afflicted with complicated disorders; why he who is useful to society is
cut off by premature death, while those who, as it might seem, ought never
to have been so much as born have lives of unusual length; why he who is
full of crimes is crowned with honors, while the blameless man is buried in
the darkness of neglect. But who can collect or enumerate all the contrasts
of this kind? But if this anomalous state of things were uniform in this
life, in which, as the sacred Psalmist says, "Man is like to vanity, his
days as a shadow that passeth away,"(1)--so uniform that none but wicked
men won the transitory prosperity of earth, while only the good suffered
its ills,--this could be referred to the just and even benign judgment of
God. We might suppose that they who were not destined to obtain those
everlasting benefits which constitute human blessedness were either deluded
by transitory blessings as the just reward of their wickedness, or were, in
God's mercy, consoled them, and that they who were not destined to suffer
eternal torments were afflicted with temporal chastisement for their sins,
or were stimulated to greater attainment in virtue. But now, as it is,
since we not only see good men involved in the ills of life, and bad men
enjoying the good of it, which seems unjust, but also that evil often
overtakes evil men, and good surprises the good, the rather on this account
are God's judgments unsearchable, and His ways past finding out. Although,
therefore, we do not know by what judgment these things are done or
permitted to be done by God, with whom is the highest virtue, the highest
wisdom, the highest justice, no infirmity, no rashness, no unrighteousness,
yet it is salutary for us to learn to hold cheap such things, be they good
or evil, as attach indifferently to good men and bad, and to covet those
good things which belong only to good men, and flee those evils which
belong only to evil men. But when we shall have come to that judgment, the
date of which is called peculiarly the day of judgment, and sometimes the
day of the Lord, we shall then recognize the justice of all God's
judgments, not only of such as shall then be pronounced, but, of all which
take effect from the beginning, or may take effect before that time. And in
that day we shall also recognize with what justice so many, or almost all,
the just judgments of God in the present life defy the scrutiny of human
sense or insight, though in this matter it is not concealed from pious
minds that what is concealed is just.

CHAP. 3.--WHAT SOLOMON, IN THE BOOK OF ECCLESIASTES, SAYS REGARDING THE
THINGS WHICH HAPPEN ALIKE TO GOOD AND WICKED MEN.

   Solomon, the wisest king of Israel, who reigned in Jerusalem, thus
commences the book called Ecclesiastes, which the Jews number among their
canonical Scriptures: "Vanity of vanities, said Ecclesiastes, vanity of
vanities; all is vanity. What profit hath a man of all his labor which he
hath taken under the sun?"(2) And after going on to enumerate, with this as
his text, the calamities and delusions of this life, and the shifting
nature of the present time, in which there is nothing substantial, nothing
lasting, he bewails, among the other vanities that are under the sun, this
also, that though wisdom excelleth folly as light excelleth darkness, and
though the eyes of the wise man are in his head, while the fool walketh in
darkness,(1) yet one event happeneth to them all, that is to say, in this
life under the sun, unquestionably alluding to those evils which we see
befall good and bad men alike. He says, further, that the good suffer the
ills of life as if they were evil doers, and the bad enjoy the good of life
as if they were good. "There is a vanity which is done upon the earth; that
there be just men unto whom it happeneth according to the work of the
wicked: again, there be wicked men, to whom it happeneth according to the
work of the righteous. I said, that this also is vanity."(2)  This wisest
man devoted this whole book to a full exposure of this vanity, evidently
with no other object than that we might long for that life in which there
is no vanity under the sun, but verity under Him who made the sun. In this
vanity, then, was it not by the just and righteous judgment of God that
man, made like to vanity, was destined to pass away? But in these days of
vanity it makes an important difference whether he resists or yields to the
truth, and whether he is destitute of true piety or a partaker of it,--
important not so far as regards the acquirement of the blessings or the
evasion of the calamities of this transitory and vain life, but in
connection with the future judgment which shall make over to good men good
things, and to bad men bad things, in permanent, inalienable possession. In
fine, this wise man concludes this book of his by saying, "Fear God, and
keep His commandments: for this is every man. For God shall bring every
work into judgment, with every despised person, whether it be good, or
whether it be evil."(3) What truer, terser, more salutary enouncement could
be made? "Fear God, he says, and keep His commandments: for this is every
man." For whosoever has real existence, is this, is a keeper of God's
commandments; and he who is not this, is nothing. For so long as he remains
in the likeness of vanity, he is not renewed in the image of the truth.
"For God shall bring into judgment every work,"--that is, whatever man does
in this life,--"whether it be good or whether it be evil, with every
despised person,"--that is, with every man who here seems despicable, and
is therefore not considered; for God sees even him and does not despise him
nor pass him over in His judgment.

CHAP. 4.--THAT PROOFS OF THE LAST JUDGMENT WILL BE ADDUCED, FIRST FROM THE
NEW TESTAMENT, AND THEN FROM THE OLD.

   The proofs, then, of this last judgment of God which I propose to
adduce shall be drawn first from the New Testament, and then from the Old.
For although the Old Testament is prior in point of time the New has the
precedence in intrinsic value; for the Old acts the part of herald to the
New. We shall therefore first cite passages from the New Testament, and
confirm them by quotations from the Old Testament. The Old contains the law
and the prophets, the New the gospel and the apostolic epistles. Now the
apostle says "By the law is the knowledge of sin. But now the righteousness
of God without the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the
prophets; now the righteousness of God is by faith of Jesus Christ upon all
them that believe."(4) This righteousness of God belongs to the New
Testament, and evidence for it exists in the old books, that is to say, in
the law and the prophets. I shall first, then state the case, and then call
the witnesses. This order Jesus Christ Himself directs us to observe,
saying, "The scribe instructed in the kingdom of God is like a good
householder, bringing out of his treasure things new and old."(5) He did
not say" old and new," which He certainly would have said had He not wished
to follow the order of merit rather than that of time.

CHAP. 5.--THE PASSAGES IN WHICH THE SAVIOUR DECLARES THAT THERE SHALL BE A
DIVINE JUDGMENT IN THE END OF THE WORLD.

   The Saviour Himself, while reproving the cities in which He had done
great works, but which had not believed, and while setting them in
unfavorable comparison with foreign cities, says, "But I say unto you, It
shall be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon at the day of judgment than for
you."(6) And a little after He says, "Verily, I say unto you, It shall be
more tolerable for the land of Sodom in the day of judgment than for
thee."(7)  Here He most plainly predicts that a day of judgment is to come.
And in another place He says, "The men of Nineveh shall rise in judgment
with this generation, and shall condemn it: because they repented at the
preaching of Jonas; and, behold, a greater than Jonas is here. The queen of
the south shall rise up in the judgment with this generation, and shall
condemn it: for she came from the uttermost parts of the earth to hear the
words of Solomon; and behold, a greater than Solomon is here."(1) Two
things we learn from this passage, that a judgment is to take place, and
that it is to take place at the resurrection of the dead. For when He spoke
of the Ninevites and the queen of the south, He certainly spoke of dead
persons, and yet He said that they should rise up in the day of judgment.
He did not say, "They shall condemn," as if they themselves were to be the
judges, but because, in comparison with them, the others shall be justly
condemned.

   Again, in another passage, in which He was speaking of the present
intermingling and future separation of the good and bad,--the separation
which shall be made in the day of judgment,--He adduced a comparison drawn
from the sown wheat and the tares sown among them, and gave this
explanation of it to His disciples: "He that soweth the good seed is the
Son of man,"(2) etc. Here, indeed, He did not name the judgment or the day
of judgment, but indicated it much more clearly by describing the
circumstances, and foretold that it should take place in the end of the
world.

   In like manner He says to His disciples, "Verily I say unto you, That
ye which have followed me, in the regeneration, when the Son of man shall
sit on the throne of His glory, ye also shall sit upon twelve thrones,
judging the twelve tribes of Israel."(3) Here we learn that Jesus shall
judge with His disciples. And therefore He said elsewhere to the Jews, "If
I by Beelzebub cast out devils, by whom do your sons cast them out?
Therefore they shall be your judges."(4) Neither ought we to suppose that
only twelve men shall judge along with Him, though He says that they shall
sit upon twelve thrones; for by the number twelve is signified the
completeness of the multitude of those who shall judge. For the two parts
of the number seven (which commonly symbolizes totality), that is to say
four and three, multiplied into one another, give twelve. For four times
three, or three times four, are twelve. There are other meanings, too, in
this number twelve. Were not this the right interpretation of the twelve
thrones, then since we read that Matthias was ordained an apostle in the
room of Judas the traitor, the Apostle Paul, though he labored more than
them all,(5) should have no throne of judgment; but he unmistakeably
considers himself to be included in the number of the judges when he says,
"Know ye not that we shall judge angels?"(6) The same rule is to be
observed in applying the number twelve to those who are to be judged. For
though it was said, "judging the twelve tribes of Israel," the tribe of
Levi, which is the thirteenth, shall not on this account be exempt from
judgment, neither shall judgment be passed only on Israel and not on the
other nations. And by the words "in the regeneration," He certainly meant
the resurrection of the dead to be understood; for our flesh shall be
regenerated by incorruption, as our soul is regenerated by faith.

   Many passages I omit, because, though they seem to refer to the last
judgment, yet on a closer examination they are found to be ambiguous, or to
allude rather to some other event,--whether to that coming of the Saviour
which continually occurs in His Church, that is, in His members, in which
comes little by little, and piece by piece, since the whole Church is His
body, or to the destruction of the earthly Jerusalem. For when He speaks
even of this, He often uses language which is applicable to the end of the
world and that last and great day of judgment, so that these two events
cannot be distinguished unless all the corresponding passages bearing on
the subject in the three evangelists, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, are compared
with one another,--for some things are put more obscurely by one evangelist
and more plainly by another,--so that it becomes apparent what things are
meant to be referred to one event. It is this which I have been at pains to
do in a letter which I wrote to Hesychius of blessed memory, bishop of
Salon, and entitled, "Of the End of the World."(7)

   I shall now cite from the Gospel according to Matthew the passage which
speaks of the separation of the good from the wicked by the most
efficacious and final judgment of Christ: "When the Son of man," he says,
"shall come in His glory, . . . then shall He say also unto them on His
left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for
the devil and his angels."(8)  Then He in like manner recounts to the
wicked the things they had not done, but which He had said those on the
right hand had done. And when they ask when they had seen Him in need of
these things, He replies that, inasmuch as they had not done it to the
least of His brethren, they had not done it unto Him, and concludes His
address in the words, "And these shall go away into everlasting punishment,
but the righteous into life eternal." Moreover, the evangelist John most
distinctly states that He had predicted that the judgment should be at the
resurrection of the dead. For after saying, "The Father judgeth no man, but
hath committed all judgment unto the Son: that all men should honor the
Son, even as they honor the Father: he that honoreth not the Son, honoreth
not the Father which hath sent Him;" He immediately adds, "Verily, verily,
I say unto you, He that heareth my word and believeth on Him that sent me,
hath everlasting life, and shall not come into judgment; but is passed from
death to life."(1)  Here He said that believers on Him should not come into
judgment. How, then, shall they be separated from the wicked by judgment,
and be set at His right hand, unless judgment be in this passage used for
condemnation? For into judgment, in this sense, they shall not come who
hear His word, and believe on Him that sent Him.

CHAP. 6.--WHAT IS THE FIRST RESURRECTION, AND WHAT THE SECOND.

   After that He adds the words, "Verily, verily, I say unto you, The hour
is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of
God; and they that hear shall live. For as the Father hath life in Himself;
so hath He given to the Son to have life in Himself."(2)  As yet He does
not speak of the second resurrection, that is, the resurrection of the
body, which shall be in the end, but of the first, which now is. It is for
the sake of making this distinction that He says, "The hour is coming, and
now is." Now this resurrection regards not the body, but the soul. For
souls, too, have a death of their own in wickedness and sins, whereby they
are the dead of whom the same lips say, "Suffer the dead to bury their
dead,"(3)--that is, let those who are dead in soul bury them that are dead
in body. It is of these dead, then--the dead in ungodliness and wickedness-
-that He says, "The hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear
the voice of the Son of God; and they that hear shall live." "They that
hear," that is, they who obey, believe, and persevere to the end. Here no
difference is made between the good and the bad. For it is good for all men
to hear His voice and live, by passing to the life of godliness from the
death of ungodliness. Of this death the Apostle Paul says, "Therefore all
are dead, and He died for all, that they which live should not henceforth
live unto themselves, but unto Him which died for them and rose again."(4)
Thus all, without one exception, were dead in sins, whether original or
voluntary sins, sins of ignorance, or sins committed against knowledge; and
for all the dead there died the one only person who lived, that is, who had
no sin whatever, in order that they who live by the remission of their sins
should live, not to themselves, but to Him who died for all, for our sins,
and rose again for our justification, that we, believing in Him who
justifies the ungodly, and being justified from ungodliness or quickened
from death, may be able to attain to the first resurrection which now is.
For in this first resurrection none have a part save those who shall be
eternally blessed; but in the second, of which He goes on to speak, all, as
we shall learn, have a part, both the blessed and the wretched. The one is
the resurrection of mercy, the other of judgment. And therefore it is
written in the psalm, "I will sing of mercy and of judgment: unto Thee, O
Lord, will I sing."(5)

   And of this judgment He went on to say, "And hath given Him authority
to execute judgment also, because He is the Son of man." Here He shows that
He will come to judge in that flesh in which He had come to be judged. For
it is to show this He says, "because He is the Son of man." And then follow
the words for our purpose: "Marvel not at this: for the hour is coming, in
the which all that are in the graves shall hear His voice, and shall come
forth; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they
that have done evil, unto the resurrection of judgment."(6)  This judgment
He uses here in the same sense as a little before, when He says, "He that
heareth my word, and believeth on Him that sent me, hath everlasting life,
and shall not come into judgment, but is passed from death to life;" i.e.,
by having a part in the first resurrection, by which a transition from
death to life is made in this present time, he shall not come into
damnation, which He mentions by the name of judgment, as also in the place
where He says, "but they that have done evil unto the resurrection of
judgment," i.e., of damnation. He, therefore, who would not be damned in
the second resurrection, let him rise in the first. For "the hour is
coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God;
and they that hear shall live," i.e., shall not come into damnation, which
is called the second death; into which death, after the second or bodily
resurrection, they shall be hurled who do not rise in the first or
spiritual resurrection. For "the hour is coming" (but here He does not say,
"and now is," because it shall come in the end of the world in the last and
greatest judgment of God) "when all that are in the graves shall hear His
voice and shall come forth." He does not say, as in the first resurrection,
"And they that Hear shall live." For all shall not live, at least with such
life as ought alone to be called life because it alone is blessed. For some
kind of life they must have in order to hear, and come forth from the
graves m their rising bodies. And why all shall not live He teaches in the
words that follow: "They that have done good, to the resurrection of
life,"--these are they who shall live; "but they that have done evil, to
the resurrection of judgment,"--these are they who shall not live, for they
shall die in the second death. They have done evil because their life has
been evil; and their life has been evil because it has not been renewed in
the first or spiritual resurrection which now is, or because they have not
persevered to the end in their renewed life. As, then, there are two
regenerations, of which I have already made mention,--the one according to
faith, and which takes place in the present life by means of baptism; the
other according to the flesh, and which shall be accomplished in its
incorruption and immortality by means of the great and final judgment,--so
are there also two resurrections,--the one the first and spiritual
resurrection, which has place in this life, and preserves us from coming
into the second death; the other the second, which does not occur now, but
in the end of the world, and which is of the body, not of the soul, and
which by the last judgment shall dismiss some into the second death, others
into that life which has no death.

CHAP. 7.--WHAT IS WRITTEN IN THE REVELATION OF JOHN REGARDING THE TWO
RESURRECTIONS, AND THE THOUSAND YEARS, AND WHAT MAY REASONABLY BE HELD ON
THESE POINTS.

   The evangelist John has spoken of these two resurrections in the book
which is called the Apocalypse, but in such a way that some Christians do
not understand the first of the two, and so construe the passage into
ridiculous fancies. For the Apostle John says in the foresaid book, "And I
saw an angel come down from heaven. . . . Blessed and holy is he that hath
part in the first resurrection: on such the second death hath no power; but
they shall be priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign with Him a
thousand years."(1) Those who, on the strength of this passage, have
suspected that the first resurrection is future and bodily, have been
moved, among other things, specially by the number of a thousand years, as
if it were a fit thing that the saints should thus enjoy a kind of Sabbath-
rest during that period, a holy leisure after the labors of the six
thousand years since man was created, and was on account of his great sin
dismissed from the blessedness of paradise into the woes of this mortal
life, so that thus, as it is written, "One day is with the Lord as a
thousand years, and a thousand years as one day,"(2) there should follow on
the completion of six thousand years, as of six days, a kind of seventh-day
Sabbath in the succeeding thousand years; and that it is for this purpose
the saints rise, viz., to celebrate this Sabbath. And. this opinion would
not be objectionable, if it were believed that the joys of the saints in
that Sabbath shall be spiritual, and consequent on the presence of God; for
I myself, too, once held this opinion.(3) But, as they assert that those
who then rise again shall enjoy the leisure of immoderate carnal banquets,
furnished with an amount of meat and drink such as not only to shock the
feeling of the temperate, but even to surpass the measure of credulity
itself, such assertions can be believed only by the carnal. They who do
believe them are called by the spiritual Chiliasts, which we may literally
reproduce by the name Millenarians.(4) It were a tedious process to refute
these opinions point by point: we prefer proceeding to show how that
passage of Scripture should be understood.(5)

   The Lord Jesus Christ Himself says, "No man can enter into a strong
man's house, and Spoil his goods, except he first bind the strong man"(6)--
meaning by the strong man the devil, because he had power to take captive
the human race; and meaning by his goods which he was to take, those who
had been held by the devil in divers sins and iniquities, but were to
become believers in Himself. It was then for the binding of this strong one
that the apostle saw in the Apocalypse "an angel coming down from heaven,
having the key of the abyss, and a chain in his hand. And he laid hold," he
says, "on the dragon, that old serpent, which is called the devil and
Satan, and bound him a thousand years,"--that is, bridled and restrained
his power so that he could not seduce and gain possession of those who were
to be freed. Now the thousand years may be understood in two ways, so far
as occurs to me: either because these things happen in the sixth thousand
of years or sixth millennium (the latter part of which is now passing), as
if during the sixth day, which is to be followed by a Sabbath which has no
evening, the endless rest of the saints, so that, speaking of a part under
the name of the whole, he calls the last part of the millennium--the part,
that is, which had yet to expire before the end of the world--a thousand
years; or he used the thousand years as an equivalent for the whole
duration of this world, employing the number of perfection to mark the
fullness of time. For a thousand is the cube of ten. For ten times ten
makes a hundred, that is; the square on a plane superficies. But to give
this superficies height, and make it a cube, the hundred is again
multiplied by ten, which gives a thousand. Besides, if a hundred is
sometimes used for totality, as when the Lord said by way of promise to him
that left all and followed Him "He shall receive in this world an
hundredfold;"(1) of which the apostle gives, as it were, an explanation
when he says, "As having nothing, yet possessing all things,"(2)--for even
of old it had been said, The whole world is the wealth of a believer,--with
how much greater reason is a thousand put for totality since it is the
cube, while the other is only the square? And for the same reason we cannot
better interpret the words of the psalm, "He hath been mindful of His
covenant for ever, the word which He commanded to a thousand
generations,"(3) than by understanding it to mean "to all generations."

   "And he cast him into the abyss,"--i.e., cast the devil into the abyss.
By the abyss is meant the countless multitude of the wicked whose hearts
are unfathomably deep in malignity against the Church of God; not that the
devil was not there before, but he is said to be cast in thither, because,
when prevented from harming believers, he takes more complete possession of
the ungodly. For that man is more abundantly possessed by the devil who is
not only alienated from God, but also gratuitously hates those who serve
God. "And shut him up, and set a seal upon him, that he should deceive the
nations no more till the thousand years should be fulfilled." "Shut him
up,"--i.e., prohibited him from  going out, from doing what was forbidden.
And the addition of "set a seal upon him" seems to me to mean that it was
designed to keep it a secret who belonged to the devil's party and who did
not. For in this world this is a secret, for we cannot tell whether even
the man who seems to stand shall fall, or whether he who seems to lie shall
rise again. But by the chain and prison-house of this interdict the devil
is prohibited and restrained from seducing those nations which belong to
Christ, but which he formerly seduced or held in subjection. For before the
foundation of the world God chose to rescue these from the power of
darkness, and to translate them into the kingdom of the Son of His love, as
the apostle says.(4) For what Christian is not aware that he seduces
nations even now, and draws them with himself to eternal punishment, but
not those predestined to eternal life? And let no one be dismayed by the
circumstance that the devil often seduces even those who have been
regenerated in Christ, and begun to walk in God's way. For "the Lord
knoweth them that are His,"(5) and of these the devil seduces none to
eternal damnation. For it is as God, from whom nothing is hid even of
things future, that the Lord knows them; not as a man, who sees a man at
the present time (if he can be said to see one whose heart he does not
see), but does not see even himself so far as to be able to know what kind
of person he is to be. The devil, then, is bound and shut up in the abyss
that he may not seduce the nations from which the Church is gathered, and
which he formerly seduced before the Church existed. For it is not said
"that he should not seduce any man," but "that he should not seduce the
nations"--meaning, no doubt, those among which the Church exists--"till the
thousand years should be fulfilled,"--i.e., either what remains of the
sixth day which consists of a thousand years, or all the years which are to
elapse till the end of the world.

   The words, "that he should not seduce the nations till the thousand
years should be fulfilled," are not to be understood as indicating that
afterwards. he is to seduce only those nations from which the predestined
Church is composed, and from seducing whom he is restrained by that chain
and imprisonment; but they are used in conformity with that usage
frequently employed in Scripture and exemplified in the psalm, "So our eyes
wait upon the Lord our God, until He have mercy upon us,"(6)--not as if the
eyes of His servants Would no longer wait upon the Lord their God when He
had mercy upon them. Or the order of the words is unquestionably this, "And
he shut him up and set a seal upon him, till the thousand years should be
fulfilled;" and the interposed clause, "that he should seduce the nations
no more," is not to be understood in the connection in which it stands, but
separately, and as if added afterwards, so that the whole sentence might be
read, "And He shut him up and set a seal upon him till the thousand years
should be fulfilled, that he should seduce the nations no more,"--i.e., he
is shut up till the thousand years be fulfilled, on this account, that he
may no more deceive the nations.

CHAP. 8.--OF THE BINDING AND LOOSING OF THE DEVIL.

   "After that," says John, "he must be loosed a little season." If the
binding and shutting up of the devil means his being made unable to seduce
the Church, must his loosing be the recovery of this ability? By no means.
For the Church predestined and elected before the foundation of the world,
the Church of which it is said, "The Lord knoweth them that are His," shall
never be seduced by him. And yet there shall be a Church in this world even
when the devil shall be loosed, as there has been since the beginning, and
shall be always, the places of the dying being filled by new believers. For
a little after John says that the devil, being loosed, shall draw the
nations whom he has seduced in the whole world to make war against the
Church, and that the number of these enemies shall be as the sand of the
sea. "And they went up on the breadth of the earth, and compassed the camp
of the saints about, and the beloved city: and fire came down from God out
of heaven and devoured them. And the devil who seduced them was cast into
the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are,
and shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever."(1) This relates to
the last judgment, but I have thought fit to mention it now, lest any one
might suppose that in that short time during which the devil shall be loose
there shall be no Church upon earth, whether because the devil finds no
Church, or destroys it by manifold persecutions. The devil, then, is not
bound during the whole time which this  book embraces,--that is, from the
first coming of Christ to the end of the world, when He shall come the
second time,--not bound in this sense, that during this interval, which
goes by the name of a thousand years, he shall not seduce the Church, for
not even when loosed shall he seduce it. For certainly if his being bound
means that he is not able or not permitted to seduce the Church, what can
the loosing of him mean but his being able or permitted to do so?  But God
forbid that such should be the case! But the binding of the devil is his
being prevented from the exercise of his whole power to seduce men, either
by violently forcing or fraudulently deceiving them into taking part with
him. If he were during so long a period permitted to assail the weakness of
men, very many persons, such as God would not wish to expose to such
temptation, would have their faith overthrown, or would be prevented from
believing; and that this might not happen, he is bound.

   But when the short time comes he shall be loosed. For he shall rage
with the whole force of himself and his angels for three years and six
months; and those with whom he makes war shall have power to withstand all
his violence and stratagems. And if he were never loosed, his malicious
power would be less patent, and less proof would be given of the steadfast
fortitude of the holy city: it would, in short, be less manifest what good
use the Almighty makes of his great evil. For the Almighty does not
absolutely seclude the saints from his temptation, but shelters only their
inner man, where faith resides, that by outward temptation they may grow in
grace. And He binds him that he may not, in the free and eager exercise of
his malice, hinder or destroy the faith of those countless weak persons,
already believing or yet to believe, from whom the Church must be increased
and completed; and he will in the end loose him, that the city of God may
see how mighty an adversary it has conquered, to the great glory of its
Redeemer, Helper, Deliverer. And what are we in comparison with those
believers and saints who shall then exist, seeing that they shall be tested
by the loosing of an enemy with whom we make war at the greatest peril even
when he is bound? Although it is also certain that even in this intervening
period there have been and are some soldiers of Christ so wise and strong,
that if they were to be alive in this mortal condition at the time of his
loosing, they would both most wisely guard against, and most patiently
endure, all his snares and assaults.

   Now the devil was thus bound not only when the Church began to be more
and more widely extended among the nations beyond Judea, but is now and
shall be bound till the end of the world, when he is to be loosed. Because
even now men are, and doubtless to the end of the world shall be, converted
to the faith from the unbelief in which he held them. And this strong one
is bound in each instance in which he is spoiled of one of his goods; and
the abyss in which he is shut up is not at an end when those die who were
alive when first he was shut up in it, but these have been succeeded, and
shall to the end of the world be succeeded, by others born after them with
a like hate of the Christians, and in the depth of whose blind hearts he is
continually shut up as in an abyss. But it is a question whether, during
these three years and six months when he shall be loose, and raging with
all his force, any one who has not previously believed shall attach himself
to the faith. For how in that case would the words hold good, "Who entereth
into the house of a strong one to spoil his goods, unless first he shall
have bound the strong one?" Consequently this verse seems to compel us to
believe that during that time, short as it is, no one will be added to the
Christian community, but that the devil will make war with those who have
previously become Christians, and that, though some of these may be
conquered and desert to the devil, these do not belong to the predestinated
number of the sons of God. For it is not without reason that John, the same
apostle as wrote this Apocalypse, says in his epistle regarding certain
persons, "They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had
been of us, they would no doubt have remained with us."(1) But what shall
become of the little ones? For it is beyond all belief that in these days
there shall not be found some Christian children born, but not yet
baptized, and that there shall not also be some born during that very
period; and if there be such, we cannot believe that their parents shall
not find some way of bringing them to the laver of regeneration. But if
this shall be the case, how shall these goods be snatched from the devil
when he is loose, since into his house no man enters to spoil his goods
unless he has first bound him? On the contrary, we are rather to believe
that in these days there shall be no lack either of those who fall away
from, or of those who attach themselves to the Church; but there shall be
such resoluteness, both in parents to seek baptism for their little ones,
and in those who shall then first believe, that they shall conquer that
strong one, even though unbound,--that is, shall both vigilantly
comprehend, and patiently bear up against him, though employing such wiles
and putting forth such force as he never before used; and thus they shall
be snatched from him even though unbound. And yet the verse of the Gospel
will not be untrue, "Who entereth into the house of the strong one to spoil
his goods, unless he shall first have bound the strong one?" For in
accordance with this true saying that order is observed--the strong one
first bound, and then his goods spoiled; for the Church is so increased by
the weak and strong from all nations far and near, that by its most robust
faith in things divinely predicted and accomplished, it shall be able to
spoil the goods of even the unbound devil. For as we must own that, "when
iniquity abounds, the love of many waxes cold,"(2) and that those who have
not been written in the book of life shall in large numbers yield to the
severe and unprecedented persecutions and stratagems of the devil now
loosed, so we cannot but think that not only those whom that time shall
find sound in the faith, but also some who till then shall be without,
shall become firm in the faith they have hitherto rejected and mighty to
conquer the devil even though unbound, God's grace aiding them to
understand the Scriptures, in which, among other things, there is foretold
that very end which they themselves see to be arriving. And if this shall
be so, his binding is to be spoken of as preceding, that there might follow
a spoiling of him both bound and loosed; for it is of this it is said, "Who
shall enter into the house of the strong one to spoil his goods, unless he
shall first have bound the strong one?"

CHAP. 9.--WHAT THE REIGN OF THE SAINTS WITH CHRIST FOR A THOUSAND YEARS IS,
AND HOW IT DIFFERS FROM THE ETERNAL KINGDOM.

   But while the devil is bound, the saints reign with Christ during the
same thousand years, understood in the same way, that is, of the time of
His first coming.(3) For, leaving out of account that kingdom concerning
which He shall say in the end, "Come, ye blessed of my Father, take
possession of the kingdom prepared for you,"(4) the Church could not now be
called His kingdom or the kingdom of heaven unless His saints were even now
reigning with Him, though in another and far different way; for to His
saints He says, "Lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the
world."(5) Certainly it is in this present time that the scribe well
instructed in the kingdom of God, and of whom we have already spoken,
brings forth from his treasure things new and old. And from the Church
those reapers shall gather out the tares which He suffered to grow with the
wheat till the harvest, as He explains in the words "The harvest is the end
of the world; and the reapers are the angels. As therefore the tares are
gathered together and burned with fire, so shall it be in the end of the
world. The Son of man shall send His angels, and they shall gather out of
His kingdom all offenses."(1) Can He mean out of that kingdom in which are
no offenses? Then it must be out of His present kingdom, the Church, that
they are gathered. So He says, "He that breaketh one of the least of these
commandments, and teacheth men so, shall be called least in the kingdom of
heaven: but he that doeth and teacheth thus shall be called great in the
kingdom of heaven."(2) He speaks of both as being in the kingdom of heaven,
both the man who does not perform the commandments which He teaches,--for
"to break" means not to keep, not to perform,--and the man who does and
teaches as He did; but the one He calls least, the other great. And He
immediately adds, "For I say unto you, that except your righteousness
exceed that of the scribes and Pharisees,"--that is, the righteousness of
those who break what they teach; for of the scribes and Pharisees He
elsewhere says, "For they say and do not;"(3)--unless therefore, your
righteousness exceed theirs that is, so that you do not break but rather do
what you teach, "ye shall not enter the kingdom of heaven."(4) We must
understand in one sense the kingdom of heaven in which exist together both
he who breaks what he teaches and he who does it, the one being least, the
other great, and in another sense the kingdom of heaven into which only he
who does what he teaches shall enter. Consequently, where both classes
exist, it is the Church as it now is, but where only the one shall exist,
it is the Church as it is destined to be when no wicked person shall be in
her. Therefore the Church even now is the kingdom of Christ, and the
kingdom of heaven. Accordingly, even now His saints reign with Him, though
otherwise than as they shall reign hereafter; and yet, though the tares
grow in the Church along with the wheat, they do not reign with Him. For
they reign with Him who do what the apostle says, "If ye be risen with
Christ, mind the things which are above, where Christ sitteth at the right
hand of God. Seek those things which are above, not the things which are on
the earth."(5) Of such persons he also says that their conversation is in
heaven.(6) In fine, they reign with Him who are so in His kingdom that they
themselves are His kingdom. But in what sense are those the kingdom of
Christ who, to say no more, though they are in it until all offenses are
gathered out of it at the end of the world, yet seek their own things in
it, and not the things that are Christ's?(7)

   It is then of this kingdom militant, in which conflict with the enemy
is still maintained, and war carried on with warring lusts, or government
laid upon them as they yield, until we come to that most peaceful kingdom
in which we shall reign without an enemy, and it is of this first
resurrection in the present life, that the Apocalypse speaks in the words
just quoted. For, after saying that the devil is bound a thousand years and
is afterwards loosed for a short season, it goes on to give a sketch of
what the Church does or of what is done in the Church in those days, in the
words, "And I saw seats and them that sat upon them, and judgment was
given." It is not to be supposed that this refers to the last judgment, but
to the seats of the rulers and to the rulers themselves by whom the Church
is now governed. And no better interpretation of judgment being given can
be produced than that which we have in the words, "What ye bind on earth
shall be bound in heaven; and what ye loose on earth shall be loosed in
heaven."(8) Whence the apostle says, "What have I to do with judging them
that are without? do not ye judge them that are within?"(9) "And the
souls," says John, "of those who were slain for the testimony of Jesus and
for the word of God,"--understanding what he afterwards says, "reigned with
Christ a thousand years,"(10)--that is, the souls of the martyrs not yet
restored to their bodies. For the souls of the pious dead are not separated
from the Church, which even now is the kingdom of Christ; otherwise there
would be no remembrance made of them at the altar of God in the partaking
of the body of Christ, nor would it do any good in danger to run to His
baptism, that we might not pass from this life without it; nor to
reconciliation, if by penitence or a bad conscience any one may be severed
from His body. For why are these things practised, if not because the
faithful, even though dead, are His members? Therefore, while these
thousand years run on, their souls reign with Him, though not as yet in
conjunction with their bodies. And therefore in another part of this same
book we read, "Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from henceforth and
now, saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their labors; for their
works do follow them."(1) The Church, then, begins its reign with Christ
now in the living and in the dead. For, as the apostle says, "Christ died
that He might be Lord both of the living and of the dead."(2) But he
mentioned the souls of the martyrs only, because they who have contended
even to death for the truth, themselves principally reign after death; but,
taking the part for the whole, we understand the words of all others who
belong to the Church, which is the kingdom of Christ.

   As to the words following, "And if any have not worshipped the beast
nor his image, nor have received his inscription on their forehead, or on
their hand," we must take them of both the living and the dead. And what
this beast is, though it requires a more careful investigation, yet it is
not inconsistent with the true faith to understand it of the ungodly city
itself, and the community of unbelievers set in opposition to the faithful
people and the city of God. "His image" seems to me to mean his simulation,
to wit, in those men who profess to believe, but live as unbelievers. For
they pretend to be what they are not, and are called Christians, not from a
true likeness but from a deceitful image. For to this beast belong not only
the avowed enemies of the name of Christ and His most glorious city, but
also the tares which are to be gathered out of His kingdom, the Church, in
the end of the world. And who are they who do not worship the beast and his
image, if not those who do what the apostle says, "Be not yoked with
unbelievers?"(3) For such do not worship, i.e., do not consent, are not
subjected; neither do they receive the inscription, the brand of crime, on
their forehead by their profession, on their hand by their practice. They,
then, who are free from these pollutions, whether they still live in this
mortal flesh, or are dead, reign with Christ even now, through this whole
interval which is indicated by the thousand years, in a fashion suited to
this time.

   "The rest of them," he says, "did not live." For now is the hour when
the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and they that hear shall
live; and the rest of them shall not live. The words added, "until the
thousand years are finished," mean that they did not live in the time in
which they ought to have lived by passing from death to life. And
therefore, when the day of the bodily resurrection arrives, they shall come
out of their graves, not to life, but to judgment, namely, to damnation,
which is called the second death. For whosoever has not lived until the
thousand years be finished, i.e., during this whole time in which the first
resurrection is going on,--whosoever has not heard the voice of the Son of
God, and passed from death to life,--that man shall certainly in the second
resurrection, the resurrection of the flesh, pass with his flesh into the
second death. For he goes to say "This is the first resurrection. Blessed
and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection," or who
experiences it. Now he experiences it who not only revives from the death
of sin, but continues in this renewed life. "In these the second death hath
no power." Therefore it has power in the rest, of whom he said above, "The
rest of them did not live until the thousand years were finished;" for in
this whole intervening time called a thousand years, however lustily they
lived in the body, they were not quickened to life out of that death in
which their wickedness held them, so that by this revived life they should
become partakers of the first resurrection, and so the second death should
have no power over them.

CHAP. 10.--WHAT IS TO BE REPLIED TO THOSE WHO THINK THAT RESURRECTION
PERTAINS ONLY TO BODIES AND NOT TO SOULS.

   There are some who suppose that resurrection can be predicated only of
the body, and therefore they contend that this first resurrection (of the
Apocalypse) is a bodily resurrection. For, say they, "to rise again" can
only be said of things that fall. Now, bodies fall in death.(4) There
cannot, therefore, be a resurrection of souls, but of bodies. But what do
they say to the apostle who speaks of a resurrection of souls? For
certainly it was in the inner and not the outer man that those had risen
again to whom he says, "If ye have risen with Christ, mind the things that
are above."(5) The same sense he elsewhere conveyed in other words, saying,
"That as Christ has risen from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we
also may walk in newness of life."(6) So, too, "Awake thou that sleepest,
and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light.(7)" As to what
they say about nothing being able to rise again but what falls, whence they
conclude that resurrection pertains to bodies only, and not to souls,
because bodies fall, why do they make nothing of the words, "Ye that fear
the Lord, wait for His mercy; and go not aside lest ye fall;"(1) and" To
his own Master he stands or falls;"(2) and "He that thinketh he standeth,
let him take heed lest he fall?"(3) For I fancy this fall that we are to
take heed against is a fall of the soul, not of the body. If, then, rising
again belongs to things that fall, and souls fall, it must be owned that
souls also rise again. To the words, "In them the second death hath no
power," are added the words, "but they shall be priests of God and Christ,
and shall reign with Him a thousand years;" and this refers not to the
bishops alone, and presbyters, who are now specially called priests in the
Church; but as we call all believers Christians on account of the mystical
chrism, so we call all priests because they are members of the one Priest.
Of them the Apostle Peter says, "A holy people, a royal priesthood."(4)
Certainly he implied, though in a passing and incidental way, that Christ
is God, saying priests of God and Christ, that is, of the Father and the
Son, though it was in His servant-form and as Son of man that Christ was
made a Priest for ever after the order of Melchisedec. But this we have
already explained more than once.

CHAP. 11.--OF GOG AND MAGOG, WHO ARE TO BE ROUSED BY THE DEVIL TO PERSECUTE
THE CHURCH, WHEN HE IS LOOSED IN THE END OF THE WORLD.

   "And when the thousand years are finished, Satan shall be loosed from
his prison, and shall go out to seduce the nations which are in the four
corners of the earth, Gog and Magog, and shall draw them to battle, whose
number is as the sand of the sea." This then, is his purpose in seducing
them, to draw them to this battle. For even before this he was wont to use
as many and various seductions as he could continue. And the words "he
shall go out" mean, he shall burst forth from lurking hatred into open
persecution. For this persecution, occurring while the final judgment is
imminent, shall be the last which shall be endured by the holy Church
throughout the world, the whole city of Christ being assailed by the whole
city of the devil, as each exists on earth. For these nations which he
names Gog and Magog are not to be understood of some barbarous nations in
some part of the world, whether the Getae and Massagetae, as some conclude
from the initial letters, or some other foreign nations not under the Roman
government. For John marks that they are spread over the whole earth, when
he says, "The nations which are in the four corners of the earth," and he
added that these are Gog and Magog. The meaning of these names we find to
be, Cog, "a roof," Magog, "from a roof,"--a house, as it were, and he who
comes out of the house. They are therefore the nations in which we found
that the devil was shut up as in an abyss, and the devil himself coming out
from them and going forth, so that they are the roof, he from the roof. Or
if we refer both words to the nations, not one to them and one to the
devil, then they are both the roof, because in them the old enemy is at
present shut up, and as it were roofed in; and they shall be from the roof
when they break forth from concealed to open hatred. The words, "And they
went up on the breadth of the earth, and encompassed the camp of the saints
and the beloved city," do not mean that they have come, or shall come, to
one place, as if the camp of the saints and the beloved city should be in
some one place; for this camp is nothing else than the Church of Christ
extending over the whole world. And consequently wherever the Church shall
be,--and it shall be in all nations, as is signified by "the breadth of the
earth,"--there also shall be the camp of the saints and the beloved city,
and there it shall be encompassed by the savage persecution of all its
enemies; for they too shall exist along with it in all nations,--that is,
it shall be straitened, and hard pressed, and shut up in the straits of
tribulation, but shall not desert its military duty, which is signified by
the word "camp."

CHAP. 12.--WHETHER THE FIRE THAT CAME DOWN OUT OF HEAVEN AND DEVOURED THEM
REFERS TO THE LAST PUNISHMENT OF THE WICKED.

   The words, "And fire came down out of heaven and devoured them," are
not to be understood of the final punishment which shall be inflicted when
it is said, "Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire;"(5) for then
they shall be cast into the fire, not fire come down out of heaven upon
them. In this place "fire out of heaven" is well understood of the firmness
of the saints, wherewith they refuse to yield obedience to those who rage
against them. For the firmament is "heaven," by whose firmness these
assailants shall be pained with blazing zeal, for they shall be impotent to
draw away the saints to the party of Antichrist. This is the fire which
shall devour them, and this is "from God;" for it is by God's grace the
saints become unconquerable, and so torment their enemies. For as in a good
sense it is said, "The zeal of Thine house hath consumed me,"(1) so in a
bad sense it is said, "Zeal hath possessed the uninstructed people, and now
fire shall consume the enemies."(2) "And now," that is to say, not the fire
of the last judgment. Or if by this fire coming down out of heaven and
consuming them, John meant that blow wherewith Christ in His coming is to
strike those persecutors of the Church whom He shall then find alive upon
earth, when He shall kill Antichrist with the breath of His mouth,(3) then
even this is not the last judgment of the wicked; but the last judgment is
that which they shall suffer when the bodily resurrection has taken place.

CHAP. 13.--WHETHER THE TIME OF THE PERSECUTION or ANTICHRIST SHOULD BE
RECKONED IN THE THOUSAND YEARS.

   This last persecution by Antichrist shall last for three years and six
months, as we have already said, and as is affirmed both in the book of
Revelation and by Daniel the prophet. Though this time is brief, yet not
without reason is it questioned whether it is comprehended in the thousand
years in which the devil is bound and the saints reign with Christ, or
whether this little season should be added over and above to these years.
For if we say that they are included in the thousand years, then the saints
reign with Christ during a more protracted period than the devil is bound.
For they shall reign with their King and Conqueror mightily even in that
crowning persecution when the devil shall now be unbound and shall rage
against them with all his might. How then does Scripture define both the
binding of the devil and the reign of the saints by the same thousand
years, if the binding of the devil ceases three years and six months before
this reign of the saints with Christ? On the other hand, if we say that the
brief space of this persecution is not to be reckoned as a part of the
thousand years, but rather as an additional period, we shall indeed be able
to interpret the words, "The priests of God and of Christ shall reign with
Him a thousand years; and when the thousand years shall be finished, Satan
shall be loosed out of his prison;" for thus they signify that the reign of
the saints and the bondage of the devil shall cease simultaneously, so that
the time of the persecution we speak of should be contemporaneous neither
with the reign of the saints nor with the imprisonment of Satan, but should
be reckoned over and above as a superadded portion of time. But then in
this case we are forced to admit that the saints shall not reign with
Christ during that persecution. But who can dare to say that His members
shall not reign with Him at that very juncture when they shall most of all,
and with the greatest fortitude, cleave to Him, and when the glory of
resistlance and the crown of martyrdom shall be more conspicuous in
proportion to the hotness of the battle? Or if it is suggested that they
may be said not to reign, because of the tribulations which they shall
suffer, it will follow that all the saints who have formerly, during the
thousand years, suffered tribulation, shall not be said to have reigned
with Christ during the period of their tribulation, and consequently even
those whose souls the author of this book says that he saw, and who were
slain for the testimony of Jesus and the word of God, did not reign with
Christ when they were suffering persecution, and they were not themselves
the kingdom of Christ, though Christ was then pre-eminently possessing
them. This is indeed perfectly absurd, and to be scouted. But assuredly the
victorious souls of the glorious martyrs having overcome and finished all
griefs and toils, and having laid down their mortal members, have reigned
and do reign with Christ till the thousand years are finished, that they
may afterwards reign with Him when they have received their immortal
bodies. And therefore during these three years and a half the souls of
those who were slain for His testimony, both those which formerly passed
from the body and those which shall pass in that last persecution, shall
reign with Him till the mortal world come to an end, and pass into that
kingdom in which there shall be no death. And thus the reign of the saints
with Christ shall last longer than the bonds and imprisonment of the devil,
because they shall reign with their King the Son of God for these three
years and a half during which the devil is no longer bound. It remains,
therefore, that when we read that "the priests of God and of Christ shall
reign with Him a thousand years; and when the thousand years are finished,
the devil shall be loosed from his imprisonment," that we understand either
that the thousand years of the reign of the saints does not terminate,
though the imprisonment of the devil does,--so that both parties have their
thousand years, that is, their complete time, yet each with a different
actual duration approriate to itself, the kingdom of the saints being
longer, the imprisonment of the devil shorter, --or at least that, as three
years and six months is a very short time, it is not reckoned as either
deducted from the whole time of Satan's imprisonment, or as added to the
whole duration of the reign of the saints, as we have shown above in the
sixteenth book(1) regarding the round number of four hundred years, which
were specified as four hundred, though actually somewhat more; and similar
expressions are often found in the sacred writings, if one will mark them.

CHAP. 14.--OF THE DAMNATION OF THE DEVIL AND HIS ADHERENTS; AND A SKETCH OF
THE BODILY RESURRECTION OF ALL THE DEAD, AND OF THE FINAL RETRIBUTIVE
JUDGMENT.

   After this mention of the closing persecution, he summarily indicates
all that the devil, and the city of which he is the prince, shall suffer in
the last judgment. For he says, "And the devil who seduced them is cast
into the lake of fire and brimstone, in which are the beast and the false
prophet, and they shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever." We
have already said that by the beast is well understood the wicked city. His
false prophet is either Antichrist or that image or figment of which we
have spoken in the same place. After this he gives a brief narrative of the
last judgment itself, which shall take place at the second or bodily
resurrection of the dead, as it had been revealed to him: "I saw a throne
great and white, and One sitting on it from whose face the heaven and the
earth fled away, and their place was not found." He does not say, "I saw a
throne great and white, and One sitting on it, and from His face the heaven
and the earth fled away," for it had not happened then, i.e., before the
living and the dead were judged; but he says that he saw Him sitting on the
throne from whose face heaven and earth fled away, but afterwards. For when
the judgment is finished, this heaven and earth shall cease to be, and
there will be a new heaven and a new earth. For this world shall pass away
by transmutation, not by absolute destruction. And therefore the apostle
says, "For the figure of this world passeth away. I would have you be
without anxiety."(2) The figure, therefore, passes away, not the nature.
After John had said that he had seen One sitting on the throne from whose
face heaven and earth fled, though not till afterwards, he said, "And I saw
the dead, great and small: and the books were opened; and another book was
opened, which is the book of the life of each man: and the dead were judged
out of those things which were written in the books, according to their
deeds." He said that the books were opened, and a book; but he left us at a
loss as to the nature of this book, "which is," he says, "the book of the
life of each man." By those books, then, which he first mentioned, we are
to understand the sacred books old and new, that out of them it might be
shown what commandments God had enjoined; and that book of the life of each
man is to show what commandments each man has done or omitted to do. If
this book be materially considered, who can reckon its size or length, or
the time it would take to read a book in which the whole life of every man
is recorded? Shall there be present as many angels as men, and shall each
man hear his life recited by the angel assigned to him? In that case there
will be not one book containing all the lives, but a separate book for
every life. But our passage requires us to think of one only. "And another
book was opened," it says. We must therefore understand it of a certain
divine power, by which it shall be brought about that every one shall
recall to memory all his own works, whether good or evil, and shall
mentally survey them with a marvellous rapidity, so that this knowledge
will either accuse or excuse conscience, and thus all and each shall be
simultaneously judged. And this divine power is called a book, because in
it we shall as it were read all that it causes us to remember. That he may
show who the dead, small and great, are who are to be judged, he recurs to
this which he had omitted or rather deferred, and says, "And the sea
presented the dead which were in it; and death and hell gave up the dead
which were in them." This of course took place before the dead were judged,
yet it is mentioned after. And so, I say, he returns again to what he had
omitted. But now he preserves the order of events, and for the sake of
exhibiting it repeats in its own proper place what he had already said
regarding the dead who were judged. For after he had said, "And the sea
presented the dead which were in it, and death and hell gave up the dead
which were in them," he immediately subjoined what he had already said,
"and they were judged every man according to their works." For this is just
what he had said before, "And the dead were judged according to their
works."

CHAP. 15.--WHO THE DEAD ARE WHO ARE GIVEN UP TO JUDGMENT BY THE SEA, AND BY
DEATH AND HELL.

   But who are the dead which were in the sea, and which the sea
presented? For we cannot suppose that those who die in the sea are not in
hell, nor that their bodies are preserved in the sea; nor yet, which is
still more absurd, that the sea retained the good, while hell received the
bad. Who could believe this? But some very sensibly suppose that in this
place the sea is put for this world. When John then wished to signify that
those whom Christ should find still alive in the body were to be judged
along with those who should rise again, he called them dead, both the good
to whom it is said, "For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in
God,"(1) and the wicked of whom it is said, "Let the dead bury their
dead."(2) They may also be called dead, because they wear mortal bodies, as
the apostle says, "The body indeed is dead because of sin; but the spirit
is life because of righteousness;"(3) proving that in a living man in the
body there is both a body which is dead, and a spirit which is life. Yet he
did not say that the body was mortal, but dead, although immediately after
he speaks in the more usual way of mortal bodies. These, then, are the dead
which were in the sea, and which the sea presented, to wit, the men who
were in this world, because they had not yet died, and whom the world
presented for judgment. "And death and hell," he says, "gave up the dead
which were in them." The sea presented them because they had merely to be
found in the place where they were; but death and hell gave them up or
restored them, because they called them back to life, which they had
already quitted. And perhaps it was not without reason that neither death
nor hell were judged sufficient alone, and both were mentioned,--death to
indicate the good, who have suffered only death and not hell; hell to
indicate the wicked, who suffer also the punishment of hell. For if it does
not seem absurd to believe that the ancient saints who believed in Christ
and His then future coming, were kept in places far removed indeed from the
torments of the wicked, but yet in hell,(4) until Christ's blood and His
descent into these places delivered them, certainly good Christians,
redeemed by that precious price already paid, are quite unacquainted with
hell while they wait for their restoration to the body, and the reception
of their reward. After saying, "They were judged every man according to
their works," he briefly added what the judgment was: "Death and hell were
cast into the lake of fire;" by these names designating the devil and the
whole company of his angels, for he is the author of death and the pains of
hell. For this is what he had already, by anticipation, said in clearer
language: "The devil who seduced them was cast into a lake of fire and
brimstone." The obscure addition he had made in the words, "in which were
also the beast and the false prophet," he here explains, "They who were not
found written in the book of life were cast into the lake of fire." This
book is not for reminding God, as if things might escape Him by
forgetfulness, but it symbolizes His predestination of those to whom
eternal life shall be given. For it is not that God is ignorant, and reads
in the book to inform Himself, but rather His infallible prescience is the
book of life in which they are written, that is to say, known beforehand

CHAP. 16.--OF THE NEW HEAVEN AND THE NEW EARTH.

   Having finished the prophecy of judgment, so far as the wicked are
concerned, it remains that he speak also of the good. Having briefly
explained the Lord's words, "These will go away into everlasting
punishment," it remains that he explain the connected words, "but the
righteous into life eternal."(5) "And I saw," he says, "a new heaven and a
new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth have passed away; and
there is no more sea."(6) This will take place in the order which he has by
anticipation declared in the words, "I saw One sitting on the throne, from
whose face heaven and earth fled." For as soon as those who are not written
in the book of life have been judged and cast into eternal fire,--the
nature of which fire, or its position in the world or universe, I suppose
is known to no man, unless perhaps the divine Spirit reveal it to some
one,--then shall the figure of this world pass away in a conflagration of
universal fire, as once before the world was flooded with a deluge of
universal water. And by this universal conflagration the qualities of the
corruptible elements which suited our corruptible bodies shall utterly
perish, and our substance shall receive such qualities as shall, by a
wonderful transmutation, harmonize with our immortal bodies, so that, as
the world itself is renewed to some better thing, it is fitly accommodated
to men, themselves renewed in their flesh to some better thing. As for the
statement, "And there shall be no more sea," I would not lightly say
whether it is dried up with that excessive heat, or is itself also turned
into some better thing. For we read that there shall be a new heaven and a
new earth, but I do not remember to have anywhere read anything of a new
sea, unless what I find in this same book, "As it were a sea of glass like
crystal "(1) But he was not then speaking of this end of the world, neither
does he seem to speak of a literal sea, but "as it were a sea." It is
possible that, as prophetic diction delights in mingling figurative and
real language, and thus in some sort veiling the sense, so the words "And
there is no more sea" may be taken in the same sense as the previous
phrase, "And the sea presented the dead which were in it." For then there
shall be no more of this world, no more of the surgings and restlessness of
human life, and it is this which is symbolized by the sea.

CHAP. 17.--OF THE ENDLESS GLORY OF THE CHURCH.

   "And I saw," he says, "a great city, new Jerusalem, coming down from
God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard
a great voice from the throne, saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is
with men, and He will dwell with them, and they shall be His people, and
God Himself shall be with them. And God shall wipe away all tears from
their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying,
but neither shall there be any more pain: because the former things have
passed away. And He that sat upon the throne said, Behold, I make all
things new."(2) This city is said to come down out of heaven, because the
grace with which God formed it is of heaven. Wherefore He says to it by
Isaiah, "I am the Lord that formed thee."(3) It is indeed descended from
heaven from its commencement, since its citizens during the course of this
world grow by the grace of God, which cometh down from above through the
laver of regeneration in the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven. But by God's
final judgment, which shall be administered by His Son Jesus Christ, there
shall by God's grace be manifested a glory so pervading and so new, that
no vestige of what is old shall remain; for even our bodies shall pass from
their old corruption and mortality to new incorruption and immortality. For
to refer this promise to the present time, in which the saints are reigning
with their King a thousand years, seems to me excessively barefaced, when
it is most distinctly said, "God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes;
and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, but there
shall be no more pain." And who is so absurd, and blinded by contentious
opinionativeness, as to be audacious enough to affirm that in the midst of
the calamities of this mortal state, God's people, or even one single
saint, does live, or has ever lived, or shall ever live, without tears or
pain, --the fact being that the holier a man is, and the fuller of holy
desire, so much the more abundant is the tearfulness of his supplication?
Are not these the utterances of a citizen of the heavenly Jerusalem: "My
tears have been my meat day and night;" (4) and "Every night shall I make
my bed to swim; with my tears shall I water my couch;"(5) and " My groaning
is not hid from Thee;"(6) and "My sorrow was renewed?"(7) Or are not those
God's children who groan, being burdened, not that they wish to be
unclothed, but clothed upon, that mortality may be swallowed up of life?(8)
Do not they even who have the first-fruits of the Spirit groan within
themselves, waiting for the adoption, the redemption of their body?(9) Was
not the Apostle Paul himself a citizen of the heavenly Jerusalem, and was
he not so all the more when he had heaviness and continual sorrow of heart
for his Israelitish brethren?(10) But when shall there be no more death in
that city, except when it shall be said, "O death, where is thy
contention?(11) O death, where is thy sting? The sting of death is
sin."(12) Obviously there shall be no sin when it can be said, "Where is "-
- But as for the present it is not some poor weak citizen of this city, but
this same Apostle John himself who says, "If we say that we have no sin, we
deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us."(13) No doubt, though this
book is called the Apocalypse, there are in it many obscure passages to
exercise the mind of the reader, and there are few passages so plain as to
assist us in the interpretation of the others, even though we take pains;
and this difficulty is increased by the repetition of the same things, in
forms so different, that the things referred to seem to be different,
although in fact they are only differently stated. But in the words, "God
shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more
death, neither sorrow, nor crying, but there shall be no more pain," there
is so manifest a reference to the future world and the immortality and
eternity of the saints,--for only then and only there shall such a
condition be realized,--that if we think this obscure, we need not expect
to find anything plain in any part of Scripture.

CHAP. 18.--WHAT THE APOSTLE PETER PREDICTED REGARDING THE LAST JUDGMENT.

   Let us now see what the Apostle Peter predicted concerning this
judgment. "There shall come," he says, "in the last days scoffers....
Nevertheless we, according to His promise, look for new heavens and a new
earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness."(1) There is nothing said here about
the resurrection of the dead, but enough certainly regarding the
destruction of this world. And by his reference to the deluge he seems as
it were to suggest to us how far we should believe the ruin of the world
will extend in the end of the world. For he says that the world which then
was perished, and not only the earth itself, but also the heavens, by which
we understand the air, the place and room of which was occupied by the
water. Therefore the whole, or almost the whole, of the gusty atmosphere
(which he calls heaven, or rather the heavens, meaning the earth's
atmosphere, and not the upper air in which sun, moon, and stars are set)
was turned into moisture, and in this way perished together with the earth,
whose former appearance had been destroyed by the deluge. "But the heavens
and the earth which are now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved
unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men."
Therefore the heavens and the earth, or the world which was preserved from
the water to stand in place of that world which perished in the flood, is
itself reserved to fire at last in the day of the judgment and perdition of
ungodly men. He does not hesitate to affirm that in this great change men
also shall perish: their nature, however, shall notwithstanding continue,
though in eternal punishments. Some one will perhaps put the question, If
after judgment is pronounced the world itself is to burn, where shall the
saints be during the conflagration, and before it is replaced by a new
heavens and a new earth, since somewhere they must be, because they have
material bodies? We may reply that they shall be in the upper regions into
which the flame of that conflagration shall not ascend, as neither did the
water of the flood; for they shall have such bodies that they shall be
wherever they wish. Moreover, when they have become immortal and
incorruptible, they shall not greatly dread the blaze of that
conflagration, as the corruptible and mortal bodies of the three men were
able to live unhurt in the blazing furnace.

CHAP. 19.--WHAT THE APOSTLE PAUL WROTE TO THE THESSALONIANS ABOUT THE
MANIFESTATION OF ANTICHRIST WHICH SHALL PRECEDE THE DAY OF THE LORD.

   I see that I must omit many of the statements of the gospels and
epistles about this last judgment, that this volume may not become unduly
long; but I can on no account omit what the Apostle Paul says, in writing
to the Thessalonians, "We beseech you, brethren, by the coming of our Lord
Jesus Christ,"(2) etc.

   No one can doubt that he wrote this of Antichrist and of the day of
judgment, which he here calls the day of the Lord, nor that he declared
that this day should not come unless he first came who is called the
apostate --apostate, to wit, from the Lord God. And if this may justly be
said of all the ungodly, how much more of him? But it is uncertain in what
temple he shall sit, whether in that ruin of the temple which was built by
Solomon, or in the Church; for the apostle would not call the temple of any
idol or demon the temple of God. And on this account some think that in
this passage Antichrist means not the prince himself alone, but his whole
body, that is, the mass of men who adhere to him, along with him their
prince; and they also think that we should render the Greek more exactly
were we to read, not "in the temple of God," but "for" or "as the temple of
God," as if he himself were the temple of God, the Church.(3) Then as for
the words, "And now ye know what withholdeth," i.e., ye know what hindrance
or cause of delay there is, "that he might be revealed in his own time;"
they show that he was unwilling to make an explicit statement, because he
said that they knew. And thus we who have not their knowledge wish and are
not able even with pains to understand what the apostle referred to,
especially as his meaning is made still more obscure by what he adds. For
what does he mean by "For the mystery of iniquity doth already work: only
he who now holdeth, let him hold until he be taken out of the way: and then
shall the wicked be revealed?" I frankly confess I do not know what he
means. I will nevertheless mention such conjectures as I have heard or
read.

   Some think that the Apostle Paul referred to the Roman empire, and that
he was unwilling to use language more explicit, lest he should incur the
calumnious charge of wishing ill to the empire which it was hoped would be
eternal; so that in saying, "For the mystery of iniquity doth already
work," he alluded to Nero, whose deeds already seemed to be as the deeds of
Antichrist. And hence some suppose that he shall rise again and be
Antichrist. Others, again, suppose that he is not even dead, but that he
was concealed that he might be supposed to have been killed, and that he
now lives in concealment in the vigor of that same age which he had reached
when he was believed to have perished, and will live until he is revealed
in his own time and restored to his kingdom.(1) But I wonder that men can
be so audacious in their conjectures. However, it is not absurd to believe
that these words of the apostle, "Only he who now holdeth, let him hold
until he be taken out of the way," refer to the Roman empire, as if it were
said, "Only he who now reigneth, let him reign until he be taken out of the
way." "And then shall the wicked be revealed:" no one doubts that this
means Antichrist. But others think that the words, "Ye know what
withholdeth," and "The mystery of iniquity worketh," refer only to the
wicked and the hypocrites who are in the Church, until they reach a number
so great as to furnish Antichrist with a great people, and that this is the
mystery of iniquity, because it seems hidden; also that the apostle is
exhorting the faithful tenaciously to hold the faith they hold when he
says, "Only he  who now holdeth, let him hold until he be taken out of the
way," that is, until the mystery of iniquity which now is hidden departs
from the Church. For they suppose that it is to this same mystery John
alludes when in his epistle he says, "Little children, it is the last time:
and as ye have heard that Antichrist shall come, even now are there many
antichrists; whereby we know that it is the last time. They went out from
us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would no
doubt have continued with us."(2) As therefore there went out from the
Church many heretics, whom John calls "many antichrists," at that time
prior to the end, and which John calls "the last time," so in the end they
shall go out who do not belong to Christ, but to that last Antichrist, and
then he shall be revealed.

   Thus various, then, are the conjectural explanations of the obscure
words of the apostle. That which there is no doubt he said is this, that
Christ will not come to judge quick and dead unless Antichrist, His
adversary, first come to seduce those who are dead in soul; although their
seduction is a result of God's secret judgment already passed. For, as it
is said "his presence shall be after the working of Satan, with all power,
and signs, and lying wonders, and with all seduction of unrighteousness in
them that perish." For then shall Satan be loosed, and by means of that
Antichrist shall work with all power in a lying though a wonderful manner.
It is commonly questioned whether these works are called "signs and lying
wonders" because he is to deceive men's senses by false appearances, or
because the things he does, though they be true prodigies, shall be a lie
to those who shall believe that such things could be done only by God,
being ignorant of the devil's power, and especially of such unexampled
power as he shall then for the first time put forth. For when he fell from
heaven as fire, and at a stroke swept away from the holy Job his numerous
household and his vast flocks, and then as a whirlwind rushed upon and
smote the house and killed his children, these were not deceitful
appearances, and yet they were the works of Satan to whom God had given
this power. Why they are called signs and lying wonders, we shall then be
more likely to know when the time itself arrives. But whatever be the
reason of the name, they shall be such signs and wonders as shall seduce
those who shall deserve to be seduced, "because they received not the love
of the truth that they might be saved." Neither did the apostle scruple to
go on to say, "For this cause God shall send upon them the working of error
that they should believe a lie." For God shall send, because God shall
permit the devil to do these things, the permission being by His own just
judgment, though the doing of them is in pursuance of the devil's
unrighteous and malignant purpose, "that they all might be judged who
believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness." Therefore,
being judged, they shall be seduced, and, being seduced, they shall be
judged. But, being judged, they shall be seduced by those secretly just and
justly secret judgments of God, with which He has never ceased to judge
since the first sin of the rational creatures; and, being seduced, they
shall be judged in that last and manifest judgment administered by Jesus
Christ, who was Himself most unjustly judged and shall most justly judge.

CHAP. 20.--WHAT THE SAME APOSTLE TAUGHT IN THE FIRST EPISTLE TO THE
THESSALONIANS REGARDING THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD.

   But the apostle has said nothing here regarding, the resurrection of
the dead; but in his first Epistle to the Thessalonians he says, "We would
not have you to be ignorant brethren, concerning them which are asleep,"(1)
etc. These words of the apostle most distinctly proclaim the future
resurrection of the dead, when the Lord Christ shall come to judge the
quick and the dead.

   But it is commonly asked whether those whom our Lord shall find alive
upon earth, personated in this passage by the apostle and those who were
alive with him, shall never die at all, or shall pass with incomprehensible
swiftness through death to immortality in the very moment during which they
shall be caught up along with those who rise again to meet the Lord in the
air? For we cannot say that it is impossible that they should both die and
revive again while they are carried aloft through the air. For the words,
"And so shall we ever be with the Lord," are not to be understood as if he
meant that we shall always remain in the air with the Lord; for He Himself
shall not remain there, but shall only pass through it as He comes. For we
shall go to meet Him as He comes, not where He remains; but "so shall we be
with the Lord," that is, we shall be with Him possessed of immortal bodies
wherever we shall be with Him. We seem compelled to take the words in this
sense, and to suppose that those whom the Lord shall find alive upon earth
shall in that brief space both suffer death and receive immortality: for
this same apostle says, "In Christ shall all be made alive;"(2) while,
speaking of the same resurrection of the body, he elsewhere says, "That
which thou sowest is not quickened, except it die."(3) How, then, shall
those whom Christ shall find alive upon earth be made alive to immortality
in Him if they die not, since on this very account it is said, "That which
thou sowest is not quickened, except it die?" Or if we cannot properly
speak of human bodies as sown, unless in so far as by dying they do in some
sort return to the earth, as also the sentence pronounced by God against
the sinning father of the human race runs, "Earth thou art, and unto earth
shalt thou return,"(4) we must acknowledge that those whom Christ at His
coming shall find still in the body are not included in these words of the
apostle nor in those of Genesis; for, being caught up into the clouds, they
are certainly not sown, neither going nor returning to the earth, whether
they experience no death at all or die for a moment in the air.

   But, on the other hand, there meets us the saying of the same apostle
when he was speaking to the Corinthians about the resurrection of the body,
"We shall all rise," or, as other MSS. read, "We shall all sleep."(5)
Since, then, there can be no resurrection unless death has preceded, and
since we can in this passage understand by sleep nothing else than death,
how shall all either sleep or rise again if so many persons whom Christ
shall find in the body shall neither sleep nor rise again? If, then, we
believe that the saints who shall be found alive at Christ's coming, and
shall be caught up to meet Him, shall in that same ascent pass from mortal
to immortal bodies, we shall find no difficulty in the words of the
apostle, either when he says, "That which thou sowest is not quickened,
except it die," or when he says, "We Shall all rise," or "all sleep," for
not even the saints shall be quickened to immortality unless they first
die, however briefly; and consequently they shall not be exempt from
resurrection which is preceded by sleep, however brief. And why should it
seem to us incredible that that multitude of bodies should be, as it were,
sown in the air, and should in the air forthwith revive immortal and
incorruptible, when we believe, on the testimony of the same apostle, that
the resurrection shall take place in the twinkling of an eye, and that the
dust of bodies long dead shall return with incomprehensible facility and
swiftness to those members that are now to live endlessly? Neither do we
suppose that in the case of these saints the sentence, "Earth thou art, and
unto earth shalt thou return," is null, though their bodies do not, on
dying, fall to earth, but both die and rise again at once while caught up
into the air. For "Thou shalt return to earth" means, Thou shalt at death
return to that which thou weft before life began. Thou shalt, when
examinate, be that which thou weft before thou wast animate. For it was
into a face of earth that God breathed the breath of life when man was made
a living soul; as if it were said, Thou art earth with a soul, which thou
wast not; thou shalt be earth without a soul, as thou wast. And this is
what all bodies of the dead are before they rot; and what the bodies of
those saints shall be if they die, no matter where they die, as soon as
they shall give up that life which they are immediately to receive back
again. In this way, then, they return or go to earth, inasmuch as from
being living men they shall be earth, as that which becomes cinder is said
to go to cinder; that which decays, to go to decay; and so of six hundred
other things. But the manner in which this shall take place we can now only
feebly conjecture, and shall understand it only when it comes to pass. For
that there shall be a bodily resurrection of the dead when Christ comes to
judge quick and dead, we must believe if we would be Christians. But if we
are unable perfectly to comprehend the manner in which it shall take place,
our faith is not on this account vain. Now, however, we ought, as we
formerly promised, to show, as far as seems necessary, what the ancient
prophetic books predicted concerning this final judgment of God; and I
fancy no great time need be spent in discussing and explaining these
predictions, if the reader has been careful to avail himself of the help we
have already furnished.

CHAP. 21.--UTTERANCES OF THE PROPHET ISAIAH REGARDING THE RESURRECTION OF
THE DEAD AND THE RETRIBUTIVE JUDGMENT.

   The prophet Isaiah says, "The dead shall rise again, and all who were
in the graves shall rise again; and all who are in the earth shall rejoice:
for the dew which is from Thee is their health, and the earth of the wicked
shall fall."(1) All the former part of this passage relates to the
resurrection of the blessed; but the words, "the earth of the wicked shall
fall," is rightly understood as meaning that the bodies of the wicked shall
fall into the ruin of damnation. And if we would more exactly and carefully
scrutinize the words which refer to the resurrection of the good, we may
refer to the first resurrection the words, "the dead shall rise again," and
to the second the following words, "and all who were in the graves shall
rise again." And if we ask what relates to those saints whom the Lord at
His coming shall find alive upon earth, the following clause may suitably
be referred to them; "All who are in the earth shall rejoice: for the dew
which is from Thee is their health." By "health" in this place it is best
to understand immortality. For that is the most perfect health which is not
repaired by nourishment as by a daily remedy. In like manner the same
prophet, affording hope to the good and terrifying the wicked regarding the
day of judgment, says, "Thus saith the Lord, Behold, I will flow down upon
them as a river of peace, and upon the glory of the Gentiles as a rushing
torrent; their sons shall be carried on the shoulders, and shall be
comforted on the knees. As one whom his mother comforteth,  so shall I
comfort you; and ye shall be comforted in Jerusalem. And ye shall see, and
your heart shall rejoice, and your bones shall rise up like a herb; and the
hand of the Lord shall be known by His worshippers, and He shall threaten
the contumacious. For, behold, the Lord shall come as a fire, and as a
whirlwind His chariots, to execute vengeance with indignation, and wasting
with a flame of fire. For with fire of the Lord shall all the earth be
judged, and all flesh with His sword: many shall be wounded by the
Lord."(2) In His promise to the good he says that He will flow down as a
river of peace, that is to say, in the greatest possible abundance of
peace. With this peace we shall in the end be refreshed; but of this we
have spoken abundantly in the preceding book. It is this river in which he
says He shall flow down upon those to whom He promises so great happiness,
that we may understand that in the region of that felicity, which is in
heaven, all things are satisfied from this river. But because there shall
thence flow, even upon earthly bodies, the peace of incorruption and
immortality, therefore he says that He shall flow down as this river, that
He may as it were pour Himself from things above to things beneath, and
make men the equals of the angels. By "Jerusalem," too, we should
understand not that which serves with her children, but that which,
according to the apostle, is our free mother, eternal in the heavens.(3) In
her we shall be comforted as we pass toilworn from earth's cards and
calamities, and be taken up as her children on her knees and shoulders.
Inexperienced and new to such blandishments, we shall be received into
unwonted bliss. There we shall see, and our heart shall rejoice. He does
not say what we shall see; but what but God, that the promise in the Gospel
may be fulfilled in us, "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see
God ?"(4) What shall we see but all those things which now we see not, but
believe in, and of which the idea we form, according to our feeble
capacity, is incomparably less than the reality? "And ye shall see," he
says, "and your heart shall rejoice." Here ye believe, there ye shall see.

   But because he said, "Your heart shall rejoice," lest we should suppose
that the blessings of that Jerusalem are only spiritual, he adds, "And your
bones shall rise up like a herb," alluding to the resurrection of the body,
and as it were supplying an omission he had made. For it will not take
place when we have seen; but we shall see when it has taken place. For he
had already spoken of the new heavens and the new earth, speaking
repeatedly, and under many figures, of the things promised to the saints,
and saying, "There shall be new heavens, and a new earth: and the former
shall not be remembered nor come into mind; but they shall find in it
gladness and exultation. Behold, I will make Jerusalem an exultation, and
my people a joy. And I will exult in Jerusalem, and joy in my people; and
the voice of weeping shall be no more heard in her;"(1) and other promises,
which some endeavor to refer to carnal enjoyment during the thousand years.
For, in the manner of prophecy, figurative and literal expressions are
mingled, so that a serious mind may, by useful and salutary effort, reach
the spiritual sense; but carnal sluggishness, or the slowness of an
uneducated and undisciplined mind, rests in the superficial letter, and
thinks there is nothing beneath to be looked for. But let this be enough
regarding the style of those prophetic expressions just quoted. And now, to
return to their interpretation. When he had said, "And your bones shall
rise up like a herb," in order to show that it was the resurrection of the
good, though a bodily resurrection, to which he alluded, he added, "And the
hand of the Lord shall be known by His worshippers." What is this but the
hand of Him who distinguishes those who worship from those who despise Him?
Regarding these the context immediately adds, "And He shall threaten the
contumacious," or, as another translator has it, "the unbelieving." He
shall not actually threaten then, but the threats which are now uttered
shall then be fulfilled in effect. "For behold," he says, "the Lord shall
come as a fire, and as a whirlwind His chariots, to execute vengeance with
indignation, and wasting with a flame of fire. For with fire of the Lord
shall all the earth be judged, and all flesh with His sword: many shall be
wounded by the Lord." By fire, whirlwind, sword, he means the judicial
punishment of God. For he says that the Lord Himself shall come as a fire,
to those, that is to say, to whom His coming shall be penal. By His
chariots (for the word is plural)we suitably understand the ministration of
angels. And when he says that all flesh and all the earth shall be judged
with His fire and sword, we do not understand the spiritual and holy to be
included, but the earthly and carnal, of whom it is said that they "mind
earthly things,"(2) and "to be carnally minded is death,"(3) and whom the
Lord calls simply flesh when He says, "My Spirit shall not always remain in
these men, for they are flesh."(4) As to the words, "Many shall be wounded
by the Lord," this wounding shall produce the second death. It is possible,
indeed, to understand fire, sword, and wound in a good sense. For the Lord
said that He wished to send fire on the earth.(5) And the cloven tongues
appeared to them as fire when the Holy Spirit came.(6) And our Lord says,
"I am not come to send peace on earth, but a sword."(7) And Scripture says
that the word of God is a doubly sharp sword,(8) on account of the two
edges, the two Testaments. And in the Song of Songs the holy Church says
that she is wounded with love,(9)--pierced, as it were, with the arrow of
love. But here, where we read or hear that the Lord shall come to execute
vengeance, it is obvious in what sense we are to understand these
expressions.

   After briefly mentioning those who shall be consumed in this judgment,
speaking of the wicked and sinners under the figure of the meats forbidden
by the old law, from which they had not abstained, he summarily recounts
the grace of the new testament, from the first coming of the Saviour to the
last judgment, of which we now speak; and herewith he concludes his
prophecy. For he relates that the Lord declares that He is coming to gather
all nations, that they may come and witness His glory.(10) For, as the
apostle says, "All have sinned and are in want of the glory of God."(11)
And he says that He will do wonders among them, at which they shall marvel
and believe in Him; and that from them He will send forth those that are
saved into various nations, and distant islands which have not heard His
name nor seen His glory, and that they shall declare His glory among the
nations, and shall bring the brethren of those to whom the prophet was
speaking, i.e., shall bring to the faith under God the Father the brethren
of the elect Israelites; and that they shall bring from all nations an
offering to the Lord on beasts of burden and waggons (which are understood
to mean the aids furnished by God in the shape of angelic or human
ministry), to the holy city Jerusalem, which at present is scattered over
the earth, in the faithful saints. For where divine aid is given, men
believe, and where they believe, they come. And the Lord compared them, in
a figure, to the children of Israel offering sacrifice to Him in His house
with psalms, which is already everywhere done by the Church; and He
promised that from among them He would choose for Himself priests and
Levites, which also we see already accomplished. For we see that priests
and Levites are now chosen, not from a certain family and blood, as was
originally the rule in the priesthood according to the order of Aaron, but
as befits the new testament, under which Christ is the High Priest after
the order of Melchisedec, in consideration of the merit which is bestowed
upon each man by divine grace. And these priests are not to be judged by
their mere title, which is often borne by unworthy men, but by that
holiness which is not common to good men and bad.

   After having thus spoken of this mercy of God which is now experienced
by the Church, and is very evident and familiar to us, he foretells also
the ends to which men shall come when the last judgment has separated the
good and the bad, saying by the prophet, or the prophet himself speaking
for God, "For as the new heavens and the new earth shall remain before me,
said the Lord, so shall your seed and your name remain, and there shall be
to them month after month, and Sabbath after Sabbath. All flesh shall come
to worship before me in Jerusalem, said the Lord. And they shall go out,
and shall see the members of the men who have sinned against me: their worm
shall not die, neither shall their fire be quenched; and they shall be for
a spectacle to all flesh."(1) At this point the prophet closed his book, as
at this point the world shall come to an end. Some, indeed, have translated
"carcass"(2) instead of "members of the men," meaning by carcases the
manifest punishment of the body, although carcase is commonly used only of
dead flesh, while the bodies here spoken of shall be animated, else they
could not be sensible of any pain; but perhaps they may, without absurdity,
be called carcases, as being the bodies of those who are to fall into the
second death. And for the same reason it is said, as I have already quoted,
by this same prophet, "The earth of the wicked shall fall."(3) It is
obvious that those translators who use a different word for men do not mean
to include only males, for no one will say that the women who sinned shall
not appear in that judgment; but the male sex, being the more worthy, and
that from which the woman was derived, is intended to include both sexes.
But that which is especially pertinent to our subject is this, that since
the words "All flesh shall come," apply to the good, for the people of God
shall be composed of every race of men,--for all men shall not be present,
since the greater part shall be in punishment,--but, as I was saying, since
flesh is used of the good, and members or carcases of the bad, certainly it
is thus put beyond a doubt that that judgment in which the good and the bad
shall be allotted to their destinies shall take place after the
resurrection of the body, our faith in which is thoroughly established by
the use of these words.

CHAP. 22.--WHAT IS MEANT BY THE GOOD GOING OUT TO SEE THE PUNISHMENT OF THE
WICKED.

   But in what way shall the good go out to see the punishment of the
wicked? Are they to leave their happy abodes by a bodily movement, and
proceed to the places of punishment, so as to witness the torments of the
wicked in their bodily presence? Certainly not; but they shall go out by
knowledge. For this expression, go out, signifies that those who shall be
punished shall be without. And thus the Lord also calls these places "the
outer darkness,"(4) to which is opposed that entrance concerning which it
is said to the good servant, "Enter into the joy of thy Lord," that it may
not be supposed that the wicked can enter thither and be known, but rather
that the good by their knowledge go out to them, because the good are to
know that which is without. For those who shall be in torment shall not
know what is going on within in the joy of the Lord; but they who shall
enter into that joy shall know what is going on outside in the outer
darkness. Therefore it is said, "They shall go out," because they shall
know what is done by those who are without. For if the prophets were able
to know things that had not yet happened, by means of that indwelling of
God in their minds, limited though it was, shall not the immortal saints
know things that have already happened, when God shall be all in all?(5)
The seed, then, and the name of the saints shall remain in that
blessedness,--the seed, to wit, of which John says, "And his seed remaineth
in him;"(6) and the name, of which it was said through Isaiah himself, "I
will give them an everlasting name."(7) "And there shall be to them month
after month, and Sabbath after Sabbath," as if it were said, Moon after
moon, and rest upon rest, both of which they shall themselves be when they
shall pass from the old shadows of time into the new lights of eternity.
The worm that dieth not, and the fire that is not quenched, which
constitute the punishment of the wicked, are differently interpreted by
different people. For some refer both to the body, others refer both to the
soul; while others again refer the fire literally to the body, and the worm
figuratively to the soul, which seems the more credible idea. But the
present is not the time to discuss this difference, for we have undertaken
to occupy this book with the last judgment, in which the good and the bad
are separated: their rewards and punishments we shall more carefully
discuss elsewhere.

CHAP. 23.--WHAT DANIEL PREDICTED REGARDING THE PERSECUTION OF ANTICHRIST,
THE JUDGMENT OF GOD, AND THE KINGDOM OF THE SAINTS.

   Daniel prophesies of the last judgment in such a way as to indicate
that Antichrist shall first come, and to carry on his description to the
eternal reign of the saints. For when in prophetic vision he had seen four
beasts, signifying four kingdoms, and the fourth conquered by a certain
king, who is recognized as Antichrist, and after this the eternal kingdom
of the Son of man, that is to say, of Christ, he says, "My spirit was
terrified, I Daniel in the midst of my body, and the visions of my head
troubled me,"(1) etc. Some have interpreted these four kingdoms as
signifying those of the Assyrians, Persians, Macedonians, and Romans. They
who desire to understand the fitness of this interpretation may read
Jerome's book on Daniel, which is written with a sufficiency of care and
erudition. But he who reads this passage, even half asleep, cannot fail to
see that the kingdom of Antichrist shall fiercely, though for a short time,
assail the Church before the last judgment of God shall introduce the
eternal reign of the saints. For it is patent from the context that the
time, times, and half a time, means a year, and two years, and half a year,
that is to say, three years and a half.  Sometimes in Scripture the same
thing is indicated by months. For though the word  times seems to be used
here in the Latin indefinitely, that is only because the Latins have no
dual, as the Greeks have, and as the  Hebrews also are said to have. Times,
therefore, is used for two times. As for the  ten kings, whom, as it seems,
Antichrist is to find in the person of ten individuals when he comes, I own
I am afraid we may be deceived in this, and that he may come unexpectedly
while there are not ten kings living in the Roman world. For what if this
number ten signifies the whole number of kings who are to precede his
coming, as totality is frequently symbolized by a thousand, or a hundred,
or seven, or other numbers, which it is not necessary to recount?

   In another place the same Daniel says, "And there shall be a time of
trouble, such as was not since there was born a nation upon earth until
that time: and in that time all Thy people which shall be found written in
the book shall be delivered. And many of them that sleep in the mound of
earth shall arise, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and
everlasting confusion. And they that be wise shall shine as the brightness
of the firmament; and many of the just as the stars for ever."(2) This
passage is very similar to the one we have quoted from the Gospel,(3) at
least so far as regards the resurrection of dead bodies. For those who are
there said to be "in the graves" are here spoken of as "sleeping in the
mound of earth," or, as others translate, "in the dust of earth," There it
is said, "They shall come forth;" so here, "They shall arise." There, "They
that have done good, to the resurrection of life; and they that have done
evil, to the resurrection of judgment;" here, "Some to everlasting life,
and some to shame and everlasting confusion." Neither is it to be supposed
a difference, though in place of the expression in the Gospel, "All who are
in their graves," the prophet does not say "all," but "many of them that
sleep in the mound of earth." For many is sometimes used in Scripture for
all. Thus it was said to Abraham, "I have set thee as the father of many
nations," though in another place it was said to him, "In thy seed shall
all nations be blessed."(4) Of such a resurrection it is said a little
afterwards to the prophet himself, "And come thou and rest: for there is
yet a day till the completion of the consummation; and thou shall rest, and
rise in thy lot in the end of the days."(5)

CHAP. 24.--PASSAGES FROM THE PSALMS OF DAVID WHICH PREDICT THE END OF THE
WORLD AND THE LAST JUDGMENT.

    There are many allusions to the last judgment in the Psalms, but for
the most part only casual and slight. I cannot, however, omit to mention
what is said there in express terms of the end of this world: "In the
beginning hast Thou laid the foundations of the earth, O Lord; and the
heavens are the work of Thy hands. They shall perish, but Thou shall
endure; yea, all of them shall wax old like a garment; and as a vesture
Thou shall change them, and they shall be changed: but Thou art the same,
and Thy years shall not fail."(1) Why is it that Porphyry, while he lauds
the piety of the Hebrews in worshipping a God great and true, and terrible
to the gods themselves, follows the oracles of these gods in accusing the
Christians of extreme folly because they say that this world shall perish?
For here we find it said in the sacred books of the Hebrews, to that God
whom this great philosopher acknowledges to be terrible even to the gods
themselves, "The heavens are the work of Thy hands; they shall perish."
When the heavens, the higher and more secure part of the world, perish,
shall the world itself be preserved? If this idea is not relished by
Jupiter, whose oracle is quoted by this philosopher as an unquestionable
authority in rebuke of the credulity of the Christians, why does he not
similarly rebuke the wisdom of the Hebrews as folly, seeing that the
prediction is found in their most holy books? But if this Hebrew wisdom,
with which Porphyry is so captivated that he extols it through the
utterances of his own gods, proclaims that the heavens are to perish, how
is he so infatuated as to detest the faith of the Christians partly, if not
chiefly, on this account, that they believe the world is to perish?--though
how the heavens are to perish if the world does not is not easy to see.
And, indeed, in the sacred writings which are peculiar to ourselves, and
not common to the Hebrews and us,--I mean the evangelic and apostolic
books,--the following expressions are used: "The figure of this world
passeth away;"(2) "The world passeth away;"(3) "Heaven and earth shall pass
away,"(4)--expressions which are, I fancy, somewhat milder than "They shall
perish." In the Epistle of the Apostle Peter, too, where the world which
then was is said to have perished, being overflowed with water, it is
sufficiently obvious What part of the world is signified by the whole, and
in what sense the word perished is  to be taken, and what heavens were kept
in  store, reserved unto fire against the day of  judgment and perdition of
ungodly men.(5) And when he says a little afterwards, "The  day of the Lord
will come as a thief; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great
rush, and the elements shall melt with burning heat, and the earth and the
works which are in it shall be burned up and then adds, "Seeing, then, that
all these things shall be dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye to
be?"(6)--these heavens which are to perish may be understood to be the same
which he said were kept in store reserved for fire; and the elements which
are to be burned are those which are full of storm and disturbance in this
lowest part of the world in which he said that these heavens were kept in
store; for the higher heavens in whose firmament are set the stars are
safe, and remain in their integrity. For even the expression of Scripture,
that "the stars shall fall from heaven,"(7) not to mention that a different
interpretation is much preferable, rather shows that the heavens themselves
shall remain, if the stars are to fall from them. This expression, then, is
either figurative, as is more credible, or this phenomenon will take place
in this lowest heaven, like that mentioned by Virgil,--

  "A meteor with a train of light
   Athwart the sky gleamed dazzling bright,
   Then in Idaean woods was lost."(8)

But the passage I have quoted from the psalm seems to except none of the
heavens from the destiny of destruction; for he says, "The heavens are the
works of Thy hands: they shall perish;" so that, as none of them are
excepted from the category of God's works, none of them are excepted from
destruction. For our opponents will not condescend to defend the Hebrew
piety, which has won the approbation of their gods, by the words of the
Apostle Peter, whom they vehemently detest; nor will they argue that, as
the apostle in his epistle understands a part when he speaks of the whole
world perishing in the flood, though only the lowest part of it, and the
corresponding heavens were destroyed, so in the psalm the whole is used for
a part, and it is said "They shall perish," though only the lowest heavens
are to perish. But since, as I said, they will not condescend to reason
thus, lest they should seem to approve of Peter's meaning, or ascribe as
much importance to the final conflagration as we ascribe to the deluge,
whereas they contend that no waters or flames could destroy the whole human
race, it only remains to them to maintain that their gods lauded the wisdom
of the Hebrews because they had not read this psalm.

   It is the last judgment of God which is referred to also in the 50th
Psalm in the words, "God shall come manifestly, our God, and shall not keep
silence: fire shall devour before Him, and it shall be very tempestuous
round about Him. He shall call the heaven above, and the earth, to judge
His people. Gather His saints together to Him; they who make a covenant
with Him over sacrifices."(1) This we understand of our Lord Jesus Christ,
whom we look for from heaven to judge the quick and the dead. For He shall
come manifestly to judge justly the just and the unjust, who before came
hiddenly to be unjustly judged by the unjust. He, I say, shall come
manifestly, and shall not keep silence, that is, shall make Himself known
by His voice of judgment, who before, when he came hiddenly, was silent
before His judge when He was led as a sheep to the slaughter, and, as a
lamb before the shearer, opened not His mouth as we read that it was
prophesied of Him by Isaiah,(2) and as we see it fulfilled in the
Gospel.(3) As for the fire and tempest, we have already said how these are
to be interpreted when we were explaining a similar passage in Isaiah.(4)
As to the expression, "He shall call the heaven above," as the saints and
the righteous are rightly called heaven, no doubt this means what the
apostle says, "We shall  be caught up together with them in the clouds, to
meet the Lord in the air."(5) For if we take the bare literal sense, how is
it possible to call the heaven above, as if the heaven could be anywhere
else than above? And the following expression, "And the earth to judge His
people," if we supply only the words, "He shall call," that is to say, "He
shall call the earth also," and do not supply "above," seems to give us a
meaning in accordance with sonnet doctrine, the heaven symbolizing those
who will judge along with Christ, and the earth those who shall be judged;
and thus the words, "He shall call the heaven above," would not mean, "He
shall catch up into the air," but "He shall lift up to seats of judgment."
Possibly, too, "He shall call the heaven," may mean, He shall call the
angels in the high and lofty places, that He may descend with them to do
judgment; and "He shall call the earth also" would then mean, He shall call
the men on the earth to judgment. But if with the words "and the earth" we
understand not only "He shall call," but also "above," so as to make the
full sense be, He shall call the heaven above, and He shall call the earth
above, then I think it is best understood of the men who shall be caught up
to meet Christ in the air, and that they are called the heaven with
reference to their souls, and the earth with reference to their bodies.
Then what is "to judge His people," but to separate by judgment the good
from the bad, as the sheep from the goats? Then he turns to address the
angels: "Gather His saints together unto Him." For certainly a matter so
important must be accomplished by the ministry of angels. And if we ask who
the saints are who are gathered unto Him by the angels, we are told, "They
who make a covenant with Him over sacrifices." This is the whole life of
the saints, to make a covenant with God over sacrifices. For "over
sacrifices" either refers to works of mercy, which are preferable to
sacrifices in the judgment of God, who says, "I desire mercy more than
sacrifices,"(6) or if "over sacrifices" means in sacrifices, then these
very works of mercy are the sacrifices with which God is pleased, as I
remember to have stated in the tenth book of this work;(7) and in these
works the saints make a covenant with God, because they do them for the
sake of the promises which are contained in His new testament or covenant.
And hence, when His saints have been gathered to Him and set at His right
hand in the last judgment, Christ shall say, "Come, ye blessed of my
Father, take possession of the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation
of the world. For I was hungry, and ye gave me to eat,"(8) and so on,
mentioning the good works of the good, and their eternal rewards assigned
by the last sentence of the Judge.

CHAP. 25.--OF MALACHI'S PROPHECY, IN WHICH HE SPEAKS OF THE LAST JUDGMENT,
AND OF A CLEANSING WHICH SOME ARE TO UNDERGO BY PURIFYING PUNISHMENTS.

   The prophet Malachi or Malachias, who is also called Angel, and is by
some (for Jerome(9) tells us that this is the opinion of the Hebrews)
identified with Ezra the priest,(10) others of whose writings have been
received into the canon, predicts the last judgment, saying, "Behold, He
cometh, saith the Lord Almighty; and who shall abide the day of His
entrance? ... for I am the Lord your God, and I change not."(11) From these
words it more evidently appears that some shall in the last judgment suffer
some kind of purgatorial punishments; for what else can be understood by
the word, "Who shall abide the day of His entrance, or who shall be able to
look upon Him? for He enters as a moulder's fire, and as the herb of
fullers: and He shall sit fusing and purifying as if over gold and silver:
and He shall purify the sons of Levi, and pour them out like gold and
silver?" Similarly Isaiah says, "The Lord shall wash the filthiness of the
sons and daughters of Zion, and shall cleanse away the blood from their
midst, by the spirit of judgment and by the spirit of burning."(1) Unless
perhaps we should say that they are cleansed from filthiness and in a
manner clarified, when the wicked are separated from them by penal
judgment, so that the elimination and damnation of the one party is the
purgation of the others, because they shall henceforth live free from the
contamination of such men. But when he says, "And he shall purify the sons
of Levi, and pour them out like gold and silver, and they shall offer to
the Lord sacrifices in righteousness; and the sacrifices of Judah and
Jerusalem shall be pleasing to the Lord," he declares that those who shall
be purified shall then please the Lord with sacrifices of righteousness,
and consequently they themselves shall be purified from their own
unrighteousness which made them displeasing to God. Now they themselves,
when they have been purified, shall be sacrifices of complete and perfect
righteousness; for what more acceptable offering can such persons make to
God than themselves? But this question of purgatorial punishments we must
defer to another time, to give it a more adequate treatment. By the sons of
Levi and Judah and Jerusalem we ought to understand the Church herself,
gathered not from the Hebrews only, but from other nations as well; nor
such a Church as she now is, when "if we say that we have no sin, we
deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us,"(2) but as she shall then
be, purged by the last judgment as a threshing-floor by a winnowing wind,
and those of her members who need it being cleansed by fire, so that there
remains absolutely not one who offers sacrifice for his sins. For all who
make such offerings are assuredly in their sins, for the remission of which
they make offerings, that having made to God an acceptable offering, they
may then be absolved.

CHAP. 26.--OF THE SACRIFICES OFFERED TO GOD BY THE SAINTS, WHICH ARE TO BE
PLEASING TO HIM, AS IN THE PRIMITIVE DAYS AND FORMER YEARS.

   And it was with the design of showing that His city shall not then
follow this custom, that God said that the sons of Levi should offer
sacrifices in righteousness,--not therefore in sin, and consequently not
for sin. And hence we see how vainly the Jews promise themselves a return
of the old times of sacrificing according to the law of the old testament,
grounding on the words which follow, "And the sacrifice of Judah and
Jerusalem shall be pleasing to the Lord, as in the primitive days, and as
in former years." For in the times of the law they offered sacrifices not
in righteousness but in sins, offering especially and primarily for sins,
so much so that even the priest himself, whom we must suppose to have been
their most righteous man, was accustomed to offer, according to God's
commandments, first for his own sins, and then for the sins of the people.
And therefore we must explain how we are to understand the words, "as in
the primitive days, and as in former years;" for perhaps he alludes to the
time in which our first parents were in paradise. Then, indeed, intact and
pure from all stain and blemish of sin, they offered themselves to God as
the purest sacrifices. But since they were banished thence on account of
their transgression, and human nature was condemned in them, with the
exception of the one Mediator and those who have been baptized, and are as
yet infants, "there is none clean from stain, not even the babe whose life
has been but for a day upon the earth."(3) But if it be replied that those
who offer in faith may be said to offer in righteousness, because the
righteous lives by faith,(4)--he deceives himself, however, if he says that
he has no sin, and therefore he does not say so, because he lives by
faith,--will any man say this time of faith can be placed on an equal
footing with that consummation when they who offer sacrifices in
righteousness shall be purified by the fire of the last judgment? And
consequently, since it must be believed that after such a cleansing the
righteous shall retain no sin, assuredly that time, so far as regards its
freedom from sin, can be compared to no other period, unless to that during
which our first parents lived in paradise in the most innocent happiness
before their transgression. It is this period, then, which is properly
understood when it is said, "as in the primitive days, and as in former
years." For in Isaiah, too, after the new heavens and the new earth have
been promised, among other elements in the blessedness of the saints which
are there depicted by allegories and figures, from giving an adequate
explanation of which I am prevented by a desire to avoid prolixity, it is
said, "According to the days of the tree of life shall be the days of my
people."(1) And who that has looked at Scripture does not know where God
planted the tree of life, from whose fruit He excluded our first parents
when their own iniquity ejected them from paradise, and round which a
terrible and fiery fence was set?

   But if any one contends that those days of the tree of life mentioned
by the prophet Isaiah are the present times of the Church of Christ, and
that Christ Himself is prophetically called the Tree of Life, because He is
Wisdom, and of wisdom Solomon says, "It is a tree of life to all who
embrace it;"(2) and if they maintain that our first parents did not pass
years in paradise, but were driven from it so soon that none of their
children were begotten there, and that therefore that time cannot be
alluded to in words which run, "as in the primitive days, and as in former
years," I forbear entering on this question, lest by discussing everything
I become prolix, and leave the whole subject in uncertainty. For I see
another meaning, which should keep us from believing that a restoration of
the primitive days and former years of the legal sacrifices could have been
promised to us by the prophet as a great boon. For the animals selected as
victims under the old law were required to be immaculate, and free from all
blemish whatever, and symbolized holy men free from all sin, the only
instance of which character was found in Christ. As, therefore, after the
judgment those who are worthy of such purification shall be purified even
by fire, and shall be rendered thoroughly sinless, and shall offer
themselves to God in righteousness, and be indeed victims immaculate and
free from all blemish whatever, they shall then certainly be, "as in the
primitive days,  and as in former years," when the purest victims were
offered, the shadow of this future reality. For there shall then be in the
body and soul of the saints the purity which was symbolized in the bodies
of these victims.

   Then, with reference to those who are worthy not of cleansing but of
damnation, He says, "And I will draw near to you to judgment, and I will be
a swift witness against evildoers and against adulterers;" and after
enumerating other damnable crimes, He adds, "For I am the Lord your God,
and I am not changed." It is as if He said, Though your fault has changed
you for the worse, and my grace has changed you for the better, I am not
changed. And he says that He Himself will be a witness, because in His
judgment He needs no witnesses; and that He will be "swift," either because
He is to come suddenly, and the judgment which seemed to lag shall be very
swift by His unexpected arrival, or because He will convince the
consciences of men directly and without any prolix harangue. "For," as it
is written, "in the thoughts of the wicked His examination shall be
conducted."(3) And the apostle says, "The thoughts accusing or else
excusing, in the day in which God shall judge the hidden things of men,
according to my gospel in Jesus Christ."(4) Thus, then, shall the Lord be a
swift witness, when He shall suddenly bring back into the memory that which
shall convince and punish the conscience.

CHAP. 27.--OF THE SEPARATION OF THE GOOD AND THE BAD, WHICH PROCLAIM THE
DISCRIMINATING INFLUENCE OF THE LAST JUDGMENT.

   The passage also which I formerly quoted for another purpose from this
prophet refers to the last judgment, in which he says, "They shall be mine,
saith the Lord Almighty, in the day in which I make up my gains,"(5) etc.
When this diversity between the rewards and punishments which distinguish
the righteous from the wicked shall appear under that Sun of righteousness
in the brightness of life eternal,--a diversity which is not discerned
under this sun which shines on the vanity of this life,--there shall then
be such a judgment as has never before been.

CHAP. 28.--THAT THE LAW OF MOSES MUST BE SPIRITUALLY UNDERSTOOD TO PRECLUDE
THE DAMNABLE MURMURS OF A CARNAL INTERPRETATION

   In the succeeding words, "Remember the law of Moses my servant, which I
commanded to him in Horeb for all Israel,"(6) the prophet opportunely
mentions precepts and statutes, after declaring the important distinction
hereafter to be made between those who observe and those who despise the
law. He intends also that they learn to interpret the  law spiritually, and
find Christ in it, by whose judgment that separation between the good and
the bad is to be made. For it is not without reason that the Lord Himself
says to the Jews, "Had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed me; for he
wrote of me."(7) For by receiving the law carnally without perceiving that
its earthly promises were figures of things spiritual, they fell into such
murmurings as audaciously to say, "It is vain to serve God; and what profit
is it that we have kept His ordinance, and that we have walked suppliantly
before the face of the Lord Almighty? And now we call aliens happy; yea,
they that work wickedness are set up."(1) It was these words of theirs
which in a manner compelled the prophet to announce the last judgment, in
which the wicked shall not even in appearance be happy, but shall
manifestly be most miserable; and in which the good shall be oppressed with
not even a transitory wretchedness, but shall enjoy unsullied and eternal
felicity. For he had previously cited some similar expressions of those who
said, "Every one that doeth evil is good in the sight of the Lord, and such
are pleasing to Him."(2) It was, I say, by understanding the law of Moses
carnally that they had come to murmur thus against God. And hence, too, the
writer of the 73d Psalm says that his feet were almost gone, his steps had
well-nigh slipped, because he was envious of sinners while he considered
their prosperity, so that he said among other things, How doth God know,
and is there knowledge in the Most High? and again, Have I sanctified my
heart in vain, and washed my hands in innocency?(3) He goes on to say that
his efforts to solve this most difficult problem, which arises when the
good seem to be wretched and the wicked happy, were in vain until he went
into the sanctuary of God, and understood the last things.(4) For in the
last judgment things shall not be so; but in the manifest felicity of the
righteous and manifest misery of the wicked quite another state of things
shall appear.

CHAP. 29.--OF THE COMING OF ELIAS BEFORE THE JUDGMENT, THAT THE JEWS MAY BE
CONVERTED TO CHRIST BY HIS PREACHING AND EXPLANATION OF SCRIPTURE.

   After admonishing them to give heed to the law of Moses, as he foresaw
that for a long time to come they would not understand it spiritually and
rightly, he went on to say, "And, behold, I will send to you Elias the
Tishbite before the great and signal day of the Lord come: and he shall
turn the heart of the father to the son, and the heart of a man to his next
of kin, lest I come and utterly smite the earth."(5) It is a familiar theme
in the conversation and heart of the faithful, that in the last days before
the judgment the Jews shall believe in the true Christ, that is, our
Christ, by means of this great and admirable prophet Elias who shall
expound the law to them. For not without reason do we hope that before the
coming of our Judge and Saviour Elias shall come, because we have good
reason to believe that he is now alive; for, as Scripture most distinctly
informs us,(6) he was taken up from this life in a chariot of fire. When,
therefore, he is come, he shall give a spiritual explanation of the law
which the Jews at present understand carnally, and shall thus "turn the
heart of the father to the son," that is, the heart of fathers to their
children; for the Septuagint translators have frequently put the singular
for the plural number. And the meaning is, that the sons, that is, the
Jews, shall understand the law as the fathers, that is, the prophets, and
among them Moses himself, understood it. For the heart of the fathers shall
be turned to their children when the children understand the law as their
fathers did; and the heart of the children shall be turned to their fathers
when they have the same sentiments as the fathers. The Septuagint used the
expression, "and the heart of a man to his next of kin," because fathers
and children are eminently neighbors to one another. Another and a
preferable sense can be found in the words of the Septuagint translators,
who have translated Scripture with an eye to prophecy, the sense, viz.,
that Elias shall turn the heart of God the Father to the Son, not certainly
as if he should bring about this love of the Father for the Son, but
meaning that he should make it known, and that the Jews also, who had
previously hated, should then love the Son who is our Christ. For so far as
regards the Jews, God has His heart turned away from our Christ, this being
their conception about God and Christ. But in their case the heart of God
shall be turned to the Son when they themselves shall turn in heart, and
learn the love of the Father towards the Son. The words following, "and the
heart of a man to his next of kin,"--that is, Elias shall also turn the
heart of a man to his next of kin,--how can we understand this better than
as the heart of a man to the man Christ? For though in the form of God He
is our God, yet, taking the form of a servant, He condescended to become
also our next of kin. It is this, then, which Elias will do, "lest," he
says, "I come and smite the earth utterly." For they who mind earthly
things are the earth. Such are the carnal Jews until this day; and hence
these murmurs of theirs against God, "The wicked are pleasing to Him," and
"It is a vain thing to serve God."(7)

CHAP. 30.--THAT IN THE BOOKS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT, WHERE IT IS SAID THAT
GOD SHALL JUDGE THE WORLD, THE PERSON OF CHRIST IS NOT EXPLICITLY
INDICATED, BUT IT PLAINLY APPEARS FROM SOME PASSAGES IN WHICH THE LORD GOD
SPEAKS THAT CHRIST IS MEANT.

   There are many other passages of Scripture bearing on the last judgment
of God,--so many, indeed, that to cite them all would swell this book to an
unpardonable size. Suffice it to have proved that both Old and New
Testament enounce the judgment. But in the Old it is not so definitely
declared as in the New that the judgment shall be administered by Christ,
that is, that Christ shall descend from heaven as the Judge; for when it is
therein stated by the Lord God or His prophet that the Lord God shall come,
we do not necessarily understand this of Christ. For both the Father, and
the Son, and the Holy Ghost are the Lord God. We must not, however, leave
this without proof. And therefore we must first show how Jesus Christ
speaks in the prophetical books under the title of the Lord God, while yet
there can be no doubt that it is Jesus Christ who speaks; so that in other
passages where this is not at once apparent, and where nevertheless it is
said that the Lord God will come to that last judgment, we may understand
that Jesus Christ is meant. There is a passage in the prophet Isaiah which
illustrates what I mean.  For God says by the prophet, "Hear me, Jacob and
Israel, whom I call. I am the first, and I am for ever: and my hand has
rounded the earth, and my right hand has established the heaven. I will
call them, and they shall stand together, and be gathered, and hear. Who
has declared to them these things? In love of thee I have done thy pleasure
upon Babylon, that I might take away the seed of the Chaldeans. I have
spoken, and I have called: I have brought him, and have made his way
prosperous. Come ye near unto me, and hear this. I have not spoken in
secret from the beginning; when they were made, there was I. And now the
Lord God and His Spirit hath sent me."(1) It was Himself who was speaking
as the Lord God; and yet we should not have understood that it was Jesus
Christ had He not added, "And now the Lord God and His Spirit hath sent
me." For He said this with reference to the form of a servant, speaking of
a future event as if it were past, as in the same prophet we read, "He was
led as a sheep to the slaughter,"(2) not "He shall be led;" but the past
tense is used to express the future. And prophecy constantly speaks in this
way.

   There is also another passage in Zechariah which plainly declares that
the Almighty sent the Almighty; and of what persons can this be understood
but of God the Father and God the Son? For it is written, "Thus saith the
Lord Almighty, After the glory hath He sent me unto the nations which
spoiled you; for he that toucheth you toucheth the apple of His eye Behold,
I will bring mine hand upon them, and they shall be a spoil to their
servants: and ye shall know that the Lord Almighty hath sent me."(3)
Observe, the Lord Almighty saith that the Lord Almighty sent Him. Who can
presume to understand these words of any other than Christ, who is speaking
to the lost sheep of the house of Israel? For He says in the Gospel, "I am
not sent save to the lost sheep of the house of Israel,"(4) which He here
compared to the pupil of God's eye, to signify the profoundest love. And to
this class of sheep the apostles themselves belonged. But after the glory,
to wit, of His resurrection,--for before it happened the evangelist said
that "Jesus was not yet glorified,"(5)--He was sent unto the nations in the
persons of His apostles; and thus the saying of the psalm was fulfilled,
"Thou wilt deliver me from the contradictions of the people; Thou wilt set
me as the head of the nations,"(6) So that those who had spoiled the
Israelites, and whom the Israelites had served when they were subdued by
them, were not themselves to be spoiled in the same fashion, but were in
their own persons to become the spoil of the Israelites. For this had been
promised to the apostles when the Lord said, "I will make you fishers of
men."(7) And to one of them He says, "From henceforth thou shalt catch
men."(8) They were then to become a spoil, but in a good sense, as those
who are snatched from that strong one when he is bound by a stronger.(9)

   In like manner the Lord, speaking by the same prophet, says, "And it
shall come to pass in that day, that I will seek to destroy all the nations
that come against Jerusalem. And I will pour upon the house of David, and
upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and mercy; and they
shall look upon me because they have insulted me, and they shall mourn for
Him as for one very dear, and shall be in bitterness as for an only-
begotten."(10) To whom but to God does it belong to destroy all the nations
that are hostile to the holy city Jerusalem, which "come against it," that
is, are opposed to it, or, as some translate, "come upon it," as if putting
it down under them; or to pour out upon the house of David and the
inhabitants of Jerusalem the spirit of grace and mercy? This belongs
doubtless to God, and it is to God the prophet ascribes the words; and yet
Christ shows that He is the God who does these so great and divine things,
when He goes on to say, "And they shall look upon me because they have
insulted me, and they shall mourn for Him as if for one very dear (or
beloved), and shall be in bitterness for Him as for an only-begotten." For
in that day the Jews--those of them, at least, who shall receive the spirit
of grace and mercy--when they see Him coming in His majesty, and recognize
that it is He whom they, in the person of their parents, insulted when He
came before in His humiliation, shall repent of insulting Him in His
passion: and their parents themselves, who were the perpetrators of this
huge impiety, shall see Him when they rise; but this will be only for their
punishment, and not for their correction. It is not of them we are to
understand the words, "And I will pour upon the house of David, and upon
the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and mercy, and they shall
look upon me because they have insulted me;" but we are to understand the
words of their descendants, who shall at that time believe through Elias.
But as we say to the Jews, You killed Christ, although it was their parents
who did so, so these persons shall grieve that they in some sort did what
their progenitors did. Although, therefore, those that receive the spirit
of mercy and grace, and believe, shall not be condemned with their impious
parents, yet they shall mourn as if they themselves had done what their
parents did. Their grief shall arise not so much from guilt as from pious
affection. Certainly the words which the Septuagint have translated, "They
shall look upon me because they insulted me," stand in the Hebrew,  "They
shall look upon me whom they pierced."(1) And by this word the crucifixion
of Christ is certainly more plainly indicated. But the Septuagint
translators preferred to allude to the insult which was involved in His
whole passion. For in point of fact they insuited Him both when He was
arrested and when He was bound, when He was judged, when He was mocked by
the robe they put on Him and the homage they did on bended knee, when He
was crowned with thorns and struck with a rod on the head, when He bore His
cross, and when at last He hung upon the tree. And therefore we recognize
more fully the Lord's passion when we do not confine ourselves to one
interpretation, but combine both, and read both "insulted" and "pierced."

   When, therefore, we read in the prophetical books that God is to come
to do judgment at the last, from the mere mention of the judgment, and
although there is nothing else to determine the meaning, we must gather
that Christ is meant; for though the Father will judge, He will judge by
the coming of the Son. For He Himself, by His own manifested presence,
"judges no man, but has committed all judgment to the Son;"(2) for as the
Son was judged as a man, He shall also judge in human form. For it is none
but He of whom God speaks by Isaiah under the name of Jacob and Israel, of
whose seed Christ took a body, as it is written, "Jacob is my servant, I
will uphold Him; Israel is mine elect, my Spirit has assumed Him: I have
put my Spirit upon Him; He shall bring forth judgment to the Gentiles. He
shall not cry, nor cease, neither shall His voice be heard without. A
bruised reed shall He not break, and the smoking flax shall He not quench:
but in truth shall He bring forth judgment. He shall shine and shall not be
broken, until He sets judgment in the earth: and the nations shall hope in
His name."(3) The Hebrew has not "Jacob" and "Israel;" but the Septuagint
translators, wishing to show the significance of the expression "my
servant," and that it refers to the form of a servant in which the Most
High humbled Himself, inserted the name of that man from whose stock He
took the form of a servant. The Holy Spirit was given to Him, and was
manifested, as the evangelist testifies, in the form of a dove.(4) He
brought forth judgment to the Gentiles, because He predicted what was
hidden from them. In His meekness He did not cry, nor did He cease to
proclaim the truth. But His voice was not heard, nor is it heard, without,
because He is not obeyed by those who are outside of His body. And the Jews
themselves, who persecuted Him, He did not break, though as a bruised reed
they had lost their integrity, and as smoking flax their light was
quenched; for He spared them, having come to be judged and not yet to
judge. He brought forth judgment in truth, declaring that they should be
punished did they persist in their wickedness. His face shone on the
Mount,(5) His fame in the world. He is not broken nor over come, because
neither in Himself nor in His Church has persecution prevailed to
annihilate Him. And therefore that has not, and shall not, be brought about
which His enemies said or say, "When shall He die, and His name perish?"(1)
"until He set judgment in the earth." Behold, the hidden thing which we
were seeking is discovered. For this is the last judgment, which He will
set in the earth when He comes from heaven. And it is in Him, too, we
already see the concluding expression of the prophecy fulfilled: "In His
name shall the nations hope." And by this fulfillment, which no one can
deny, men are encouraged to believe in that which is most impudently
denied. For who could have hoped for that which even those who do not yet
believe in Christ now see fulfilled among us, and which is so undeniable
that they can but gnash their teeth and pine away? Who, I say, could have
hoped that the nations would hope in the name of Christ, when He was
arrested, bound, scourged, mocked, crucified, when even the disciples
themselves had lost the hope which they had begun to have in Him? The hope
which was then entertained scarcely by the one thief on the cross, is now
cherished by nations everywhere on the earth, who are marked with the sign
of the cross on which He died that they may not die eternally.

   That the last judgment, then, shall be administered by Jesus Christ in
the manner predicted in the sacred writings is denied or doubted by no one,
unless by those who, through some incredible animosity or blindness,
decline to believe these writings, though already their truth is
demonstrated to all the world. And at or in connection with that judgment
the following events shall come to pass, as we have learned: Elias the
Tishbite shall come; the Jews shall believe; Antichrist shall persecute;
Christ shall judge; the dead shall rise; the good and the wicked shall be
separated; the world shall be burned and renewed. All these things, we
believe, shall come to pass; but how, or in what order, human understanding
cannot perfectly teach us, but only the experience of the events
themselves. My opinion, however, is, that they will happen in the order in
which I have related them.

   Two books yet remain to be written by me, in order to complete, by
God's help, what I promised. One of these will explain the punishment of
the wicked, the other the happiness of the righteous; and in them I shall
be at special pains to refute, by God's grace, the arguments by which some
unhappy creatures seem to themselves to undermine the divine promises and
threatenings, and to ridicule as empty words statements which are the most
salutary nutriment of faith. But they who are instructed in divine things
hold the truth and omnipotence of God to be the strongest arguments in
favor of those things which, however incredible they seem to men, are yet
contained in the Scriptures, whose truth has already in many ways been
proved; for they are sure that God can m no wise lie, and that He can do
what is impossible to the unbelieving.


BOOK XXI.

ARGUMENT: OF THE END RESERVED FOR THE CITY OF THE DEVIL, NAMELY, THE
ETERNAL PUNISHMENT OF THE DAMNED; AND OF THE ARGUMENTS WHICH UNBELIEF
BRINGS AGAINST IT.

CHAP. 1.--OF THE ORDER OF THE DISCUSSION, WHICH REQUIRES THAT WE FIRST
SPEAK OF THE ETERNAL PUNISHMENT OF THE LOST IN COMPANY WITH THE DEVIL, AND
THEN OF THE ETERNAL HAPPINESS OF THE SAINTS.

   I PROPOSE, with such ability as God may grant me, to discuss in this
book more thoroughly the nature of the punishment which shall be assigned
to the devil and all his retainers, when the two cities, the one of God,
the other of the devil, shall have reached their proper ends through Jesus
Christ our Lord, the Judge of quick and dead. And I have adopted this
order, and preferred to speak, first of the punishment of the devils, and
afterwards of the blessedness of the saints, because the body partakes of
either destiny; and it seems to be more incredible that bodies endure in
everlasting torments than that they continue to exist without any pain in
everlasting felicity. Consequently, when I shall have demonstrated that
that punishment ought not to be incredible, this will materially aid me in
proving that which is much more credible, viz., the immortality of the
bodies of the saints which are delivered from all pain. Neither is this
order out of harmony with the divine writings, in which sometimes, indeed,
the blessedness of the good is placed first, as in the words, "They that
have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done
evil, unto the resurrection of judgment;"(1) but sometimes also last, as,
"The Son of man shall send forth His angels, and they shall gather out of
His kingdom all things which offend, and shall cast them into a furnace of
fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth, Then shall the
righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of His Father;"(2) and
that, "These shall go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into
life eternal."(3) And though we have not room to cite instances, any one
who examines the prophets will find that they adopt now the one arrangement
and now the other. My own reason for following the latter order I have
given.

CHAP. 2.--WHETHER IT IS POSSIBLE FOR BODIES TO LAST FOR EVER IN BURNING
FIRE.

   What, then, can I adduce to convince those who refuse to believe that
human bodies, animated and living, can not only survive death, but also
last in the torments of everlasting fires? They will not allow us to refer
this simply to the power of the Almighty, but demand that we persuade them
by some example. If, then, we reply to them, that there are animals which
certainly are corruptible, because they are mortal, and which yet live in
the midst of flames; and likewise, that in springs of water so hot that no
one can put his  hand in it with impunity a species of worm is found, which
not only lives there, but cannot live elsewhere; they either refuse to
believe these facts unless we can show them, or, if we are in circumstances
to prove them by ocular demonstration or by adequate testimony, they
contend, with the same scepticism, that these facts are not examples of
what we seek to prove, inasmuch as these animals do not live for ever, and
besides, they live in that blaze of heat without pain, the element of fire
being congenial to their nature, and causing it to thrive and not to
suffer,--just as if it were not more incredible that it should thrive than
that it should suffer in such circumstances. It is strange that anything
should suffer in fire and yet live, but stranger that it should live in
fire and not suffer. If, then, the latter be believed, why not also the
former?

CHAP 3.--WHETHER BODILY SUFFERING NECESSARILY TERMINATES IN THE DESTRUCTION
OF THE FLESH.

   But, say they, there is no body which can suffer and cannot also die.
How do we know this? For who can say with certainty that the devils do not
suffer in their bodies, when they own that they are grievously tormented?
And if it is replied that there is no earthly body--that is to say, no
solid and perceptible body, or, in one word, no flesh--which can suffer and
cannot die, is not this to tell us only what men have gathered from
experience and their bodily senses? For they indeed have no acquaintance
with any flesh but that which is mortal; and this is their whole argument,
that what they have had no experience of they judge quite impossible. For
we cannot call it reasoning to make pain a presumption of death, while, in
fact, it is rather a sign of life. For though it be a question whether that
which suffers can continue to live for ever, yet it is certain that
everything which suffers pain does live, and that pain can exist only in a
living subject. It is necessary, therefore, that he who is pained be
living, not necessary that pain kill him; for every pain does not kill even
those mortal bodies of ours which are destined to die. And that any pain
kills them is caused by the circumstance that the soul is so connected with
the body that it succumbs to great pain and withdraws; for the structure of
our members and vital parts is so infirm that it cannot bear up against
that violence which causes great or extreme agony. But in the life to come
this connection of soul and body is of such a kind, that as it is dissolved
by no lapse of time, so neither is it burst asunder by any pain. And so,
although it be true that in this world there is no flesh which can suffer
pain and yet cannot die, yet in the world to come there shall be flesh such
as now there is not, as there will also be death such as now there is not.
For death will not be abolished, but will be eternal, since the soul will
neither be able to enjoy God and live,  nor to die and escape the pains of
the body.  The first death drives the soul from the body against her will:
the second death holds the soul in the body against her will. The two have
this in common, that the soul suffers against her will what her own body
inflicts.

   Our opponents, too, make much of this, that in this world there is no
flesh which can suffer pain and cannot die; while they make nothing of the
fact that there is something which is greater than the body. For the
spirit, whose presence animates and rules the body, can both suffer pain
and cannot die. Here then is something which, though it can feel pain, is
immortal. And this capacity, which we now see in the spirit of all, shall
be hereafter in the bodies of the damned. Moreover, if we attend to the
matter a little more closely, we see that what is called bodily pain is
rather to be referred to the soul. For it is the soul not the body, which
is pained, even when the pain originates with the body,--the soul feeling
pain at the point where the body is hurt. As then we speak of bodies
feeling and living, though the feeling and life of the body are from the
soul, so also we speak of bodies being pained, though no pain can be
suffered by the body apart from the soul. The soul, then, is pained with
the body in that part where something occurs to hurt it; and it is pained
alone, though it be in the body, when some invisible cause distresses it,
while the body is safe and sound. Even when not associated with the body it
is pained; for certainly that rich man was suffering in hell when he Cried,
"I am tormented in this flame."(1) But as for the body, it suffers no pain
when it is soulless; and even when animate it can suffer only by the soul's
suffering. If, therefore, we might draw a just presumption from the
existence of pain to that of death, and conclude that where pain can be
felt death can occur, death would rather be the property of the soul, for
to it pain more peculiarly belongs. But, seeing that that which suffers
most cannot die, what ground is there for supposing that those bodies,
because destined to suffer, are therefore, destined to die? The Platonists
indeed maintained that these earthly bodies and dying members gave rise to
the fears, desires, griefs, and joys of the soul. "Hence," says Virgil
(i.e., from these earthly bodies and dying members),

  "Hence wild desires and grovelling fears,
   And human laughter, human tears."(2)

   But in the fourteenth book of this work s we have proved that,
according to the Platonists' own theory, souls, even when purged from all
pollution of the body, are yet possessed by a monstrous desire to return
again into their bodies. But where desire can exist, certainly pain also
can exist; for desire frustrated, either by missing what it aims at or
losing what it had attained, is turned into pain. And therefore, if the
soul, which is either the only or the chief sufferer, has yet a kind of
immortality of its own, it is inconsequent to say that because the bodies
of the damned shall suffer pain, therefore they shall die. In fine, if the
body causes the soul to suffer, why can the body not cause death as well as
suffering, unless because it does not follow that what causes pain causes
death as well? And why then is it incredible that these fires can cause
pain but not death to those bodies we speak of, just as the bodies
themselves cause pain, but not therefore death, to the souls? Pain is
therefore no necessary presumption of death.

CHAP 4.--EXAMPLES FROM NATURE PROVING THAT BODIES MAY REMAIN UNCONSUMED AND
ALIVE IN FIRE.

   If, therefore, the salamander lives in fire, as naturalists(1) have
recorded, and if certain famous mountains of Sicily have been continually
on fire from the remotest antiquity until now, and yet remain entire, these
are sufficiently convincing examples that everything which burns is not
consumed. As the soul too, is a proof that not everything which can suffer
pain can also die, why then do they yet demand that we produce real
examples to prove that it is not incredible that the bodies of men
condemned to everlasting punishment may retain their soul in the fire, may
burn without being consumed, and may suffer without perishing? For suitable
properties will be communicated to the substance of the flesh by Him who
has endowed the things we see with so marvellous and diverse properties,
that their very multitude prevents our wonder. For who but God the Creator
of all things has given to the flesh of the peacock its antiseptic
property? This property, when I first heard of it, seemed to me incredible;
but it happened at Carthage that a bird of this kind was cooked and served
up to me, and, taking a suitable slice of flesh from its breast, I ordered
it to be kept, and when it had been kept as many days as make any other
flesh stinking, it was produced and set before me, and emitted no offensive
smell. And after it had been laid by for thirty days and more, it was still
in the same state; and a year after, the same still, except that it was a
little more shrivelled, and drier. Who gave to chaff such power to freeze
that it preserves snow buried under it, and such power to warm that it
ripens green fruit?

   But who can explain the strange properties of fire itself, which
blackens everything it burns, though itself bright; and which, though of
the most beautiful colors, discolors almost all it touches and feeds upon,
and turns blazing fuel into grimy cinders? Still this is not laid down as
an absolutely uniform law; for, on the contrary, stones baked in glowing
fire themselves also glow, and though the fire be rather of a red hue, and
they white, yet white is congruous with light, and black with darkness.
Thus, though the fire burns the wood in calcining the stones, these
contrary effects do not result from the contrariety of the materials. For
though wood and stone differ, they are not contraries, like black and
white, the one of which colors is produced in the stones, while the other
is produced in the wood by the same action of fire, which imparts its own
brightness to the former, while it begrimes the latter, and which could
have no effect on the one were it not fed by the other. Then what wonderful
properties do we find in charcoal, which is so brittle that a light tap
breaks it and a slight pressure pulverizes it, and yet is so strong that no
moisture rots it, nor any time causes it to decay. So enduring is it, that
it is customary in laying down landmarks to put charcoal underneath them,
so that if, after the longest interval, any one raises an action, and
pleads that there is no boundary stone, he may be convicted by the charcoal
below. What then has enabled it to last so long without rotting, though
buried in the damp earth in which [its original] wood rots, except this
same fire which consumes all things?

   Again, let us consider the wonders of time; for besides growing white
in fire, which makes other things black, and of which I have already said
enough, it has also a mysterious property of conceiving fire within it.
Itself cold to the touch, it yet has a hidden store of fire, which is not
at once apparent to our senses, but which experience teaches us, lies as it
were slumbering within it even while unseen. And it is for this reason
called "quick lime," as if the fire were the invisible soul quickening the
visible substance or body. But the marvellous thing is, that this fire is
kindled when it is extinguished. For to disengage the hidden fire the lime
is moistened or drenched with water, and then, though it be cold before, it
becomes hot by that very application which cools what is hot. As if the
fire were departing from the lime and breathing its last, it no longer lies
hid, but appears; and then the lime lying in the coldness of death cannot
be requickened, and what we before called "quick," we now call "slaked."
What can be stranger than this? Yet there is a greater marvel still. For if
you treat the lime, not with water, but with oil, which is as fuel to fire,
no amount of oil will heat it. Now if this marvel had been told us of some
Indian mineral which we had no opportunity of experimenting upon, we should
either have forthwith pronounced it a falsehood, or certainly should have
been greatly astonished. But things that daily present themselves to our
own observation we despise, not because they are really less marvellous,
but because they are common; so that even some products of India itself,
remote as it is from ourselves, cease to excite our admiration as soon as
we can admire them at our leisure.(1)

   The diamond is a stone possessed by many among ourselves, especially by
jewellers and lapidaries, and the stone is so hard that it can be wrought
neither by iron nor fire, nor, they say, by anything at all except goat's
blood. But do you suppose it is as much admired by those who own it and are
familiar with its properties as by those to whom it is shown for the first
time? Persons who have not seen it perhaps do not believe what is said of
it, or if they do, they wonder as at a thing beyond their experience; and
if they happen to see it, still they marvel because they are unused to it,
but gradually familiar experience [of it] dulls their admiration. We know
that the loadstone has a wonderful power of attracting iron. When I first
saw it I was thunderstruck, for I saw an iron ring attracted and suspended
by the stone; and then, as if it had communicated its own property to the
iron it attracted, and had made it a substance like itself, this ring was
put near another, and lifted it up; and as the first ring clung to the
magnet, so did the second ring to the first. A third and a fourth were
similarly added, so that there hung from the stone a kind of chain of
rings, with their hoops connected, not interlinking, but attached together
by their outer surface. Who would not be amazed at this virtue of the
stone, subsisting as it does not only in itself, but transmitted through so
many suspended rings, and binding them together by invisible links? Yet far
more astonishing is what I heard about this stone from my brother in the
episcopate, Severus bishop of Milevis. He told me that Bathanarius, once
count of Africa, when the bishop was dining with him, produced a magnet,
and held it under a silver plate on which he placed a bit of iron; then as
he moved his hand with the magnet underneath the plate, the iron upon the
plate moved about accordingly. The intervening silver was not affected at
all, but precisely as the magnet was moved backwards and forwards below it,
no matter how quickly, so was the iron attracted above. I have related what
I myself have witnessed; I have related what I was told by one whom I trust
as I trust my own eyes. Let me further say what I have read about this
magnet. When a diamond is laid near it, it does not lift iron; or if it has
already lifted it, as soon as the diamond approaches, it drops it. These
stones come from India. But if we cease to admire them because they are now
familiar, how much less must they admire them who procure them very easily
and send them to us? Perhaps they are held as cheap as we hold lime, which,
because it is common, we think nothing of, though it has the strange
property of burning when water, which is wont to quench fire, is poured on
it, and of remaining cool when mixed with oil, which ordinarily feeds fire.

CHAP. 5.--THAT THERE ARE MANY THINGS WHICH REASON CANNOT ACCOUNT FOR, AND
WHICH ARE NEVERTHELESS TRUE.

   Nevertheless, when we declare the miracles which God has wrought, or
will yet work, and which we cannot bring under the very eyes of men,
sceptics keep demanding that we shall explain these marvels to reason. And
because we cannot do so, inasmuch as they are above human comprehension,
they suppose we are speaking falsely. These persons themselves, therefore,
ought to account for all these marvels which we either can or do see. And
if they perceive that this is impossible for man to do, they should
acknowledge that it cannot be concluded that a thing has not been or shall
not be because it cannot be reconciled to reason, since there are things
now in existence of which the same is true. I will not, then, detail the
multitude of marvels which are related in books, and which refer not to
things that happened once and passed away, but that are permanent in
certain places, where, if any one has the desire and opportunity, he may
ascertain their truth; but a few only I recount. The following are some of
the marvels men tell us:--The salt of Agrigentum in Sicily, when thrown
into the fire, becomes fluid as if it were in water, but in the water it
crackles as if it were in the fire. The Garamantae have a fountain so cold
by day that no one can drink it, so hot by night no one can touch it.(1) In
Epirus, too, there is a fountain which, like all others, quenches lighted
torches, but, unlike all others, lights quenched torches. There is a stone
found in Arcadia, and called asbestos, because once lit it cannot be put
out. The wood of a certain kind of Egyptian fig-tree sinks in water, and
does not float like other wood; and, stranger still, when it has been sunk
to the bottom for some time, it rises again to the surface, though nature
requires that when soaked in water it should be heavier than ever. Then
there are the apples of Sodom which grow indeed to an appearance of
ripeness, but, when you touch them with hand or tooth, the peal cracks, and
they crumble into dust and ashes. The Persian stone pyrites burns the hand
when it is tightly held in it and so gets its name from fire. In Persia
too, there is found another stone called selenite, because its interior
brilliancy waxes and wanes with the moon. Then in Cappadocia the mares are
impregnated by the wind, and their foals live only three years. Tilon, an
Indian island, has this advantage over all other lands, that no tree which
grows in it ever loses its foliage.

   These and numberless other marvels recorded in the history, not of past
events, but of permanent localities, I have no time to enlarge upon and
diverge from my main object; but let those sceptics who refuse to credit
the divine writings give me, if they can, a rational account of them. For
their only ground of unbelief in the Scriptures is, that they contain
incredible things, just such as I have been recounting. For, say they,
reason cannot admit that flesh burn and remain unconsumed, suffer without
dying. Mighty reasoners, indeed, who are competent to give the reason of
all the marvels that exist! Let them then give us the reason of the few
things we have cited, and which, if they did not know they existed, and
were only assured by us they would at some future time occur, they would
believe still less than that which they now refuse to credit on our word.
For which of them would believe us if, instead of saying that the living
bodies of men hereafter will be such as to endure everlasting pain and fire
without ever dying, we were to say that in the world to come there will be
salt which becomes liquid in fire as if it were in water, and crackles in
water as if it were in fire; or that there will be a fountain whose water
in the chill air of night is so hot that it cannot be touched, while in the
heat of day it is so cold that it cannot be drunk; or that there will be a
stone which by its own heat burns the hand when tightly held, or a stone
which cannot be extinguished if it has been lit in any part; or any of
those wonders I have cited, while omitting numberless others? If we were to
say that these things would be found in the world to come, and our sceptics
were to reply, "If you wish us to believe these things, satisfy our reason
about each of them," we should confess that we could not, because the frail
comprehension of man cannot master these and such-like wonders of God's
working; and that yet our reason was thoroughly convinced that the Almighty
does nothing without reason, though the frail mind of man cannot explain
the reason; and that while we are in many instances uncertain what He
intends, yet that it is always most certain that nothing which He intends
is impossible to Him; and that when He declares His mind, we believe Him
whom we cannot believe to be either powerless or false. Nevertheless these
cavillers at faith and exactors of reason, how do they dispose of those
things of which a reason cannot be given, and which yet exist, though in
apparent contrariety to the nature of things? If we had announced that
these things were to be, these sceptics would have demanded from us the
reason of them, as they do in the case of those things which we are
announcing as destined to be. And consequently, as these present marvels
are not non-existent, though human reason and discourse are lost in such
works of God, so those things we speak of are not impossible because
inexplicable; for in this particular they are in the same predicament as
the marvels of earth.

CHAP. 6.--THAT ALL MARVELS ARE NOT OF NATURE'S PRODUCTION, BUT THAT SOME
ARE DUE TO HUMAN INGENUITY AND OTHERS TO DIABOLIC CONTRIVANCE.

   At this point they will perhaps reply, "These things have no existence;
we don't believe one of them; they are travellers' tales and fictitious
romances;" and they may add what has the appearance of argument, and say,
"If you believe such things as these, believe what is recorded in the same
books, that there was or is a temple of Venus in which a candelabrum set in
the open air holds a lamp, which burns so strongly that no storm or rain
extinguishes it, and which is therefore called, like the stone mentioned
above, the asbestos or inextinguishable lamp." They may say this with the
intention of putting us into a dilemma: for if we say this is incredible,
then we shall impugn the truth of the other recorded marvels; if, on the
other hand, we admit that this is credible, we shall avouch the pagan
deities. But, as I have already said in the eighteenth book of this work,
we do not hold it necessary to believe all that profane history contains,
since, as Varro says, even historians themselves disagree on so many
points, that one would think they intended and were at pains to do so; but
we believe, if we are disposed, those things which are not contradicted by
these books, which we do not hesitate to say we are bound to believe. But
as to those permanent miracles of nature, whereby we wish to persuade the
sceptical of the miracles of the world to come, those are quite sufficient
for our purpose which we ourselves can observe or of which it is not
difficult to find trustworthy witnesses. Moreover, that temple of Venus,
with its inextinguishable lamp, so far from hemming us into a corner, opens
an advantageous field to our argument. For to this inextinguishable lamp we
add a host of marvels wrought by men, or by magic,--that is, by men under
the influence of devils, or by the devils directly,--for such marvels we
cannot deny without impugning the truth of the sacred Scriptures we
believe. That lamp, therefore, was either by some mechanical and human
device fitted with asbestos, or it was arranged by magical art in order
that the worshippers might be astonished, or some devil under the name of
Venus so signally manifested himself that this prodigy both began and
became permanent. Now devils are attracted to dwell in certain temples by
means of the creatures (God's creatures, not theirs), who present to them
what suits their various tastes. They are attracted not by food like
animals, but, like spirits, by such symbols as suit their taste, various
kinds of stones, woods, plants, animals, songs, rites. And that men may
provide these attractions, the devils first of all cunningly seduce them,
either by imbuing their hearts with a secret poison, or by revealing
themselves under a friendly guise, and thus make a few of them their
disciples, who become the instructors of the multitude. For unless they
first instructed men, it were impossible to know what each of them desires,
what they shrink from, by what name they should be invoked or constrained
to be present. Hence the origin of magic and magicians. But, above all,
they possess the hearts of men, and are chiefly proud of this possession
when they transform themselves into angels of light. Very many things that
occur, therefore, are their doing; and these deeds of theirs we ought all
the more carefully to shun as we acknowledge them to be very surprising.
And yet these very deeds forward my present arguments. For if such marvels
are wrought by unclean devils, how much mightier are the holy angels! and
what can not that God do who made the angels themselves capable of working
miracles!

   If, then, very many effects can be contrived by human art, of so
surprising a kind that the uninitiated think them divine, as when, e.g., in
a certain temple two magnets have been adjusted, one in the roof, another
in the floor, so that an iron image is suspended in mid-air between them,
one would suppose by the power of the divinity, were he ignorant of the
magnets above and beneath; or, as in the case of that lamp of Venus which
we already mentioned as being a skillful adaptation of asbestos; if, again,
by the help of magicians, whom Scripture calls sorcerers and enchanters,
the devils could gain such power that the noble poet Virgil should consider
himself justified in describing a very powerful magician in these lines:

  "Her charms can cure what souls she please,
   Rob other hearts of healthful ease,
   Turn rivers backward to their source,
   And make the stars forget their course,
           And call up ghosts from night:
   The ground shall bellow 'neath your feet:
   The mountain-ash shall quit its seat,
           And travel down the height;"(1)--

if this be so, how much more able is God to do those things which to
sceptics are incredible, but to His power easy, since it is He who has
given to stones and all other things their virtue, and to men their skill
to use them in wonderful ways; He who has given to the angels a nature more
mighty than that of all that lives on earth; He whose power surpasses all
marvels, and whose wisdom in working, ordaining, and permitting is no less
marvellous in its governance of all things than in its creation of all!

CHAP. 7.--THAT THE ULTIMATE REASON FOR BELIEVING MIRACLES IS THE
OMNIPOTENCE OF THE CREATOR.

   Why, then, cannot God effect both that the bodies of the dead shall
rise, and that the bodies of the damned shall be tormented in everlasting
fire,--God, who made the world full of countless miracles in sky, earth,
air and waters, while itself is a miracle unquestionably greater and more
admirable than all the marvels it is filled with? But those with whom or
against whom we are arguing, who believe both that there is a God who made
the world, and that there are gods created by Him who administer the
world's laws as His viceregents,--our adversaries, I say, who, so far from
denying emphatically, assert that there are powers in the world which
effect marvellous results (whether of their own accord, or because they are
invoked by some rite or prayer, or in some magical way), when we lay before
them the wonderful properties of other things which are neither rational
animals nor rational spirits, but such material objects as those we have
just cited, are in the habit of replying, This is their natural property,
their nature; these are the powers naturally belonging to them. Thus the
whole reason why Agrigentine salt dissolves in fire and crackles in water
is that this is its nature Yet this seems rather contrary to nature, which
has given not to fire but to water the power of melting salt, and the power
of scorching it not to water but to fire. But this they say, is the natural
property of this salt, to show effects contrary to these. The same reason,
therefore, is assigned to account for that Garamantian fountain, of which
one and the same runlet is chill by day and boiling by night, so that in
either extreme it cannot be touched. So also of that other fountain which,
though it is cold to the touch, and though it, like other fountains,
extinguishes a lighted torch, yet, unlike other fountains, and in a
surprising manner, kindles an extinguished torch. So of the asbestos stone,
which, though it has no heat of its own, yet when kindled by fire applied
to it, cannot be extinguished. And so of the rest, which I am weary of
reciting, and in which, though there seems to be an extraordinary property
contrary to nature, yet no other reason is given for them than this, that
this is their nature,--a brief reason truly, and, I own, a satisfactory
reply. But since God is the author of all natures, how is it that our
adversaries, when they refuse to believe what we affirm, on the ground that
it is impossible, are unwilling to accept from us a better explanation than
their own, viz., that this is the will of Almighty God,--for certainly He
is called Almighty only because He is mighty to do all He will,--He who was
able to create so many marvels, not only unknown, but very well
ascertained, as I have been showing, and which, were they not under our own
observation, or reported by recent and credible witnesses, would certainly
be pronounced impossible? For as for those marvels which have no other
testimony than the writers in whose books we read them, and who wrote
without being divinely instructed, and are therefore liable to human error,
we cannot justly blame any one who declines to believe them.

   For my own part, I do not wish all the marvels I have cited to be
rashly accepted, for I do not myself believe them implicitly, save those
which have either come under my own observation, or which any one can
readily verify, such as the lime which is heated by water and cooled by
oil; the magnet which by its mysterious and insensible suction attracts the
iron, but has no affect on a straw; the peacock's flesh which triumphs over
the corruption from which not the flesh of Plato is exempt; the chaff so
chilling that it prevents snow from melting, so heating that it forces
apples to ripen; the glowing fire, which, in accordance with its glowing
appearance, whitens the stones it bakes, while; contrary to its glowing
appearance, it begrimes most things it burns (just as dirty stains are made
by oil, however pure it be, and as the lines drawn by white silver are
black); the charcoal, too, which by the action of fire is so completely
changed from its original, that a finely marked piece of wood becomes
hideous, the tough becomes brittle, the decaying incorruptible. Some of
these things I know in common with many other persons, some of them in
common with all men; and there are many others which I have not room to
insert in this book. But of those which I have cited, though I have not
myself seen, but only read about them, I have been unable to find
trustworthy witnesses from whom I could ascertain whether they are facts,
except in the case of that fountain in which burning torches are
extinguished and extinguished torches lit, and of the apples of Sodom,
which are ripe to appearance, but are filled with dust. And indeed I have
not met with any who said they had seen that fountain in Epirus, but with
some who knew there was a similar fountain in Gaul not far from Grenoble.
The fruit of the trees of Sodom, however, is not only spoken of in books
worthy of credit, but so many persons say that they have seen it that I
cannot doubt the fact. But the rest of the prodigies I receive without
definitely affirming or denying them; and I have cited them because I read
them in the authors of our adversaries, and that I might prove how many
things many among themselves believe, because they are written in the works
of their own literary men, though no rational explanation of them is given,
and yet they scorn to believe us when we assert that Almighty God will do
what is beyond their experience and observation; and this they do even
though we assign a reason for His work. For what better and stronger reason
for such things can be given than to say that the Almighty is able to bring
them to pass, and will bring them to pass, having predicted them in those
books in which many other marvels which have already come to pass were
predicted? Those things which are regarded as impossible will be
accomplished according to the word, and by the power of that God who
predicted and effected that the incredulous nations should believe
incredible wonders.

CHAP. 8.--THAT IT IS NOT CONTRARY TO NATURE THAT, IN AN OBJECT WHOSE NATURE
IS KNOWN, THERE SHOULD BE DISCOVERED AN ALTERATION OF THE PROPERTIES WHICH
HAVE BEEN KNOWN AS ITS NATURAL PROPERTIES.

   But if they reply that their reason for not believing us when we say
that human bodies will always burn and vet never die, is that the nature of
human bodies is known to be quite otherwise constituted; if they say that
for this miracle we cannot give the reason which was valid in the case of
those natural miracles, viz., that this is the natural property, the nature
of the thing,--for we know that this is not the nature of human flesh,--we
find our answer in the sacred writings, that even this human flesh was
constituted in one fashion before there was sin,--was constituted, in fact,
so that it could not die,--and in another fashion after sin, being made
such as we see it in this miserable state of mortality, unable to retain
enduring life. And so in the resurrection of the dead shall it be
constituted differently from its present well-known condition. But as they
do not believe these writings of ours, in which we read what nature man had
in paradise, and how remote he was from the necessity of death,--and
indeed, if they did believe them, we should of course have little trouble
in debating with them the future punishment of the damned,--we must produce
from the writings of their own most learned authorities some instances to
show that it is possible for a thing to become different from what it was
formerly known characteristically to be.

   From the book of Marcus Varro, entitled, Of the Race of the Roman
People, I cite word for word the following instance: "There occurred a
remarkable celestial portent; for Castor records that, in the brilliant
star Venus, called Vesperugo by Plautus, and the lovely Hesperus by Homer,
there occurred so strange a prodigy, that it changed its color, size, form,
course, which never happened before nor since. Adrastus of Cyzicus, and
Dion of Naples, famous mathematicians, said that this occurred in the reign
of Ogyges." So great an author as Varro would certainly not have called
this a portent had it not seemed to he contrary to nature. For we say that
all portents are contrary to nature; but they are not so. For how is that
contrary to nature which happens by the will of God, since the will of so
mighty a Creator is certainly the nature of each created thing? A portent,
therefore, happens not contrary to nature, but contrary to what we know as
nature. But who can number the multitude of portents recorded in profane
histories? Let us then at present fix our attention on this one only which
concerns the matter in hand. What is there so arranged by the Author of the
nature of heaven and earth as the exactly ordered course of the stars? What
is there established by laws so sure and inflexible? And yet, when it
pleased Him who with sovereignty and supreme power regulates all He has
created, a star conspicuous among the rest by its size and splendor changed
its color, size, form, and, most wonderful of all, the order and law of its
course! Certainly that phenomenon disturbed the canons of the astronomers,
if there were any then, by which they tabulate, as by unerring computation,
the past and future movements of the stars, so as to take upon them to
affirm that this which happened to the morning star (Venus) never happened
before nor since. But we read in the divine books that even the sun itself
stood still when a holy man, Joshua the son of Nun, had begged this from
God until victory should finish the battle he had begun; and that it even
went back, that the promise of fifteen years added to the life of king
Hezekiah might be sealed by this additional prodigy. But these miracles,
which were vouchsafed to the merits of holy men, even when our adversaries
believe them, they attribute to magical arts; so Virgil, in the lines I
quoted above, ascribes to magic the power to

  "Turn rivers backward to their source,
   And make the stars forget their course."

For in our sacred books we read that this also happened, that a river
"turned backward," was stayed above while the lower part flowed on, when
the people passed over under the above-mentioned leader, Joshua the son of
Nun; and also when Elias the prophet crossed; and afterwards, when his
disciple Elisha passed through it: and we have just mentioned how, in the
case of king Hezekiah the greatest of the "stars forgot its course." But
what happened to Venus, according to Varro, was not said by him to have
happened in answer to any man's prayer.

   Let not the sceptics then benight themselves in this knowledge of the
nature of things, as if divine power cannot bring to pass in an object
anything else than what their own experience has shown them to be in its
nature. Even the very things which are most commonly known as natural would
not be less wonderful nor less effectual to excite surprise in all who
beheld them, if men were not accustomed to admire nothing but what is rare.
For who that thoughtfully observes the countless multitude of men, and
their similarity of nature, can fail to remark with surprise and admiration
the individuality of each man's appearance, suggesting to us, as it does,
that unless men were like one another, they would not be distinguished from
the rest of the animals; while unless, on the other hand, they were unlike,
they could not be distinguished from one another, so that those whom we
declare to be like, we also find to be unlike? And the unlikeness is the
more wonderful consideration of the two; for a common nature seems rather
to require similarity. And yet, because the very rarity of things is that
which makes them wonderful, we are filled with much greater wonder when we
are introduced to two men so like, that we either always or frequently
mistake in endeavoring to distinguish between them.

   But possibly, though Varro is a heathen historian, and a very learned
one, they may disbelieve that what I have cited from him truly occurred; or
they may say the example is invalid, because the star did not for any
length of time continue to follow its new course, but returned to its
ordinary orbit. There is, then, another phenomenon at present open to their
observation, and which, m my opinion, ought to be sufficient to convince
them that, though they have observed and ascertained some natural law, they
ought not on that account to prescribe to God, as if He could not change
and turn it into something very different from what they have observed. The
land of Sodom was not always as it now is; but once it had the appearance
of other lands, and enjoyed equal if not richer fertility; for, in the
divine narrative, it was compared to the paradise of God. But after it was
touched [by fire] from heaven, as even pagan history testifies, and as is
now witnessed by those who visit the spot, it became unnaturally and
horribly sooty in appearance; and its apples, under a deceitful appearance
of ripeness, contain ashes within. Here is a thing which was of one kind,
and is of another. You see how its nature was converted by the wonderful
transmutation wrought by the Creator of all natures into so very disgusting
a diversity,--an alteration which after so long a time took place, and
after so long a time still continues. As therefore it was not impossible to
God to create such natures as He pleased, so it is not impossible to Him to
change these natures of His own creation into whatever He pleases, and thus
spread abroad a multitude of those marvels which are called monsters,
portents, prodigies, phenomena,(1) and which if I were minded to cite and
record, what end would there be to this work? They say that they are called
"monsters," because they demonstrate or signify something; "portents,"
because they portend something; and so forth.(2) But let their diviners see
how they are either deceived, or even when they do predict true things, it
is because they are inspired by spirits, who are intent upon entangling the
minds of men (worthy, indeed, of such a fate) in the meshes of a hurtful
curiosity, or how they light now and then upon some truth, because they
make so many predictions. Yet, for our part, these things which happen
contrary to nature, and are said to be contrary to nature (as the apostle,
speaking after the manner of men, says, that to graft the wild olive into
the good olive, and to partake of its fatness, is contrary to nature), and
are called monsters, phenomena, portents, prodigies, ought to demonstrate,
portend, predict that God will bring to pass what He has foretold regarding
the bodies of men, no difficulty preventing Him, no law of nature
prescribing to Him His limit. How He has foretold what He is to do, I think
I have sufficiently shown in the preceding book, culling from the sacred
Scriptures, both of the New and Old Testaments, not, indeed, all the
passages that relate to this, but as many as I judged to suffice for this
work.

CHAP. 9.--OF HELL, AND THE NATURE OF ETERNAL PUNISHMENTS.

   So then what God by His prophet has said of the everlasting punishment
of the damned shall come to pass--shall without fail come to pass,--"their
worm shall not die, neither shall their fire be quenched."(3) In order to
impress this upon us most forcibly, the Lord Jesus Himself, when ordering
us to cut off our members, meaning thereby those persons whom a man loves
as the most useful members of his body, says, "It is better for thee to
enter into life maimed, than having two hands to go into hell, into the
fire that never shall be quenched; where their worm dieth not, and their
fire is not quenched." Similarly of the foot: "It is better for thee to
enter halt into life, than having two feet to be cast into hell, into the
fire that never shall be quenched; where their worm dieth not, and the fire
is not quenched." So, too, of the eye: "It is better for thee to enter into
the kingdom of God with one eye, than having two eyes to be cast into hell
fire: where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched."(1) He did
not shrink from using the same words three times over in one passage. And
who is not terrified by this repetition, and by the threat of that
punishment uttered so vehemently by the lips of the Lord Himself?

   Now they who would refer both the fire and the worm to the spirit, and
not to the body, affirm that the wicked, who are separated from the
kindgdom of God, shall be burned, as it were, by the anguish of a spirit
repenting too late and fruitlessly; and they contend that fire is therefore
not inappropriately used to  express this burning torment, as when the
apostle exclaims "Who is offended, and I burn not?"(2) The worm, too, they
think, is to be similarly understood. For it is written they say, "As the
moth consumes the garment, and the worm the wood, so does grief consume the
heart of a man."(3) But they who make no doubt that in that future
punishment both body and soul shall suffer, affirm that the body shall be
burned with fire, while the soul shall be, as it were, gnawed by a worm of
anguish. Though this view is more reasonable,--for it is absurd to suppose
that either body or soul will escape pain in the future punishment,--yet,
for my own part, I find it easier to understand both as referring to the
body than to suppose that neither does; and I think that Scripture is
silent regarding the spiritual pain of the damned, because, though not
expressed, it is necessarily understood that in a body thus tormented the
soul also is tortured with a fruitless repentance. For we read in the
ancient Scriptures, "The vengeance of the flesh of the ungodly is fire and
worms."(4) It might have been more briefly said, "The vengeance of the
ungodly." Why, then, was it said, "The flesh of the ungodly," unless
because both the fire and the worm are to be the punishment of the flesh?
Or if the object of the writer in saying, "The vengeance of the flesh," was
to indicate that this shall be the punishment of those who live after the
flesh (for this leads to the second death, as the apostle intimated when he
said, "For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die"(5), let each one make
his own choice, either assigning the fire to the body and the worm to the
soul,--the one figuratively, the other really,--or assigning both really to
the body. For I have already sufficiently made out that animals can live in
the fire, in burning without being consumed, in without dying, by a miracle
of the most omnipotent Creator, to whom no one can deny that this is
possible, if he be not ignorant by whom has been made all that is wonderful
in all nature. For it is God Himself who has wrought all these miracles,
great and small, in this world which I have mentioned, and incomparably
more which I have omitted, and who has enclosed these marvels in this
world, itself the greatest miracle of all. Let each man, then, choose which
he will, whether he thinks that the worm is real and pertains to the body,
or that spiritual things are meant by bodily representations, and that it
belongs to the soul. But which of these is true will be more readily
discovered by the facts themselves, when there shall be in the saints such
knowledge as shall not require that their own experience teach them the
nature of these punishments, but as shall, by its own fullness and
perfection, suffice to instruct them in this matter. For "now we know in
part, until that which is perfect is come;"(6) only, this we believe about
those future bodies, that they shall be such as shall certainly be pained
by the fire.

CHAP. 10.--WHETHER THE FIRE OF HELL, IF IT BE MATERIAL FIRE, CAN BURN THE
WICKED SPIRITS, THAT IS TO SAY, DEVILS, WHO ARE IMMATERIAL.

   Here arises the question: If the fire is not to be immaterial,
analogous to the pain of the soul, but material, burning by contact, so
that bodies may be tormented in it, how can evil spirits be punished in it?
For it is undoubtedly the same fire which is to serve for the punishment of
men and of devils, according to the words of Christ: "Depart from me, ye
cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels;"(7)
unless, perhaps, as learned men have thought, the devils have a kind of
body made of that dense and humid air which we feel strikes us when the
wind is blowing. And if this kind of substance could not be affected by
fire, it could not burn when heated in the baths. For in order to burn, it
is first burned, and affects other things as itself is affected. But if any
one maintains that the devils have no bodies, this is not a matter either
to be laboriously  investigated, or to be debated with keenness. For why
may we not assert that even immaterial spirits may, in some extraordinary
way, yet really be pained by the punishment of material fire, if the
spirits of men, which also are certainly immaterial, are both now contained
in material members of the body, and in the world to come shall be
indissolubly united to their own bodies? Therefore, though the devils have
no bodies, yet their spirits, that is, the devils themselves, shall be
brought  into thorough contact with the material fires, to be tormented by
them; not that the fires themselves with which they are brought into
contact shall be animated by their connection with these spirits, and
become animals composed of body and spirit, but, as I said, this junction
will be effected in a wonderful and ineffable way, so that they shall
receive pain from the fires, but give no life to them. And, in truth, this
other mode of union, by which bodies and spirits are bound together and
become animals, is thoroughly marvellous, and  beyond the comprehension of
man, though this it is which is man.

   I would indeed say that these spirits will burn without any body of
their own, as that rich man was burning in hell when he exclaimed, "I am
tormented in this flame,"(1) were I not aware that it is aptly said in
reply, that that flame was of the same nature as the  eyes he raised and
fixed on Lazarus, as the tongue on which he entreated that a little cooling
water might be dropped, or as the finger of Lazarus, with which he asked
that this might be done,--all of which took place where souls exist without
bodies. Thus, therefore, both that flame in which he burned and that drop
he begged were immaterial, and resembled the visions of sleepers or persons
in an ecstasy, to whom immaterial objects appear in a bodily form. For the
man himself who is in such a state, though it be in spirit only, not in
body, yet sees himself so like to his own body that he cannot discern any
difference whatever. But that hell, which also is called a lake of fire and
brimstone,(2) will be material fire, and will torment the bodies of the
damned, whether men or devils,--the solid bodies of the one, aerial bodies
of the others; or if only men have bodies as well as souls, yet the evil
spirits, though without bodies, shall be so connected with the bodily fires
as to receive pain without imparting life. One fire certainly shall be the
lot of both, for thus the truth has declared.

CHAP. 11.--WHETHER IT IS JUST THAT THE PUNISHMENTS OF SINS LAST LONGER THAN
THE SINS THEMSELVES LASTED.

   Some, however, of those against whom we are defending the city of God,
think it unjust that any man be doomed to an eternal punishment for sins
which, no matter how great they were, were perpetrated in a brief space of
time; as if any law ever regulated the duration of the punishment by the
duration of the offence punished! Cicero tells us that the laws recognize
eight kinds of penalty,-damages, imprisonment, scourging, reparation,(3)
disgrace, exile, death, slavery. Is there any one of these which may be
compressed into a brevity proportioned to the rapid commission of the
offence, so that no longer time may be spent in its punishment than in its
perpetration, unless, perhaps, reparation? For this requires that the
offender suffer what he did, as that clause of the law says, "Eye for eye,
tooth for tooth."(4) For certainly it is possible for an offender to lose
his eye by the severity of legal retaliation in as brief a time as he
deprived another of his eye by the  cruelty of his own lawlessness. But if
scourging be a reasonable penalty for kissing another man's wife, is not
the fault of an instant visited with long hours of atonement, and the
momentary delight punished with lasting pain? What shall we say of
imprisonment? Must the criminal be confined only for so long a time as he
spent on the offence for which he is committed? or is not a penalty of many
years' confinement imposed on the slave who has provoked his master with a
word, or has struck him a blow that is quickly over? And as to damages,
disgrace, exile, slavery, which are commonly inflicted so as to admit of no
relaxation or pardon, do not these resemble eternal punishments in so far
as this short life allows a resemblance? For they are not eternal only
because the life in which they are endured is not eternal; and yet the
crimes which are punished with these most protracted sufferings are
perpetrated in a very brief space of time. Nor is there any one who would
suppose that the pains of punishment should occupy as short a time as the
offense; or that murder, adultery, sacrilege, or any other crime, should be
measured, not by the enormity of the injury or wickedness, but by the
length of time spent in its perpetration. Then as to the award of death for
any great crime, do the laws reckon the punishment to  consist in the brief
moment in which death is inflicted, or in this, that the offender is
eternally banished from the society of the living? And just as the
punishment of the first death cuts men off from this present mortal city,
so does the punishment of the second death cut men off from that future
immortal city. For as the laws of this present city do not provide for the
executed criminal's return to it, so neither is he who is condemned to the
second dearth recalled again to life everlasting. But if temporal sin is
visited with eternal punishment, how, then, they say, is that true which
your Christ says, "With the same measure that ye mete withal it shall be
measured to you again?"(1) and they do not observe that "the same measure"
refers, not to an equal space of time, but to the retribution of evil or,
in other words, to the law by which he, who has done evil suffers evil.
Besides, these words could be appropriately understood as referring to the
matter of which our Lord was speaking when He used them, viz., judgments
and condemnation. Thus, if he who unjustly judges and condemns is himself
justly judged and condemned, he receives "with the same measure" though not
the same thing as he gave. For judgment he gave, and judgment he receives,
though the judgment he gave was unjust, the judgment he receives just.

CHAP. 12.--OF THE GREATNESS OF THE FIRST TRANSGRESSION, ON ACCOUNT OF WHICH
ETERNAL PUNISHMENT IS DUE TO ALL WHO ARE NOT WITHIN THE PALE OF THE
SAVIOUR'S GRACE.

   But eternal punishment seems hard and unjust to human perceptions,
because in the weakness of our mortal condition there is wanting that
highest and purest wisdom by which it can be perceived how great a
wickedness was committed in that first transgression. The more enjoyment
man found in God, the greater was his wickedness in abandoning Him; and he
who destroyed in himself a good which might have been eternal, became
worthy of eternal evil. Hence the whole mass of the human race is
condemned; for he who at first gave entrance to sin has been punished with
all his posterity who were in him as in a root, so that no one is exempt
from this just and due punishment, unless delivered by mercy and undeserved
grace; and the an race is so apportioned that in some is displayed the
efficacy of merciful grace, in the rest the efficacy of just retribution.
For both could not be displayed in all; for if all had remained(2) under
the punishment of just condemnation, there would have been seen in no one
the mercy of redeeming grace. And, on the other hand, if all had been
transferred from darkness to light, the severity of retribution would have
been manifested in none. But many more are left under punishment than are
delivered from it, in order that it may thus be shown what was due to all.
And had it been inflicted on all, no one could justly have found fault with
the justice of Him who taketh vengeance; whereas, in the deliverance of so
many from that just award, there is cause to render the most cordial thanks
to the gratuitous bounty of Him who delivers.

CHAP. 13.--AGAINST THE OPINION OF THOSE WHO THINK THAT THE PUNISHMENTS OF
THE WICKED AFTER DEATH ARE PURGATORIAL.

   The Platonists, indeed, while they maintain that no sins are
unpunished, suppose that all punishment is administered for remedial
purposes,(3) be it inflicted by human or divine law, in this life or after
death; for a man may be scathless here, or, though punished, may yet not
amend. Hence that passage of Virgil, where, when he had said of our earthly
bodies and mortal members, that our souls derive--

  "Hence wild desires and grovelling fears,
   And human laughter, human tears;
   Immured in dungeon-seeming night,
   They look abroad, yet see no light,"

goes on to say:

  "Nay, when at last the life has fled,
   And left the body cold and dead,
   Ee'n then there passes not away
   The painful heritage of clay;
   Full many a long-contracted stain
   Perforce must linger deep in grain.
   So penal sufferings they endure
   For ancient crime, to make them pure;
   Some hang aloft in open view,
   For winds to pierce them through and through,
   While others purge their guilt deep-dyed
   In burning fire or whelming tide."(4)

They who are of this opinion would have all punishments after death to be
purgatorial; and as the elements of air, fire, and water are superior to
earth, one or other of these may be the instrument of expiating and purging
away the stain contracted by the contagion of earth. So Virgil hints at the
air in the words, "Some hang aloft for winds to pierce;" at the water in
"whelming tide;" and at fire in the expression "in burning fire." For our
part, we recognize that even in this life some punishments are
purgatorial,--not, indeed, to those whose life is none the better, but
rather the worse for them, but to those who are constrained by them to
amend their life. All other punishments, whether temporal or eternal,
inflicted as they are on every one by divine providence, are sent either on
account of past sins, or of sins presently allowed in the life, or to
exercise and reveal a man's graces. They may be inflicted by the
instrumentality of bad men and angels as well as of the good. For even if
any one suffers some hurt through another's wickedness or mistake, the man
indeed sins whose ignorance or injustice does the harm; but God, who by His
just though hidden judgment permits it to be done, sins not. But temporary
punishments are suffered by some in this life only, by others after death,
by others both now and then; but all of them before that last and strictest
judgment. But of those who suffer temporary punishments after death, all
are not doomed to those everlasting pains which are to follow that
judgment; for to some, as we have already said, what is not remitted in
this world is remitted in the next, that is, they are not punished with the
eternal punishment of the world to come.

CHAP. 14.--OF THE TEMPORARY PUNISHMENTS OF THIS LIFE TO WHICH THE HUMAN
CONDITION IS SUBJECT.

   Quite exceptional are those who are not punished in this life, but only
afterwards. Yet that there have been some who have reached the decrepitude
of age without experiencing even the slightest sickness, and who have had
uninterrupted enjoyment of life, I know both from report and from my own
observation. However, the very life we mortals lead is itself all
punishment, for it is all temptation, as the Scriptures declare, where it
is written, "Is not the life of man upon earth a temptation?"(1) For
ignorance is itself no slight punishment, or want of culture, which it is
with justice thought so necessary to escape, that boys are compelled, under
pain of severe punishment, to learn trades or letters; and the learning to
which they are driven by punishment is itself so much of a punishment to
them, that they sometimes prefer the pain that drives them to the pain to
which they are driven by it. And who would not shrink from the alternative,
and elect to die, if it were proposed to him either to suffer death or to
be again an infant? Our infancy, indeed, introducing us to this life not
with laughter but with tears, seems unconsciously to predict the ills we
are to encounter.(2) Zoroaster alone is said to have laughed when he was
born, and that unnatural omen portended no good to him. For he is said to
have been the inventor of magical arts, though indeed they were unable to
secure to him even the poor felicity of this present life against the
assaults of his enemies. For, himself king of the Bactrians, he was
conquered by Ninus king of the Assyrians. In short, the words of Scripture,
"An heavy yoke is upon the sons of Adam, from the day that they go out of
their mother's womb till the day that they return to the mother of all
things,"(3)--these words so infallibly find fulfillment, that even the
little ones, who by the layer of regeneration have been freed from the bond
of original sin in which alone they were held, yet suffer many ills, and in
some instances are even exposed to the assaults of evil spirits. But let us
not for a moment suppose that this suffering is prejudicial to their future
happiness, even though it has so increased as to sever soul from body, and
to terminate their life in that early age.

CHAP. 15.--THAT EVERYTHING WHICH THE GRACE OF GOD DOES IN THE WAY OF
RESCUING US FROM THE INVETERATE EVILS IN WHICH WE ARE SUNK, PERTAINS TO THE
FUTURE WORLD, IN WHICH ALL THINGS ARE MADE NEW.

   Nevertheless, in the "heavy yoke that is laid upon the sons of Adam,
from the day that they go out of their mother's womb to the day that they
return to the mother of all things," there is found an admirable though
painful monitor teaching us to be sober-minded, and convincing us that this
life has become penal in consequence of that outrageous wickedness which
was perpetrated in Paradise, and that all to which the New Testament
invites belongs to that future inheritance which awaits us in the world to
come, and is offered for our acceptance, as the earnest that we may, in its
own due time, obtain that of which it is the pledge. Now, therefore, let us
walk in hope, and let us by the spirit mortify the deeds of the flesh, and
so make progress from day to day. For "the Lord knoweth them that are
His;"(1) and "as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are sons of
God,"(2) but by grace, not by nature. For there is but one Son of God by
nature, who in His compassion became Son of man for our sakes, that we, by
nature sons of men, might by grace become through Him sons of God. For He,
abiding unchangeable, took upon Him our nature, that thereby He might take
us to Himself; and, holding fast His own divinity, He became partaker of
our infirmity, that we, being changed into some better thing, might, by
participating in His righteousness and immortality, lose our own properties
of sin and mortality, and preserve whatever good quality He had implanted
in our nature perfected now by sharing in the goodness of His nature. For
as by the sin of one man we have fallen into a misery so deplorable, so by
the righteousness of one Man, who also is God, shall we come to a
blessedness inconceivably exalted. Nor ought any one to trust that he has
passed from the one man to the other until he shall have reached that place
where there is no temptation, and have entered into the peace which he
seeks in the many and various conflicts of this war, in which "the flesh
lusteth against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh."(3) Now, such
a war as this would have had no existence if human nature had, in the
exercise of free will, continued steadfast in the uprightness in which it
was created. But now in its misery it makes war upon itself, because in its
blessedness it would not continue at peace with God; and this, though it be
a miserable calamity, is better than the earlier stages of this life, which
do not recognize that a war is to be maintained. For better is it to
contend with vices than without conflict to be subdued by them. Better, I
say, is war with the hope of peace everlasting than captivity without any
thought of deliverance. We long, indeed, for the cessation of this war,
and, kindled by the flame of divine love, we burn for entrance on that
well-ordered peace in which whatever is inferior is for ever subordinated
to what is above it. But if (which God forbid) there had been no hope of so
blessed a consummation, we should still have preferred to endure the
hardness of this conflict, rather than, by our non-resistance, to yield
ourselves to the dominion of vice.

CHAP. 16.--THE LAWS OF GRACE, WHICH EXTEND TO ALL THE EPOCHS OF THE LIFE OF
THE REGENERATE.

   But such is God's mercy towards the vessels of mercy which He has
prepared for glory, that even the first age of man, that is, infancy, which
submits without any resistance to the flesh, and the second age, which is
called boyhood, and which has not yet understanding enough to undertake
this warfare, and therefore yields to almost every vicious pleasure
(because though this age has the power of speech,(4) and may therefore seem
to have passed infancy, the mind is still too weak to comprehend the
commandment), yet if either of these ages has received the sacraments of
the Mediator, then, although the present life be immediately brought to an
end, the child, having been translated from the power of darkness to the
kingdom of Christ, shall not only be saved from eternal punishments, but
shall not even suffer purgatorial torments after death. For spritual
regeneration of itself suffices to prevent any evil consequences resulting
after death from the connection with death which carnal generation
forms.(5) But when we reach that age which can now comprehend the
commandment, and submit to the dominion of law, we must declare war upon
vices, and wage this war keenly, lest we be landed in damnable sins. And if
vices have not gathered strength, by habitual victory they are more easily
overcome and subdued; but if they have been used to conquer and rule, it is
only with difficulty and labor they are mastered. And indeed this victory
cannot be sincerely and truly gained but by delighting in true
righteousness, and it is faith in Christ that gives this. For if the law be
present with its command, and the Spirit be absent with His help, the
presence of the prohibition serves only to increase the desire to sin, and
adds the guilt of transgression. Sometimes, indeed, patent vices are
overcome by other and hidden vices, which are reckoned virtues, though
pride and a kind of ruinous self-sufficiency are their informing
principles. Accordingly vices are then only to be considered overcome when
they are conquered by the love of God, which God Himself alone gives, and
which He gives only through the Mediator between God and men, the man
Christ Jesus, who became a partaker of our mortality that He might make us
partakers of His divinity. But few indeed are they who are so happy as to
have passed their youth without committing any damnable sins, either by
dissolute or violent conduct, or by following some godless and unlawful
opinions, but have subdued by their greatness of soul everything in them
which could make them the slaves of carnal pleasures. The greater number
having first become transgressors of the law that they have received, and
having allowed vice to have the ascendency in them, then flee to grace for
help, and so, by a penitence more bitter, and a struggle more violent than
it would otherwise have been, they subdue the soul to God, and thus give it
its lawful authority over the flesh, and become victors. Whoever,
therefore, desires to escape eternal punishment, let him not only be
baptized, but also justified in Christ, and so let him in truth pass from
the devil to Christ. And let him not fancy that there are any purgatorial
pains except before that final and dreadful judgment. We must not, however
deny that even the eternal fire will be proportioned to the deserts of the
wicked, so that to some it will be more, and to others less painful,
whether this result be accomplished by a variation in the temperature of
the fire itself, graduated according to every one's merit, or whether it be
that the heat remains the same, but that all do not feel it with equal
intensity of torment.

CHAP. 17.--OF THOSE WHO FANCY THAT NO MEN SHALL BE PUNISHED ETERNALLY.

   I must now, I see, enter the lists of amicable controversy with those
tender-hearted Christians who decline to believe that any, or that all of
those whom the infallibly just Judge may pronounce worthy of the punishment
of hell, shall suffer eternally, and who suppose that they shall be
delivered after a fixed term of punishment, longer or shorter according to
the amount of each man's sin. In respect of this matter, Origen was even
more indulgent; for he believed that even the devil himself and his angels,
after suffering those more severe and prolonged pains which their sins
deserved, should be delivered from their torments, and associated with the
holy angels. But the Church, not without reason, condemned him for this and
other errors, especially for his theory of the ceaseless alternation of
happiness and misery, and the interminable transitions from the one state
to the other at fixed periods of ages; for in this theory he lost even the
credit of being merciful, by allotting to the saints real miseries for the
expiation of their sins, and false happiness, which brought them no true
and secure joy, that is, no fearless assurance of eternal blessedness. Very
different, however, is the error we speak of, which is dictated by the
tenderness of these Christians who suppose that the sufferings of those who
are condemned in the judgment will be temporary, while the blessedness of
all who are sooner or later set free will be eternal. Which opinion, if it
is good and true because it is merciful, will be so much the better and
truer in proportion as it becomes more merciful. Let, then, this fountain
of mercy be extended, and flow forth even to the lost angels, and let them
also be set free, at least after as many and long ages as seem fit! Why
does this stream of mercy  flow to all the human race, and dry up as soon
as it reaches the angelic? And yet they dare not extend their pity further,
and propose the deliverance of the devil himself. Or if any one is bold
enough to do so, he does indeed put to shame their charity, but is himself
convicted of error that is more unsightly, and a wresting of God's truth
that is more perverse, m proportion as his clemency of sentiment seems to
be greater.(1)

CHAP. 18.--OF THOSE WHO FANCY THAT, ON ACCOUNT OF THE SAINTS' INTERCESSION,
MAN SHALL BE DAMNED IN THE LAST JUDGMENT.

   There are others, again, with whose opinions I have become acquainted
in conversation, who, though they seem to reverence the holy Scriptures,
are yet of reprehensible life, and who accordingly, in their own interest,
attribute to God a still greater compassion towards men. For they
acknowledge that it is truly predicted in the divine word that the wicked
and unbelieving are worthy of punishment, but they assert that, when the
judgment comes, mercy will prevail. For, say they, God, having compassion
on them, will give them up to the prayers and intercessions of His saints.
For if the saints used to pray for them when they suffered from their cruel
hatred, how much more will they do so when they see them prostrate and
humble suppliants? For we cannot, they say, believe that the saints shall
lose their bowels of compassion when they have attained the most perfect
and complete holiness; so that they who, when still sinners, prayed for
their enemies, should now, when they are freed from sin, withhold from
interceding for their suppliants. Or shall God refuse to listen to so many
of His beloved children, when their holiness has purged their prayers of
all hindrance to His answering them? And the passage of the psalm which is
cited by those who admit that wicked men and infidels shall be punished for
a long time, though in the end delivered from all sufferings, is claimed
also by the persons we are now speaking of as making much more for them.
The verse runs: "Shall God forget to be gracious? Shall He in anger shut up
His tender mercies?" His anger, they say, would condemn all that are
unworthy of everlasting happiness to endless punishment. But if He suffer
them to be punished for a long time, or even at all, must He not shut up
His tender mercies, which the Psalmist implies He will not do? For he does
not say, Shall He in anger shut up His tender mercies for a long period?
but he implies that He will not shut them up at all.

   And they deny that thus God's threat of judgment is proved to be false
even though He condemn no man, any more than we can say that His threat to
overthrow Nineveh was false, though the destruction which was absolutely
predicted was not accomplished. For He did not say, "Nineveh shall be
overthrown if they do not repent and amend their ways," but without any
such condition He foretold that the city should be overthrown. And this
prediction, they maintain, was true because God predicted the punishment
which they deserved, although He was not to inflict it. For though He
spared them on their repentance yet He was certainly aware that they would
repent, and, notwithstanding, absolutely and definitely predicted that the
city should be overthrown. This was true, they say, in the truth of
severity, because they were worthy of it; but in respect of the compassion
which checked His anger, so that He spared the suppliants from the
punishment with which He had threatened the rebellious, it was not true.
If, then, He spared those whom His own holy prophet was provoked at His
sparing, how much more shall He spare those more wretched suppliants for
whom all His saints shall intercede? And they suppose that this conjecture
of theirs is not hinted at in Scripture, for the sake of stimulating many
to reformation of life through fear of very protracted or eternal
sufferings, and of stimulating others to pray for those who have not
reformed. However, they think that the divine oracles are not altogether
silent on this point; for they ask to what purpose is it said, "How great
is Thy goodness which Thou hast hidden for them that fear Thee,"(2) if it
be not to teach us that the great and hidden sweetness of God's mercy is
concealed in order that men may fear? To the same purpose they think the
apostle said, "For God hath concluded all men in unbelief, that He may have
mercy upon all,"(3) signifying that no one should be condemned by God. And
yet they who hold this opinion do not extend it to the acquittal or
liberation of the devil and his angels. Their human tenderness is moved
only towards men, and they plead chiefly their own cause, holding out false
hopes of impunity to their own depraved lives by means of this quasi
compassion of God to the whole race. Consequently they who promise this
impunity even to the prince of the devils and his satellites make a still
fuller exhibition of the mercy of God.

CHAP. 19.--OF THOSE WHO PROMISE IMPUNITY FROM ALL SINS EVEN TO HERETICS,
THROUGH VIRTUE OF THEIR PARTICIPATION OF THE BODY OF CHRIST.

   So, too, there are others who promise this deliverance from eternal
punishment, not, indeed, to all men, but only to those who have been washed
in Christian baptism, and who become partakers of the body of Christ, no
matter how they have lived, or what heresy or impiety they have fallen
into. They ground this opinion on the saying of Jesus, "This is the bread
which cometh down from heaven, that if any man eat thereof, he shall not
die. I am the living bread which came down from heaven. If a man eat of
this bread, he shall live for ever."(4) Therefore, say they, it follows
that these persons must be delivered from death eternal, and at one time or
other be introduced to everlasting life.

CHAP. 20.--OF THOSE WHO PROMISE THIS INDULGENCE NOT TO ALL, BUT ONLY TO
THOSE WHO HAVE BEEN BAPTIZED AS CATHOLICS, THOUGH AFTERWARDS THEY HAVE
BROKEN OUT INTO MANY CRIMES AND HERESIES.

   There are others still who make this promise not even to all who have
received the sacraments of the baptism of Christ and of His body, but only
to the catholics, however badly they have lived. For these have eaten the
body of Christ, not only sacramentally but really, being incorporated in
His body, as the apostle says, "We, being many, are one bread, one
body;"(5) so that, though they have afterwards lapsed into some heresy, or
even into heathenism and idolatry, yet by virtue of this one thing, that
they have received the baptism of Christ, and eaten the body of Christ, in
the body of Christ, that is to say, in the catholic Church, they shall not
die eternally, but at one time or other obtain eternal life; and all that
wickedness of theirs shall not avail to make their punishment eternal, but
only proportionately long and severe.

CHAP. 21.--OF THOSE WHO ASSERT THAT ALL CATHOLICS WHO CONTINUE IN THE FAITH
EVEN THOUGH BY THE DEPRAVITY OF THEIR LIVES THEY HAVE MERITED HELL FIRE,
SHALL BE SAVED ON ACCOUNT OF THE "FOUNDATION" OF THEIR FAITH.

   There are some, too, who found upon the expression of Scripture, "He
that endureth to the end shall be saved,"(1) and who promise salvation only
to those who continue in the Church catholic; and though such persons have
lived badly, yet, say they, they shall be saved as by fire through virtue
of the foundation of which the apostle says, "For other foundation hath no
man laid than that which is laid, which is Christ Jesus. Now if any man
build upon this foundation gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay,
stubble; every man's work shall be made manifest: for the day of the Lord
shall declare it, for it shall be revealed by fire; and each man's work
shall be proved of what sort it is. If any man's work shall endure which he
hath built thereupon, he shall receive a reward. But if any man's work
shall be burned, he shall suffer loss: but he himself shall be saved; yet
so as through fire."(2) They say, accordingly, that the catholic Christian,
no matter what his life be, has Christ as his foundation, while this
foundation is not possessed by any heresy which is separated from the unity
of His body. And therefore, through virtue of this foundation, even though
the catholic Christian by the inconsistency of his life has been as one
building up wood, hay, stubble, upon it, they believe that he shall be
saved by fire, in other words, that he shall be delivered after tasting the
pain of that fire to which the wicked shall be condemned at the last
judgment.

CHAP. 22.--OF THOSE WHO FANCY THAT THE SINS WHICH ARE INTERMINGLED WITH
ALMS-DEEDS SHALL NOT BE CHARGED AT THE DAY OF JUDGMENT.

   I have also met with some who are of opinion that such only as neglect
to cover their sins with alms-deeds shall be punished in everlasting fire;
and they cite the words of the Apostle James, "He shall have judgment
without mercy who hath shown no mercy."(3) Therefore, say they, he who has
not amended his ways, but yet has intermingled his profligate and wicked
actions with works of mercy, shall receive mercy in the judgment, so that
he shall either quite escape condemnation, or shall be liberated from his
doom after some time shorter or longer. They suppose that this was the
reason why the Judge Himself of quick and dead declined to mention anything
else than works of mercy done or omitted, when awarding to those on His
right hand life eternal, and to those on His left everlasting
punishment.(4) To the same purpose, they say, is the daily petition we make
in the Lord's prayer, "Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors."(5)
For, no doubt, whoever pardons the person who has wronged him does a
charitable action. And this has been so highly commended by the Lord
Himself, that He says, "For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your
heavenly Father will also forgive you: but if ye forgive not men their
trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses."(6) And so it
is to this kind of alms-deeds that the saying of the Apostle James refers,
"He shall have judgment without mercy that hath shown no mercy." And our
Lord, they say, made no distinction of great and small sins, but "Your
Father will forgive your sins, if ye forgive men theirs." Consequently they
conclude that, though a man has led an abandoned life up to the last day of
it, yet whatsoever his sins have been, they are all remitted by virtue of
this daily prayer, if only he has been mindful to attend to this one thing,
that when they who have done him any injury ask his pardon, he forgive them
from his heart.

   When, by God's help, I have replied to all these errors, I shall
conclude this (twenty-first) book.

CHAP. 23.--AGAINST THOSE WHO ARE OF OPINION THAT THE PUNISHMENT NEITHER OF
THE DEVIL NOR OF WICKED MEN SHALL BE ETERNAL.

   First of all, it behoves us to inquire and to recognize why the Church
has not been able to tolerate the idea that promises cleansing or
indulgence to the devil even after the most severe and protracted
punishment. For so many holy men, imbued with the spirit of the Old and New
Testament, did not grudge to angels of any rank or character that they
should enjoy the blessedness of the heavenly kingdom after being cleansed
by suffering, but rather they perceived that they could not invalidate nor
evacuate the divine sentence which the Lord predicted that He would
pronounce in the judgment, saying, "Depart from me, ye cursed, into
everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels."(7) For here it is
evident that the devil and his angels shall burn in everlasting fire. And
there is also that declaration in the Apocalypse, "The devil their deceiver
was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where also are the beast and
the false prophet. And they shall be tormented day and night for ever."(1)
In the former passage "everlasting" is used, in the latter "for ever;" and
by these words Scripture is wont to mean nothing else than endless
duration. And therefore no other reason, no reason more obvious and just,
can be found for holding it as the fixed and immovable belief of the truest
piety, that the devil and his angels shall never return to the justice and
life of the saints, than that Scripture, which deceives no man, says that
God spared them not, and that they were condemned beforehand by Him, and
cast into prisons of darkness in hell,(2) being reserved to the judgment of
the last day, when eternal fire shall receive them, in which they shall be
tormented world without end. And if this be so, how can it be believed that
all men, or even some, shall be withdrawn from the endurance of punishment
after some time has been spent in it? how can this be believed without
enervating our faith in the eternal punishment of the devils? For if all or
some of those to whom it shall be said, "Depart from me, ye cursed, into
everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels,"(3) are not to be
always in that fire, then what reason is there for believing that the devil
and his angels shall always be there? Or is perhaps the sentence of God,
which is to be pronounced on wicked men and angels alike, to be true in the
case of the angels, false in that of men? Plainly it will be so if the
conjectures of men are to weigh more than the word of God. But because this
is absurd, they who desire to be rid of eternal punishment ought to abstain
from arguing against God, and rather, while yet there is opportunity, obey
the divine commands. Then what a fond fancy is it to suppose that eternal
punishment means long continued punishment, while eternal life means life
without end, since Christ in the very same passage spoke of both in similar
terms in one and the same sentence, "These shall go away into eternal
punishment, but the righteous into life eternal!"(4) If both destinies are
"eternal," then we must either understand both as long-continued but at
last terminating, or both as endless. For they are correlative,--on the one
hand, punishment eternal, on the other hand, life eternal. And to say in
one and the same sense, life eternal shall be endless, punishment eternal
shall come to an end, is the height of absurdity. Wherefore, as the eternal
life of the saints shall be endless, so too the eternal punishment of those
who are doomed to it shall have no end.

CHAP. 24.--AGAINST THOSE WHO FANCY THAT IN THE JUDGMENT OF GOD ALL THE
ACCUSED WILL BE SPARED IN VIRTUE OF THE PRAYERS OF THE SAINTS.

   And this reasoning is equally conclusive against those who, in their
own interest, but under the guise of a greater tenderness of spirit,
attempt to invalidate the words of God, and who assert that these words are
true, not because men shall suffer those things which are threatened by
God, but because they deserve to suffer them. For God, they say, will yield
them to the prayers of His saints, who will then the more earnestly pray
for their enemies, as they shall be more perfect in holiness, and whose
prayers will be the more efficacious and the more worthy of God's ear,
because now purged from all sin whatsoever. Why, then, if in that perfected
holiness their prayers be so pure and all-availing, will they not use them
in behalf of the angels for whom eternal fire is prepared, that God may
mitigate His sentence and alter it, and extricate them from that fire? Or
will there, perhaps, be some one hardy enough to affirm that even the holy
angels will make common cause with holy men (then become the equals of
God's angels), and will intercede for the guilty, both men and angels, that
mercy may spare them the punishment which truth has pronounced them to
deserve? But this has been asserted by no one sound in the faith; nor will
be. Otherwise there is no reason why the Church should not even now pray
for the devil and his angels, since God her Master has ordered her to pray
for her enemies. The reason, then, which prevents the Church from now
praying for the wicked angels, whom she knows to be her enemies, is the
identical reason which shall prevent her, however perfected in holiness,
from praying at the last judgment for those men who are to be punished in
eternal fire. At present she prays for her enemies among men, because they
have yet opportunity for fruitful repentance. For what does she especially
beg for them but that "God would grant them repentance," as the apostle
says, "that they may return to soberness out of the snare of the devil, by
whom they are held captive according to his will?"(5) But if the Church
were certified who those are, who, though they are still abiding in this
life, are yet predestinated to go with the devil into eternal fire, then
for them she could no more pray than for him. But since she has this
certainty regarding no man, she prays for all her enemies who yet live in
this world; and yet she is not heard in behalf of all. But she is heard in
the case of those only who, though they oppose the Church, are yet
predestinated to become her sons through her intercession. But if any
retain an impenitent heart until death, and are not converted from enemies
into sons, does the Church continue to pray for them, for the spirits,
i.e., of such persons deceased? And why does she cease to pray for them,
unless because the man who was not translated into Christ's kingdom while
he was in the body, is now judged to be of Satan's following?

   It is then, I say, the same reason which prevents the Church at any
time from praying for the wicked angels, which prevents her from praying
hereafter for those men who are to be punished in eternal fire; and this
also is the reason why, though she prays even for the wicked so long as
they live, she yet does not even in this world pray for the unbelieving and
godless who are dead. For some of the dead, indeed, the prayer of the
Church or of pious individuals is heard; but it is for those who, having
been regenerated in Christ, did not spend their life so wickedly that they
can be judged unworthy of such compassion, nor so well that they can be
considered to have no need of it.x As also, after the resurrection, there
will be some of the dead to whom, after they have endured the pains proper
to the spirits of the dead, mercy shall be accorded, and acquittal from the
punishment of the eternal fire. For were there not some whose sins, though
not remitted in this life, shall be remitted in that which is to come, it
could not be truly said, "They shall not be forgiven, neither in this
world, neither in that which is to come."(2) But when the Judge of quick
and dead has said, "Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom
prepared for you from the foundation of the world," and to those on the
other side, "Depart from me, ye cursed, into the eternal fire, which is
prepared for the devil and his angels," and "These shall go away into
eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life,"(3) it were
excessively presumptuous to say that the punishment of any of those whom
God has said shall go away into eternal punishment shall not be eternal,
and so bring either despair or doubt upon the corresponding promise of life
eternal.

   Let no man then so understand the words of the Psalmist, "Shall God
forget to be gracious? shall He shut up in His anger His tender mercies"(4)
as if the sentence of God were true of good men, false of bad men, or true
of good men and wicked angels, but false of bad men. For the Psalmist's
words refer to the vessels of mercy and the children of the promise, of
whom the prophet himself was one; for when he had said, "Shall God forget
to be gracious? shall He shut up in His anger His tender mercies?" and then
immediately subjoins, "And I said, Now I begin: this is the change wrought
by the right hand of the Most High,"(5) he manifestly explained what he
meant by the words, "Shall he shut up in His anger His tender mercies?" For
God's anger is this mortal life, in which man is made like to vanity, and
his days pass as a shadow? Yet in this anger God does not forget to be
gracious, causing His sun to shine and His. rain to descend on the just and
the unjust;(7)  and thus He does not in His anger cut short His tender
mercies, and especially in what the Psalmist speaks of in the words, "Now I
begin: this change is from the right hand of the Most High;" for He changes
for the better the vessels of mercy, even while they are still in this most
wretched life, which is God's anger, and even while His anger is
manifesting itself in this miserable corruption; for "in His anger He does
not shut up His tender mercies." And since the truth of this divine
canticle is quite satisfied by this application of it, there is no need to
give it a reference to that place in which those who do not belong to the
city of God are punished in eternal fire. But if any persist in extending
its application to the torments of the wicked, let them at least understand
it so that the anger of God, which has threatened the wicked with eternal
punishment, shall abide, but shall be mixed with mercy to the extent of
alleviating the torments which might justly be inflicted; so that the
wicked shall neither w. holly escape, nor only for a time endure these
threatened pains, but that they shall be less severe and more endurable
than they deserve. Thus the anger of God shall continue, and at the same
time He will not in this anger shut up His tender mercies. But even this
hypothesis I am not to be supposed to affirm because I do not positively
oppose it.(8)

   As for those who find an empty threat rather than a truth in such
passages as these: "Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire;" and
"These shall go away into eternal punishment;"(1) and "They shall be
tormented for ever and ever;"(2) and "Their worm shall not die, and their
fire shall not be quenched,"(3)--such persons, I say, are most emphatically
and abundantly refuted, not by me so much as by the divine Scripture
itself. For the men of Nineveh repented in this life, and therefore their
repentance was fruitful, inasmuch as they sowed in that field which the
Lord meant to be sown in tears that it might afterwards be reaped in joy.
And yet who will deny that God's prediction was fulfilled in their case, if
at least he observes that God destroys sinners not only in anger but also
in compassion? For sinners are destroyed in two ways,--either, like the
Sodomites, the men themselves are punished for their sins, or, like the
Ninevites, the men's sins are destroyed by repentance. God's prediction,
therefore, was fulfilled,--the wicked Nineveh was overthrown, and a good
Nineveh built up. For its walls and houses remained standing; the city was
overthrown in its depraved manners. And thus, though the prophet was
provoked that the destruction which the inhabitants dreaded, because of his
prediction, did not take place, yet that which God's foreknowledge had
predicted did take place, for He who foretold the destruction knew how it
should be fulfilled in a less calamitous sense.

   But that these perversely compassionate persons may see what is the
purport of these words, "How great is the abundance of Thy sweetness, Lord,
which Thou hast hidden for them that fear Thee."(4)  let them read what
follows:" "And Thou hast perfected it for them that hope in Thee." For what
means, "Thou hast hidden it for them that fear Thee, "Thou hast perfected
it for them that hope in Thee," unless this, that to those who through fear
of punishment seek to establish their own righteousness by the law, the
righteousness of God is not sweet, because they are ignorant of it? They
have not tasted it. For they hope in themselves, not in Him; and therefore
God's abundant sweetness is hidden from them. They fear God, indeed, but it
is with that servile fear "which is not in love; for perfect love casteth
out fear."(5) Therefore to them that hope in Him He perfecteth His
sweetness, inspiring them with His own love, so that with a holy fear,
which love does not cast out, but which endureth for ever, they may, when
they glory, glory in the Lord. For the righteousness of God is Christ, "who
is of God made unto us," as the apostle says, "wisdom, and righteousness,
and 'sanctification, and redemption: as it is written, He that glorieth,
let him glory in the Lord."(6) This righteousness of God, which is the gift
of grace without merits, is not known by those who go about to establish
their own righteousness, and are therefore not subject to the righteousness
of God, which is Christ.(7) But it is in this righteousness that we find
the great abundance of God's sweetness, of which the psalm says, "Taste and
see how sweet the Lord is."(8)  And this we rather taste than partake of to
satiety in this our pilgrimage. We hunger and thirst for it now, that
hereafter we may be satisfied with it when we see Him as He is, and that is
fulfilled which is written, "I shall be satisfied when Thy glory shall be
manifested."(9) It is thus that Christ perfects the great abundance of His
sweetness to them that hope in Him. But if God conceals His sweetness from
them that fear Him in the sense that these our objectors fancy, so that
men's ignorance of His purpose of mercy towards the wicked may lead them to
fear Him and live better, and so that there may be prayer made for those
who are not living as they ought, how then does He perfect His sweetness to
them that hope in Him, since, if their dreams be true, it is this very
sweetness which will prevent Him from punishing those who do not hope in
Him? Let us then seek that sweetness of His, which He perfects to them that
hope in Him, not that which He is supposed to perfect to those who despise
and blaspheme Him; for in vain, after this life, does a man seek for what
he has neglected to provide while in this life.

   Then, as to that saying of the apostle, "For God hath concluded all in
unbelief, that He may have mercy upon all,"(10) it does not mean that He
will condemn no one; but the foregoing context shows what is meant. The
apostle composed the epistle for the Gentiles who were already believers;
and when he was speaking to them of the Jews who were yet to believe, he
says, "For as ye in times past believed not God, yet have now obtained
mercy through their unbelief; even so have these also now not believed,
that through your mercy they also may obtain mercy." Then he added the
words in question with which these persons beguile themselves: "For God
concluded all in unbelief, that He might have mercy upon all." All whom, if
not all those of whom he was speaking, just as if he had said, "Both you
and them?" God then concluded all those in unbelief, both Jews and
Gentiles, whom He foreknew and predestinated to be comformed to the image
of His Son, in order that they might be confounded by the bitterness of
unbelief, and might repent and believingly turn to the sweetness of God's
mercy, and might take up that exclamation of the psalm, "How great is the
abundance of Thy sweetness, O Lord, which Thou hast hidden for them that
fear Thee, but hast perfected to them that hope," not in themselves, but
"in Thee." He has mercy, then, on all the vessels of mercy. And what means
"all?" Both those of the Gentiles and those of the Jews whom He
predestinated, called, justified, glorified: none of these will be
condemned by Him; but we cannot say none of all men whatever.

CHAP. 25.--WHETHER THOSE WHO RECEIVED HERETICAL BAPTISM, AND HAVE
AFTERWARDS FALLEN AWAY TO WICKEDNESS OF LIFE; OR THOSE WHO HAVE RECEIVED
CATHOLIC BAPTISM, BUT HAVE AFTERWARDS PASSED OVER TO HERESY AND SCHISM; OR
THOSE WHO HAVE REMAINED IN THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IN WHICH THEY WERE BAPTIZED,
BUT HAVE CONTINUED TO LIVE IMMORALLY,--MAY HOPE THROUGH THE VIRTUE OF THE
SACRAMENTS FOR THE REMISSION OF ETERNAL PUNISHMENT.

   But let us now reply to those who promise deliverance from eternal
fire, not to the devil and his angels (as neither do they of whom we have
been speaking), nor even to all men whatever, but only to those who have
been washed by the baptism of Christ, and have become partakers of His body
and blood, no matter how they have lived, no matter what heresy or impiety
they have fallen into. But they are contradicted by the apostle, where he
says, "Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these;
fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred,
variances, emulations, wrath, strife, heresies, envyings, drunkenness,
revellings, and the like: of the which I tell you before, as I have also
told you in time past, for they which do such things shall not inherit the
kingdom of God."(1) Certainly this sentence of the apostle is false, if
such persons shall be delivered after any lapse of time, and shall then
inherit the kingdom of God. But as it is not false, they shall certainly
never inherit the kingdom of God. And if they shall never enter that
kingdom, then they shall always be retained in eternal punishment; for
there is no middle place where he may live unpunished who has not been
admitted into that kingdom.

   And therefore we may reasonably inquire how we are to understand these
words of the Lord Jesus: "This is the bread which cometh down from heaven,
that a man may eat thereof, and not die. I am the living bread which came
down from heaven. If any man eat of this bread, he shall live for ever."(2)
And those, indeed, whom we are now answering, are refuted in their
interpretation of this passage by those whom we are shortly to answer, and
who do not promise this deliverance to all who have received the sacraments
of baptism and the Lord's body, but only to the catholics, however wickedly
they live; for these, say they, have eaten the Lord's body not only
sacramentally, but really, being constituted members of His body, of which
the apostle says, "We being many are one bread, one body."(3) He then who
is in the unity of Christ's body (that is to say, in the Christian
membership), of which body the faithful have been wont to receive the
sacrament at the altar, that man is truly said to eat the body and drink
the blood of Christ. And consequently heretics and schismatics being
separate from the unity of this body, are able to receive the same
sacrament, but with no profit to themselves,--nay, rather to their own
hurt, so that they are rather more severely judged than liberated after
some time. For they are not in that bond of peace which is symbolized by
that sacrament.

   But again, even those who sufficiently understand that he who is not in
the body of Christ cannot be said to eat the body of Christ, are in error
when they promise liberation from the fire of eternal punishment to persons
who fall away from the unity of that body into heresy, or even into
heathenish superstition. For, in the first place, they ought to consider
how intolerable it is, and how discordant with sound doctrine, to suppose
that many, indeed, or almost all, who have forsaken the Church catholic,
and have originated impious heresies and become heresiarchs, should enjoy a
destiny superior to those who never were catholics, but have fallen into
the snares of these others; that is to say, if the fact of their catholic
baptism and original reception of the sacrament of the body of Christ in
the true body of Christ is sufficient to deliver these heresiarchs from
eternal punishment. For certainly he who deserts the faith, and from a
deserter becomes an assailant, is worse than he who has not deserted the
faith he never held. And, in the second place, they are contradicted by the
apostle, who, after enumerating the works of the flesh, says with reference
to heresies, "They who do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of
God."

   And therefore neither ought such persons as lead an abandoned and
damnable life to be confident of salvation, though they persevere to the
end in the communion of the Church catholic, and comfort themselves with
the words, "He that endureth to the end shall be saved." By the iniquity of
their life they abandon that very righteousness of life which Christ is to
them, whether it be by fornication, or by perpetrating in their body the
other uncleannesses which the apostle would not so much as mention, or by a
dissolute luxury, or by doing any one of those things of which he says,
"They who do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God."
Consequently, they who do such things shall not exist anywhere but in
eternal punishment, since they cannot be in the kingdom of God. For, while
they continue in such things to the very end of life, they cannot be said
to abide in Christ to the end; for to abide in Him is to abide in the faith
of Christ. And this faith, according to the apostle's definition of it,
"worketh by love."(1) And "love," as he elsewhere says, "worketh no
evil."(2) Neither can these persons be said to eat the body of Christ, for
they cannot even be reckoned among His members. For, not to mention other
reasons, they cannot be at once the members of Christ and the members of a
harlot. In fine, He Himself, when He says, "He that eateth my flesh and
drinketh my blood, dwelleth in me, and I in him,"(3) shows what it is in
reality, and not sacramentally, to eat His body and drink His blood; for
this is to dwell in Christ, that He also may dwell in us. So that it is as
if He said, He that dwelleth not in me, and in whom I do not dwell, let him
not say or think that he eateth my body or drinketh my blood. Accordingly,
they who are not Christ's members do not dwell in Him. And they who make
themselves members of a harlot, are not members of Christ unless they have
penitently abandoned that evil, and have returned to this good to be
reconciled to it.

CHAP. 26.--WHAT IT IS TO HAVE CHRIST FOR A FOUNDATION, AND WHO THEY ARE TO
WHOM SALVATION AS BY FIRE IS PROMISED.

   But, say they, the catholic Christians have Christ for a foundation,
and they have not fallen away from union with Him, no matter how depraved a
life they have built on this foundation, as wood, hay, stubble; and
accordingly the well-directed faith by which Christ is their foundation
will suffice to deliver them some time from the continuance of that fire,
though it be with loss, since those things they have built on it shall be
burned. Let the Apostle James summarily reply to them: "If any man say he
has faith, and have not works,. can faith save him?"(4) And who then is it,
they ask, of whom the Apostle Paul says, "But he himself shall be saved,
yet so as by fire?"(5) Let us join them in their inquiry; and one thing is
very certain, that it is not he of whom James speaks, else we should make
the two apostles contradict one another, if the one says, "Though a man's
works be evil, his faith will save him as by fire," while the other says,
"If he have not good works, can his faith save him?"

   We shall then ascertain who it Is who can be saved by fire, if we first
discover what it is to have Christ for a foundation. And this we may very
readily learn from the image itself. In a building the foundation is first.
Whoever, then, has Christ in his heart, so that no earthly or temporal
things--not even those that are legitimate and allowed--are preferred to
Him, has Christ as a foundation. But if these things be preferred, then
even though a man seem to have faith in Christ, yet Christ is not the
foundation to that man; and much more if he, in contempt of wholesome
precepts, seek forbidden gratifications, is he clearly convicted of putting
Christ not first but last, since he has despised Him as his ruler, and has
preferred to fulfill his own wicked lusts, in contempt of Christ's commands
and allowances. Accordingly, if any Christian man loves a harlot, and,
attaching himself to her, becomes one body, he has not now Christ for a
foundation. But if any one loves his own wife, and loves her as Christ
would have him love her, who can doubt that he has Christ for a foundation?
But if he loves her in the world's fashion, carnally, as the disease of
lust prompts him, and as the Gentiles love who know not God, even this the
apostle, or rather Christ by the apostle, allows as a venial fault. And
therefore even such a man may have Christ for a foundation. For so long as
he does not prefer such an affection or pleasure to Christ, Christ is his
foundation, though on it he builds wood, hay, stubble; and therefore he
shall be saved as by fire. For the fire of affliction shall burn such
luxurious pleasures and earthly loves, though they be not damnable, because
enjoyed in lawful wedlock. And of this fire the fuel is bereavement, and
all those calamities which consume these joys. Consequently the
superstructure will be loss to him who has built it, for he shall not
retain it, but shall be agonized by the loss of those things in the
enjoyment of which he found pleasure. But by this fire he shall be saved
through virtue of the foundation, because even if a persecutor demanded
whether he would retain Christ or these things, he would prefer Christ.
Would you hear, in the apostle's own words, who he is who builds on the
foundation gold, silver, precious stones? "He that is unmarried," he says,
"careth for the things that belong to the Lord, how he may please the
Lord."(1) Would you hear who he is that buildeth wood, hay, stubble? "But
he that is married careth for the things that are of the world, how he may
please his wife.(2) "Every man's work shall be made manifest: for the day
shall declare it,"--the day, no doubt, of tribulation--"because," says he,
"it shall be revealed by fire."(3) He calls tribulation fire, just as it is
elsewhere said, "The furnace proves the vessels of the potter, and the
trial of affliction righteous men."4  And "The fire shall try every man's
work of what sort it is. If any man's work abide "--for a man's care for
the things of the Lord, how he may please the Lord, abides--"which he hath
built thereupon, he shall receive a reward, "--that is, he shall reap the
fruit of his care. "But if any man's work shall be burned, he shall suffer
loss,"--for what he loved he shall not retain: --" but he himself shall be
saved,"--for no tribulation shall have moved him from that stable
foundation,--" yet so as by fire;"(5)  for that which he possessed with the
sweetness of love he does not lose without the sharp sting of pain. Here,
then, as seems to me, we have a fire which destroys neither, but enriches
the one, brings loss to the other, proves both.

   But if this passage [of Corinthians] is to interpret that fire of which
the Lord shall say to those on His left hand, "Depart from me, ye cursed,
into everlasting fire,"(6)  so that among these we are to believe there are
those who build on the foundation wood, hay, stubble, and that they,
through virtue of the good foundation, shall after a time be liberated from
the fire that is the award of their evil deserts, what then shall we think
of those on the right hand, to whom it shall be said, "Come, ye blessed of
my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you,"(7)  unless that they are
those who have built on the foundation. gold, silver, precious stones? But
if the fire of which our Lord speaks is the same as that of which the
apostle says, "Yet so as by fire," then both--that is to say, both those on
the right as well as those on the left--are to be cast into it. For that
fire is to try both, since it is said, "For the day of the Lord shall
declare it, because it shall be revealed by fire; and the fire shall try
every man's work of what sort it is."(8) If, therefore, the fire shall try
both, in order that if any man's work abide--i.e., if the superstructure be
not consumed by the fire--he may receive a reward, and that if his work is
burned he may suffer loss, certainly that fire is not the eternal fire
itself. For into this latter fire only those on the left hand shall be
cast, and that with final and everlasting doom; but that former fire proves
those on the right hand. But some of them it so proves that it does not
burn and consume the structure which is found to have been built by them on
Christ as the foundation; while others of them it proves in another
fashion, so as to burn what they have built up, and thus cause them to
suffer loss, while they themselves are saved because they have retained
Christ, who was laid as their sure foundation, and have loved Him above
all. But if they are saved, then certainly they shall stand at the right
hand, and shall with the rest hear the sentence, "Come, ye blessed of my
Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you;" and not at the left hand,
where those shall be who shall not be saved, and shall therefore hear the
doom, "Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire." For from that
fire no man shall be saved, because they all shall go away into eternal
punishment, where their worms shall not die, nor their fire be quenched, in
which they shall be tormented day and night for ever.

   But if it be said that in the interval of time between the death of
this body and that last day of judgment and retribution which shall follow
the resurrection, the bodies of the dead shall be exposed to a fire of such
a nature that it shall not affect those who have not in this life indulged
in such pleasures and pursuits as shall be consumed like wood, hay,
stubble, but shall affect those others who have carried with them
structures of that kind; if it be said that such worldliness, being venial,
shall be consumed in the fire of tribulation either here only, or here and
hereafter both, or here that it may not be hereafter,--this I do not
contradict, because possibly it is true. For perhaps even the death of the
body is itself a part of this tribulation, for it results from the first
transgression, so that the time which follows death takes its color in each
case from the nature of the man's building. The persecutions, too, which
have crowned the martyrs, and which Christians of all kinds suffer, try
both buildings like a fire, consuming some, along with the builders
themselves, if Christ is not found in them as their foundation, while
others they consume without the builders, because Christ is found in them,
and they are saved, though with loss; and other buildings still they do not
consume, because such materials as abide for ever are found in them. In the
end of the world there shall be in the time of Antichrist tribulation such
as has never before been. How many edifices there shall then be, of gold or
of hay, built on the best foundation, Christ Jesus, which that fire shall
prove, bringing joy to some, loss to others, but without destroying either
sort, because of this stable foundation! But whosoever prefers, I do not
say his wife, with whom he lives for carnal pleasure, but any of those
relatives who afford no delight of such a kind, and whom it is right to
love,--whosoever prefers these to Christ, and loves them after a human and
carnal fashion, has not Christ as a foundation, and will therefore not be
saved by fire, nor indeed at all; for he shall not possibly dwell with the
Saviour, who says very explicitly concerning this very matter, "He that
loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and he that
loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me."(1) But he who
loves his relations carnally, and yet so that he does not prefer them to
Christ, but would rather want them than Christ if he were put to the proof,
shall be saved by fire, because it is necessary that by the loss of these
relations he suffer pain in proportion to his love. And he who loves
father, mother, sons, daughters, according to Christ, so that he aids them
in obtaining His kingdom and cleaving to Him, or loves them because they
are members of Christ, God forbid that this love should be consumed as
wood, hay, stubble, and not rather be reckoned a structure of gold, silver,
precious stones. For how can a man love those more than Christ whom he
loves only for Christ's sake?

CHAP. 27.--AGAINST THE BELIEF OF THOSE WHO THINK THAT THE SINS WHICH HAVE
BEEN ACCOMPANIED WITH ALMSGIVING WILL DO THEM NO HARM,

   It remains to reply to those who maintain that those only shall burn in
eternal fire who neglect alms-deeds proportioned to their sins, resting
this opinion on the words of the Apostle James, "He shall have judgment
without mercy that hath showed no mercy."(2) Therefore, they say, he that
hath showed mercy, though he has not reformed his dissolute conduct, but
has lived wickedly and iniquitously even while abounding in alms, shall
have a merciful judgment, so that he shall either be not condemned at all,
or shall be delivered from final judgment after a time. And for the same
reason they suppose that Christ will discriminate between those on the
right hand and those on the left, and will send the one party into His
kingdom, the other into eternal punishment, on the sole ground of their
attention to or neglect of works of charity. Moreover, they endeavor to use
the prayer which the Lord Himself taught as a proof and bulwark of their
opinion, that daily sins which are never abandoned can be expiated through
alms-deeds, no matter how offensive or of what sort they be. For, say they,
as there is no day on which Christians ought not to use this prayer, so
there is no sin of any kind which, though committed every day, is not
remitted when we say, "Forgive us our debts," if we take care to fulfill
what follows, "as we forgive our debtors."(3) For, they go on to say, the
Lord does not say, "If ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly
Father will forgive you your little daily sins," but "will forgive you your
sins." Therefore, be they of any kind or magnitude whatever, be they
perpetrated daily and never abandoned or subdued in this life, they can be
pardoned, they presume, through alms-deeds.

   But they are right to inculcate the giving of aims proportioned to past
sins; for if they said that any kind of alms could obtain the divine pardon
of great sins committed daily and with habitual enormity, if they said that
such sins could thus be daily remitted, they would see that their doctrine
was absurd and ridiculous. For they would thus be driven to acknowledge
that it were possible for a very wealthy man to buy absolution from
murders, adulteries, and all manner of wickedness, by paying a daily alms
of ten paltry coins. And if it he most absurd and insane to make such an
acknowledgment, and if we still ask what are those fitting alms of which
even the forerunner of Christ said, "Bring forth therefore fruits meet for
repentance,"(1) undoubtedly it will be found that they are not such as are
done by men who undermine their life by daily enormities even to the very
end. For they suppose that by giving to the poor a small fraction of the
wealth they acquire by extortion' and spoliation they can propitiate
Christ, so that they may with impunity commit the most damnable sins, in
the persuasion that they have bought from Him a license to transgress, or
rather do buy a daily indulgence. And if they for one crime have
distributed all their goods to Christ's needy members, that could profit
them nothing unless they desisted from all similar actions, and attained
charity which worketh no evil He therefore who does alms-deeds proportioned
to his sins must first begin with himself. For it is not reasonable that a
man who exercises charity towards his neighbor should not do so towards
himself, since he hears the Lord saying, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as
thyself," and again, "Have compassion on thy soul, and please God."(3)  He
then who has not compassion on his own soul that he may please God, how can
he be said to do alms-deeds proportioned to his sins? To the same purpose
is that written, "He who is bad to himself, to whom can he be good?"(4) We
ought therefore to do alms that we may be heard when we pray that our past
sins may be forgiven, not that while we continue in them we may think to
provide ourselves with a license for wickedness by alms-deeds.

   The reason, therefore, of our predicting that He will impute to those
on His right hand the alms-deeds they have done, and charge those on His
left with omitting the same, is that He may thus show the efficacy of
charity for the deletion of past sins, not for impunity in their perpetual
commission. And such persons, indeed, as decline to abandon their evil
habits of life for a better course cannot be said to do charitable deeds.
For this is the purport of the saying, "Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of
the least of these, ye did it not to me."(5) He shows them that they do not
perform charitable actions even when they think they are doing so. For if
they gave bread to a hungering Christian because he is a Christian,
assuredly they would not deny to themselves the bread of righteousness,
that is, Christ Himself; for God considers not the person to whom the gift
is made, but the spirit in which it is made. He therefore who loves Christ
in a Christian extends alms to him in the same spirit in which he draws
near to Christ, not in that spirit which would abandon Christ if it could
do so with impunity. For in proportion as a man loves what Christ
disapproves does he himself abandon Christ. For what does it profit a man
that he is baptized, if he is not justified? Did not He who said, "Except a
man be born of water and of the Spirit, he shall not enter into the kingdom
of God,"(6) say also, "Except your righteousness shall exceed the
righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall not enter into the
kingdom of heaven?"(7) Why do many through fear of the first saying run to
baptism, while few through fear of the second seek to be justified? As
therefore it is not to his brother a man says, "Thou fool," if when he says
it he is indignant not at the brotherhood, but at the sin of the offender,-
-for otherwise he were guilty of hell fire,--so he who extends charity to a
Christian does not extend it to a Christian if he does not love Christ in
him. Now he does not love Christ who refuses to be justified in Him. Or,
again, if a man has been guilty of this sin of calling his brother Fool,
unjustly reviling him without any desire to remove his sin, his alms-deeds
go a small way towards expiating this fault, unless he adds to this the
remedy of reconciliation which the same passage enjoins. For it is there
said, "Therefore, if thou bring thy gift to the altar, and there
rememberest that thy brother hath aught against thee; leave there thy gift
before the altar, and go thy way; first be reconciled to thy brother, and
then come and offer thy gift."(8) Just so it is a small matter to do alms-
deeds, no matter how great they be, for any sin, so long as the offender
continues in the practice of sin.

    Then as to the daily prayer which the Lord Himself taught, and which
is therefore called the Lord's prayer, it obliterates indeed the sins of
the day, when day by day we say, "Forgive us our debts," and when we not
only say but act out that which follows, "as we forgive our debtors;"(9)
but we utter this petition because sins have been committed, and not that
they may be. For by it our Saviour designed to teach us that, however
righteously we live in this life of infirmity and darkness, we still commit
sins for the remission of which we ought to pray, while we must pardon
those who sin against us that we ourselves also may be pardoned. The Lord
then did not utter the words, "If ye forgive men their trespasses, your
Father will also forgive you your trespasses,"(10) in order that we might
contract from this petition such confidence as should enable us to sin
securely from day to day, either putting ourselves above the fear of human
laws, or craftily deceiving men concerning our conduct, but in order that
we might thus learn not to suppose that we are without sins, even though we
should be free from crimes; as also God admonished the priests of the old
law to this same effect regarding their sacrifices, which He commanded them
to offer first for their own sins, and then for the sins of the people. For
even the very words of so great a Master and Lord are to be intently
considered. For He does not say, If ye forgive men their sins, your Father
will also forgive you your sins, no matter of what sort they be, but He
says, your sins; for it was a daily prayer He was teaching, and it was
certainly to disciples already justified He was speaking. What, then, does
He mean by "your sins," but those sins from which not even you who are
justified and sanctified can be free? While, then, those who seek occasion
from this petition to indulge m habitual sin maintain that the Lord meant
to include great sins, because He did not say, He will forgive you your
small sins, but "your sins," we, on the other hand, taking into account the
character of the persons He was addressing, cannot see our way to interpret
the expression "your sins" of anything but small sins, because such persons
are no longer guilty of great sins. Nevertheless not even great sins
themselves--sins from which we must flee with a total reformation of life--
are forgiven to those who pray, unless they observe the appended precept,
"as ye also forgive your debtors." For if the very small sins which attach
even to the life of the righteous be not remitted without that condition,
how much further from obtaining indulgence shall those be who are involved
in many great crimes, if, while they cease from perpetrating such
enormities, they still inexorably refuse to remit any debt incurred to
themselves, since the Lord says, "But if ye forgive not men their
trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses?"(1) For this
is the purport of the saying of the Apostle James also, "He shall have
judgment without mercy that hath showed no mercy."(2) For we should
remember that servant whose debt of ten thousand talents his lord
cancelled, but afterwards ordered him to pay up, because the servant
himself had no pity for his fellow-servant, who owed him an hundred
pence.(3) The  words which the Apostle James subjoins,  "And mercy
rejoiceth against judgment,"(4) find their application among those who are
the children of the promise and vessels of mercy. For even those righteous
men, who have lived with such holiness that they receive into the eternal
habitations others also who have won their friendship with the mammon of
unrighteousness,(5) became such only through the merciful deliverance of
Him who justifies the ungodly, imputing to him a reward according to grace,
not according to debt. For among this number is the apostle, who says, "I
obtained mercy to be faithful."(6)

   But it must be admitted, that those who are thus received into the
eternal habitations are not of such a character that their own life would
suffice to rescue them without the aid of the saints, and consequently in
their case especially does mercy rejoice against judgment. And yet we are
not on this account to suppose that every abandoned profligate, who has
made no amendment of his life, is to be received into the eternal
habitations if only he has assisted the saints with the mammon of
unrighteousness,--that is to say, with money or wealth which has been
unjustly acquired, or, if rightfully acquired, is yet not the true riches,
but only what iniquity counts riches, because it knows not the true riches
in which those persons abound, who even receive others also into eternal
habitations. There is then a certain kind of life, which is neither, on the
one hand, so bad that those who adopt it are not helped towards the kingdom
of heaven by any bountiful alms-giving by which they may relieve the wants
of the saints, and make friends who could receive them into eternal
habitations, nor, on the other hand, so good that it of itself suffices to
win for them that great blessedness, if they do not obtain mercy through
the merits of those whom they have made their friends. And I frequently
wonder that even Virgil should give expression to this sentence of the
Lord, in which He says, "Make to yourselves friends of the mammon of
unrighteousness, that they may receive you into everlasting
habitations;"(2) and this very similar saying, "He that receiveth a
prophet, in the name of a prophet, shall receive a prophet's reward; and he
that receiveth a righteous man, in the name of a righteous man, shall
receive a righteous man's reward."(8) For when that poet described the
Elysian fields, in which they suppose that the souls of the blessed dwell,
he placed there not only those who had been able by their own merit to
reach that abode. but added.--

    "And they who grateful memory won By services to others done;"(9) that
is, they who had served others, and thereby merited to be remembered by
them. Just as if they used the expression so common in Christian lips,
where some humble person commends himself to one of the saints, and says,
Remember me, and secures that he do so by deserving well at his hand. But
what that kind of life we have been speaking of is, and what those sins are
which prevent a man from winning the kingdom of God by himself, but yet
permit him to avail himself of the merits of the saints, it is very
difficult to ascertain, very perilous to define. For my own part, in spite
of all investigation, I have been up to the present hour unable to discover
this. And possibly it is hidden from us, lest we should become careless in
avoiding such sins, and so cease to make progress. For if it were known
what these sins are which, though they continue, and be not abandoned for a
higher life, do yet not prevent us from seeking and hoping for the
intercession of the saints, human sloth would presumptuously wrap itself in
these sins, and would take no steps to be disentangled from such wrappings
by the deft energy of any virtue, but would only desire to be rescued by
the merits of other people, whose friendship had been won by a bountiful
use of the mammon of unrighteousness. But now that we are left in ignorance
of the precise nature of that iniquity which is venial, even though it be
persevered in, certainly we are both more vigilant in our prayers and
efforts for progress, and more careful to secure with the mammon of
unrighteousness friends for ourselves among the saints.

   But this deliverance, which is effected by one's own prayers, or the
intercession of holy men, secures that a man be not cast into eternal fire,
but not that, when once he has been cast into it, he should after a time be
rescued from it. For even those who fancy that what is said of the good
ground bringing forth abundant fruit, some thirty, some sixty, some an
hundred fold, is to be referred to the saints, so that in proportion to
their merits some of them shall deliver thirty men, some sixty, some an
hundred,--even those who maintain this are yet commonly inclined to suppose
that this deliverance will take place at, and not after the day of
judgment. Under this impression, some one who observed the unseemly folly
with which men promise themselves impunity on the ground that all will be
included in this method of deliverance, is reported to have very happily
remarked, that we should rather endeavor to live so well that we shall be
all found among the number of those who are to intercede for the liberation
of others, lest these should be so few in number, that, after they have
delivered one thirty, another sixty, another a hundred, there should still
remain many who could not be delivered from punishment by their
intercessions, and among them every one who has vainly and rashly promised
himself the fruit of another's labor. But enough has been said in reply to
those who acknowledge the authority of the same sacred Scriptures as
ourselves, but who, by a mistaken interpretation of them, conceive of the
future rather as they themselves wish, than as the Scriptures teach. And
having given this reply, I now, according to promise, close this book.


Taken from "The Early Church Fathers and Other Works" originally published
by Wm. B. Eerdmans Pub. Co. in English in Edinburgh, Scotland, beginning in
1867. (LNPF I/II, Schaff). The digital version is by The Electronic Bible
Society, P.O. Box 701356, Dallas, TX 75370, 214-407-WORD.

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