(NOTE: The electronic text obtained from The Electronic Bible Society was
not completely corrected. EWTN has corrected all discovered errors.)

Transliteration of Greek words: All phonetical except: w = omega; h serves
three puposes: 1. = Eta; 2. = rough breathing, when appearing initially
before a vowel; 3. = in the aspirated letters theta = th, phi = ph, chi =
ch. Accents are given immediately after their corresponding vowels: acute =
' , grave = `, circumflex = ^. The character ' doubles as an apostrophe,
when necessary.


ST. AUGUSTIN

THE CITY OF GOD, BOOK XXII

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


BOOK XXII.

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

CHAP. 1.--OF THE CREATION OF ANGELS AND MEN.

   As we promised in the immediately preceeding book, this, the last of
the whole work, shall contain a discussion of the eternal blessedness of
the city of God. This blessedness is named eternal, not because it shall
endure for many ages, though at last it shall come to an end, but because,
according to the words of the gospel, "of His kingdom there shall be no
end."(1) Neither shall it enjoy the mere appearance of perpetuity which is
maintained by the rise of fresh generations to occupy the place of those
that have died out, as in an evergreen the same freshness seems to continue
permanently, and the same appearance of dense foliage is preserved by the
growth of fresh leaves in the room of those that have withered and fallen;
but in that city all the citizens shall be immortal, men now for the first
time enjoying what the holy angels have never lost. And this shall be
accomplished by God, the most almighty Founder of the city. For He has
promised it, and cannot lie, and has already performed many of His
promises, and has done many unpromised kindnesses to those whom He now asks
to believe that He will do this also.

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

CHAP. 2.--OF THE ETERNAL AND UNCHANGEABLE WILL OF GOD.

   It is true that wicked men do many things contrary to God's will; but
so great is His wisdom and power, that all things which seem adverse to His
purpose do still tend towards those just and good ends and issues which He
Himself has foreknown. And consequently, when God is said to change His
will, as when, e.g., He becomes angry with those to whom He was gentle, it
is rather they than He who are changed, and they find Him changed in so far
as their experience of suffering at His hand is new, as the sun is changed
to injured eyes, and becomes as it were fierce from being mild, and hurtful
from being delightful, though in itself it remains the same as it was. That
also is called the will of God which He does in the hearts of those who
obey His commandments; and of this the apostle says, "For it is God that
worketh in you both to will."(1) As God's "righteousness" is used not only
of the righteousness wherewith He Himself is righteous, but also of that
which He produces in the man whom He justifies, so also that is called His
law, which, though given by God, is rather the law of men. For certainly
they were men to whom Jesus said, "It is written in your law,"(2) though in
another place we read, "The law of Iris God is in his heart."(3) According
to this will which God works in men, He is said also to will what He
Himself does not will, but causes His people to will; as He is said to know
what He has caused those to know who were ignorant of it. For when the
apostle says, "But now, after that ye have known God, or rather are known
of God,"(4) we cannot suppose that God there for the first time knew those
who were foreknown by Him before the foundation of the world; but He is
said to have known them then, because then He caused them to know. But I
remember that I discussed these modes of expression in the preceding books.
According to this will, then, by which we say that God wills what He causes
to be willed by others, from whom the future is hidden, He wills many
things which He does not perform.

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

CHAP. 3.--OF THE PROMISE OF ETERNAL BLESSEDNESS TO THE SAINTS, AND
EVERLASTING PUNISHMENT TO THE WICKED.

   Wherefore, not to mention many other instances besides, as we now see
in Christ the fulfillment of that which God promised to Abraham when He
said, "In thy seed shall all nations be blessed,"(5) so this also shall be
fulfilled which He promised to the same race, when He said by the prophet,
"They that are in their sepulchres shall rise again,"(6) and also, "There
shall be a new heaven and a new earth: and the former shall not be
mentioned, nor come into mind; but they shall find joy and rejoicing in it:
for I will make Jerusalem a rejoicing, and my people a joy. And I will
rejoice in Jerusalem, and joy in my people, and the voice of weeping shall
be no more heard in her."(1) And by another prophet He uttered the same
prediction: "At that time thy people shall be delivered, every one that
shall be found written in the book. And many of them that sleep in the
dust" (or, as some interpret it, "in the mound") "of the earth shall awake,
some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt."(2)
And in another place by the same prophet: "The saints of the Most High
shall take the kingdom, and shall possess the kingdom for ever, even for
ever and ever."(3) And a little after he says, "His kingdom is an
everlasting kingdom."(4) Other prophecies referring to the same subject I
have advanced in the twentieth book, and others still which I have not
advanced are found written in the same Scriptures; and these predictions
shall be fulfilled, as those also have been which unbelieving men supposed
would be frustrate. For it is the same God who promised both, and predicted
that both would come to pass,--the God whom the pagan deities tremble
before, as even Porphyry, the noblest of pagan philosophers, testifies.

CHAP. 4.--AGAINST THE WISE MEN OF THE WORLD, WHO FANCY THAT THE EARTHLY
BODIES OF MEN CANNOT BE TRANSFERRED TO A HEAVENLY HABITATION.

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

CHAP. 5.--OF THE RESURRECTION OF THE FLESH, WHICH SOME REFUSE TO BELIEVE,
THOUGH THE WORLD AT LARGE BELIEVES IT.

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

CHAP. 6.--THAT ROME MADE ITS FOUNDER ROMULUS A GOD BECAUSE IT LOVED HIM;
BUT THE CHURCH LOVED CHRIST BECAUSE IT BELIEVED HIM TO BE GOD.

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

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

CHAP. 7.--THAT THE WORLD'S BELIEF IN CHRIST IS THE RESULT OF DIVINE POWER,
NOT OF HUMAN PERSUASION.

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

CHAP. 8.--OF MIRACLES WHICH WERE WROUGHT THAT THE WORLD MIGHT BELIEVE IN
CHRIST, AND WHICH HAVE NOT CEASED SINCE THE WORLD BELIEVED.

   Why, they say, are those miracles, which you affirm were wrought
formerly, wrought no longer? I might, indeed, reply that miracles were
necessary before the world believed, in order that it might believe. And
whoever now-a-days demands to see prodigies that he may believe, is himself
a great prodigy, because he does not believe, though the whole world does.
But they make these objections for the sole purpose of insinuating that
even those former miracles were never wrought. How, then, is it that
everywhere Christ is celebrated with such firm belief in His resurrection
and ascension? How is it that in enlightened times, in which every
impossibility is rejected, the world has, without any miracles, believed
things marvellously incredible? Or will they say that these things were
credible, and therefore were credited? Why then do they themselves not
believe? Our argument, therefore, is a summary one--either incredible
things which were not witnessed have caused the world to believe other
incredible things which both occurred and were witnessed, or this matter
was so credible that it needed no miracles in proof of it, and therefore
convicts these unbelievers of unpardonable scepticism. This I might say for
the sake of refuting these most frivolous objectors. But we cannot deny
that many miracles were wrought to confirm that one grand and health-giving
miracle of Christ's ascension to heaven with the flesh in which He rose.
For these most trustworthy books of ours contain in one narrative both the
miracles that were wrought and the creed which they were wrought to
confirm. The miracles were published that they might produce faith, and the
faith which they produced brought them into greater prominence. For they
are read in congregations that they may be believed, and yet they would not
be so read unless they were believed. For even now miracles are wrought in
the name of Christ, whether by His sacraments or by the prayers or relics
of His saints; but they are not so brilliant and conspicuous as to cause
them to be published with such glory as accompanied the former miracles.
For the canon of the sacred writings, which behoved to be closed,(1) causes
those to be everywhere recited, and to sink into the memory of all the
congregations; but these modern miracles are scarcely known even to the
whole population in the midst of which they are wrought, and at the best
are confined to one spot. For frequently they are known only to a very few
persons, while all the rest are ignorant of them, especially if the state
is a large one; and when they are reported to other persons in other
localities, there is no sufficient authority to give them prompt and
unwavering credence, although they are reported to the faithful by the
faithful.

   The miracle which was wrought at Milan when I was there, and by which a
blind man was restored to sight, could come to the knowledge of many; for
not only is the city a large one, but also the emperor was there at the
time, and the occurrence was witnessed by an immense concourse of people
that had gathered to the bodies of the martyrs Protasius and Gervasius,
which had long lain concealed and unknown, but were now made known to the
bishop Ambrose in a dream, and discovered by him. By virtue of these
remains the darkness of that blind man was scattered, and he saw the light
of day.(2)

   But who but a very small number are aware of the cure which was wrought
upon Innocentius, ex-advocate of the deputy prefecture, a cure wrought at
Carthage, in my presence, and under my own eyes? For when I and my brother
Alypius,(3) who were not yet clergymen,(4) though already servants of God,
came from abroad, this man received us, and made us live with him, for he
and all his household were devotedly pious. He was being treated by medical
men for fistulae, of which he had a large number intricately seated in the
rectum. He had already undergone an operation, and the surgeons were using
every means at their command for his relief. In that operation he had
suffered long-continued and acute pain; yet, among the many folds of the
gut, one had escaped the operators so entirely, that, though they ought, to
have laid it open with the knife, they never touched it. And thus, though
all those that had been opened were cured, this one remained as it was, and
frustrated all their labor. The patient, having his suspicions awakened by
the delay thus occasioned, and fearing greatly a second operation, which
another medical man--one of his own domestics--had told him he must
undergo, though this man had not even been allowed to witness the first
operation, and had been banished from the house, and with difficulty
allowed to come back to his enraged master's presence,--the patient, I say,
broke out to the surgeons, saying, "Are you going to cut me again? Are you,
after all, to fulfill the prediction of that man whom you would not allow
even to be present?" The surgeons laughed at the unskillful doctor, and
soothed their patient's fears with fair words and promises. So several days
passed, and yet nothing they tried aid him good. Still they persisted in
promising that they would cure that fistula by drugs, without the knife.
They called in also another old practitioner of great repute in that
department, Ammonius (for he was still alive at that time); and he, after
examining the part, promised the same result as themselves from their care
and skill. On this great authority, the patient became confident, and, as
if already well, vented his good spirits in facetious remarks at the
expense of his domestic physician, who had predicted a second operation. To
make a long story short, after a number of days had thus uselessly elapsed,
the surgeons, wearied and confused, had at last to confess that he could
only be cured by the knife. Agitated with excessive fear, he was terrified,
and grew pale with dread; and when he collected himself and was able to
speak, he ordered them to go away and never to return. Worn out with
weeping, and driven by necessity, it occurred to him to call in an
Alexandrian, who was at that time esteemed a wonderfully skillful operator,
that he might perform the operation his rage would not suffer them to do.
But when he had come, and examined with a professional eye the traces of
their careful work, he acted the part of a good man, and persuaded his
patient to allow those same hands the satisfaction of finishing his cure
which had begun it with a skill that excited his admiration, adding that
there was no doubt his only hope of a cure was by an operation, but that it
was thoroughly inconsistent with his nature to win the credit of the cure
by doing the little that remained to be done, and rob of their reward men
whose consummate skill, care, and diligence he could not but admire when be
saw the traces of their work. They were therefore again received to favor;
and it was agreed that, in the presence of the Alexandrian, they should
operate on the fistula, which, by the consent of all, could now only be
cured by the knife. The operation was deferred till the following day. But
when they had left, there arose in the house such a wailing, in sympathy
with the excessive despondency of the master, that it seemed to us like the
mourning at a funeral, and we could scarcely repress it. Holy men were in
the habit of visiting him daily; Saturninus of blessed memory, at that time
bishop of Uzali, and the presbyter Gelosus, and the deacons of the church
of Carthage; and among these was the bishop Aurelius, who alone of them all
survives,--a man to be named by us with due reverence,--and with him I have
often spoken of this affair, as we conversed together about the wonderful
works of God, and I have found that he distinctly remembers what I am now
relating. When these persons visited him that evening according to their
custom, he besought them, with pitiable tears, that they would do him the
honor of being present next day at what he judged his funeral rather than
his suffering. For such was the terror his former pains had produced, that
he made no doubt he would die in the hands of the surgeons. They comforted
him, and exhorted him to put his trust in God, and nerve his will like a
man. Then we went to prayer; but while we, in the usual way, were kneeling
and bending to the ground, he cast himself down, as if some one were
hurling him violently to the earth, and began to pray; but in what a
manner, with what earnestness and emotion, with what a flood of tears, with
what groans and sobs, that shook his whole body, and almost prevented him
speaking, who can describe! Whether the others prayed, and had not their
attention wholly diverted by this conduct, I do not know. For myself, I
could not pray at all. This only I briefly said in my heart: "O Lord, what
prayers of Thy people dost Thou hear if Thou hearest not these?" For it
seemed to me that nothing could be added to this prayer, unless he expired
in praying. We rose from our knees, and, receiving the blessing of the
bishop, departed, the patient beseeching his visitors to be present next
morning, they exhorting him to keep up his heart. The dreaded day dawned.
The servants of God were present, as they had promised to be; the surgeons
arrived; all that the circumstances required was ready; the frightful
instruments are produced; all look on in wonder and suspense. While those
who have most influence with the patient are cheering his fainting spirit,
his limbs are arranged on the couch so as to suit the hand of the operator;
the knots of the bandages are untied; the part is bared; the surgeon
examines it, and, with knife in hand, eagerly looks for the sinus that is
to be cut. He searches for it with his eyes; he feels for it with his
finger; he applies every kind of scrutiny: he finds a perfectly firm
cicatrix! No words of mine can describe the joy, and praise, and
thanksgiving to the merciful and almighty God which was poured from the
lips of all, with tears of gladness. Let the scene be imagined rather than
described!

   In the same city of Carthage lived Innocentia, a very devout woman of
the highest rank in the state. She had cancer in one of her breasts, a
disease which, as physicians say, is incurable. Ordinarily, therefore, they
either amputate, and so separate from the body the member on which the
disease has seized, or, that the patient's life may be prolonged a little,
though death is inevitable even if somewhat delayed, they abandon all
remedies, following, as they say, the advice of Hippocrates. This the lady
we speak of had been advised to by a skillful physician, who was intimate
with her family; and she betook herself to God alone by prayer. On the
approach of Easter, she was instructed in a dream to wait for the first
woman that came out from the baptistery(1) after being baptized, and to ask
her to make the sign of Christ upon her sore. She did so, and was
immediately cured. The physician who had advised her to apply no remedy if
she wished to live a little longer, when he had examined her after this,
and found that she who, on his former examination, was afflicted with that
disease was now perfectly cured, eagerly asked her what remedy she had
used, anxious, as we may well believe, to discover the drug which should
defeat the decision of Hippocrates. But when she told him what had
happened, he is said to have replied, with religious politeness, though
with a contemptuous tone, and an expression which made her fear he would
utter some blasphemy against Christ, "I thought you would make some great
discovery to me." She, shuddering at his indifference, quickly replied,
"What great thing was it for Christ to heal a cancer, who raised one who
had been four days dead?" When, therefore, I had heard this, I was
extremely indignant that so great a miracle wrought in that well-known
city, and on a person who was certainly not obscure, should not be
divulged, and I considered that she should be spoken to, if not reprimanded
on this score. And when she replied to me that she had not kept silence on
the subject, I asked the women with whom she was best acquainted whether
they had ever heard of this before. They told me they knew nothing of it.
"See," I said, "what your not keeping silence amounts to, since not even
those who are so familiar with you know of it." And as I had only briefly
heard the story, I made her tell how the whole thing happened, from
beginning to end, while the other women listened in great astonishment, and
glorified God.

   A gouty doctor of the same city, when he had given in his name for
baptism, and had been prohibited the day before his baptism from being
baptized that year, by black woolly-halted boys who appeared to him in his
dreams, and whom he understood to be devils, and when, though they trod on
his feet, and inflicted the acutest pain he had ever yet experienced, he
refused to obey them, but overcame them, and would not defer being washed
in the layer of regeneration, was relieved in the very act of baptism, not
only of the extraordinary pain he was tortured with, but also of the
disease itself, so that, though he lived a long time afterwards, he never
suffered from gout; and yet who knows of this miracle? We, however, do know
it, and so, too, do the small number of brethren who were in the
neighborhood, and to whose ears it might come.

   An old comedian of Curubis(1) was cured at baptism not only of
paralysis, but also of hernia, and, being delivered from both afflictions,
came up out of the font of regeneration as if he had had nothing wrong with
his body. Who outside of Curubis knows of this, or who but a very few who
might hear it elsewhere? But we, when we heard of it, made the man come to
Carthage, by order of the holy bishop Aurelius, although we had already
ascertained the fact on the information of persons whose word we could not
doubt.

   Hesperius, of a tribunitian family, and a neighbor of our own,(2) has a
farm called Zubedi in the Fussalian district;(3) and, finding that his
family, his cattle, and his servants were suffering from the malice of evil
spirits, he asked our presbyters, during my absence, that one of them would
go with him and banish the spirits by his prayers. One went, offered there
the sacrifice of the body of Christ, praying with all his might that that
vexation might cease. It did cease forthwith, through God's mercy. Now he
had received from a friend of his own some holy earth brought from
Jerusalem, where Christ, having been buried, rose again the third day. This
earth he had hung up in his bedroom to preserve himself from harm. But when
his house was purged of that demoniacal invasion, he began to consider what
should be done with the earth; for his reverence for it made him unwilling
to have it any longer in his bedroom. It so happened that I and Maximinus
bishop of Synita, and then my colleague, were in the neighborhood.
Hesperius asked us to visit him, and we did so. When he had related all the
circumstances, he begged that the earth might be buried somewhere, and that
the spot should be made a place of prayer where Christians might assemble
for the worship of God. We made no objection: it was done as he desired.
There was in that neighborhood a young countryman who was paralytic, who,
when he heard of this, begged his parents to take him without delay to that
holy place. When he had been brought there, he prayed, and forthwith went
away on his own feet perfectly cured.

   There is a country-seat called Victoriana, less than thirty miles from
Hippo-regius. At it there is a monument to the Milanese martyrs, Protasius
and Gervasius. Thither a young man was carried, who, when he was watering
his horse one summer day at noon in a pool of a river, had been taken
possession of by a devil. As he lay at the monument, near death, or even
quite like a dead person, the lady of the manor, with her maids and
religious attendants, entered the place for evening prayer and praise, as
her custom was, and they began to sing hymns. At this sound the young man,
as if electrified, was thoroughly aroused, and with frightful screaming
seized the altar, and held it as if he did not dare or were not able to let
it go, and as if he were fixed or tied to it; and the devil in him, with
loud lamentation, besought that he might be spared, and confessed where and
when and how he took possession of the youth. At last, declaring that he
would go out of him, he named one by one the parts of his body which he
threatened to mutilate as he went out and with these words he departed from
the man. But his eye, falling out on his cheek, hung by a slender vein as
by a root, and the whole of the pupil which had been black became white.
When this was witnessed by those present (others too had now gathered to
his cries, and had all joined in prayer for him), although they were
delighted that he had recovered his sanity of mind, yet, on the other hand,
they were grieved about his eye, and said he should seek medical advice.
But his sister's husband, who had brought him there, said, "God, who has
banished the devil, is able to restore his eye at the prayers of His
saints." Therewith he replaced the eye that was fallen out and hanging, and
bound it in its place with his handkerchief as well as he could, and
advised him not to loose the bandage for seven days. When he did so, he
found it quite healthy. Others also were cured there, but of them it were
tedious to speak.

   I know that a young woman of Hippo was immediately dispossessed of a
devil, on anointing herself with oil, mixed with the tears of the prebsyter
who had been praying for her. I know also that a bishop once prayed for a
demoniac young man whom he never saw, and that he was cured on the spot.

   There was a fellow-townsman of ours at Hippo, Florentius, an old man,
religious and poor, who supported himself as a tailor. Having lost his
coat, and not having means to buy another, he prayed to the Twenty
Martyrs,(1) who have a very celebrated memorial shrine in our town, begging
in a distinct voice that he might be clothed. Some scoffing young men, who
happened to be present, heard him, and followed him with their sarcasm as
he went away, as if he had asked the martyrs for fifty pence to buy a coat.
But he, walking on in silence, saw on the shore a great fish, gasping as if
just cast up, and having secured it with the good-natured assistance of the
youths, he sold it for curing to a cook of the name of Catosus, a good
Christian man, telling him how he had come by it, and receiving for it
three hundred pence, which he laid out in wool, that his wife might
exercise her skill upon, and make into a coat for him. But, on  cutting up
the fish, the cook found a gold ring in its belly; and forthwith, moved
with compassion, and influenced, too, by religious fear, gave it up to the
man, saying, "See how the Twenty Martyrs have clothed you."

   When the bishop Projectus was bringing the relics of the most glorious
martyr Stephen to the waters of Tibilis, a great concourse of people came
to meet him at the shrine. There a blind woman entreated that she might be
led to the bishop who was carrying the relics. He gave her the flowers he
was carrying. She took them, applied them to her eyes, and forthwith saw.
Those who were present were astounded, while she, with every expression of
joy, preceded them, pursuing her way without further need of a guide.

   Lucillus bishop of Sinita, in the neighborhood of the colonial town of
Hippo, was carrying in procession some relics of the same martyr, which had
been deposited in the castle of Sinita. A fistula under which he had long
labored, and which his private physician was watching an opportunity to
cut, was suddenly cured by the mere carrying of that sacred fardel,(2)--at
least, afterwards there was no trace of it in his body.

   Eucharius, a Spanish priest, residing at Calama, was for a long time a
sufferer from stone. By the relics of the same martyr, which the bishop
Possidius brought him, he was cured. Afterwards the same priest, sinking
under another disease, was lying dead, and already they were binding his
hands. By the succor of the same martyr he was raised to life, the priest's
cloak having been brought from the oratory and laid upon the corpse.

   There was there an old nobleman named Martial, who had a great aversion
to the Christian religion, but whose daughter was a Christian, while her
husband had been baptized that same year. When he was ill, they besought
him with tears and prayers to become a Christian, but he positively
refused, and dismissed them from his presence in a storm of indignation. It
occurred to the son-in-law to go to the oratory of St. Stephen, and there
pray for him with all earnestness that God might give him a right mind, so
that he should not delay believing in Christ. This he did with great
groaning and tears, and the burning fervor of sincere piety; then, as he
left the place, he took some of the flowers that were lying there, and, as
it was already night, laid them by his father's head, who so slept. And lo!
before dawn, he cries out for some one to run for the bishop; but he
happened at that time to be with me at Hippo. So when he had heard that he
was from home, he asked the presbyters to come. They came. To the joy and
amazement of all, he declared that he believed, and he was baptized. As
long as he remained in life, these words were ever on his lips: "Christ,
receive my spirit," though he was not aware that these were the last words
of the most blessed  Stephen when he was stoned by the Jews. They were his
last words also, for not long after he himself also gave up the ghost.

   There, too, by the same martyr, two men, one a citizen, the other a
stranger, were cured of gout; but while the citizen was absolutely cured,
the stranger was only informed what he should apply when the pain returned;
and when he followed this advice, the pain was at once relieved.

   Audurus is the name of an estate, where there is a church that contains
a memorial shrine of the martyr Stephen. It happened that, as a little boy
was playing in the court, the oxen drawing a wagon went out of the track
and crushed him with the wheel, so that immediately he seemed at his last
gasp. His mother snatched him up, and laid him at the shrine, and not only
did he revive, but also appeared uninjured.

   A religious female, who lived at Caspalium, a neighboring estate, when
she was so ill as to be despaired of, had her dress brought to this shrine,
but before it was brought back she was gone. However, her parents wrapped
her corpse in the dress, and, her breath returning, she became quite well.

   At Hippo a Syrian called Bassus was praying at the relics of the same
martyr for his daughter, who was dangerously ill. He too had brought her
dress with him to the shrine. But as he prayed, behold, his servants ran
from the house to tell him she was dead. His friends, however, intercepted
them, and forbade them to tell him, lest he should bewail her in public.
And when he had returned to his house, which was already ringing with the
lamentations of his family, and had thrown on his daughter's body the dress
he was carrying, she was restored to life.

   There, too, the son of a man, Irenaeus, one of our tax-gatherers, took
ill and died. And while his body was lying lifeless, and the last rites
were being prepared, amidst the weeping and mourning of all, one of the
friends who were consoling the father suggested that the body should be
anointed with the oil of the same martyr. It was done, and he revived.

   Likewise Eleusinus, a man of tribunitian rank among us, laid his infant
son, who had died, on the shrine of the martyr, which is in the suburb
where he lived, and, after prayer, which he poured out there with many
tears, he took up his child alive.

   What am I to do? I am so pressed by the promise of finishing this work,
that I cannot record all the miracles I know; and doubtless several of our
adherents, when they read what I have narrated, will regret that I have
omitted so many which they, as well as I, certainly know. Even now I beg
these persons to excuse me, and to consider how long it would take me to
relate all those miracles, which the necessity of finishing the work I have
undertaken forces me to omit. For were I to be silent of all others, and to
record exclusively the miracles of healing which were wrought in the
district of Calama and of Hippo by means of this martyr--I mean the most
glorious Stephen--they would fill many volumes; and yet all even of these
could not be collected, but only those of which narratives have been
written for public recital. For when I saw, in our own times, frequent
signs of the presence of divine powers similar to those which had been
given of old, I desired that narratives might be written, judging that the
multitude should not remain ignorant of these things. It is not yet two
years since these relics were first brought to Hippo-regius, and though
many of the miracles which have been wrought by it have not, as I have the
most certain means of knowing, been recorded, those which have been
published amount to almost seventy at the hour at which I write. But at
Calama, where these relics have been for a longer time, and where more of
the miracles were narrated for public information, there are incomparably
more.

   At Uzali, too, a colony near Utica, many signal miracles were, to my
knowledge, wrought by the same martyr, whose relics had found a place there
by direction of the bishop Evodius, long before we had them at Hippo. But
there the custom of publishing narratives does not obtain, or, I should
say, did not obtain, for possibly it may now have been begun. For, when I
was there recently, a woman of rank, Petronia, had been miraculously cured
of a serious illness of long standing, in which all medical appliances had
failed, and, with the consent of the abovenamed bishop of the place, I
exhorted her to publish an account of it that might be read to the people.
She most promptly obeyed, and inserted in her narrative a circumstance
which I cannot omit to mention, though I am compelled to hasten on to the
subjects which this work requires me to treat. She said that she had been
persuaded by a Jew to wear next her skin, under all her clothes, a hair
girdle, and on this girdle a ring, which, instead of a gem, had a stone
which had been found in the kidneys of an ox. Girt with this charm, she was
making her way to the threshold of the holy martyr. But, after leaving
Carthage, and when she had been lodging in her own demesne on the river
Bagrada, and was now rising to continue her journey, she saw her ring lying
before her feet. In great surprise she examined the hair girdle, and when
she found it bound, as it had been, quite firmly with knots, she
conjectured that the ring had been worn through and dropped off; but when
she found that the ring was itself also perfectly whole, she presumed that
by this great miracle she had received somehow a pledge of her cure,
whereupon she untied the girdle, and cast it into the river, and the ring
along with it. This is not credited by those who do not believe either that
the Lord Jesus Christ came forth from His mother's womb without destroying
her virginity, and entered among His disciples when the doors were shut;
but let them make strict inquiry into this miracle, and if they find it
true, let them believe those others. The lady is of distinction, nobly
born, married to a nobleman. She resides at Carthage. The city is
distinguished, the person is distinguished, so that they who make inquiries
cannot fail to find satisfaction. Certainly the martyr himself, by whose
prayers she was healed, believed on the Son of her who remained a virgin;
on Him who came in among the disciples when the doors were shut; in fine,--
and to this tends all that we have been retailing,--on Him who ascended
into heaven with the flesh in which He had risen; and it is because he laid
down his life for this faith that such miracles were done by his means.

   Even now, therefore, many miracles are wrought, the same God who
wrought those we read of still performing them, by whom He will and as He
will; but they are not as well known, nor are they beaten into the memory,
like gravel, by frequent reading, so that they cannot fall out of mind. For
even where, as is now done among ourselves, care is taken that the
pamphlets of those who receive benefit be read publicly, yet those who are
present hear the narrative but once, and many are absent; and so it comes
to pass that even those who are present forget in a few days what they
heard, and scarcely one of them can be found who will tell what he heard to
one who he knows was not present.

   One miracle was wrought among ourselves, which, though no greater than
those I have mentioned, was yet so signal and conspicuous, that I suppose
there is no inhabitant of Hippo who did not either see or hear of it, none
who could possibly forget it. There were seven brothers and three sisters
of a noble family of the Cappadocian Caesarea, who were cursed by their
mother, a new-made widow, on account of some wrong they had done her, and
which she bitterly resented, and who were visited with so severe a
punishment from Heaven, that all of them were seized with a hideous shaking
in all their limbs. Unable, while presenting this loathsome appearance, to
endure the eyes of their fellow-citizens, they wandered over almost the
whole Roman world, each following his own direction. Two of them came to
Hippo, a brother and a sister, Paulus and Palladia, already known in many
other places by the fame of their wretched lot. Now it was about fifteen
days before Easter when they came, and they came daily to church, and
specially to the relics of the most glorious Stephen, praying that God
might now be appeased, and restore their former health. There, and wherever
they went, they attracted the attention of every one. Some who had seen
them elsewhere, and knew the cause of their trembling, told others as
occasion offered. Easter arrived, and on the Lord's day, in the morning,
when there was now a large crowd present, and the young man was holding the
bars of the holy place where the relics were, and praying, suddenly he fell
down, and lay precisely as if asleep, but not trembling as he was wont to
do even in sleep. All present were astonished. Some were alarmed, some were
moved with pity; and while some were for lifting him up, others prevented
them, and said they should rather wait and see what would result. And
behold! he rose up, and trembled no more, for he was healed, and stood
quite well, scanning those who were scanning him. Who then refrained
himself from praising God? The whole church was filled with the voices of
those who were shouting and congratulating him. Then they came running to
me, where I was sitting ready to come into the church. One after another
they throng in, the last comer telling me as news what the first had told
me already; and while I rejoiced and inwardly gave God thanks, the young
man himself also enters, with a number of others, falls at my knees, is
raised up to receive my kiss. We go in to the congregation: the church was
full, and ringing with the shouts of joy, "Thanks to God! Praised be God!"
every one joining and shouting on all sides, "I have healed the people,"
and then with still louder voice shouting again. Silence being at last
obtained, the customary lessons of the divine Scriptures were read. And
when I came to my sermon, I made a few remarks suitable to the occasion and
the happy and joyful feeling, not desiring them to listen to me, but rather
to consider the eloquence of God in this divine work. The man dined with
us, and gave us a careful account of his own, his mother's, and his
family's calamity. Accordingly, on the following day, after delivering my
sermon, I promised that next day I would read his narrative to the
people.(1) And when I did so, the third day after Easter Sunday, I made the
brother and sister both stand on the steps of the raised place from which I
used to speak; and while they stood there their pamphlet was read.(2) The
whole congregation, men and women alike, saw the one standing without any
unnatural movement, the other trembling in all her limbs; so that those who
had not before seen the man himself saw in his sister what the divine
compassion had removed from him. In him they saw matter of congratulation,
in her subject for prayer. Meanwhile, their pamphlet being finished, I
instructed them to withdraw from the gaze of the people; and I had begun to
discuss the whole matter somewhat more carefully, when lo! as I was
proceeding, other voices are heard from the tomb of the martyr, shouting
new congratulations. My audience turned round, and began to run to the
tomb. The young woman, when she had come down from the steps where she had
been standing, went to pray at the holy relics, and no sooner had she
touched the bars than she, in the same way as her brother, collapsed, as if
falling asleep, and rose up cured. While, then, we were asking what had
happened, and what occasioned this noise of joy, they came into the
basilica where we were, leading her from the martyr's tomb in perfect
health. Then, indeed, such a shout of wonder rose from men and women
together, that the exclamations and the tears seemed like never to come to
an end. She was led to the place where she had a little before stood
trembling. They now rejoiced that she was like her brother, as before they
had mourned that she remained unlike him; and as they had not yet uttered
their prayers in her behalf, they perceived that their intention of doing
so had been speedily heard. They shouted God's praises without words, but
with such a noise that our ears could scarcely bear it. What was there in
the hearts of these exultant people but the faith of Christ, for which
Stephen had shed his blood?

CHAP. 9.--THAT ALL THE MIRACLES WHICH ARE DONE BY MEANS OF THE MARTYRS IN
THE NAME OF CHRIST TESTIFY TO THAT FAITH WHICH THE MARTYRS HAD IN CHRIST.

   To what do these miracles witness, but to this faith which preaches
Christ risen in the flesh, and ascended with the same into heaven? For the
martyrs themselves were martyrs, that is to say, witnesses of this faith,
drawing upon themselves by their testimony the hatred of the world, and
conquering the world not by resisting it, but by dying. For this faith they
died, and can now ask these benefits from the Lord in whose name they were
slain. For this faith their marvellous constancy was exercised, so that in
these miracles great power was manifested as the result. For if the
resurrection of the flesh to eternal life had not taken place in Christ,
and were not to be accomplished in His people, as predicted by Christ, or
by the prophets who foretold that Christ was to come, why do the martyrs
who were slain for this faith which proclaims the resurrection possess such
power? For whether God Himself wrought these miracles by that wonderful
manner of working by which, though Himself eternal, He produces effects in
time; or whether He wrought them by servants, and if so, whether He made
use of the spirits of martyrs as He uses men who are still in the body, or
effects all these marvels by means of angels, over whom He exerts an
invisible, immutable, incorporeal sway, so that what is said to be done by
the martyrs is done not by their operation, but only by their prayer and
request; or whether, finally, some things are done in one way, others in
another, and so that man cannot at all comprehend them,--nevertheless these
miracles attest this faith which preaches the resurrection of the flesh to
eternal life.

CHAP. 10.--THAT THE MARTYRS WHO OBTAIN MANY MIRACLES IN ORDER THAT THE TRUE
GOD MAY BE WORSHIPPED, ARE WORTHY OF MUCH GREATER HONOR THAN THE DEMONS,
WHO DO SOME MARVELS THAT THEY THEMSELVES MAY BE SUPPOSED TO BE GOD.

   Here perhaps our adversaries will say that their gods also have done
some wonderful things, if now they begin to compare their gods to our dead
men. Or will they also say that they have gods taken from among dead men,
such as Hercules, Romulus, and many others whom they fancy to have been
received into the number of the gods? But our martyrs are not our gods; for
we know that the martyrs and we have both but one God, and that the same.
Nor yet are the miracles which they maintain to have been done by means of
their temples at all comparable to those which are done by the tombs of our
martyrs. If they seem similar, their gods have been defeated by our martyrs
as Pharaoh's magi were by Moses. In reality, the demons wrought these
marvels with the same impure pride with which they aspired to be the gods
of the nations; but the martyrs do these wonders, or rather God does them
while they pray and assist, in order that an impulse may be given to the
faith by which we believe that they are not our gods, but  have, together
with ourselves, one God. In fine, they built temples to these gods of
theirs, and set up altars, and ordained priests, and appointed sacrifices;
but to our martyrs we build, not temples as if they were gods, but
monuments as to dead men whose spirits live with God. Neither do we erect
altars at these monuments that we may sacrifice to the martyrs, but to the
one God of the martyrs and of ourselves; and in this sacrifice they are
named in their own place and rank as men of God who conquered the world by
confessing Him, but they are not invoked by the sacrificing priest. For it
is to God, not to them, he sacrifices, though he sacrifices at their
monument; for he is God's priest, not theirs. The sacrifice itself, too, is
the body of Christ, which is not offered to them, because they themselves
are this body. Which then can more readily be believed to work miracles?
They who wish themselves to be reckoned gods by those on whom they work
miracles, or those whose sole object in working any miracle is to induce
faith in God, and in Christ also as God? They who wished to turn even their
crimes into sacred rites, or those who are unwilling that even their own
praises be consecrated, and seek that everything for which they are justly
praised be ascribed to the glory of Him in whom they are praised? For in
the Lord their souls are praised. Let us therefore believe those who both
speak the truth and work wonders. For by speaking the truth they suffered,
and so won the power of working wonders. And the leading truth they
professed is that Christ rose from the dead, and first showed in His own
flesh the immortality of the resurrection which He promised should be ours,
either in the beginning of the world to come, or in the end of this world.

CHAP. 11.--AGAINST THE PLATONISTS, WHO ARGUE FROM THE PHYSICAL WEIGHT OF
THE ELEMENTS THAT AN EARTHLY BODY CANNOT INHABIT HEAVEN.

   But against this great gift of God, these reasoners, "whose thoughts
the Lord knows that they are vain"(1) bring arguments from the weights of
the elements; for they have been taught by their master Plato that the two
greatest elements of the world, and the furthest removed from one another,
are coupled and united by the two intermediate, air and water. And
consequently they say, since the earth is the first of the elements,
beginning from the base of the series, the second the water above the
earth, the third the air above the water, the fourth the heaven above the
air, it follows that a body of earth cannot live in the heaven; for each
element is poised by its own weight so as to preserve its own place and
rank. Behold with what arguments human infirmity, possessed with vanity,
contradicts the omnipotence of God! What, then, do so many earthly bodies
do in the air, since the air is the third element from the earth? Unless
perhaps He who has granted to the earthly bodies of birds that they be
carried through the air by the lightness of feathers and wings, has not
been able to confer upon the bodies of men made immortal the power to abide
in the highest heaven. The earthly animals, too, which cannot fly, among
which are men, ought on these terms to live under the earth, as fishes,
which are the animals of the water, live under the water. Why, then, can an
animal of earth not live in the second element, that is, in water, while it
can in the third? Why, though it belongs to the earth, is it forthwith
suffocated if it is forced to live in the second element next above earth,
while it lives in the third, and cannot live out of it? Is there a mistake
here in the order of the elements, or is not the mistake rather in their
reasonings, and not in the nature of things? I will not repeat what I said
in the thirteenth book,(2) that many earthly bodies, though heavy like
lead, receive from the workman's hand a form which enables them to swim in
water; and yet it is denied that the omnipotent Worker can confer on the
human body a property which shall enable it to pass into heaven and dwell
there.

   But against what I have formerly said they can find nothing to say,
even though they introduce and make the most of this order of the elements
in which they confide. For if the order be that the earth is first, the
water second, the air third, the heaven fourth, then the soul is above all.
For Aristotle said that the soul was a fifth body, while Plato denied that
it was a body at all. If it were a fifth body, then certainly it would be
above the rest; and if it is not a body at all, so much the more does it
rise above all. What, then, does it do in an earthly body? What does this
soul, which is finer than all else, do in such a mass of matter as this?
What does the lightest of substances do in this ponderosity? this swiftest
substance in such sluggishness? Will not the body be raised to heaven by
virtue of so excellent a nature as this? and if now earthly bodies can
retain the souls below, shall not the souls be one day able to raise the
earthly bodies above?

   If we pass now to their miracles which they oppose to our martyrs as
wrought by their gods, shall not even these be found to make for us, and
help out our argument? For if any of the miracles of their gods are great,
certainly that is a great one which Varro mentions of a vestal virgin, who,
when she was endangered by a false accusation of unchastity, filled a sieve
with water from the Tiber, and carried it to her judges without any part of
it leaking. Who kept the weight of water in the sieve? Who prevented any
drop from falling from it through so many open holes? They will answer,
Some god or some demon. If a god, is he greater than the God who made the
world? If a demon, is he mightier than an angel who serves the God by whom
the world was made? If, then, a lesser god, angel, or demon could so
sustain the weight of this liquid element that the water might seem to have
changed its nature, shall not Almighty God, who Himself created all the
elements, be able to eliminate from the earthly body its heaviness, so that
the quickened body shall dwell in whatever element the quickening spirit
pleases?

   Then, again, since they give the air a middle place between the fire
above and the water beneath, how is it that we often find it between water
and water, and between the water and the earth? For what do they make of
those watery clouds, between which and the seas air is constantly found
intervening? I should like to know by what weight and order of the elements
it comes to pass that very violent and stormy torrents are suspended in the
clouds above the earth before they rush along upon the earth under the air.
In fine, why is it that throughout the whole globe the air is between the
highest heaven and the earth, if its place is between the sky and the
water, as the place of the water is between the sky and the earth?

   Finally, if the order of the elements is so disposed that, as Plato
thinks, the two extremes, fire and earth, are united by the two means, air
and water, and that the fire occupies the highest part of the sky, and the
earth the lowest part, or as it were the foundation of the world, and that
therefore earth cannot be in the heavens, how is fire in the earth? For,
according to this reasoning, these two elements, earth and fire, ought to
be so restricted to their own places, the highest and the lowest, that
neither the lowest can rise to the place of the highest, nor the highest
sink to that of the lowest. Thus, as they think that no particle of earth
is or shall ever be in the sky so we ought to see no particle of fire on
the earth. But the fact is that it exists to such an extent, not only on
but even under the earth, that the tops of mountains vomit it forth;
besides that we see it to exist on earth for human uses, and even to be
produced from the earth, since it is kindled from wood and stones, which
are without doubt earthly bodies. But that [upper] fire, they say, is
tranquil, pure, harmless, eternal; but this [earthly] fire is turbid,
smoky, corruptible, and corrupting. But it does not corrupt the mountains
and caverns of the earth in which it rages continually. But grant that the
earthly fire is so unlike the other as to suit its earthly position, why
then do they object to our believing that the nature of earthly bodies
shall some day be made incorruptible and fit for the sky, even as now fire
is corruptible and suited to the earth? They therefore adduce from their
weights and order of the elements nothing from which they can prove that it
is impossible for Almighty God to make our bodies such that they can dwell
in the skies.

CHAP. 12.--AGAINST THE CALUMNIES WITH WHICH UNBELIEVERS THROW RIDICULE UPON
THE CHRISTIAN FAITH IN THE RESURRECTION OF THE FLESH.

   But their way is to feign a scrupulous anxiety in investigating this
question, and to cast ridicule on our faith in the resurrection of the
body, by asking, Whether abortions shall rise? And as the Lord says,
"Verily I  say unto you, not a hair of your head shall perish,"(1) shall
all bodies have an equal stature and strength, or shall there be
differences in size? For if there is to be equality, where shall those
abortions, supposing that they rise again, get that bulk which they had not
here? Or if they shall not rise because they were not born but cast out,
they raise the same question about children who have died in childhood,
asking us whence they get the stature which we see they had not here; for
we will not say that those who have been not only born, but born again,
shall not rise again. Then, further, they ask of what size these equal
bodies shall be. For if all shall be as tall and large as were the tallest
and largest in this world, they ask us how it is that not only children but
many full-grown persons shall receive what they here did not possess, if
each one is to receive what he had here. And if the saying of the apostle,
that we are all to come to the "measure of the age of the fullness of
Christ,"(1) or that other saying, "Whom He predestinated to be conformed to
the image of His Son,"(2) is to be understood to mean that the stature and
size of Christ's body shall be the measure of the bodies of all those who
shall be in His kingdom, then, say they, the size and height of many must
be diminished; and if so much of the bodily frame itself be lost, what
becomes of the saying, "Not a hair of your head shall perish?" Besides, it
might be asked regarding the hair itself, whether all that the barber has
cut off shall be restored? And if it is to be restored, who would not
shrink from such deformity? For as the same restoration will be made of
what has been pared off the nails, much will be replaced on the body which
a regard for its appearance had cut off. And where, then, will be its
beauty, which assuredly ought to be much greater in that immortal condition
than it could be in this corruptible state? On the other hand, if such
things are not restored to the body, they must perish; how, then, they say,
shall not a hair of the head perish? In like manner they reason about
fatness and leanness; for if all are to be equal, then certainly there
shall not be some fat, others lean. Some, therefore, shall gain, others
lose something. Consequently there will not be a simple restoration of what
formerly existed, but, on the one hand, an addition of what had no
existence, and, on the other, a loss of what did before exist.

   The difficulties, too, about the corruption and dissolution of dead
bodies,--that one is turned into dust, while another evaporates into the
air; that some are devoured by beasts, some by fire, while some perish by
shipwreck or by drowning in one shape or other, so that their bodies decay
into liquid, these difficulties give them immoderate alarm, and they
believe that all those dissolved elements cannot be gathered again and
reconstructed into a body. They also make eager use of all the deformities
and blemishes which either accident or birth has produced, and accordingly,
with horror and derision, cite monstrous births, and ask if every deformity
will be preserved in the resurrection. For if we say that no such thing
shall be reproduced in the body of a man, they suppose that they confute us
by citing the marks of the wounds which we assert were found in the risen
body of the Lord Christ But of all these, the most difficult question is,
into whose body that flesh shall return which has been eaten and
assimilated by another man constrained by hunger to use it so; for it has
been converted into the flesh of the man who used it as his nutriment, and
it filled up those losses of flesh which famine had produced. For the sake,
then, of ridiculing the resurrection, they ask, Shall this return to the
man whose flesh it first was, or to him whose flesh it afterwards became?
And thus, too, they seek to give promise to the human soul of alternations
of true misery and false happiness, in accordance with Plato's theory; or,
in accordance with Porphyry's, that, after many transmigrations into
different bodies, it ends its miseries. and never more returns to them,
not, however, by obtaining an immortal body, but by escaping from every
kind of body.

CHAP. 13.--WHETHER ABORTIONS, IF THEY ARE NUMBERED AMONG THE DEAD, SHALL
NOT ALSO HAVE A PART IN THE RESURRECTION.

   To these objections, then, of our adversaries which I have thus
detailed, I will now reply, trusting that God will mercifully assist my
endeavors. That abortions, which, even supposing they were alive in the
womb, did also die there, shall rise again, I make bold neither to affirm
nor to deny, although I fail to see why, if they are not excluded from the
number of the dead, they should not attain to the resurrection of the dead.
For either all the dead shall not rise, and there will be to all eternity
some souls without bodies though they once had them,--only in their
mother's womb, indeed; or, if all human souls shall receive again the
bodies which they had wherever they lived, and which they left when they
died, then I do not see how I can say that even those who died in their
mother's womb shall have no resurrection. But whichever of these opinions
any one may adopt concerning them, we must at least apply to them, if they
rise again, all that we have to say of infants who have been born.

CHAP. 14.--WHETHER INFANTS SHALL RISE IN THAT BODY WHICH THEY WOULD HAVE
HAD HAD THEY GROWN UP.

   What, then, are we to say of infants, if not that they will not rise in
that diminutive body in which they died, but shall receive by the
marvellous and rapid operation of God that body which time by a slower
process would have given them? For in the Lord's words, where He says, "Not
a hair of your head shall perish,"(1) it is asserted that nothing which was
possessed shall be wanting; but it is not said that nothing which was not
possessed shall be given. To the dead infant there was wanting the perfect
stature of its body; for even the perfect infant lacks the perfection of
bodily size, being capable of further growth. This perfect stature is, in a
sense, so possessed by all that they are conceived and born with it,--that
is, they have it potentially, though not yet in actual bulk; just as all
the members of the body are potentially in the seed, though, even after the
child is born, some of them, the teeth for example, may be wanting. In this
seminal principle of every substance, there seems to be, as it were, the
beginning of everything which does not yet exist, or rather does not
appear, but which in process of time will come into being, or rather into
sight. In this, therefore, the child who is to be tall or short is already
tall or short. And in the resurrection of the body, we need, for the same
reason, fear no bodily loss; for though all should be of equal size, and
reach gigantic proportions, lest the men who were largest here should lose
anything of their bulk and it should perish, in contradiction to the words
of Christ, who said that not a hair of their head should perish, yet why
should there lack the means by which that wonderful Worker should make such
additions, seeing that He is the Creator, who Himself created all things
out of nothing?

CHAP. 15.--WHETHER THE BODIES OF ALL THE DEAD SHALL RISE THE SAME SIZE AS
THE LORD'S BODY.

   It is certain that Christ rose in the same bodily stature in which He
died, and that it is wrong to say that, when the general resurrection shall
have arrived, His body shall, for the sake of equalling the tallest, assume
proportions which it had not when He appeared to the disciples in the
figure with which they Were familiar. But if we say that even the bodies of
taller men are to be reduced to the size of the Lord's body, there will be
a great loss in many bodies, though He promised that, not a hair of their
head should perish. It remains, therefore, that we conclude that every man
shall receive his own size which he haiti in youth, though he died an old
man, or which he would have had, supposing he died before his prime. As for
what the apostle said of the measure of the age of the fullness of Christ,
we must either understand him to refer to something else, viz., to the fact
that the measure of Christ will be completed when all the members among the
Christian communities are added to the Head; or if we are to refer it to
the resurrection of the body, the meaning is that all shall rise neither
beyond nor under youth, but in that vigor and age to which we know that
Christ had arrived. For even the world's wisest men have fixed the bloom of
youth at about the age of thirty; and when this period has been passed, the
man begins to decline towards the defective and duller period of old age.
And therefore the apostle did not speak of the measure of the body, nor of
the measure of the stature, but of "the measure of the age of the fullness
of Christ."

CHAP. 16.--WHAT IS MEANT BY THE CONFORMING OF THE SAINTS TO THE IMAGE OF
TIlE SON OF GOD.

   Then, again, these words, "Predestinate to be conformed to the image of
the Son of God,"(2) may be understood of the inner man. So in another place
He says to us, "Be not conformed to this world, but be ye transformed in
the renewing of your mind."(3) In so far, then, as we are transformed so as
not to be conformed to the world, we are conformed to the Son of God. It
may also be understood thus, that as He was conformed to us by assuming
mortality, we shall be conformed to Him by immortality; and this indeed is
connected with the resurrection of the body. But if we are also taught in
these words what form our bodies shall rise in, as the measure we spoke of
before, so also this conformity is to be understood not of size, but of
age. Accordingly all shall rise in the stature they either had attained or
would have attained had they lived to their prime, although it will be no
great disadvantage even if the form of the body he infantine or aged, while
no infirmity shall remain in the mind nor in the body itself. So that even
if any one contends that every person will rise again in the same bodily
form in which he died, we need not spend much labor in disputing with him.

CHAP. 17.--WHETHER THE BODIES OF WOMEN SHALL RETAIN THEIR OWN SEX IN THE
RESURRECTION.

   From the words, "Till we all come to a  perfect man, to the measure of
the age of the fullness of Christ,"(4) and from the words, "Conformed to
the image of the Son of God,"(5) some conclude that women shall not rise
women, but that all shall be men, because God made man only of earth, and
woman of the man. For my part, they seem to be wiser who make no doubt that
both sexes shall rise, For there shall be no lust, which is now the cause
of confusion. For before they sinned, the man and the woman were naked, and
were not ashamed. From those bodies, then, vice shall be withdrawn, while
nature shall be preserved. And the sex of woman is not a vice, but nature.
It shall then indeed be superior to carnal intercourse and child-bearing;
nevertheless the female members shall remain adapted not to the old uses,
but to a new beauty, which, so far from provoking lust, now extinct, shall
excite praise to the wisdom and clemency of God, who both made what was not
and delivered from corruption what He made. For at the beginning of the
human race the woman was made of a rib taken from the side of the man while
he slept; for it seemed fit that even then Christ and His Church should be
fore-shadowed in this event. For that sleep of the man was the death of
Christ, whose side, as He hung lifeless upon the cross, was pierced with a
spear, and there flowed from it blood and water, and these we know to be
the sacraments by which the Church is "built up." For Scripture used this
very word, not saying "He formed" or "framed," but "built her up into a
woman;"(1) whence also the apostle speaks of the edification of the body of
Christ,(2) which is the Church. The woman, therefore, is a creature of God
even as the man; but by her creation from man unity is commended; and the
manner of her creation prefigured, as has been said, Christ and the Church.
He, then, who created both sexes will restore both. Jesus Himself also,
when asked by the Sadducees, who denied the resurrection, which of the
seven brothers should have to wife the woman whom all in succession had
taken to raise up seed to their brother, as the law enjoined, says, "Ye do
err, not knowing the Scriptures nor the power of God."(3) And though it was
a fit opportunity for His saying, She about whom you make inquiries shall
herself be a man, and not a woman, He said nothing of the kind; but "In the
resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are as the
angels of God in heaven."(4) They shall be equal to the angels in
immortality and happiness, not in flesh, nor in resurrection, which the
angels did not need, because they could not die. The Lord then denied that
there would be in the resurrection, not women, but marriages; and He
uttered this denial in circumstances in which the question mooted would
have been more easily and speedily solved by denying that the female sex
would exist, if this had in truth been foreknown by Him. But, indeed, He
even affirmed that the sex should exist by saying, "They shall not be given
in marriage," which can only apply to females; "Neither shall they marry,"
which applies to males. There shall therefore be those who are in this
world accustomed to marry and be given in marriage, only they shall there
make no such marriages.

CHAP. 18.--OF THE PERFECT MAN, THAT IS, CHRIST; AND OF HIS BODY, THAT IS,
THE, CHURCH, WHICH IS HIS FULLNESS.

   To understand what the apostle means when he says that we shall all
come to a perfect man, we must consider the connection of the whole
passage, which runs thus: "He that descended is the same also that ascended
up far above all heavens, that He might fill all things. And He gave some,
apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and
teachers; for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry,
for the edifying of the body of Christ: till we all come to the unity of
the faith and knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure
of the age of the fullness of Christ: that we henceforth be no more
children, tossed and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the
sleight of men, and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to
deceive; but, speaking the truth in love, may grow up in Him in all things,
which is the Head, even Christ: from whom the whole body fitly joined
together and compacted by that which every joint supplieth, according to
the effectual working in the measure of every part, maketh increase of the
body, unto the edifying of itself in love."(5) Behold what the perfect man
is--the head and the body, which is made up of all the members, which in
their own time shall be perfected. But new additions are daily being made
to this body while, the Church is being built up, to which it is said, "Ye
are the body of Christ and His members;"(6) and again, "For His body's
sake," he says, "which is the Church;"(7) and again, "We being many are one
head, one body."(8)  It is of the edification of this body that it is here,
too, said, "For the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry,
for the edification of the body of Christ;" and then that passage of which
we are now speaking is added, "Till we all come to the unity of the faith
and knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the
age of the fullness of Christ," and so on. And he shows of what body we are
to understand this to be the measure, when he says, "That we may grow up
into Him in all things, which is the Head, even Christ: from whom the whole
body filly joined together and compacted by that which every joint
supplieth, according to the effectual working in the measure of every
part." As, therefore, there is a measure of every part, so there is a
measure of the fullness of the whole body which is made up of all its
parts, and it is of this measure it is said, "To the measure of the age of
the fullness of Christ." This fullness he spoke of also in the place where
he says of Christ, "And gave Him to be the Head over all things to the
Church,(1) which is His body, the fullness of Him that filleth all in
all.'(2) But even if this should be referred to the form in which each one
shall rise, what should hinder us from applying to the woman what is
expressly said of the man, understanding both sexes to be included under
the general term "man?" For certainly in the saying, "Blessed is he who
feareth the Lord,"(3) women also who fear the Lord are included.

CHAP. 19.--THAT ALL BODILY BLEMISHES WHICH MAR HUMAN BEAUTY IN THIS LIFE
SHALL BE REMOVED IN THE RESURRECTION, THE NATURAL SUBSTANCE OF THE BODY
REMAINING, BUT THE QUALITY AND QUANTITY OF IT BEING ALTERED SO AS TO
PRODUCE BEAUTY.

   What am I to say now about the hair and nails? Once it is understood
that no part of the body shall so perish as to produce deformity in the
body, it is at the same time understood trial such things as would have
produced a deformity by their excessive proportions shall be added to the
total bulk of the body, not to parts in which the beauty of the proportion
would thus be marred. Just as if, after making a vessel of clay, one wished
to make it over again of the same clay, it would not be necessary that the
same portion of the clay which had formed the handle should again form the
new handle, or that what had formed the bottom should again do so, but only
that the whole clay should go to make up the whole new vessel, and that no
part of it should be left unused. Wherefore, if the hair that has been
cropped and the nails that have been cut would cause a deformity were they
to be restored to their places, they shall not be restored; and yet no one
will lose these parts at the resurrection, for they shall be changed into
the same flesh, their substance being so altered as to preserve the
proportion of the various parts of the body. However, what our Lord said,
"Not a hair of your head shall perish," might more suitably be interpreted
of the number, and not of the length of the hairs, as He elsewhere says,
"The hairs of your head are all numbered."(4) Nor would I say this because
I suppose that any part naturally belonging to the body can perish, but
that whatever deformity was in it, and served to exhibit the penal
condition in which we mortals are, should be restored in such a way that,
while the substance is entirely preserved, the deformity shall perish. For
if even a human workman, who has, for some reason, made a deformed statue,
can recast it and make it very beautiful, and this without suffering any
part of tile substance, but only the deformity to be lost,--if he can, for
example, remove some unbecoming or disproportionate part, not by cutting
off and separating this part from the whole, but by so breaking down and
mixing up the whole as to get rid of the blemish without diminishing the
quantity of his material,--shall we not think as highly of the almighty
Worker? Shall He not be able to remove and abolish all deformities of the
human body, whether common ones or rare and monstrous, which, though in
keeping with this miserable life, are yet not to be thought of in
connection with that future blessedness; and shall He not be able so to
remove them that, while the natural but unseemly blemishes are put an end
to, the natural substance shall suffer no diminution?

   And consequently overgrown and emaciated persons need not fear that
they shall be in heaven of such a figure as they would not be even in this
world if they could help it. For all bodily beauty consists in the
proportion of the parts, together with a certain agreeableness of color.
Where there is no proportion, the eye is offended, either because there is
something awanting, or too small, or too large. And thus there shall be no
deformity resulting from want of proportion in that state in which all that
is wrong is corrected, and all that is defective supplied from resources
the Creator wots of, and all that is excessive removed without destroying
the integrity of the substance. And as for the pleasant color, how
conspicuous shall it be where "the just shall shine forth as the sun in the
kingdom of their Father!"(5) This brightness we must rather believe to have
been concealed from the eyes of the disciples when Christ rose, than to
have been awanting. For weak human eyesight could not bear it, and it was
necessary that they should so look upon Him as to be able to recognize Him.
For this purpose also He allowed them to touch the marks of His wounds, and
also ate and drank,--not because He needed nourishment, but because He
could take it if He wished. Now, when an object, though present, is
invisible to persons who see other things which are present, as we say that
that brightness was present but invisible by those who saw other things,
this is called in Greek aorasi'a; and our Latin translators, for want of a
better word, have rendered this caecitas (blindness) in the book of
Genesis. This blindness the men of Sodom suffered when they sought the just
Lot's gate and could not find it. But if it had been blindness, that is to
say, if they could see nothing, then they would not have asked for the gate
by which they might enter the house, but for guides who might lead them
away.

   But the love we bear to the blessed martyrs causes us, I know not how,
to desire to see in the heavenly kingdom the marks of the wounds which they
received for the name of Christ, and possibly we shall see them. For this
will not be a deformity, but a mark of honor, and will add lustre to their
appearance, and a spiritual, if not a bodily beauty. And yet we need not
believe that they to whom it has been said, "Not a hair of your head shall
perish," shall, in the resurrection, want such of their members as they
have been deprived of in their martyrdom. But if it will be seemly in that
new kingdom to have some marks of these wounds still visible in that
immortal flesh, the places where they have been wounded or mutilated shall
retain the scars without any of the members being lost. While, therefore,
it is quite true that no blemishes which the body has sustained shall
appear in the resurrection, yet we are not to reckon or name these marks of
virtue blemishes.

CHAP. 20.--THAT, IN THE RESURRECTION, THE SUBSTANCE OF OUR BODIES, HOWEVER
DISINTEGRATED, SHALL BE ENTIRELY REUNITED.

   Far be it from us to fear that the omnipotence of the Creator cannot,
for the resuscitation and reanimation of our bodies, recall all the
portions which have been consumed by beasts or fire, or have been dissolved
into dust or ashes, or have decomposed into water, or evaporated into the
air. Far from us be the thought, that anything which escapes our
observation in any most hidden recess of nature either evades the knowledge
or transcends the power of the Creator of all things. Cicero, the great
authority of our adversaries, wishing to define God as accurately as
possible, says, "God is a mind free and independent, without materiality,
perceiving and moving all things, and itself endowed with eternal
movement."(1) This he found in the systems of the greatest philosophers.
Let me ask, then, in their own language, how anything can either lie hid
from Him who perceives all things, or irrevocably escape Him who moves all
things?

   This leads me to reply to that question which seems the most difficult
of all,--To whom, in the resurrection, will belong the flesh of a dead man
which has become the flesh of a living man? For if some one, famishing for
want and pressed with hunger, use human flesh as food,--an extremity not
unknown, as both ancient history and the unhappy experience of our own days
have taught us,--can it be contended, with any show of reason, that all the
flesh eaten has been evacuated, and that none of it has been assimilated to
the substance of the eater though the very emaciation which existed before,
and has now disappeared, sufficiently indicates what large deficiencies
have been filled up with this food? But I have already made some remarks
which will suffice for the solution of this difficulty also. For all the
flesh which hunger has consumed finds its way into the air by evaporation,
whence, as we have said, God Almighty can recall it. That flesh, therefore,
shall be restored to the man in whom it first became human flesh. For it
must be looked upon as borrowed by the other person, and, like a pecuniary
loan, must be returned to the lender. His own flesh, however, which he lost
by famine, shall be restored to him by Him who can recover even what has
evaporated. And though it had been absolutely annihilated, so that no part
of its substance remained in any secret spot of nature, the Almighty could
restore it by such means as He saw fit. For this sentence, uttered by the
Truth, "Not a hair of your head shall perish," forbids us to suppose that,
though no hair of a man's head can perish, yet the large portions of his
flesh eaten and consumed by the famishing can perish.

   From all that we have thus considered, and discussed with such poor
ability as we can command, we gather this conclusion, that in the
resurrection of the flesh the body shall be of that size which it either
had attained or should have attained in the flower of its youth, and shall
enjoy the beauty that arises from preserving symmetry and proportion in all
its members. And it is reasonable to suppose that, for the preservation of
this beauty, any part of the body's substance, which, if placed in one
spot, would produce a deformity, shall be distributed through the whole of
it, so that neither any part, nor the symmetry of the whole, may be lost,
but only the general stature of the body somewhat increased by the
distribution in all the parts of that which, in one place, would have been
unsightly. Or if it is contended that each will rise with the same stature
as that of the body he died in, we shall not obstinately dispute this,
provided only there be no deformity, no infirmity, no languor, no
corruption,--nothing of any kind which would ill become that kingdom in
which the children of the resurrection and of the promise shall be equal to
the angels of God, if not in body and age, at least in happiness.

CHAP. 21.--OF THE NEW SPIRITUAL BODY INTO WHICH THE FLESH OF THE SAINTS
SHALL BE TRANSFORMED.

   Whatever, therefore, has been taken from the body, either during life
or after death shall be restored to it, and, in conjunction with what has
remained in the grave, shall rise again, transformed from the oldness of
the animal body into the newness of the spiritual body, and clothed in
incorruption and immortality. But even though the body has been all quite
ground to powder by some severe accident, or by the ruthlessness of
enemies, and though it has been so diligently scattered to the winds, or
into the water, that there is no trace of it left, yet it shall not be
beyond the omnipotence of the Creator,--no, not a hair of its head shall
perish. The flesh shall then be spiritual, and subject to the spirit, but
still flesh, not spirit, as the spirit itself, when subject to the flesh,
was fleshly, but still spirit and not flesh. And of this we have
experimental proof in the deformity of our penal condition. For those
persons were carnal, not in a fleshly, but in a spiritual way, to whom the
apostle said, "I could not speak to you as unto spiritual, but as unto
carnal."(1) And a man is in this life spiritual in such a way, that he is
yet carnal with respect to his body, and sees another law in his members
warring against the law of his mind; but even in his body he will be
spiritual when the same flesh shall have had that resurrection of which
these words speak, "It is sown an animal body, it shall rise a spiritual
body."(2) But what this spiritual body shall be and how great its grace, I
fear it were but rash to pronounce, seeing that we have as yet no
experience of it. Nevertheless, since it is fit that the joyfulness of our
hope should utter itself, and so show forth God's praise, and since it was
from the profoundest sentiment of ardent and holy love that the Psalmist
cried, "O Lord, I have loved the beauty of Thy house,"(3) we may, with
God's help, speak of the gifts  He lavishes on men, good and bad alike, in
this most wretched life, and may do our best to conjecture the great glory
of that state which we cannot worthily speak of, because we have not yet
experienced it, For I say nothing of the time when God made man upright; I
say nothing of the happy life of "the man and his wife" in the fruitful
garden, since it was so short that none of their children experienced it: I
speak only of this life which we know, and in which we now are, from the
temptations of which we cannot escape so long as we are in it, no matter
what progress we make, for it is all temptation, and I ask, Who can
describe the tokens of God's goodness that are extended to the human race
even in this life?

CHAP. 22.--OF THE MISERIES AND ILLS TO WHICH THE HUMAN RACE IS JUSTLY
EXPOSED THROUGH THE FIRST SIN, AND FROM WHICH NONE CAN BE DELIVERED SAVE BY
CHRIST'S GRACE.

   That the whole human race has been condemned in its first origin, this
life itself, if life it is to be called, bears witness by the host of cruel
ills with which it is filled. Is not this proved by the profound and
dreadful ignorance which produces all the errors that enfold the children
of Adam, and from which no man can be delivered without toil, pain, and
fear? Is it not proved by his love of so many vain and hurtful things,
which produces gnawing cares, disquiet, griefs, fears, wild joys, quarrels,
lawsuits, wars, treasons, angers, hatreds, deceit, flattery, fraud, theft,
robbery, perfidy, pride, ambition, envy, murders, parricides, cruelty,
ferocity, wickedness, luxury, insolence, impudence, shamelessness,
fornications, adulteries, incests, and the numberless uncleannesses and
unnatural acts of both sexes, which it is shameful so much as to mention;
sacrileges, heresies, blasphemies, perjuries, oppression of the innocent,
calumnies, plots, falsehoods, false witnessings, unrighteous judgments,
violent deeds, plunderings, and whatever similar wickedness has found its
way into the lives of men, though it cannot find its way into the
conception of pure minds? These are indeed the crimes of wicked men, yet
they spring from that root of error and misplaced love which is born with
every son of Adam. For who is there that has not observed with what
profound ignorance, manifesting itself even in infancy, and with what
superfluity of foolish desires, beginning to appear in boyhood, man comes
into this life, so that, were he left to live as he pleased, and to do
whatever he pleased, he would plunge into all, or certainly into many of
those crimes and iniquities which I mentioned, and could not mention?

   But because God does not wholly desert those whom He condemns, nor
shuts up in His anger His tender mercies, the human race is restrained by
law and instruction, which keep guard against the ignorance that besets us,
and oppose the assaults of vice, but are themselves full of labor and
sorrow. For what mean those multifarious threats which are used to restrain
the folly of children? What mean pedagogues, masters, the birch, the strap,
the cane, the schooling which Scripture says must be given a child,
"beating him on the sides lest he wax stubborn,"(1) and it be hardly
possible or not possible at all to subdue him? Why all these punishments,
save to overcome ignorance and bridle evil desires--these evils with which
we come into the world? For why is it that we remember with difficulty, and
without difficulty forget? learn with difficulty, and without difficulty
remain ignorant? are diligent with difficulty, and without difficulty are
indolent? Does not this show what vitiated nature inclines and tends to by
its own weight, and what succor it needs if it is to be delivered?
Inactivity, sloth, laziness, negligence, are vices which shun labor, since
labor, though useful, is itself a punishment.

   But, besides the punishments of childhood, without which there would be
no learning of what the parents wish,--and the parents rarely wish anything
useful to be taught,--who can describe, who can conceive the number and
severity of the punishments which afflict the human race,--pains which are
not  only the accompaniment of the wickedness of godless men, but are a
part of the human condition and the common misery,--what fear and what
grief are caused by bereavement and mourning, by losses and condemnations,
by fraud and falsehood, by false suspicions, and all the crimes and wicked
deeds of other men? For at their hands we suffer robbery, captivity,
chains, imprisonment, exile, torture, mutilation, loss of sight, the
violation of chastity to satisfy the lust of the oppressor, and many other
dreadful evils. What numberless casualties threaten our bodies from
without,--extremes of heat and cold, storms, floods, inundations,
lightning, thunder, hail, earthquakes, houses falling; or from the
stumbling, or shying, or vice of horses; from countless poisons. in fruits,
water, air, animals; from the painful or even deadly bites of wild animals;
from the madness which a mad dog communicates, so that even the animal
which of all others is most gentle and friendly to its own master, becomes
an object of intenser fear than a lion or dragon, and the man whom it has
by chance infected with this pestilential contagion becomes so rabid, that
his parents, wife, children, dread him more than any wild beast! What
disasters are suffered by those who travel by land or sea! What man can go
out of his own house without being exposed on all hands to unforeseen
accidents? Returning home sound in limb, he slips on his own doorstep,
breaks his leg, and never recovers. What can seem safer than a man sitting
in his chair? Eli the priest fell from his, and broke his neck. How many
accidents do farmers, or rather all men, fear that the crops may suffer
from the weather, or the soil, or the ravages of destructive animals?
Commonly they feel safe when the crops are gathered and housed. Yet, to my
certain knowledge, sudden floods have driven the laborers away, and swept
the barns clean of the finest harvest. Is innocence a sufficient protection
against the various assaults of demons? That no man might think so, even
baptized infants, who are certainly unsurpassed in innocence, are sometimes
so tormented, that God, who permits it, teaches us hereby to bewail the
calamities of this life, and to desire the felicity of the life to come. As
to bodily diseases, they are so numerous that they cannot all be contained
even in medical books. And in very many, or almost all of them, the cures
and remedies are themselves tortures, so that men are delivered from a pain
that destroys by a cure that pains. Has not the madness of thirst driven
men to drink human urine, and even their own? Has not hunger driven men to
eat human flesh, and that the flesh not of bodies found dead, but of bodies
slain for the purpose? Have not the fierce pangs of famine driven mothers
to eat their own children, incredibly savage as it seems? In fine, sleep
itself, which is justly called repose, how little of repose there sometimes
is in it when disturbed with dreams and visions; and with what terror is
the wretched mind overwhelmed by the appearances of things which are so
presented, and which, as it were so stand out before the senses, that we
can not distinguish them from realities! How wretchedly do false
appearances distract men in certain diseases! With what astonishing variety
of appearances are even healthy men sometimes deceived by evil spirits, who
produce these delusions for the sake of perplexing the senses of their
victims, if they cannot succeed in seducing them to their side!

   From this hell upon earth there is no escape, save through the grace of
the Saviour Christ, our God and Lord. The very name Jesus shows this, for
it means Saviour; and He saves us especially from passing out of this life
into a more wretched and eternal state, which is rather a death than a
life. For in this life, though holy men and holy pursuits afford us great
consolations, yet the blessings which men crave are not invariably bestowed
upon them, lest religion should be cultivated for the sake of these
temporal advantages, while it ought rather to be cultivated for the sake of
that other life from which all evil is excluded. Therefore, also, does
grace aid good men in the midst of present calamities, so that they are
enabled to endure them with a constancy proportioned to their faith. The
world's sages affirm that philosophy contributes something to this,--that
philosophy which, according to Cicero, the gods have bestowed in its purity
only on a few men. They have never given, he says, nor can ever give, a
greater gift to men. So that even those against whom we are disputing have
been compelled to acknowledge, in some fashion, that the grace of God is
necessary for the acquisition, not, indeed, of any philosophy, but of the
true philosophy. And if the true philosophy--this sole support against the
miseries of this life--has been given by Heaven only to a few, it
sufficiently appears from this that the human race has been condemned to
pay this penalty of wretchedness. And as, according to their
acknowledgment, no greater gift has been bestowed by God, so it must be
believed that it could be given only by that God whom they themselves
recognize as greater than all the gods they worship.

CHAP. 23.--OF THE MISERIES OF THIS LIFE WHICH ATTACH PECULIARLY TO THE TOIL
OF GOOD MEN. IRRESPECTIVE OF THOSE WHICH ARE COMMON TO THE GOOD AND BAD.

   But, irrespective of the miseries which in this life are common to the
good and bad, the righteous undergo labors peculiar to themselves, in so
far as they make war upon their vices, and are involved in the temptations
and perils of such a contest. For though sometimes more violent and at
other times slacker, yet without intermission does the flesh lust against
the spirit and the spirit against the flesh, so that we cannot do the
things we would,(1) and extirpate all lust, but can only refuse consent to
it, as God gives us ability, and so keep it under, vigilantly keeping watch
lest a semblance of truth deceive us, lest a subtle discourse blind us,
test error involve us in darkness, test we should take good for evil or
evil for good, lest fear should hinder us from doing what we ought, or
desire precipitate us into doing what we ought not, lest the sun go down
upon our wrath, lest hatred provoke us to render evil for evil, lest
unseemly or immoderate grief consume us, test an ungrateful disposition
make us slow to recognize benefits received, lest calumnies fret our
conscience, lest rash suspicion on our part deceive us regarding a friend,
or false suspicion of us on the part of others give us too much uneasiness,
lest sin reign in our mortal body to obey its desires, lest our members be
used as the instruments of unrighteousness, lest the eye follow lust, test
thirst for revenge carry us away, lest sight or thought dwell too long on
some evil thing which gives us pleasure, lest wicked or indecent language
be willingly listened to, lest we do what is pleasant but unlawful, and
lest in this warfare, filled so abundantly with toil and peril, we either
hope to secure victory by our own strength, or attribute it when secured to
our own strength, and not to His grace of whom the apostle says, "Thanks be
unto God, who giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ;"(2) and
in another place he says, "In all these things we are more than conquerors
through Him that loved us."(3) But yet we are to know this, that however
valorously we resist our vices, and however successful we are in overcoming
them, yet as long as we are in this body we have always reason to say to
God, Forgive us our debts."(4) But in that kingdom where we shall dwell for
ever, clothed in immortal bodies, we shall no longer have either conflicts
or debts,--as indeed we should not have had at any time or in any
condition, had our nature continued upright as it was created. Consequently
even this our conflict, in which we are exposed to peril, and from which we
hope to be delivered by a final victory, belongs to the ills of this life,
which is proved by the witness of so many grave evils to be a life under
condemnation.

CHAP. 24.--OF THE BLESSINGS WITH WHICH THE CREATOR HAS FILLED THIS LIFE,
OBNOXIOUS THOUGH IT BE TO THE CURSE.

   But we must now contemplate the rich and countless blessings with which
the goodness of God, who cares for all He has created, has filled this very
misery of the human race, which reflects His retributive justice. That
first blessing which He pronounced before the fall, when He said,
"Increase, and multiply, and replenish the earth,"(1) He did not inhibit
after man had sinned, but the fecundity originally bestowed remained in the
condemned stock; and the vice of sin, which has involved us in the
necessity of dying, has yet not deprived us of that wonderful power of
seed, or rather of that still more marvellous power by which seed is
produced, and which seems to be as it were inwrought and inwoven in the
human body. But in this river, as I may call it, or torrent of the human
race, both elements are carried along together,--both the evil which is
derived from him who begets, and the good which is bestowed by Him who
creates us. In the original evil there are two things, sin and punishment;
in the original good, there are two other things, propagation and
conformation. But of the evils, of which the one, sin, arose from our
audacity, and the other, punishment, from God's judgment, we have already
said as much as suits our present purpose. I mean now to speak of the
blessings which God has conferred or still confers upon our nature,
vitiated and condemned as it is. For in condemning it He did not withdraw
all that He had given it, else it had been annihilated; neither did He, in
penally subjecting it to the devil, remove it beyond His own power; for not
even the devil himself is outside of God's government, since the devil's
nature subsists only by the supreme Creator who gives being to all that in
any form exists.

   Of these two blessings, then, which we have said flow from God's
goodness, as from a fountain, towards our nature, vitiated by sin and
condemned to punishment, the one, propagation, was conferred by God's
benediction when He made those first works, from which He rested on the
seventh day. But the other, conformation, is conferred in that work of His
wherein "He worketh hitherto."(2) For were He to withdraw His efficacious
power from things, they should neither be able to go on and complete the
periods assigned to their measured movements, nor should they even continue
in possession of that nature they were created in. God, then, so created
man that He gave him what we may call fertility, whereby he might propagate
other men, giving them a congenital capacity to propagate their kind, but
not imposing on them any necessity to do so. This capacity God withdraws at
pleasure from individuals, making them barren; but from the whole race He
has not withdrawn the blessing of propagation once conferred. But though
not withdrawn on account of sin, this power of propagation is not what it
would have been had there been no sin. For since "man placed in honor fell,
he has become like the beasts,"(3) and generates as they do, though the
little spark of reason, which was the image of God in him, has not been
quite quenched. But if conformation were not added to propagation, there
would be no reproduction of one's kind. For even though there were no such
thing as copulation, and God wished to fill the earth with human
inhabitants, He might create all these as He created one without the help
of human generation. And, indeed, even as it is, those who copulate can
generate nothing save by the creative energy of God. As, therefore, in
respect of that spiritual growth whereby a man is formed to piety and
righteousness, the apostle says, "Neither is he that planteth anything,
neither he that watereth, but God that giveth the increase,"(4) so also it
must be said that it is not he that generates that is anything, but God
that giveth the essential form; that it is not the mother who carries and
nurses the fruit of her womb that is anything, but God that giveth the
increase. For He alone, by that energy wherewith "He worketh hitherto,"
causes the seed to develop, and to evolve from certain secret and invisible
folds into the visible forms of beauty which we see. He alone, coupling and
connecting in some wonderful fashion the spiritual and corporeal natures,
the one to command, the other to obey, makes a living being. And this work
of His is so great and wonderful, that not only man, who is a rational
animal, and consequently more excellent than all other animals of the
earth, but even the most diminutive insect, cannot be considered
attentively without astonishment and without praising the Creator.

   It is He, then, who has given to the human soul a mind, in which reason
and understanding lie as it were asleep during infancy, and as if they were
not, destined, however, to be awakened and exercised as years increase, so
as to become capable of knowledge and of receiving instruction, fit to
understand what is true and to love what is good. It is by this capacity
the soul drinks in wisdom, and becomes endowed with those virtues by which,
in prudence, fortitude, temperance, and righteousness, it makes war upon
error and the other inborn vices, and conquers them by fixing its desires
upon no other object than the supreme and unchangeable Good. And even
though this be not uniformly the result, yet who can competently utter or
even conceive the grandeur of this work of the Almighty, and the
unspeakable boon He has conferred upon our rational nature, by giving us
even the capacity of such attainment? For over and above those arts which
are called virtues, and which teach us how we may spend our life well, and
attain to endless happiness,--arts which are given to the children of the
promise and the kingdom by the sole grace of God which is in Christ,--has
not the genius of man invented and applied countless astonishing arts,
partly the result of necessity, partly the result of exuberant invention,
so that this vigor of mind, which is so active in the discovery not merely
of superfluous but even of dangerous and destructive things, betokens an
inexhaustible wealth in the nature which can invent, learn, or employ such
arts? What wonderful--one might say stupefying--advances has human industry
made in the arts of weaving and building, of agriculture and navigation!
With what endless variety are designs in pottery, painting, and sculpture
produced, and with what skill executed! What wonderful spectacles are
exhibited in the theatres, which those who have not seen them cannot
credit! How skillful the contrivances for catching, killing, or taming wild
beasts! And for the injury of men, also, how many kinds of poisons,
weapons, engines of destruction, have been invented, while for the
preservation or restoration of health the appliances and remedies are
infinite! To provoke appetite and please the palate, what a variety of
seasonings have been concocted! To express and gain entrance for thoughts,
what a multitude and variety of signs there are, among which speaking and
writing hold the first place! what ornaments has eloquence at command to
delight the mind! what wealth of song is there to captivate the ear! how
many musical instruments and strains of harmony have been devised! What
skill has been attained in measures and numbers! with what sagacity have
the movements and connections of the stars been discovered! Who could tell
the thought that has been spent upon nature, even though, despairing of
recounting it in detail, he endeavored only to give a general view of it?
In fine, even the defence of errors and misapprehensions, which has
illustrated the genius of heretics and philosophers, cannot be sufficiently
declared. For at present it is the nature of the human mind which adorns
this mortal life which we are extolling, and not the faith and the way of
truth which lead to immortality. And since this great nature has certainly
been created by the true and supreme God, who administers all things He has
made with absolute power and justice, it could never have fallen into these
miseries, nor have gone out of them to miseries eternal, --saving only
those who are redeemed,--had not an exceeding great sin been found in the
first man from whom the rest have sprung.

   Moreover, even in the body, though it dies like that of the beasts, and
is in many ways weaker than theirs, what goodness of God, what providence
of the great Creator, is apparent! The organs of sense and the rest of the
members, are not they so placed, the appearance, and form, and stature of
the body as a whole, is it not so fashioned, as to indicate that it was
made for the service of a reasonable soul? Man has not been created
stooping towards the earth, like the irrational animals; but his bodily
form, erect and looking heavenwards, admonishes him to mind the things that
are above. Then the marvellous nimbleness which has been given to the
tongue and the hands, fitting them to speak, and write, and execute so many
duties, and practise so many arts, does it not prove the excellence of the
soul for which such an assistant was provided? And even apart from its
adaptation to the work required of it, there is such a  symmetry in its
various parts, and so beautiful a proportion maintained, that one is at a
loss to decide whether, in creating the body, greater regard was paid to
utility or to beauty. Assuredly no part of the body has been created for
the sake of utility which does not also contribute something to its beauty.
And this would be all the more apparent, if we knew more precisely how all
its parts are connected and adapted to one another, and were not limited in
our observations to what appears on the surface; for as to what is covered
up and hidden from our view, the intricate web of veins and nerves, the
vital parts of all that lies under the skin, no one can discover it. For
although, with a cruel zeal for science, some medical men, who are called
anatomists, have dissected the bodies of the dead, and sometimes even of
sick persons who died under their knives, and have inhumanly pried into the
secrets of the human body to learn the nature of the disease and its exact
seat, and how it might be cured, yet those relations of which I speak, and
which form the concord,(1) or, as the Greeks call it, "harmony," of the
whole body outside and in, as of some instrument, no one has been able to
discover, because no one has been audacious enough to seek for them. But if
these could be known, then even the inward parts, which seem to have no
beauty, would so delight us with their exquisite fitness, as to afford a
profounder satisfaction to the mind--and the eyes are but its ministers--
than the obvious beauty which gratifies the eye. There are some things,
too, which have such a place in the body, that they obviously serve no
useful purpose, but are solely for beauty, as e.g. the teats on a man's
breast, or the beard on his face; for that this is for ornament, and not
for protection, is proved by the bare faces of women, who ought rather, as
the weaker sex, to enjoy such a defence. If, therefore, of all those
members which are exposed to our view, there is certainly not one in which
beauty is sacrificed to utility, while there are some which serve no
purpose but only beauty, I think it can readily be concluded that in the
creation of the human body comeliness was more regarded than necessity. In
truth, necessity is a transitory thing; and the time is coming when we
shall enjoy one another's beauty without any lust,--a condition which will
specially redound to the praise of the Creator, who, as it is said in the
psalm, has "put on praise and comeliness,"(1)

   How can I tell of the rest of creation, with all its beauty and
utility, which the divine goodness has given to man to please his eye and
serve his purposes, condemned though he is, and hurled into these labors
and miseries? Shall I speak of the manifold and various loveliness of sky,
and earth, and sea; of the plentiful supply and wonderful qualities of the
light; of sun, moon, and stars; of the shade of trees; of the colors and
perfume of flowers; of the multitude of birds, all differing in plumage and
in song; of the variety of animals, of which the smallest in size are often
the most wonderful,--the works of ants and bees astonishing us more than
the huge bodies of whales? Shall I speak of the sea, which itself is so
grand a spectacle, when it arrays itself as it were in vestures of various
colors, now running through every shade of green, and again becoming purple
or blue? Is it not delightful to look at it in storm, and experience the
soothing complacency which it inspires, by suggesting that we ourselves are
not tossed and shipwrecked?(2) What shall I say of the numberless kinds of
food to alleviate hunger, and the variety of seasonings to stimulate
appetite which are scattered everywhere by nature, and for which we are not
indebted to the art of cookery? How many natural appliances are there for
preserving and restoring health! How grateful is the alternation of day and
night! how pleasant the breezes that cool the air! how abundant the supply
of clothing furnished us by trees and animals! Who can enumerate all the
blessings we enjoy? If I were to attempt to detail and unfold only these
few which I have indicated in the mass, such an enumeration would fill a
volume. And all these are but the solace of the wretched and condemned, not
the rewards of the blessed. What then shall these rewards be, if such be
the blessings of a condemned state? What will He give to those whom He has
predestined to life, who has given such things even to those whom He has
predestined to death? What blessings will He in the blessed life shower
upon those for whom, even in this state of misery, He has been willing that
His only-begotten Son should endure such sufferings even to death? Thus the
apostle reasons concerning those who are predestined to that kingdom: "He
that spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He
not with Him also give us all things?"(3) When this promise is fulfilled,
what shall we be? What blessings shall we receive in that kingdom, since
already we have received as the pledge of them Christ's dying? In what
condition shall the spirit of man be, when it has no longer any vice at
all; when it neither yields to any, nor is in bondage to any, nor has to
make war against any, but is perfected, and enjoys undisturbed peace with
itself? Shall it not then know all things with certainty, and without any
labor or error, when unhindered and joyfully it drinks the wisdom of God at
the fountain-head? What shall the body be, when it is in every respect
subject to the spirit, from which it shall draw a life so sufficient, as to
stand in need of no other nutriment? For it shall no longer be animal, but
spiritual, having indeed the substance of flesh, but without any fleshly
corruption.

CHAP. 25.--OF THE OBSTINACY OF THOSE INDIVIDUALS WHO IMPUGN THE
RESURRECTION OF THE BODY, THOUGH, AS WAS PREDICTED, THE WHOLE WORLD
BELIEVES IT.

   The foremost of the philosophers agree with us about the spiritual
felicity enjoyed by the blessed in the life to come; it is only the
resurrection of the flesh they call in question, and with all their might
deny. But the mass of men, learned and unlearned, the world's wise men and
its fools, have believed, and have left in meagre isolation the
unbelievers, and have turned to Christ, who in His own resurrection
demonstrated the reality of that which seems to our adversaries absurd. For
the world has believed this which God predicted, as it was also predicted
that the world would believe,--a prediction not due to the sorceries of
Peter,(1) since it was uttered so long before. He who has predicted these
things, as I have already said, and am not ashamed to repeat, is the God
before whom all other divinities tremble, as Porphyry himself owns, and
seeks to prove, by testimonies from the oracles of these gods, and goes so
far as to call Him God the Father and King. Far be it from us to interpret
these predictions as they do who have not believed, along with the whole
world, in that which it was predicted the world would believe in. For why
should we not rather understand them as the world does, whose belief was
predicted, and leave that handful of unbelievers to their idle talk and
obstinate and solitary infidelity? For if they maintain that they interpret
them differently only to avoid charging Scripture with folly, and so doing
an injury to that God to whom they bear so notable a testimony, is it not a
much greater injury they do Him when they say that His predictions must be
understood otherwise than the world believed them, though He Himself
praised, promised, accomplished this belief on the world's part? And why
cannot He cause the body to rise again, and live for ever? or is it not to
be believed that He will do this, because it is an undesirable thing, and
unworthy of God? Of His omnipotence, which effects so many great miracles,
we have already said enough. If they wish to know what the Almighty cannot
do, I shall tell them He cannot lie. Let us therefore believe what He can
do, by refusing to believe what He cannot do. Refusing to believe that He
can lie, let them believe that He will do what He has promised to do; and
let them believe it as the world has believed it, whose faith He predicted,
whose faith He praised, whose faith He promised, whose faith He now points
to. But how do they prove that the resurrection is an undesirable thing?
There shall then be no corruption, which is the only evil thing about the
booty. I have already said enough about the order of the elements, and the
other fanciful objections men raise; and in the thirteenth book I have, in
my own judgment, sufficiently illustrated the facility of movement which
the incorruptible body shall enjoy, judging from the ease and vigor we
experience even now, when the body is in good health. Those who have either
not read the former books, or wish to refresh their memory, may read them
for themselves.

CHAP. 26.--THAT THE OPINION OF PORPHYRY, THAT THE SOUL, IN ORDER TO BE
BLESSED, MUST BE SEPARATED FROM EVERY KIND OF BODY, IS DEMOLISHED BY PLATO,
WHO SAYS THAT THE SUPREME GOD PROMISED THE GODS THAT THEY SHOULD NEVER BE
OUSTED FROM THEIR BODIES.

   But, say they, Porphyry tells us that the soul, in order to be blessed,
must escape connection with every kind of body. It does not avail,
therefore, to say that the future body shall be incorruptible, if the soul
cannot be blessed till delivered from every kind of body. But in the book
above mentioned I have already sufficiently discussed this. This one thing
only will I repeat,--let Plato, their master, correct his writings, and say
that their gods, in order to be blessed, must quit their bodies, or, in
other words, die; for he said that they were shut up in celestial bodies,
and that, nevertheless, the God who made them promised them immortality,--
that is to say, an eternal tenure of these same bodies, such as was not
provided for them naturally, but only by the further intervention of His
will, that thus they might be assured of felicity. In this he obviously
overturns their assertion that the resurrection of the body cannot be
believed because it is impossible; for, according to him, when the
uncreated God promised immortality to the created gods, He expressly said
that He would do what was impossible. For Plato tells us that He said, "As
ye have had a beginning, so you cannot be immortal and incorruptible; yet
ye shall not decay, nor shall any fate destroy you or prove stronger than
my will, which more effectually binds you to immortality than the bond of
your nature keeps you from it." If they who hear these words have, we do
not say understanding, but ears, they cannot doubt that Plato believed that
God promised to the gods He had made that He would effect an impossibility.
For He who says, "Ye cannot be immortal, but by my will ye shall be
immortal," what else does He say than this, "I shall make you what ye
cannot be?" The body, therefore, shall be raised incorruptible, immortal,
spiritual, by Him who, according to Plato, has promised to do that which is
impossible. Why then do they still exclaim that this which God has
promised, which the world has believed on God's promise as was predicted,
is an impossibility? For what we say is, that the God who, even according
to Plato, does impossible things, will do this. It is not, then, necessary
to the blessedness of the soul that it be detached from a body of any kind
whatever, but that it receive an incorruptible body. And in what
incorruptible body will they more suitably rejoice than in that in which
they groaned when it was corruptible? For thus they shall not feel that
dire craving which Virgil, in imitation of Plato, has ascribed to them when
he says that they wish to return again to their bodies.(1) They shall not,
I say, feel this desire to return to their bodies, since they shall have
those bodies to which a return was desired, and shall, indeed, be in such
thorough possession of them, that they shall never lose them even for the
briefest moment, nor ever lay them down in death.

CHAP. 27.--OF THE APPARENTLY CONFLICTING OPINIONS OF PLATO AND PORPHYRY,
WHICH WOULD HAVE CONDUCTED THEM BOTH TO THE TRUTH IF THEY COULD HAVE
YIELDED TO ONE ANOTHER.

   Statements were made by Plato and Porphyry singly, which if they could
have Seen their way to hold in common, they might possibly have became
Christians. Plato said that souls could not exist eternally without bodies;
for it was on this account, he said, that the souls even of wise men must
some time or other return to their bodies. Porphyry, again, said that the
purified soul, when it has returned to the Father, shall never return to
the ills of this world. Consequently, if Plato had communicated to Porphyry
that which he saw to be true, that souls, though perfectly purified, and
belonging to the wise and righteous, must return to human bodies; and if
Porphyry, again, had imparted to Plato the truth which he saw, that holy
soul, shall never return to the miseries of a corruptible body, so that
they should not have each held only his own opinion, but should both have
hold both truths, I think they would have seen that it follows that the
souls return to their bodies, and also that these bodies shall be such as
to afford them a blessed and immortal life. For, according to Plato, even
holy souls shall return to the body; according to Porphyry, holy souls
shall not return to the ills of this world. Let Porphyry then say with
Plato, they shall return to the body; let Plato say with Porphyry, they
shall not return to their old misery: and they will agree that they return
to bodies in which they shall suffer no more. And this is nothing else than
what God has promised,--that He will give eternal felicity to souls joined
to their own bodies. For this, I presume, both of them would readily
concede, that if the souls of the saints are to be reunited to bodies, it
shall be to their own bodies, in Which they have endured the miseries of
this life, and in which, to escape these miseries, they served God with
piety and fidelity.

CHAP. 28.--WHAT PLATO OR LABEO, OR EVEN VARRO, MIGHT HAVE CONTRIBUTED TO
THE TRUE FAITH OF THE RESURRECTION, IF THEY HAD ADOPTED ONE ANOTHER'S
OPINIONS INTO ONE SCHEME.

   Some Christians, who have a liking for Plato on account of his
magnificent style and the truths which he now and then uttered, say that he
even held an opinion similar to our own regarding the resurrection of the
dead. Cicero, however, alluding to this in his Republic, asserts that Plato
meant it rather as a playful fancy than as a reality; for he introduces a
man(2) who had come to life again, and gave a narrative of his experience
in corroboration of the doctrines of Plato. Labeo, too, says that two men
died on one day, and met at a cross-road, and that, being afterwards
ordered to return to their bodies, they agreed  to be friends for life, and
were so till they died again. But the resurrection which these writers
instance resembles that of those persons whom we have ourselves known to
rise again, and who came back indeed to this life, but not so as never to
die again. Marcus Varro, however, in his work On the Origin of the Roman
People, records something more remarkable; I think his own words should be
given. "Certain astrologers," he says, "have written that men are destined
to a new birth, which the Greeks call palingenesy. This will take place
after four hundred and forty years have elapsed; and then the same soul and
the same body, which were formerly united in the person, shall again be
reunited." This Varro, indeed, or those nameless astrologers,--for he does
not give us the names of the men whose statement he cites,--have affirmed
what is indeed not altogether true; for once the souls have returned to the
bodies they wore, they shall never afterwards leave them. Yet what they say
upsets and demolishes much of that idle talk of our adversaries about the
impossibility of the resurrection. For those who have been or are of this
opinion, have not thought it possible that bodies which have dissolved into
air, or dust, or ashes, or water, or into the bodies of the beasts or even
of the men that fed on them, should be restored again to that which they
formerly were. And therefore, if Plato and Porphyry, or rather, if their
disciples now living, agree with us that holy souls shall return to the
body, as Plato says, and that, nevertheless, they shall not return to
misery, as Porphyry maintains, --if they accept the consequence of these
two propositions which is taught by the Christian faith, that they shall
receive bodies in which they may live eternally without suffering any
misery,--let them also adopt from Varro the opinion that they shall return
to the same bodies as they were formerly in, and thus the whole question of
the eternal resurrection of the body shall be resolved out of their own
mouths.

CHAP. 29.--OF THE BEATIFIC VISION.

   And now let us consider, with such ability as God may vouchsafe, how
the saints shall be employed when they are clothed in immortal and
spiritual bodies, and when the flesh shall live no longer in a fleshly but
a spiritual fashion. And indeed, to tell the truth, I am at a loss to
understand the nature of that employment, or, shall I rather say, repose
and ease, for it has never come within the range of my bodily senses. And
if I should speak of my mind or understanding, what is our understanding in
comparison of its excellence? For then shall be that "peace of God which,"
as the apostle says, "passeth all understanding,"(1)--that is to say, all
human, and perhaps all angelic understanding, but certainly not the divine.
That it passeth ours there is no doubt; but if it passeth that of the
angels,--and he who says "all understanding" seems to make no exception in
their favor, then we must understand him to mean that neither we nor the
angels can understand, as God understands, the peace which God Himself
enjoys. Doubtless this passeth all understanding but His own. But as we
shall one day be made to participate, according to our slender capacity, in
His peace, both in ourselves, and with our neighbor, and with God our chief
good, in this respect the angels understand the peace of God in their own
measure, and men too, though now far behind them, whatever spiritual
advance they have made. For we must remember how great a man he was who
said, "We know in part, and we prophesy in part, until that which is
perfect is come;"(2) and "Now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face
to face."(3) Such also is now the vision of the holy angels, who are also
called our angels, because we, being rescued out of the power of darkness,
and receiving the earnest of the Spirit, are translated into the kingdom of
Christ, and already begin to belong to those angels with whom we shall
enjoy that holy and most delightful city of God of which we have now
written so much. Thus, then, the angels of God are our angels, as Christ is
God's and also ours. They are God's, because they have not abandoned Him;
they are ours, because we are their fellow-citizens. The Lord Jesus also
said, "See that ye despise not one of these little ones: for I say unto
you, That in heaven their angels do always see the face of my Father which
is in heaven."(4) As, then, they see, so shall we also see; but not yet do
we thus see. Wherefore the apostle uses the words cited a little ago, "Now
we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face." This vision is
reserved as the reward of our faith; and of it the Apostle John also says,
"When He shall appear, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He
is."(5) "By "the face" of God we are to understand His manifestation, and
not a part of the body similar to that which in our bodies we call by that
name.

   And so, when I am asked how the saints shall be employed in that
spiritual body, I do not say what I see, but I say what I believe,
according to that which I read in the psalm, "I believed, therefore have I
spoken."(6) I say, then, they shall in the body see God; but whether they
shall see Him by means of the body, as now we see the sun, moon, stars,
sea, earth, and all that is in it, that is a difficult question. For it is
hard to say that the saints shall then have such bodies that they shall not
be able to shut and open their eyes as they please; while it is harder
still to say that every one who shuts his eyes shall lose the vision of
God. For if the prophet Elisha, though at a distance, saw his servant
Gehazi, who thought that his wickedness would escape his master's
observation and accepted gifts from Naaman the Syrian, whom the prophet had
cleansed from his foul leprosy, how much more shall the saints in the
spiritual body see all things, not only though their eyes be shut, but
though they themselves be at a great distance? For then shall be "that
which is perfect," of which the apostle says," We know in part, and we
prophesy in part; but when that which is perfect is come, then that which
is in part shall be done away." Then, that he may illustrate as well as
possible, by a simile, how superior the future life is to the life now
lived, not only by ordinary men, but even by the foremost of the saints, he
says, "When I was a child, I understood as a child, I spake as a child, I
thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things.
Now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in
part; but then shall I know even as also I am known."(1) If, then, even in
this life, in which the prophetic power of remarkable men is no more worthy
to be compared to the vision of the future life  than childhood is to
manhood, Elisha, though distant from his servant, saw him accepting gifts,
shall we say that when that which is perfect is come, and the corruptible
body no longer oppresses the soul, but is incorruptible and offers no
impediment to it, the saints shall need bodily eyes to see, though Elisha
had no need of them to see his servant? For, following the Septuagint
version, these are the prophet's words: "Did not my heart go with thee,
when the man came out of his chariot to meet thee, and thou tookedst his
gifts?"(2) Or, as the presbyter Jerome rendered it from the Hebrew, "Was
not my heart present when the man turned from his chariot to meet thee?"
The prophet said that he saw this with his heart, miraculously aided by
God, as no one can doubt. But how much more abundantly shall the saints
enjoy this gift when God shall be all in all? Nevertheless the bodily eyes
also shall have their office and their place, and shall be used by the
spirit through the spiritual body. For the prophet did not forego the use
of his eyes for seeing what was before them, though he did not need them to
see his absent servant, and though he could have seen these present objects
in spirit, and with his eyes shut, as he saw things far distant in a place
where he himself was not. Far be it, then, from us to say that in the life
to come the saints shall not see God when their eyes are shut, since they
shall always see Him with the spirit.

   But the question arises, whether, when their eyes are open, they shall
see Him with the bodily eye? If the eyes of the spiritual body have no more
power than the eyes which we now possess, manifestly God cannot be seen
with them. They must be of a very different power if they can look upon
that incorporeal nature which is not contained in any place, but is all in
every place. For though we say that God is in heaven and on earth, as He,
Himself says by the prophet, "I fill heaven and earth,"(3) we do not mean
that there is one part of God in heaven and another part on earth; but He
is all in heaven and all on earth, not at alternate intervals of time, but
both at once, as no bodily nature can be. The eye, then, shall have a
vastly superior power,--the power not of keen sight, such as is ascribed to
serpents or eagles, for however keenly these animals see, they can discern
nothing but bodily substances,--but the power of seeing things incorporeal.
Possibly it was this great power of vision which was temporarily
communicated to the eyes of the holy Job while yet in this mortal body,
when he says to God, "I have heard of Thee by the hearing of the ear; but
now mine eye seeth Thee: wherefore I abhor myself, and melt away, and count
myself dust and ashes;"(4) although there is no reason why we should not
understand this of the eve of the heart, of which the apostle says, "Having
the eyes of your heart illuminated."(5) But that God shall be seen with
these eyes no Christian doubts who believingly accepts what our God and
Master says, "Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God."(6)
But whether in the future life God shall also be seen with the bodily eye,
this is now our question.

   The expression of Scripture, "And all flesh shall see the salvation of
God,"(7) may without difficulty be understood as if it were said, "And
every man shall see the Christ of God." And He certainly was seen in the
body, and shall be seen in the body when He judges quick and dead. And that
Christ is the salvation of God, many other passages of Scripture witness,
but especially the words of the venerable Simeon, who, when he had received
into his hands the infant Christ, said, "Now lettest Thou Thy servant
depart in peace, according to Thy word: for mine eyes have seen Thy
salvation."(8) As for the words of the above-mentioned Job, as they are
found in the Hebrew manuscripts, "And in my flesh I shall see God,"(9) no
doubt they were a prophecy of the resurrection of the flesh; yet he does
not say "by the flesh." And indeed, if he had said this, it would still be
possible that Christ was meant by "God;" for Christ shall be seen by the
flesh in the flesh. But even understanding it of God, it is only equivalent
to saying, I shall be in tile flesh when I see God. Then the apostle's
expression, "face to face,(10) does not oblige us to believe that we shall
see God by the bodily face in which are the eyes of the body, for we shall
see Him without intermission in spirit. And if the apostle had not referred
to the face of the inner man, he would not have said, "But we, with
unveiled face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are
transformed into the same image, from glory to glory, as by the spirit of
the Lord."(1) In the same sense we understand what the Psalmist sings,
"Draw near unto Him, and be enlightened; and your faces shall not be
ashamed."(2) For it is by faith we draw near to God, and faith is an act of
the spirit, not of the body. But as we do not know what degree of
perfection the spiritual body shall attain,--for here we speak of a matter
of which we have no experience, and upon which the authority of Scripture
does not definitely pronounce,--it is necessary that the words of the Book
of Wisdom be illustrated in us: "The thoughts of mortal men are timid, and
our fore-castings uncertain."(3)

   For if that reasoning of the philosophers, by which they attempt to
make out that intelligible or mental objects are so seen by the mind, and
sensible or bodily objects so seen by the body, that the former cannot be
discerned by the mind through the body, nor the latter by the mind itself
without the body,--if this reasoning were trustworthy, then it would
certainly follow that God could not be seen by the eye even of a spiritual
body. But this reasoning is exploded both by true reason and by prophetic
authority. For who is so little acquainted with the truth as to say that
God has no cognisance of sensible objects? Has He therefore a body, the
eyes of which give Him this knowledge? Moreover, what we have just been
relating of the prophet Elisha, does this not sufficiently show that bodily
things can be discerned by the spirit without the help of the body? For
when that servant received the gifts, certainly this was a bodily or
material transaction, yet the prophet saw it not by the body, but by the
spirit. As, therefore, it is agreed that bodies are seen by the spirit,
what if the power of the spiritual body shall be so great that spirit also
is seen by the body? For God is a spirit. Besides, each man recognizes his
own life--that life by which he now lives in the body, and which vivifies
these earthly members and causes them to grow--by an interior sense, and
not by his bodily eye; but the life of other men, though it is invisible,
he sees with the bodily eye. For how do we distinguish between living and
dead bodies, except by seeing at once both the body and the life which we
cannot see save by the eye? But a life without a body we cannot see thus.
Wherefore it may very well be, and it is thoroughly credible, that we shall
in the future world see the material forms of the new heavens and the new
earth in such a way that we shall most distinctly recognize God everywhere
present and governing all things, material as well as spiritual, and shall
see Him, not as now we understand the invisible things of God, by the
things which are made,(4) and see Him darkly, as in a mirror, and in part,
and rather by faith than by bodily vision of material appearances, but by
means of the bodies we shall wear and which we shall see wherever we turn
our eyes. As we do not believe, but see that the living men around us who
are exercising vital functions are alive, though we cannot see their life
without their bodies, but see it most distinctly by means of their bodies,
so, wherever we shall look with those spiritual eyes of our future bodies,
we shall then, too, by means of bodily substances behold God, though a
spirit, ruling all things. Either, therefore, the eyes shall possess some
quality similar to that of the mind, by which they may be able to discern
spiritual things, and among these God,--a supposition for which it is
difficult or even impossible to find any support in Scripture,--or, which
is more easy to comprehend, God will be so known by us, and shall be so
much before us, that we shall see Him by the spirit in ourselves, in one
another, in Himself, in the new heavens and the new earth, in every created
thing which shall then exist; and also by the body we shall see Him in
every body which the keen vision of the eye of the spiritual body shall
reach. Our thoughts also shall be visible to all, for then shall be
fulfilled the words of the apostle, "Judge nothing before the time, until
the Lord come, who both will bring to light the hidden things of darkness,
and will make manifest the thoughts of the heart, and then shall every one
have praise of God."(5)

CHAP. 30.--OF THE ETERNAL FELICITY OF THE CITY OF GOD, AND OF THE PERPETUAL
SABBATH.

   How great shall be that felicity, which shall be tainted with no evil,
which shall lack no good, and which shall afford leisure for the praises of
God, who shall be all in all! For I know not what other employment there
can be where no lassitude shall slacken activity, nor any want stimulate to
labor. I am admonished also by the sacred song, in which I read or hear the
words, "Blessed are they that dwell in Thy house, O Lord; they will be
still praising Thee."(6) All the members and organs of the incorruptible
body, which now we see to be suited to various necessary uses, shall
contribute to the praises of God; for in that life necessity shall have no
place, but full, certain, secure, everlasting felicity. For all those
parts(1) of the bodily harmony, which are distributed through the whole
body, within and without, and of which I have just been saying that they at
present elude our observation, shall then be discerned; and, along with the
other great and marvellous discoveries which shall then kindle rational
minds in praise of the great Artificer, there shall be the enjoyment of a
beauty which appeals to, the reason. What power of movement such bodies
shall possess, I have not the audacity  rashly to define, as I have not the
ability to conceive. Nevertheless I will say that in any case, both in
motion and at rest, they shall be, as in their appearance, seemly; for into
that state nothing which is unseemly shall be admitted. One thing is
certain, the body shall forthwith be wherever the spirit wills, and the
spirit shall will nothing which is unbecoming either to the spirit or to
the body. True honor shall be there, for it shall be denied to none who is
worthy, nor yielded to i any unworthy; neither shall any unworthy person so
much as sue for it, for none but the worthy shall be there. True peace
shall be there, where no one shall suffer opposition either from himself or
any other. God Himself, who is the Author of virtue, shall there be its
reward; for, as there is nothing greater or better, He has promised
Himself. What else was meant by His word through the prophet, "I will be
your God, and ye shall be my people,"(2) than, I shall be their
satisfaction, I shall be all that men honorably desire,--life, and health,
and nourishment, and plenty, and glory, and honor, and peace, and all good
things? This, too, is the right interpretation of the saying of the
apostle, "That God may be all in all."(3) He shall be the end of our
desires who shall be seen without end, loved without cloy, praised without
weariness. This outgoing of affection, this employment, shall certainly be,
like eternal life itself, common to all.

   But who can conceive, not to say describe, what degrees of honor and
glory shall be awarded to the various degrees of merit? Yet it cannot be
doubted that there shall be degrees. And in that blessed city there shall
be this great blessing, that no inferior shall envy any superior, as now
the archangels are not envied by the angels, because no one will wish to be
what he has not received, though bound in strictest concord with him who
has received; as in the body the finger does not seek to be the eye, though
both members are harmoniously included in the complete structure of the
body. And thus, along with his gift, greater or less, each shall receive
this further gift of contentment to desire no more than he has.

   Neither are we to suppose that because sin shall have no power to
delight them, free will must be withdrawn. It will, on the contrary, be all
the more truly free, because set free from delight in sinning to take
unfailing delight in not sinning. For the first freedom of will which man
received when he was created upright consisted in an ability not to sin,
but also in an ability to sin; whereas this last freedom of will shall be
superior, inasmuch. as it shall not be able to sin. This, indeed, shall not
be a natural ability, but the gift of God. For it is one thing to be God,
another thing to be a partaker of God. God by nature cannot sin, but the
partaker of God receives this inability from God. And in this divine gift
there was to be observed this gradation, that man should first receive a
free will by which he was able not to sin, and at last a free will by which
he was not able to sin,--the former being adapted to the acquiring of
merit, the latter to the enjoying of the reward.(4) But the nature thus
constituted, having sinned when it had the ability to do so, it is by a
more abundant grace that it is delivered so as to reach that freedom in
which it cannot sin. For as the first immortality which Adam lost by
sinning consisted in his being able not to die, while the last shall
consist in his not being able to die; so the first free will consisted in
his being able not to sin, the last in his not being able to sin. And thus
piety and justice shall be as indefeasible as happiness. For certainly by
sinning we lost both piety and happiness; but when we lost happiness, we
did not lose the love of it. Are we to say that God Himself is not free
because He cannot sin? In that city, then, there shall be free will, one in
all the citizens, and indivisible in each, delivered from all ill, filled
with all good, enjoying indefeasibly the delights of eternal joys,
oblivious of sins, oblivious of sufferings, and yet not so oblivious of its
deliverance as to be ungrateful to its Deliverer.

   The soul, then, shall have an intellectual remembrance of its past
ills; but, so far as regards sensible experience, they shall be quite
forgotten. For a skillful physician knows, indeed, professionally almost
all diseases; but experimentally he is ignorant of a great number which he
himself has never suffered from. As, therefore, there are two ways of
knowing evil things,--one by mental insight, the other by sensible
experience, for it is one thing to understand all vices by the wisdom of a
cultivated mind, another to understand them by the foolishness of an
abandoned life,--so also there are two ways of forgetting evils. For a
well-instructed and learned man forgets them one way, and he who has
experimentally suffered from them forgets them another,--the former by
neglecting what he has learned, the latter by escaping what he has
suffered. And in this latter way the saints shall forget their past ills,
for they shall have so thoroughly escaped them all, that they shall be
quite blotted out of their experience. But their intellectual knowledge,
which shall be great, shall keep them acquainted not only with their own
past woes, but with the eternal sufferings of the lost. For if they were
not to know that they had been miserable, how could they, as the Psalmist
says, for ever sing the mercies of God? Certainly that city shall have no
greater joy than the celebration of the grace of Christ, who redeemed us by
His blood. There shall be accomplished the words of the psalm, "Be still,
and know that I am God."(1) There shall be the great Sabbath which has no
evening, which God celebrated among His first works, as it is written, "And
God rested on the seventh day from all His works which He had made. And God
blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it; because that in it He had
rested from all His work which God began to make."(2) For we shall
ourselves be the seventh day, when we shall be filled and replenished with
God's blessing and sanctification. There shall we be still, and know that
He is God; that He is that which we ourselves aspired to be when we fell
away from Him, and listened to the voice of the seducer, "Ye shall be as
gods,"(3) and so abandoned God, who would have made us as gods, not by
deserting Him, but by participating in Him. For without Him what have we
accomplished, save to perish in His anger? But when we are restored by Him,
and perfected with greater grace, we shall have eternal leisure to see that
He is God, for we shall be full of Him when He shall be all in all. For
even our good works, when they are understood to be rather His than ours,
are imputed to us that we may enjoy this Sabbath rest. For if we attribute
them to ourselves, they shall be servile; for it is said of the Sabbath,
"Ye shall do no servile work in it."(4) Wherefore also it is said by
Ezekiel the prophet, "And I gave them my Sabbaths to be a sign between me
and them, that they might know that I am the Lord who sanctify them."(5)
This knowledge shall be perfected when we shall be perfectly at rest, and
shall perfectly know that He is God.

   This Sabbath shall appear still more clearly if we count the ages as
days, in accordance with the periods of time defined in Scripture, for that
period will be found to be the seventh. The first age, as the first day,
extends from Adam to the deluge; the second from the deluge to Abraham,
equalling the first, not in length of time, but in the number of
generations, there being ten in each. From Abraham to the advent of Christ
there are, as the evangelist Matthew calculates, three periods, in each of
which are fourteen generations,--one period from Abraham to David, a second
from David to the captivity, a third from the captivity to the birth of
Christ in the flesh. There are thus five ages in all. The sixth is now
passing, and cannot be measured by any number of generations, as it has
been said, "It is not for you to know the times, which the Father hath put
in His own power."(6) After this period God shall rest as on the seventh
day, when He shall give us (who shall be the seventh day) rest in
Himself.(7) But there is not now space to treat of these ages; suffice it
to say that the seventh shall be our Sabbath, which shall be brought to a
close, not by an evening, but by the Lord's day, as an eighth and eternal
day, consecrated by the resurrection of Christ, and prefiguring the eternal
repose not only of the spirit, but also of the body. There we shall rest
and see, see and love, love and praise. This is what shall be in the end
without end. For what other end do we propose to ourselves than to attain
to the kingdom of which there is no end?

   I think I have now, by God's help, discharged my obligation in writing
this large work. Let those who think I have said too little, or those who
think I have said too much, forgive me; and let those who think I have said
just enough join me in giving thanks to God. Amen.


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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