(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, BOOKS XIV-XV

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


BOOK XIV. (1)

ARGUMENT: AUGUSTIN AGAIN TREATS OF THE SIN OF THE FIRST MAN, AND TEACHES
THAT IT IS THE CAUSE OF THE CARNAL LIFE AND VICIOUS AFFECTIONS OF MAN.
ESPECIALLY HE PROVES THAT THE SHAME WHICH ACCOMPANIES LUST IS THE JUST
PUNISHMENT OF THAT DISOBEDIENCE, AND INQUIRES HOW MAN, IF HE HAD NOT
SINNED, WOULD HAVE BEEN ABLE WITHOUT LUST TO PROPAGATE HIS KIND.

CHAP. I.- THAT THE DISOBEDIENCE OF THE FIRST MAN WOULD HAVE PLUNGED ALL MEN
INTO THE ENDLESS MISERY OF THE SECOND DEATH, HAD NOT THE GRACE OF GOD
RESCUED MANY.

   WE have already stated in the preceding books that God, desiring not
only that the human race might be able by their similarity of nature to
associate with one another, but also that they might be bound together in
harmony and peace by the ties of relationship, was pleased to derive all
men from one individual, and created man with such a nature that the
members of the race should not have died, had not the two first (of whom
the one was created out of nothing, and the other out of him) merited this
by their disobedience; for by them so great a sin was committed, that by it
the human nature was altered for the worse, and was transmitted also to
their posterity, liable to sin and subject to death. And the kingdom of
death so reigned over men, that the deserved penalty of sin would have
hurled all headlong even into the second death, of which there is no end,
had not the undeserved grace of God saved some therefrom. And thus it has
come to pass, that though there are very many and great nations all over
the earth, whose rites and customs, speech, arms, and dress, are
distinguished by marked differences, yet there  are no more than two kinds
of human society, which we may justly call two cities, according to the
language of our Scriptures. The one consists of those who wish to live
after the flesh, the other of those who wish to live after the spirit; and
when they severally achieve what they wish, they live in peace, each after
their kind.

CHAP. 2. --OF CARNAL LIFE, WHICH IS TO BE UNDERSTOOD NOT ONLY OF LIVING IN
BODILY INDULGENCE, BUT ALSO OF LIVING IN THE VICES OF THE INNER MAN.

   First, we must see what it is to live after the flesh, and what to live
after the spirit. For any one who either does not recollect, or does not
sufficiently weigh, the language of sacred Scripture, may, on first hearing
what we have said, suppose that the Epicurean philosophers live after the
flesh, because they place man's highest good in bodily pleasure; and that
those others do so who have been of opinion that in some form or other
bodily good is man's supreme good; and that the mass of men do so who,
without dogmatizing or philosophizing on the subject, are so prone to lust
that they cannot delight in any pleasure save such as they receive from
bodily sensations: and he may suppose that the Stoics, who place the
supreme good of men in the soul, live after the spirit; for what is man's
soul, if not spirit? But in the sense of the divine Scripture both are
proved to live after the flesh. For by flesh it means not only the body of
a terrestrial and mortal animal, as when it says, "All flesh is not the
same flesh, but there is one kind of flesh of men, another flesh of beasts,
another of fishes, another of birds,"(1) but it uses this word in many
other significations; and among these various usages, a frequent one is to
use flesh for man himself, the nature of man taking the part for the whole,
as in the words, "By the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be
justified;"(2) for what does he mean here by "no flesh" but "no man?" And
this, indeed, he shortly after says more plainly: "No man shall be
justified by the law;"(3) and in the Epistle to the Galatians, "Knowing
that man is not justified by the works of the law." And so we understand
the words, "And the Word was made flesh,"(4)--that is, man, which some not
accepting in its right sense, have supposed that Christ had not a human
soul.(5) For as the whole is used for the part in the words of Mary
Magdalene in the Gospel, "They have taken away my Lord, and I know not
where they have laid Him,"(6) by which she meant only the flesh of Christ,
which she supposed had been taken from the tomb where it had been buried,
so the part is used for the whole, flesh being named, while man is referred
to, as in the quotations above cited.

   Since, then, Scripture uses the word flesh in many ways, which there is
not time to collect and investigate, if we are to ascertain what it is to
live after the flesh (which is certainly evil, though the nature of flesh
is not itself evil), we must carefully examine that passage of the epistle
which the Apostle Paul wrote to the Galatians, in which he says," Now the
works of the flesh are manifest, which are these: adultery, fornication,
uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance,
emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, envyings, murders,
drunkenness, revellings, and such like: of the which I tell you before, as
I have also told you in time past, that they which do such things shall not
inherit the kingdom of God."(7) This whole passage of the apostolic epistle
being considered, so far as it bears on the matter in hand, will be
sufficient to answer the question, what it is to live after the flesh. For
among the works of the flesh which he said were manifest, and which he
cited for condemnation, we find not only those which concern the pleasure
of the flesh, as fornications, uncleanness, lasciviousness, drunkenness,
revellings, but also those which, though they be remote from fleshly
pleasure, reveal the vices of the soul. For who does not see that
idolatries, witchcrafts, hatreds, variance, emulations, wrath, strife,
heresies, envyings, are vices rather of the soul than of the flesh? For it
is quite possible for a man to abstain from fleshly pleasures for the sake
of idolatry or some heretical error; and yet, even when he does so, he is
proved by this apostolic authority to be living after the flesh; and in
abstaining from fleshly pleasure, he is proved to be practising damnable
works of the flesh. Who that has enmity has it not in his soul? or who
would say to his enemy, or to the man he thinks his enemy, You have a bad
flesh towards me, and not rather, You have a bad spirit towards me? In
fine, if any one heard of what I may call "carnalities," he would not fail
to attribute them to the carnal part of man; so no one doubts that
"animosities" belong to the soul of man. Why then does the doctor of the
Gentiles in faith and verity call all these and similar things works of the
flesh, unless because, by that mode of speech whereby the part is used for
the whole, he means us to understand by the word flesh the man himself?

CHAP. 3.-- THAT THE SIN IS CAUSED NOT BY THE FLESH, BUT BY THE SOUL, AND
THAT THE CORRUPTION CONTRACTED FROM SIN IS NOT SIN BUT SIN'S PUNISHMENT.

   But if any one says that the flesh is the cause of all vices and ill
conduct, inasmuch as the soul lives wickedly only because it is moved by
the flesh, it is certain he has not carefully considered the whole nature
of man. For "the corruptible body, indeed, weigheth down the soul."(8)
Whence, too, the apostle, speaking of this corruptible body, of which he
had shortly before said, "though our outward man perish,"(9) says, "We know
that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a
building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For
in this we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed upon with our house
which is from heaven: if so be that being clothed we shall not be found
naked. For we that are in this tabernacle do groan, being burdened: not for
that we would be unclothed, but clothed upon, that mortality might be
swallowed up in life."(10) We are then burdened with this corruptible body;
but knowing that the cause of this burdensomeness is not the nature and
substance of the body, but its corruption, we do not desire to be deprived
of the body, but to be clothed with its immortality. For then, also, there
will be a body, but it shall no longer be a burden, being no longer
corruptible. At present, then, "the corruptible body presseth down the
soul, and the earthly tabernacle weigheth down the mind that museth upon
many things," nevertheless they are in error who suppose that all the evils
of the soul proceed from the body.

   Virgil, indeed, seems to express the sentiments of Plato in the
beautiful lines, where he says,--

  "A fiery strength inspires their lives,
   An essence that from heaven derives,
   Though clogged in part by limbs of clay
   And the dull 'vesture of decay;'"(1)

but though he goes on to mention the four most common mental emotions,--
desire, fear, joy, sorrow,--with the intention of showing that the body is
the origin of all sins and vices, saying,--

  "Hence wild desires and grovelling fears,
   And human laughter, human tears,
   Immured in dungeon-seeming nights
   They look abroad, yet see no light,"(2)

yet we believe quite otherwise. For the corruption of the body, which
weighs down the soul, is not the cause but the punishment of the first sin;
and it was not the corruptible flesh that made the soul sinful, but the
sinful soul that made the flesh corruptible. And though from this
corruption of the flesh there arise certain incitements to vice, and indeed
vicious desires, yet we must not attribute to the flesh all the vices of a
wicked life, in case we thereby clear the devil of all these, for he has no
flesh. For though we cannot call the devil a fornicator or drunkard, or
ascribe to him any sensual indulgence (though he is the secret instigator
and prompter of those who sin in these ways), yet he is exceedingly proud
and envious. And this viciousness has so possessed him, that on account of
it he is reserved in chains of darkness to everlasting punishment.(3) Now
these vices, which have dominion over the devil, the apostle attributes to
the flesh, which certainly the devil has not. For he says "hatred, variance
emulations, strife, envying" are the works of the flesh; and of all these
evils pride is the origin and head, and it rules in the devil though he has
no flesh. For who shows more hatred to the saints? who is more at variance
with them? who more envious, bitter, and jealous? And since he exhibits all
these works, though he has no flesh, how are they works of the flesh,
unless because they are the works of man, who is, as I said, spoken of
under the name of flesh? For it is not by having flesh, which the devil has
not, but by living according to himself,--that is, according to man,--that
man became like the devil. For the devil too, wished to live according to
himself when he did not abide in the truth; so that when he lied, this was
not of God, but of himself, who is not only a liar, but the father of lies,
he being the first who lied, and the originator of lying as of sin.

CHAP. 4.--WHAT IT IS TO LIVE ACCORDING TO MAN, AND WHAT TO LIVE ACCORDING
TO GOD.

   When, therefore, man lives according to man, not according to God, he
is like the devil. Because not even an angel might live according to an
angel, but only according to God, if he was to abide in the truth, and
speak God's truth and not his own lie. And of man, too, the same apostle
says in another place, "If the truth of God hath more abounded through my
lie;"(4) my lie," he said, and "God's truth." When, then, a man lives
according to the truth, he lives not according to himself, but according to
God; for He was God who said, "I am the truth."(5) When, therefore, man
lives according to himself,--that is, according to man, not according to
God,--assuredly he lives according to a lie; not that man himself is a lie,
for God is his author and creator, who is certainly not the author and
creator of a lie, but because man was made upright, that he might not live
according to himself, but according to Him that made him,--in other words,
that he might do His will and not his own; and not to live as he was made
to live, that is a lie. For he certainly desires to be blessed even by not
living so that he may be blessed. And what is a lie if this desire be not?
Wherefore it is not without meaning said that all sin is a lie. For no sin
is committed save by that desire or will by which we desire that it be well
with us, and shrink from it being ill with us. That, therefore, is a lie
which we do in order that it may be well with us, but which makes us more
miserable than we were. And why is this, but because the source of man's
happiness lies only in God, whom he abandons when he sins, and not in
himself, by living according to whom he sins?

   In enunciating this proposition of ours, then, that because some live
according to the flesh and others according to the spirit, there have
arisen two diverse and conflicting cities, we might equally well have said,
"because some live according to man, others according to God." For Paul
says very plainly to the Corinthians, "For whereas there is among you
envying and strife, are ye not carnal, and walk according to man?"(6) So
that to walk according to man and to be carnal are the same; for by flesh,
that is, by a part of man, man is meant. For before he said that those same
persons were animal whom afterwards he calls carnal, saying, "For what man
knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him? even
so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God. Now we have
received not the spirit of this world, but the Spirit which is of God; that
we might, know the things which are freely given to us of God. Which things
also we speak, not in the words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the
Holy Ghost teacheth; comparing spiritual things with spiritual. But the
animal man perceiveth not the things of the Spirit of God; for they are
foolishness unto him." It is to men of this kind, then, that is, to animal
men, he shortly after says, "And I, brethren, could not speak unto you as
unto spiritual, but as unto carnal."(2) And this is to be interpreted by
the same usage, a part being taken for the whole. For both the soul and the
flesh, the component parts of man, can be used to signify the whole man;
and so the animal man and the carnal man are not two different things, but
one and the same thing, viz., man living according to man. In the same way
it is nothing else than men that are meant either in the words, "By the
deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified;"(3) or in the words,
"Seventy-five souls went down into Egypt with Jacob."(4) In the one
passage, "no flesh" signifies "no man;" and in the other, by "seventy-five
souls" seventy-five men are meant. And the expression, "not in words which
man's wisdom teacheth" might equally be "not in words which fleshly wisdom
teacheth;" and the expression, "ye walk according to man," might be
"according to the flesh." And this is still more apparent in the words
which followed: "For while one saith, I am of Paul, and another, I am of
Apollos, are ye not men?" The same thing which he had before expressed by
"ye are animal," "ye are carnal, he now expresses by "ye are men;" that is,
ye live according to man, not according to God, for if you lived according
to Him, you should be gods.

CHAP. 5.--THAT THE OPINION OF THE PLATONISTS REGARDING THE NATURE OF BODY
AND SOUL IS NOT SO CENSURABLE AS THAT OF THE MANICHEANS, BUT THAT EVEN IT
IS OBJECTIONABLE, BECAUSE IT ASCRIBES THE ORIGIN OF VICES TO THE NATURE OF
THE FLESH.

    There is no need, therefore, that in our sins and vices we accuse the
nature of the flesh to the injury of the Creator, for in its own kind and
degree the flesh is good; but to desert the Creator good, and live
according to the created good, is not good, whether a man choose to live
according to the flesh, or according to the soul, or according to the whole
human nature, which is composed of flesh and soul, and which is therefore
spoken of either by the name flesh alone, or by the name soul alone. For he
who extols the nature of the soul as the chief good, and condemns the
nature of the flesh as if it were evil, assuredly  is fleshly both in his
love of the soul and hatred of the flesh; for these his feelings arise from
human fancy, not from divine truth. The Platonists, indeed, are not so
foolish as, with the Manichaeans, to detest our present bodies as an evil
nature;(5) for they attribute all the elements of which this visible and
tangible world is compacted, with all their qualities, to God their
Creator. Nevertheless, from the death-infected members and earthly
construction of the body they believe the soul is so affected, that there
are thus originated in it the diseases of desires, and fears, and joy, and
sorrow, under which four perturbations, as Cicero(6) calls them, or
passions, as most prefer to name them with the Greeks, is included the
whole viciousness of human life. But if this be so, how is it that Aeneas
in Virgil, when he had heard from his father in Hades that the souls should
return to bodies, expresses surprise at this declaration, and exclaims:

  "O father! and can thought conceive
   That happy souls this realm would leave,
         And seek the upper sky,
   With sluggish clay to reunite?
   This direful longing for the light,
         Whence comes it, say, and why? "(7)

This direful longing, then, does it still exist even in that boasted purity
of the disembodied spirits, and does it still proceed from the death-
infected members and earthly limbs? Does he not assert that, when they
begin to long to return to the body, they have already been delivered from
all these so-called pestilences of the body? From which we gather that,
were this endlessly alternating purification and defilement of departing
and returning souls as true as it is most certainly false, yet it could not
be averred that all culpable and vicious motions of the soul originate in
the earthly body; for, on their own showing, "this direful longing," to use
the words of their noble exponent, is so extraneous to the body, that it
moves the soul that is purged of all bodily taint, and is existing apart
from any body whatever, and moves it, moreover, to be embodied again. So
that even they themselves acknowledge that the soul is not only moved to
desire, fear, joy, sorrow, by the, flesh, but that it can also be agitated
with these emotions at its own instance.

CHAP. 6.--OF THE CHARACTER OF THE HUMAN WILL WHICH MAKES THE AFFECTIONS OF
THE SOUL RIGHT OR WRONG.

   But the character of the human will is of moment; because, if it is
wrong, these motions of the soul will be wrong, but if it is right, they
will be not merely blameless, but even praiseworthy. For the will is in
them all; yea, none of them is anything else than will. For what are desire
and joy but a volition of consent to the things we wish? And what are fear
and sadness but a volition of aversion from the things which we do not
wish? But when consent takes the form of seeking to possess the things we
wish, this is called desire; and when consent takes the form of enjoying
the things we wish, this is called joy. In like manner, when we turn with
aversion from that which we do not wish to happen, this volition is termed
fear; and when we turn away from that which has happened against our will,
this act of will is called sorrow. And generally in respect of all that we
seek or shun, as a man's will is attracted or repelled, so it is changed
and turned into these different affections. Wherefore the man who lives
according to God, and not according to man, ought to be a lover of good,
and therefore a hater of evil. And since no one is evil by nature, but
whoever is evil is evil by vice, he who lives according to God ought to
cherish towards evil men a perfect hatred, so that he shall neither hate
the man because of his vice, nor love the vice because of the man, but hate
the vice and love the man. For the vice being cursed, all that ought to be
loved, and nothing that ought to be hated, will remain.

CHAP. 7.--THAT THE WORDS LOVE AND REGARD (AMOR AND DILECTIO) ARE IN
SCRIPTURE USED INDIFFERENTLY OF GOOD AND EVIL AFFECTION.

   He who resolves to love God, and to love his neighbor as himself, not
according to man but according to God, is on account of this love said to
be of a good will; and this is in Scripture more commonly called charity,
but it is also, even in the same books, called love. For the apostle says
that the man to be elected as a ruler of the people must be a lover of
good.(1) And when the Lord Himself had asked Peter, "Hast thou a regard for
me (diligis) more than these?" Peter replied, "Lord, Thou knowest that I
love (amo) Thee." And again a second time the Lord asked not whether Peter
loved (amaret) Him, but whether he had a regard (diligeret)for Him, and, he
again answered, "Lord, Thou knowest that I love (amo) Thee." But on the
third interrogation the Lord Himself no longer says, "Hast thou a regard
(diligis) for me,"  but "Lovest thou (amas) me?" And then the evangelist
adds, "Peter was grieved because He said unto him the third time, Lovest
thou (amas) me?" though the Lord had not said three times but only once,
"Lovest thou (amas) me?" and twice "Diligis me?" from which we gather that,
even when the Lord said "diligis," He used an equivalent for "amas." Peter,
too, throughout used one word for the one thing, and the third time also
replied, "Lord, Thou knowest all things, Thou knowest that I love (amo)
Thee."(2)

   I have judged it right to mention this, because some are of opinion
that charity or regard (dilectio) is one thing, love (amor) another. They
say that dilectio is used of a good affection, amor of an evil love. But it
is very certain that even secular literature knows no such distinction.
However, it is for the philosophers to determine whether and how they
differ, though their own writings sufficiently testify that they make great
account of love (amor) placed on good objects, and even on God Himself. But
we wished to show that the Scriptures of our religion, whose authority we
prefer to all writings whatsoever, make no distinction between am. or,
dilectio, and caritas; arid we have already shown that amor is used in a
good connection. And if any one fancy that amor is no doubt used both of
good and bad loves, but that dilectio is reserved for the good only, let
him remember what the psalm says, "He that loveth (diligit) iniquity hateth
his own soul;"(3) and the words of the Apostle John, "If any man love
(diligere) the world, the love (dilectio) of the Father is not in him."(4)
Here you have in one passage dilectio used both in a good and a bad sense.
And if any one demands an instance of amor being used in a bad sense (for
we have already shown its use in a good sense), let him read the words,
"For men shall be lovers (amantes) of their own selves, lovers (amatores)
of money."(5)

   The right will is, therefore, well-directed love, and the wrong will is
ill-directed love. Love, then, yearning to have what is loved, is desire;
and having and enjoying it, is joy; fleeing what is opposed to it, it is
fear; and feeling what is opposed to it, when it has befallen it, it is
sadness. Now these motions are evil if the love is evil; good if the love
is good. What we assert let us prove from Scripture. The apostle "desires
to depart, and to be with Christ."(1) And, "My soul desired to long for Thy
judgments;"(2) or if it is more appropriate to say, "My soul longed to
desire Thy judgments." And, "The desire of wisdom bringeth to a
kingdom."(3) Yet there has always obtained the usage of understanding
desire and concupiscence in a bad sense if the object be not defined. But
joy is used in a good sense: "Be glad in the Lord, and rejoice, ye
righteous."(4) And, "Thou hast put gladness in my heart."(5) And, "Thou
wilt fill me with joy with Thy countenance."(6) Fear is used in a good
sense by the apostle when he says, "Work out your salvation with fear and
trembling."(7) And, "Be not high-minded, but fear."(8) And, "I fear, lest
by any means, as the serpent be-Culled Eve through his subtilty, so your
minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ."(9) But
with respect to sadness, which Cicero prefer to calls sickness (aegritudo),
and Virgil pain (dolor) (as he says, "Dolent gaudentque"(10)), but which I
prefer to call sorrow, because sickness and pain are more commonly used to
express bodily suffering,--with respect to this emotion, I say, the
question whether it can be used in a good sense is more difficult.

CHAP. 8.--OF THE THREE PERTURBATIONS, WHICH THE STOICS ADMITTED IN THE SOUL
OF THE WISE MAN TO THE EXCLUSION OF GRIEF OR SADNESS, WHICH THE MANLY MIND
OUGHT NOT TO EXPERIENCE.

   Those emotions which the Greeks call eupathei'ai, and which Cicero
calls constantiae, the Stoics would restrict to three; and, instead of
three "perturbations" in the soul of the wise man, they substituted
severally, in place of desire, will; in place of joy, contentment; and for
fear, caution; and as to sickness or pain, which we, to avoid ambiguity,
preferred to call sorrow, they denied that it could exist in the mind of a
wise man. Will, they say, seeks the good, for this the wise man does.
Contentment has its object in good that is possessed, and this the wise man
continually possesses. Caution avoids evil, and this the wise man ought to
avoid. But sorrow arises from evil that has already happened; and as they
suppose that no evil can happen to the wise man, there can be no
representative of sorrow in his mind. According to them, therefore, none
but the wise man wills, is contented, uses caution; and that the fool can
do no more than desire, rejoice, fear, be sad. The former three affections
Cicero calls constantioe, the last four perturbationes. Many, however,
calls these last passions; and, as I have said, the Greeks call the former
eupathei'ai, and the latter pa'thh. And when I made a careful examination
of Scripture to find whether this terminology was sanctioned by it, I came
upon this saying of the prophet: "There is no contentment to the wicked,
saith the Lord;"(11) as if the wicked might more properly rejoice than be
contented regarding evils, for contentment is the property of the good and
godly. I found also that verse in the Gospel: "Whatsoever ye would that men
should do unto you, do ye even so unto them:(12) which seems to imply that
evil or shameful things may be the object of desire, but not of will.
Indeed, some interpreters have added "good things," to make the expression
more in conformity with customary usage, and have given this meaning,
"Whatsoever good deeds that ye would that men should do unto you." For they
thought that this would prevent any one from wishing other men to provide
him with unseemly, not to say shameful gratifications,--luxurious banquets,
for example,--on the supposition that if he returned the like to them he
would be fulfilling this precept. In the Greek Gospel, however, from which
the Latin is translated, "good" does not occur, but only, "All things
whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, do ye even so unto them,"
and, as I believe, because "good" is already included in the word "would;"
for He does not say "desire."

   Yet though we may sometimes avail ourselves of these precise
proprieties of language, we are not to be always bridled by them; and when
we read those writers against whose authority it is unlawful to reclaim, we
must accept the meanings above mentioned in passages where a right sense
can be educed by no other interpretation, as in those instances we adduced
partly from the prophet, partly from the Gospel. For who does not know that
the wicked exult with joy? Yet "there is no contentment for the wicked,
saith the Lord." And how so, unless because contentment, when the word is
used in its proper and distinctive significance, means something different
from joy? In like manner, who would deny that it were wrong to enjoin upon
men that whatever they desire others to do to them they should themselves
do to others, lest they should mutually please one another by shameful and
illicit pleasure? And yet the precept, "Whatsoever ye would that men should
do unto you, do ye even so to them," is very wholesome and just. And how is
this, unless because the will is in this place used strictly, and signifies
that will which cannot have evil for its object? But ordinary phraseology
would not have allowed the saying, "Be unwilling to make any manner of
lie,"(1) had there not been also an evil will, whose wickedness separates
if from that which the angels celebrated, "Peace on earth, of good will to
men."(2) For "good" is superfluous if there is no other kind of will but
good will. And why should the apostle have mentioned it among the praises
of charity as a great thing, that "it rejoices not in iniquity," unless
because wickedness does so rejoice? For even with secular writers these
words are used indifferently. For Cicero, that most fertile of orators,
says, "I desire, conscript fathers, to be merciful."(3) And who would be so
pedantic as to say that he should have said" I will" rather than "I
desire," because the word is used in a good connection? Again, in Terence,
the profligate youth, burning with wild lust, says, "I will nothing else
than Philumena."(4) That this "will" was lust is sufficiently indicated by
the answer of his old servant which is there introduced: "How much better
were it to try and banish that love from your heart, than to speak so as
uselessly to inflame your passion still more!" And that contentment was
used by secular writers in a bad sense that verse of Virgil testifies, in
which he most succinctly comprehends these four perturbations,--

   "Hence they fear and desire, grieve and are content"(5)

The same author had also used the expression, "the evil contentments of the
mind."(6) So that good and bad men alike will, are cautious, and contented;
or, to say the same thing in other words, good and bad men alike desire,
fear, rejoice, but the former in a good, the latter in a bad fashion,
according as the will is right or wrong. Sorrow itself, too, which the
Stoics would not allow to tie represented in the mind of the wise man, is
used in a good sense, and especially in our writings. For the apostle
praises the Corinthians because they had a godly sorrow. But possibly some
one may say that the apostle congratulated them because they were
penitently sorry, and that such sorrow can exist only in those who have
sinned. For these are his words: "For I perceive that the same epistle hath
made you sorry, though it were but for a season. Now I rejoice, not that ye
were made sorry, but that ye sorrowed to repentance; for ye were made sorry
after a godly manner, that ye might receive damage by us in nothing. For
godly sorrow worketh repentance to salvation not to be repented of, but the
sorrow of the world worketh death. For, behold, this selfsame thing that ye
sorrowed after a godly sort, what carefulness it wrought in you!"(7)
Consequently the Stoics may defend themselves by replying,(8) that sorrow
is indeed useful for repentance of sin, but that this can have no place in
the mind of the wise man, inasmuch as no sin attaches to him of which he
could sorrowfully repent, nor any other evil the endurance or experience of
which could make him sorrowful. For they say that Alcibiades (if my memory
does not deceive me), who believed himself happy, shed tears when Socrates
argued with him, and demonstrated that he was miserable because he was
foolish. In his case, therefore, folly was the cause of this useful and
desirable sorrow, wherewith a man mourns that he is what he ought not to
be. But the Stoics maintain not that the fool, but that the wise man,
cannot be sorrowful.

CHAP. 9.--OF THE PERTURBATIONS OF THE SOUL WHICH APPEAR AS RIGHT AFFECTIONS
IN THE LIFE OF THE RIGHTEOUS.

   But so far as regards this question of mental perturbations, we have
answered these philosophers in the ninth book(9) of this work, showing that
it is rather a verbal than a real  dispute, and that they seek contention
rather than truth. Among ourselves, according to the sacred Scriptures and
sound doctrine, the citizens of the holy city of God, who live according to
God in the pilgrimage Of this life, both fear and desire, and grieve and
rejoice. And because their love is rightly placed, all these affections of
theirs are right. They fear eternal punishment, they desire eternal life;
they grieve because they themselves groan within themselves, waiting for
the adoption, the redemption of their body;(10) they rejoice in hope,
because there "shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death
is swallowed up in victory."(1) In like manner they fear to sin, they
desire to persevere; they grieve in sin, they rejoice in good works. They
fear to sin, because they hear that "because iniquity shall abound, the
love of many shall wax cold."(2) They desire to persevere, because they
hear that it is written, "He that endureth to the end shall be saved."(3)
They grieve for sin, hearing that "If we say that we have no sin, we
deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us."(4) They rejoice in good
works, because they hear that "the Lord loveth a cheerful giver."(5) In
like manner, according as they are strong or weak, they fear or desire to
be tempted, grieve or rejoice in temptation. They fear to be tempted,
because they hear the injunction, "If a man be overtaken in a fault, ye
which are spiritual restore such an one in the spirit of meekness;
considering thyself, lest thou also be tempted."(6) They desire to be
tempted, because they hear one of the heroes of the city of God saying,
"Examine me, O Lord, and tempt me: try my reins and my heart."(7) They
grieve in temptations, because they see Peter weeping;(8) they rejoice in
temptations, because they hear James saying, "My brethren, count it all joy
when ye fall into divers temptations."(9)

   And not only on their own account do they experience these emotions,
but also on account of those whose deliverance they desire and whose
perdition they fear, and whose loss or salvation affects them with grief or
with joy. For if we who have come into the Church from among the Gentiles
may suitably instance that noble and mighty hero who glories in his
infirmities, the teacher (doctor) of the nations in faith and truth, who
also labored more than all his fellow-apostles, and instructed the tribes
of God's people by his epistles, which edified not only those of his own
time, but all those who were to be gathered in,--that hero, I say, and
athlete of Christ, instructed by Him, anointed of His Spirit, crucified
with Him, glorious in Him, lawfully maintaining a great conflict on the
theatre of this world, and being made a spectacle to angels and men,(10)
and pressing onwards for the prize of his high calling,(11)--very joyfully
do we with the eyes of faith behold him rejoicing with them that rejoice,
and weeping with them that weep;(12) though hampered by fightings without
and fears within;(13) desiring to depart and to be with Christ;(14) longing
to see the Romans, that he might have some fruit among them as among other
Gentiles;(15) being jealous over the Corinthians, and fearing in that
jealousy lest their minds should be corrupted from the chastity that is in
Christ;(16) having great heaviness and continual sorrow of  heart for the
Israelites,(17) because they, being ignorant of God's righteousness, and
going about to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted
themselves unto the righteousness of God;(18) and expressing not only his
sorrow, but bitter lamentation over some who had formally sinned and had
not repented of their uncleanness and fornications.(19)

   If these emotions and affections, arising as they do from the love of
what is good and from a holy charity, are to be called vices, then let us
allow these emotions which are truly vices to pass under the name of
virtues. But since these affections, when they are exercised in a becoming
way, follow the guidance of right reason, who will dare to say that they
are diseases or vicious passions? Wherefore even the Lord Himself, when He
condescended to lead a human life in the form of a slave, had no sin
whatever, and yet exercised these emotions where He judged they should be
exercised. For as there was in Him a true human body and a true human.
soul, so was there also a true human emotion. When, therefore, we read in
the Gospel that the hard-heartedness of the Jews moved Him to sorrowful
indignation,(20) that He said, "I am glad for your sakes, to the intent ye
may believe,"(21) that when about to raise Lazarus He even shed tears,(22)
that He earnestly desired to eat the passover with His disciples,(23) that
as His passion drew near His soul was sorrowful,(24) these emotions are
certainly not falsely ascribed to Him. But as He became man when it pleased
Him, so, in the grace of His definite purpose, when it pleased Him He
experienced those emotions in His human soul.

   But we must further make the admission, that even when these affections
are well regulated, and according to God's will, they are peculiar to this
life, not to that future life we look for, and that often we yield to them
against our will. And thus sometimes we weep in spite of ourselves, being
carried beyond ourselves, not indeed by culpable desire; but by
praiseworthy charity. In us, therefore, these affections arise from human
infirmity; but it was not so with the Lord Jesus, for even His infirmity
was the consequence of His power. But so long as we wear the infirmity of
this life, we are rather worse men than better if we have none of these
emotions at all. For the apostle vituperated and abominated some who, as he
said, were "without natural affection."(1) The sacred Psalmist also found
fault with those of whom he said, "I looked for some to lament with me, and
there was none."(2) For to be quite free from pain while we are in this
place of misery is only purchased, as one of this world's literati
perceived and remarked,(3) at the price of blunted sensibilities both of
mind and body. And therefore that which the Greeks call apa'theia, and what
the Latins would call, if their language would allow them,
"impassibilitas," if it be taken to mean an impassibility of spirit and not
of body, or, in other words, a freedom from those emotions which are
contrary to reason and disturb the mind, then it is obviously a good and
most desirable quality, but it is not one which is attainable in this life.
For the words of the apostle are the confession, not of the common herd,
but of the eminently pious, just, and holy men: "If we say we have: no sin,
we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us."(4) When there shall be
no sin in a man, then there shall be this apa'theia. At present it is
enough if we live without crime; and he who thinks he lives without sin
puts aside not sin, but pardon. And if that is to be called apathy, where
the mind is the subject of no emotion, then who would not consider this
insensibility to be worse than all vices? It may, indeed, reasonably be
maintained that the perfect blessedness we hope for shall be free from all
sting of fear or sadness; but who that is not quite lost to truth would say
that neither love nor joy shall be experienced there? But if by apathy a
condition be meant in which no fear terrifies nor any pain annoys, we must
in this life renounce such a state if we would live according to God's
will, but may hope to enjoy it in that blessedness which is promised as our
eternal condition.

   For that fear of which the Apostle John says, "There is no fear in
love; but perfect love casteth out fear, because fear hath torment. He that
feareth is not made perfect in love,"(5)--that fear is not of the same kind
as the Apostle Paul felt lest the Corinthians should be seduced by the
subtlety of the serpent; for love is susceptible of this fear, yea, love
alone is capable of it. But the fear which is not in love is of that kind
of which Paul himself says, "For ye have not received the spirit of bondage
again to fear."(6) But as for that "clean fear which endureth for ever,"(7)
if it is to exist in the world to come (and how else can it be said to
endure for ever?), it is not a fear deterring us from evil which may
happen, but preserving us in the good which cannot be lost. For where the
love of acquired good is unchangeable, there certainly the fear that avoids
evil is, if I may say so, free from anxiety. For under the name of "clean
fear" David signifies that will by which we shall necessarily shrink from
sin, and guard against it, not with the anxiety of weakness, which fears
that we may strongly sin, but with the tranquillity of perfect love. Or if
no kind of fear at all shall exist in that most imperturbable security of
perpetual and blissful delights, then the expression, "The fear of the Lord
is clean, enduring for ever," must be taken in the same sense as that
other, "The patience of the poor shall not perish for ever"(8) For
patience, which is necessary only where ills are to be borne, shall not be
eternal, but that which patience leads us to will be eternal. So perhaps
this "clean fear" is said to endure for ever, because that to which fear
leads shall endure.

   And since this is so,--since we must live a good life in order to
attain to a blessed life, a good life has all these affections right, a bad
life has them wrong. But in the blessed life eternal there will be love and
joy, not only right, but also assured; but fear and grief there will be
none. Whence it already appears in some sort what manner of persons the
citizens of the city of God must be in this their pilgrimage, who live
after the spirit, not after the flesh,--that is to say, according to God,
not according to man,--and what manner of persons they shall be also in
that immortality whither they are journeying. And the city or society of
the wicked, who live not according to God, but according to man, and who
accept the doctrines of men or devils in the worship of a false and
contempt of the true divinity, is shaken with those wicked emotions as by
diseases and disturbances. And if there be some of its citizens who seem to
restrain and, as it were, temper those passions, they are so elated with
ungodly pride, that their disease is as much greater as their pain is less.
And if some, with a vanity monstrous in proportion to its rarity, have
become enamored of themselves because they can be stimulated and excited by
no emotion, moved or bent by no affection, such persons rather lose all
humanity than obtain true tranquility. For a thing is not necessarily right
because it is inflexible, nor healthy because it is insensible.

CHAP. 10.--WHETHER IT IS TO BE BELIEVED THAT OUR FIRST PARENTS IN PARADISE,
BEFORE THEY SINNED, WERE FREE FROM ALL PERTURBATION.

   But it is a fair question, whether our first parent or first parents
(for there was a marriage of two), before they sinned, experienced in their
animal body such emotions as we shall not experience in the spiritual body
when sin has been purged and finally abolished. For if they did, then how
were they blessed in that boasted place of bliss, Paradise? For who that is
affected by fear or grief can be called absolutely blessed? And what could
those persons fear or suffer in such affluence of blessings, where neither
death nor ill-health was feared, and where nothing was wanting which a good
will could desire, and nothing present which could interrupt man's mental
or bodily enjoyment? Their love to God was unclouded, and their mutual
affection was that of faithful and sincere marriage; and from this love
flowed a wonderful delight, because they always enjoyed what was loved.
Their avoidance of sin was tranquil; and, so long as it was maintained, no
other ill at all could invade them and bring sorrow. Or did they perhaps
desire to touch and eat the forbidden fruit, yet feared to die; and thus
both fear and desire already, even in that blissful place, preyed upon
those first of mankind? Away with the thought that such could be the case
where there was no sin! And, indeed, this is already sin, to desire those
things which the law of God forbids, and to abstain from them through fear
of punishment, not through love of righteousness. Away, I say, with the
thought, that before there was any sin, there should already have been
committed regarding that fruit the very sin which our Lord warns us against
regarding a woman: "Whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her, hath
committed adultery with her already in his heart."(1) As happy, then, as
were these our first parents, who were agitated by no mental perturbations,
and annoyed by no bodily discomforts, so happy should the whole human race
have been, had they not introduced that evil which they have transmitted to
their" posterity, and had none of their descendants committed iniquity
worthy of damnation; but this original blessedness continuing until, in
virtue of that benediction which said, "Increase and multiply,"(2) the
number of the predestined saints should have been completed, there would
then have been bestowed that higher felicity which is enjoyed by the most
blessed angels,--a blessedness in which there should have been a secure
assurance that no one would sin, and no one die; and so should the saints
have lived, after no taste of labor, pain, or death, as now they shall live
in the resurrection, after they have endured all these things.

CHAP. 11.--OF THE FALL OF THE FIRST MAN, IN WHOM NATURE WAS CREATED GOOD,
AND CAN BE RESTORED ONLY BY ITS AUTHOR.

   But because God foresaw all things, and was therefore not ignorant that
man also would fall, we ought to consider this holy city m connection with
what God foresaw and ordained, and not according to our own ideas, which do
not embrace God's ordination. For man, by his sin, could not disturb the
divine counsel, nor compel God to change what He had decreed; for God's
foreknowledge had anticipated both,--that is to say, both how evil the man
whom He had created good should become, and what good He Himself should
even thus derive from him. For though God is said to change His
determinations (so that in a tropical sense the Holy Scripture says even
that God repented(3)), this is said with reference to man's expectation, or
the order of natural causes, and not with reference to that which the
Almighty had foreknown that He would do. Accordingly God, as it is written,
made man upright,(4) and consequently with a good will. For if he had not
had a good will, he could not have been upright. The good will, then, is
the work of God; for God created him with it. But the first evil will,
which preceded all man's evil acts, was rather a kind of falling away from
the work of God to its own works than any positive work. And therefore the
acts resulting were evil, not having God, but the will itself for their
end; so that the will or the man himself, so far as his will is bad, was as
it were the evil tree bringing forth evil fruit. Moreover, the bad will,
though it be not in harmony with, but opposed to nature, inasmuch as it is
a vice or blemish, yet it is true of it as of all vice, that it cannot
exist except in a nature, and only in a nature created out of nothing, and
not in that which the Creator has begotten of Himself, as He begot the
Word, by whom all things were made. For though God formed man of the dust
of the earth, yet the earth itself, and every earthly material, is
absolutely created out of nothing; and man's soul, too, God created out of
nothing, and joined to the body, when He made man. But evils are so
thoroughly overcome by good, that though they are permitted to exist, for
the sake of demonstrating how the most righteous foresight of God can make
a good use even of them, yet good can exist without evil, as in the true
and supreme God Himself, and as in every invisible and visible celestial
creature that exists above this murky atmosphere; but evil cannot exist
without good, because the natures in which evil exists, in so far as they
are natures, are good. And evil is removed, not by removing any nature, or
part of a nature, which had been introduced by the evil, but by healing and
correcting that which had been vitiated and depraved. The will, therefore,
is then truly free, when it is not the slave of vices and sins. Such was it
given us by God; and this being lost by its own fault, can only be restored
by Him who was able at first to give it. And therefore the truth says, "If
the Son shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed;"(1) which is
equivalent to saying, If the Son shall save you, ye shall be saved indeed.
For He is our Liberator, inasmuch as He is our Saviour.

   Man then lived with God for his rule in a paradise at once physical and
spiritual. For neither was it a paradise only physical for the advantage of
the body, and not also spiritual for the advantage of the mind; nor was it
only spiritual to afford enjoyment to man by his internal sensations, and
not also physical to afford him enjoyment through his external senses. But
obviously it was both for both ends. But after that proud and therefore
envious angel (of whose fall I have said as much as I was able in the
eleventh and twelfth books of this work, as well as that of his fellows,
who, from being God's angels, became his angels), preferring to rule with a
kind of pomp of empire rather than to be another's subject, fell from the
spiritual Paradise, and essaying to insinuate his persuasive guile into the
mind of man, whose unfallen condition provoked him to envy now that himself
was fallen, he chose the serpent as his mouthpiece in that bodily Paradise
in which it and all the other earthly animals were living with those two
human beings, the man and his wife, subject to them, and harmless; and he
chose the serpent because, being slippery, and moving in tortuous windings,
it was suitable for his purpose. And this animal being subdued to his
wicked ends by the presence and superior force of his angelic nature, he
abused as his instrument, and first tried his deceit upon the woman, making
his assault upon the weaker part of that human alliance, that he might
gradually gain the whole, and not supposing ,that the man would readily
give ear to him, or be deceived, but that he might yield to the error of
the woman. For as Aaron was not induced to agree with the people when they
blindly wished him to make an idol, and yet yielded to constraint; and as
it is not credible that Solomon was so blind as to suppose that idols
should be worshipped, but was drawn over to such sacrilege by the
blandishments of women; so we cannot believe that Adam was deceived, and
supposed the devil's word to be truth, and therefore transgressed God's
law, but that he by the drawings of kindred yielded to the woman, the
husband to the wife, the one human being to the only other human being. For
not without significance did the apostle say, "And Adam was not deceived,
but the woman being deceived was in the transgression;"(2) but he speaks
thus, because the woman accepted as true what the serpent told her, but the
man could not bear to be severed from his only companion, even though this
involved a partnership in sin. He was not on this account less culpable,
but sinned with his eyes open. And so the apostle does not say, "He did not
sin," but "He was not deceived." For he shows that he sinned when he says,
"By one man sin entered into the world,"(3) and immediately after more
distinctly, "In the likeness of Adam's transgression." But he meant that
those are deceived who do not judge that which they do to be sin; but he
knew. Otherwise how were it true "Adam was not deceived?"  But having as
yet no experience of the divine severity, he was possibly deceived in so
far as he thought his sin venial. And consequently he was not deceived as
the woman was deceived, but he was deceived as to the judgment which would
be passed on his apology: "The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she
gave me, and I did eat."(4) What need of saying more? Although they were
not both deceived by credulity, yet both were entangled in the snares of
the devil, and taken by sin.

CHAP. 12.--OF THE NATURE OF MAN'S FIRST SIN.

   If any one finds a difficulty in understanding why other sins do not
alter human nature as it was altered by the transgression of those first
human beings, so that on account of it this nature is subject to the great
corruption we feel and see, and to death, and is distracted and tossed with
so many furious and contending emotions, and is certainly far different
from what it was before sin, even though it were then lodged in an animal
body,--if, I say, any one is moved by this, he ought not to think that that
sin was a small and light one because it was committed about food, and that
not bad nor noxious, except because it was forbidden; for in that spot of
singular felicity God could not have created and planted any evil thing.
But by the precept He gave, God commended obedience, which is, in a sort,
the mother and guardian of all the virtues in the reasonable creature,
which was so created that submission is advantageous to it, while the
fulfillment of its own will in preference to the Creator's is destruction.
And as this commandment enjoining abstinence from one kind of food in the
midst of great abundance of other kinds was so easy to keep,--so light a
burden to the memory,--and, above all, found no resistance to its
observance in lust, which only afterwards sprung up as the penal
consequence of sin, the iniquity of violating it was all the greater in
proportion to the ease with which it might have been kept.

CHAP. 13.--THAT IN ADAM'S SIN AN EVIL WILL PRECEDED THE EVIL ACT.

   Our first parents fell into open disobedience because already they were
secretly corrupted; for the evil act had never been done had not an evil
will preceded it. And what is the origin of our evil will but pride? For
"pride is the beginning of sin."(1) And what is pride but the craving for
undue exaltation? And this is undue exaltation, when the soul abandons Him
to whom it ought to cleave as its end, and becomes a kind of end to itself.
This happens when it becomes its own satisfaction. And it does so when it
falls away from that unchangeable good which ought to satisfy it more than
itself. This falling away is spontaneous; for if the will had remained
steadfast in the love of that higher and changeless good by which it was
illumined to intelligence and kindled into love, it would not have turned
away to find satisfaction in itself, and so become frigid and benighted;
the woman would not have believed the serpent spoke the truth, nor would
the man have preferred the request of his wife to the command of God, nor
have supposed that it was a venial trangression to cleave to the partner of
his life even in a partnership of sin. The wicked deed, then,--that is to
say, the trangression of eating the forbidden fruit,--was committed by
persons who were already wicked. That "evil fruit"(2)  could be brought
forth only by "a corrupt tree." But that the tree was evil was not the
result of nature; for certainly it could become so only by the vice of the
will, and vice is contrary to nature. Now, nature could not have been
depraved by vice had it not been made out of nothing. Consequently, that it
is a nature, this is because it is made by God; but that it falls away from
Him, this is because it is made out of nothing. But man did not so fall
away(3) as to become absolutely nothing; but being turned towards himself,
his being became more contracted than it was when he clave to Him who
supremely is. Accordingly, to exist in himself, that is, to be his own
satisfaction after abandoning God, is not quite to become a nonentity, but
to approximate to that. And therefore the holy Scriptures designate the
proud by another name, "self-pleasers." For it is good to have the heart
lifted up, yet not to one's self, for this is proud, but to the Lord, for
this is obedient, and can be the act only of the humble. There is,
therefore, something in humility which, strangely enough, exalts the heart,
and something in pride which debases it. This seems, indeed, to be
contradictory, that loftiness should debase and lowliness exalt. But pious
humility enables us to submit to what is above us; and nothing is more
exalted above us than God; and therefore humility, by making us subject to
God, exalts us. But pride, being a defect of nature, by the very act of
refusing subjection and revolting from Him who is supreme, falls to a low
condition; and then comes to pass what is written: "Thou castedst them down
when they lifted up themselves."(4) For he does not say, "when they had
been lifted up," as if first they were exalted, and then afterwards cast
down; but "when they lifted up themselves" even then they were cast down,--
that is to say, the very lifting up was already a fall. And therefore it is
that humility is specially recommended to the city of God as it sojourns in
this world, and is specially exhibited in the city of God, and in the
person of Christ its King; while the contrary vice of pride, according to
the testimony of the sacred writings, specially rules his adversary the
devil. And certainly this is the great difference which distinguishes the
two cities of which we speak, the one being the society of the godly men,
the other of the ungodly, each associated with the angels that adhere to
their party, and the one guided and fashioned by love of self, the other by
love of God.

   The devil, then, would not have ensnared man in the open and manifest
sin of doing what God had forbidden, had man not already begun to live for
himself. It was this that made him listen with pleasure to the words, "Ye
shall be as gods,"(1) which they would much more readily have accomplished
by obediently adhering to their supreme and true end than by proudly living
to themselves. For created gods are gods not by virtue of what is in
themselves, but by a participation of the true God. By craving to be more,
man becomes less; and by aspiring to be self-sufficing, he fell away from
Him who truly suffices him. Accordingly, this wicked desire which prompts
man to please himself as if he were himself light, and which thus turns him
away from that light by which, had he followed it, he would himself have
become light,--this wicked desire, I say, already secretly existed in him,
and the open sin was but its consequence. For that is true which is
written, "Pride goeth before destruction, and before honor is humility;"(2)
that is to say, secret ruin precedes open ruin, while the former is not
counted ruin. For who counts exaltation ruin, though no sooner is the
Highest forsaken than a fall is begun? But who does not recognize it as
ruin, when there occurs an evident and indubitable transgression of the
commandment? And consequently, God's prohibition had reference to such an
act as, when committed, could not be defended on any pretense of doing what
was righteous.(3) And I make hold to say that it is useful for the proud to
fall into an open and indisputable transgression, and so displease
themselves, as already, by pleasing themselves, they had fallen. For Peter
was in a healthier condition when he wept and was dissatisfied with
himself, than when he boldly presumed and satisfied himself. And this is
averred by the sacred Psalmist when he says, "Fill their faces with shame,
that they may seek Thy name, O Lord;"(4) that is, that they who have
pleased themselves in seeking their own glory may be pleased and satisfied
with Thee in seeking Thy glory.

CHAP. 14.--OF THE PRIDE IN THE SIN, WHICH WAS WORSE THAN THE SIN ITSELF.

   But it is a worse and more damnable pride which casts about for the
shelter of an excuse even in manifest sins, as these our first parents did,
of whom the woman said, "The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat;" and the
man said, "The woman whom Thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the
tree, and I did eat."(5) Here there is no word of begging pardon, no word
of entreaty for healing. For though they do not, like Cain, deny that they
have perpetrated the deed, yet their pride seeks to refer its wickedness to
another,--the woman's pride to the serpent, the man's to the woman. But
where there is a plain trangression of a divine commandment, this is rather
to accuse than to excuse oneself. For the fact that the woman sinned on the
serpent's persuasion, and the man at the woman's offer, did not make the
transgression less, as if there were any one whom we ought rather to
believe or yield to than God.

CHAP. 15.--OF THE JUSTICE OF THE PUNISHMENT WITH WHICH OUR FIRST PARENTS
WERE VISITED FOR THEIR DISOBEDIENCE.

   Therefore, because the sin was a despising of the authority of God,--
who had created man; who had made him in His own image; who had set him
above the other animals; who had placed him in Paradise; who had enriched
him with abundance of every kind and of safety; who had laid upon him
neither many, nor great, nor difficult commandments, but, in order to make
a wholesome obedience easy to him, had given him a single very brief and
very light precept by which He reminded that creature whose service was to
be free that He was Lord,--it was just that condemnation followed, and
condemnation such that man, who by keeping the commandments should have
been spiritual even in his flesh, became fleshly even in his spirit; and as
in his pride he had sought to he his own satisfaction, God in His justice
abandoned him to himself, not to live in the absolute independence he
affected, but instead of the liberty he desired, to live dissatisfied with
himself in a hard and miserable bondage to him to whom by sinning he had
yielded himself, doomed in spite of himself to die in body as he had
willingly become dead in spirit, condemned even to eternal death (had not
the grace of God delivered him) because he had forsaken eternal life.
Whoever thinks such punishment either excessive or unjust shows his
inability to measure the great iniquity of sinning where sin might so
easily have been avoided. For as Abraham's obedience is with justice
pronounced to be great, because the thing commanded, to kill his son, was
very difficult, so in Paradise the disobedience was the greater, because
the difficulty of that which was commanded was imperceptible. And as the
obedience of the second Man was the more laudable because He became
obedient even "unto death,"(1) so the disobedience of the first man was the
more detestable because he became disobedient even unto death. For where
the penalty annexed to disobedience is great, and the thing commanded by
the Creator is easy, who can sufficiently estimate how great a wickedness
it is, in a matter so easy, not to obey the authority of so great a power,
even when that power deters with so terrible a penalty?

   In short, to say all in a word, what but disobedience was the
punishment of disobedience in that sin? For what else is man's misery but
his own disobedience to himself, so that in consequence of his not being
willing to do what he could do, he now wills to do what he cannot? For
though he could not do all things in Paradise before he sinned, yet he
wished to do only what he could do, and therefore he could do all things he
wished. But now, as we recognize in his offspring, and as divine Scripture
testifies, "Man is like to vanity."(2) For who can count how many things he
wishes which be cannot do, so long as he is disobedient to himself, that
is, so long as his mind and his flesh do not obey his will? For in spite of
himself his mind is both frequently disturbed, and his flesh suffers, and
grows old, and dies; and in spite of ourselves we suffer whatever else we
suffer, and which we would not suffer if our nature absolutely and in all
its parts obeyed our will. But is it not the infirmities of the flesh which
hamper it in its service? Yet what does it matter how its service is
hampered, so long as the fact remains, that by the just retribution of the
sovereign God whom we refused to be subject to and serve, our flesh, which
was subjected to us, now torments us by insubordination, although our
disobedience brought trouble on ourselves, not upon God? For He is not in
need of our service as we of our body's; and therefore what we did was no
punishment to Him, but what we receive is so to us. And the pains which are
called bodily are pains of the soul in and from the body. For what pain or
desire can the flesh feel by itself and without the soul? But when the
flesh is said to desire or to suffer, it is meant, as we have explained,
that the man does so, or some part of the soul which is affected by the
sensation of the flesh, whether a harsh sensation causing pain, or gentle,
causing pleasure. But pain in the flesh is only a discomfort of the soul
arising from the flesh, and a kind of shrinking from its suffering, as the
pain of the soul which is called sadness is a shrinking from those things
which have happened to us in spite of ourselves. But sadness is frequently
preceded by fear, which is itself in the soul, not in the flesh; while
bodily pain is not preceded by any kind of fear of the flesh, which can be
felt in the flesh before the pain. But pleasure is preceded by a certain
appetite which is felt in the flesh like a craving, as hunger and thirst
and that generative appetite which is most commonly identified with the
name" lust," though this is the generic word for all desires. For anger
itself was defined by the ancients as nothing else than the lust of
revenge;(3) although sometimes a man is angry even at inanimate objects
which cannot feel his vengeance, as when one breaks a pen, or crushes a
quill that writes badly. Yet even this, though less reasonable, is in its
way a lust of revenge, and is, so to speak, a mysterious kind of shadow of
[the great law of] retribution, that they who do evil should suffer evil.
There is therefore a lust for revenge, which is called anger; there is a
lust of money, which goes by the name of avarice; there is a lust of
conquering, no matter by what means, which is called opinionativeness;
there is a lust of applause, which is named boasting. There are many and
various lusts, of which some have names of their own, while others have
not. For who could readily give a name to the lust of ruling, which yet has
a powerful influence in the soul of tyrants, as civil wars bear witness?

CHAP. 16.--OF THE EVIL OF LUST,--A WORD WHICH, THOUGH APPLICABLE TO MANY
VICES, IS SPECIALLY APPROPRIATED TO SEXUAL UNCLEANNESS

   Although, therefore, lust may have many objects, yet when no object is
specified, the word lust usually suggests to the mind the lustful
excitement of the organs of generation. And this lust not only takes
possession of the whole body and outward members, but also makes itself
felt within, and moves the whole man with a passion in which mental emotion
is mingled with bodily appetite, so that the pleasure which results is the
greatest of all bodily pleasures. So possessing indeed is this pleasure,
that at the moment of time in which it is consummated, all mental activity
is suspended. What friend of wisdom and holy joys, who, being married, but
knowing, as the apostle says, "how to possess his vessel in santification
and honor, not in the disease of desire, as the Gentiles who know not
God,"(4) would not prefer, if this were possible, to beget children without
this lust, so that in this function of begetting offspring the members
created for this purpose should not be stimulated by the heat of lust, but
should be actuated by his volition, in the same way as his other members
serve him for their respective ends? But even those who delight in this
pleasure are not moved to it at their own will, whether they confine
themselves to lawful or transgress to unlawful pleasures; but sometimes
this lust importunes them in spite of themselves, and sometimes fails them
when they desire to feel it, so that though lust rages in the mind, it
stirs not in the body. Thus, strangely enough, this emotion not only fails
to obey the legitimate desire to beget offspring, but also refuses to serve
lascivious lust; and though it often opposes its whole combined energy to
the soul that resists it, sometimes also it is divided against itself, and
while it moves the soul, leaves the body unmoved.

CHAP. 17.--OF THE NAKEDNESS OF OUR FIRST PARENTS, WHICH THEY SAW AFTER
THEIR BASE AND SHAMEFUL SIN.

   Justly is shame very specially connected with this lust; justly, too,
these members themselves, being moved and restrained not at our will, but
by a certain independent autocracy, so to speak, are called "shameful."
Their condition was different before sin. For as it is written, "They were
naked and were not ashamed,"(1)--not that their nakedness was unknown to
them, but because nakedness was not yet shameful, because not yet did lust
move those members without the will's consent; not yet did the flesh by its
disobedience testify against the disobedience. of man. For they were not
created blind, as the unenlightened vulgar fancy;(2) for Adam saw the
animals to whom he gave names, and of Eve we read, "The woman saw that the
tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes."(3) Their
eyes, therefore were open, but were not open to this, that is to say, were
not observant so as to recognize what was conferred upon them by the
garment of grace, for they had no consciousness of their members warring
against their will. But when they were stripped of this grace,(4) that
their disobedience might be punished by fit retribution, there began in the
movement of their bodily members a shameless novelty which made nakedness
indecent: it at once made them observant and made them ashamed. And
therefore, after they violated God's command by open transgression, it is
written: "And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they
were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves
aprons."(5) "The eyes of them both were opened," not to see. for already
they saw, but to discern between the good they had lost and the evil into
which they had fallen. And therefore also the tree itself which they were
forbidden to touch was called the tree of the knowledge of good and evil
from this circumstance, that if they ate of it it would impart to them this
knowledge. For the discomfort of sickness reveals the pleasure of health.
"They knew," therefore, "that they were naked,"--naked of that grace which
prevented them from being ashamed of bodily nakedness while the law of sin
offered no resistance to their mind. And thus they obtained a knowledge
which they would have lived in blissful ignorance of, had they, in trustful
obedience to God, declined to commit that offence which involved them in
the experience of the hurtful effects of unfaithfulness and disobedience.
And therefore, being ashamed of the disobedience of their own flesh, which
witnessed to their disobedience while it punished it, "they sewed fig
leaves together, and made themselves aprons," that is, cinctures for their
privy parts; for some interpreters have rendered the word by succinctoria.
Campestria is, indeed, a Latin word, but it is used of the drawers or
aprons used for a similar purpose by the young men who stripped for
exercise in the campus; hence those who were so girt were commonly called
campestrati. Shame modestly covered that which lust disobediently moved in
opposition to the will, which was thus punished for its own disobedience.
Consequently all nations, being propagated from that one stock, have so
strong an instinct to cover the shameful parts, that some barbarians do not
uncover them even in the bath, but wash with their drawers on. In the dark
solitudes of India also, though some philosophers go naked, and are
therefore called gymnosophists, yet they make an exception in the case of
these members and cover them.

CHAP. 18.--OF THE SHAME WHICH ATTENDS ALL SEXUAL INTERCOURSE.

   Lust requires for its consummation darkness and secrecy; and this not
only when unlawful intercourse is desired, but even such fornication as the
earthly city has legalized. Where there is no fear of punishment, these
permitted pleasures still shrink from the public eye. Even where provision
is made for this lust, secrecy also is provided; and while lust found it
easy to remove the prohibitions of law, shamelessness found it impossible
to lay aside the veil of retirement. For even shameless men call this
shameful; and though they love the pleasure, dare not display it. What!
does not even conjugal intercourse, sanctioned as it is by law for the
propagation of children, legitimate and honorable though it be, does it not
seek retirement from every eye? Before the bridegroom fondles his bride,
does he not exclude the attendants, and even the paranymphs, and such
friends as the closest ties have admitted to the bridal chamber? The
greatest master of Roman eloquence says, that all right actions wish to be
set in the light, i.e., desire to be known. This right action, however, has
such a desire to be known, that yet it blushes to be seen. Who does not
know what passes between husband and wife that children may be born? Is it
not for this purpose that wives are married with such ceremony? And yet,
when this well-understood act is gone about for the procreation of
children, not even the children themselves, who may already have been born
to them, are suffered to be witnesses. This right action seeks the light,
in so far as it seeks to be known, but yet dreads being seen. And why so,
if not because that which is by nature fitting and decent is so done as to
be accompanied with a shame-begetting penalty of sin?

CHAP. 19.--THAT IT IS NOW NECESSARY, AS IT WAS NOT BEFORE MAN SINNED, TO
BRIDLE ANGER AND LUST BY THE RESTRAINING INFLUENCE OF WISDOM.

   Hence it is that even the philosophers who have approximated to the
truth have avowed that anger and lust are vicious mental emotions, because,
even when exercised towards objects which wisdom does not prohibit, they
are moved in an ungoverned and inordinate manner, and consequently need the
regulation of mind and reason. And they assert that this third part of the
mind is posted as it were in a kind of citadel, to give rule to these other
parts, so that, while it rules and they serve, man's righteousness is
preserved without a breach.(1) These parts, then, which they acknowledge to
be vicious even in a wise and temperate man, so that the mind, by its
composing and restraining influence, must bridle and recall them from those
objects towards which they are unlawfully moved, and give them access to
those which the law of wisdom sanctions,--that anger, e.g., may be allowed
for the enforcement of a just authority, and lust for the duty of
propagating offspring,-these parts, I say, were not vicious in Paradise
before sin, for they were never moved in opposition to a holy will towards
any object from which it was necessary that they should be withheld by the
restraining bridle of reason. For though now they are moved in this way,
and are regulated by a bridling and restraining power, which those who live
temperately, justly, and godly exercise, sometimes with ease, and sometimes
with greater difficulty, this is not the sound health of nature, but the
weakness which results from sin. And how is it that shame does not hide the
acts and words dictated by anger or other emotions, as it covers the
motions of lust, unless because the members of the body which we employ for
accomplishing them are moved, not by the emotions themselves, but by the
authority of the consenting will? For he who in his anger rails at or even
strikes some one, could not do so were not his tongue and hand moved by the
authority of the will, as also they are moved when there is no anger. But
the organs of generation are so subjected to the rule of lust, that they
have no motion but what it communicates. It is this we are ashamed of; it
is this which blushingly hides from the eyes of onlookers. And rather will
a man endure a crowd of witnesses when he is unjustly venting his anger on
some one, than the eye of one man when he innocently copulates with his
wife.

CHAP. 20.--OF THE FOOLISH BEASTLINESS OF THE CYNICS.

   It is this which those canine or cynic(2) philosophers have overlooked,
when they have, in violation of the modest instincts of men, boastfully
proclaimed their unclean and shameless opinion, worthy indeed of dogs,
viz., that as the matrimonial act is legitimate, no one should be ashamed
to perform it openly, in the street or in any public place. Instinctive
shame has overborne this wild fancy. For though it is related(3) that
Diogenes once dared to put his opinion in practice, under the impression
that his sect would be all the more famous if his egregious shamelessness
were deeply graven in the memory of mankind, yet this example was not
afterwards followed. Shame had more influence with them, to make them blush
before men, than error to make them affect a resemblance to dogs. And
possibly, even in the case of Diogenes, and those who did imitate him,
there was but an appearance and pretence of copulation, and not the
reality. Even at this day there are still Cynic philosophers to be seen;
for these are Cynics who are not content with being clad in the pallium,
but also carry a club; yet no one of them dares to do this that we speak
of. If they did, they would be spat upon, not to say stoned, by the mob.
Human nature, then, is without doubt ashamed of this lust; and justly so,
for the insubordination of these members, and their defiance of the will,
are the clear testimony of the punishment of man's first sin. And it was
fitting that this should appear specially in those parts by which is
generated that nature which has been altered for the worse by that first
and great sin,--that sin from whose evil connection no one can escape,
unless God's grace expiate in him individually that which was perpetrated
to the destruction of all in common, when all were in one man, and which
was avenged by God's justice.

CHAP. 21.--THAT MAN'S TRANSGRESSION DID NOT ANNUL THE BLESSING OF FECUNDITY
PRONOUNCED UPON MAN BEFORE HE SINNED BUT INFECTED IT WITH THE DISEASE OF
LUST.

   Far be it, then, from us to suppose that our first parents in Paradise
felt that lust which caused them afterwards to blush and hide their
nakedness, or that by its means they should have fulfilled the benediction
of God, "Increase and multiply and replenish the earth;"(1) for it was
after sin that lust began. It was after sin that our nature, having lost
the power it had over the whole body, but not having lost all shame,
perceived, noticed blushed at, and covered it. But that blessing upon
marriage, which encouraged them to increase and multiply and replenish the
earth, though it continued even after they had sinned, was yet given before
they sinned, in order that the procreation of children might be recognized
as part of the glory of marriage, and not of the punishment of sin. But
now, men being ignorant of the blessedness of Paradise, suppose that
children could not have been begotten there in any other way than they know
them to be begotten now, i.e., by lust, at which even honorable marriage
blushes; some not simply rejecting, but sceptically deriding the divine
Scriptures, in which we read that our first parents, after they sinned,
were ashamed of their nakedness, and covered it; while others, though they
accept and honor Scripture, yet conceive that this expression, "Increase
and multiply," refers not to carnal fecundity, because a similar expression
is used of the soul in the words, "Thou wilt multiply me with strength in
my soul;"(2)  and so, too, in the words which follow in Genesis, "And
replenish the earth., and subdue it," they understand by the earth the body
which the soul fills with its presence, and which it rules over when it is
multiplied in strength. And they hold that children could no more then than
now be begotten without lust, which, after sin, was kindled, observed,
blushed for, and covered; and even that children would not have been born
in Paradise, but only outside of it, as in fact it turned out. For it was
after they were expelled from it that they came together to beget children,
and begot them.

CHAP. 22.--OF THE CONJUGAL UNION AS IT WAS ORIGINALLY INSTITUTED AND
BLESSED BY GOD.

   But we, for our part, have no manner of doubt that to increase and
multiply and replenish the earth in virtue of the blessing of God, is a
gift of marriage as God instituted it from the beginning before man sinned,
when He created them male and female,--in other words, two sexes manifestly
distinct. And it was this work of God on which His blessing was pronounced.
For no sooner had Scripture said, "Male and female created He them,"(3)
than it immediately continues, "And God blessed them, and God said unto
them, Increase, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it," etc.
And though all these things may riot unsuitably be interpreted in a
spiritual sense, yet "male and female" cannot be understood of two things
in one man, as if there were in him one thing which rules, another which is
ruled; but it is quite clear that they were created male and female, with
bodies of different sexes, for the very purpose of begetting offspring, and
so increasing, multiplying, and replenishing the earth; and it is great
folly to oppose so plain a fact. It was not of the spirit which commands
and the body which obeys, nor of the rational soul which rules and the
irrational desire which is ruled, nor of the contemplative virtue which is
supreme and the active which is subject, nor of the understanding of the
mind and the sense of the body, but plainly of the matrimonial union by
which the sexes are mutually bound together, that our Lord, when asked
whether  it were lawful for any cause to put away one's wife (for on
account of the hardness of the hearts of the Israelites Moses permitted a
bill of divorcement to be given), answered and said, "Have ye not read that
He which made them at the beginning made them male and female, and said,
For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his
wife, and they twain shall be one flesh? Wherefore they are no more twain,
but one flesh. What, therefore, God hath joined together, let not man put
asunder."(1) It is certain, then, that from the first men were created, as
we see and know them to be now, of two sexes, male and female, and that
they are called one, either on account of the matrimonial union, or on
account of the origin of the woman, who was created from the side of the
man. And it is by this original example, which God Himself instituted. that
the apostle admonishes all husbands to love their own wives in
particular.(2)

CHAP. 23.--WHETHER GENERATION SHOULD HAVE TAKEN PLACE EVEN IN PARADISE HAD
MAN NOT SINNED, OR WHETHER THERE SHOULD HAVE BEEN ANY CONTENTION THERE
BETWEEN CHASTITY AND LUST.

   But he who says that there should have been neither copulation nor
generation but for sin, virtually says that man's sin was necessary to
complete the number of the saints. For if these two by not sinning should
have continued to live alone, because, as is supposed, they could not have
begotten children had they not sinned, then certainly sin was necessary in
order that there might be not only two but many righteous men. And if this
cannot be maintained without absurdity, we must rattler believe that the
number of the saints fit to complete this most blessed city would have been
as great though no one had sinned, as it is now that the grace of God
gathers its citizens out of the multitude of sinners, so long as the
children of this world generate and are generated.(3)

   And therefore that marriage, worthy of the happiness of Paradise,
should have had desirable fruit without the shame of lust, had there been
no sin. But how that could be, there is now no example to teach us.
Nevertheless, it ought not to seem incredible that one member might serve
the will without lust then, since so many serve it now. Do we now move our
feet and hands when we will to do the things we would by means of these
members? do we meet with no resistance in them, but perceive that they are
ready servants of the will, both in our own case and in that of others, and
especially of artisans employed in mechanical operations, by which the
weakness and clumsiness of nature become, through industrious exercise,
wonderfully dexterous? and shall we not believe that, like as all those
members obediently serve the will, so also should the members have
discharged the function of generation, though lust, the award of
disobedience, had been awanting.? Did not Cicero, in discussing the
difference of governments in his De Republica, adopt a simile from human
nature, and say that we command Our bodily members as Children, they are so
obedient; but that the vicious parts of the soul must be treated as slaves,
and be coerced with a more stringent authority? And no doubt, in the order
of nature, the soul is more excellent than the body; and yet the soul
commands the body more easily than itself. Nevertheless this lust, of which
we at present speak, is the more shameful on this account, because the soul
is therein neither master of itself, so as not to lust at all, nor of the
body, so as to keep the members under the control of the will; for if they
were thus ruled, there should be no shame. But now the soul is ashamed that
the body, which by nature is inferior and subject to it, should resist its
authority. For in the resistance experienced by the soul in the other
emotions there is less shame, because the resistance is from itself, and
thus, when it is conquered by itself, itself is the conqueror, although the
conquest is inordinate and vicious, because accomplished by those parts of
the soul which ought to be subject to reason, yet, being accomplished by
its own parts and energies, the conquest is, as I say, its own. For when
the soul conquers itself to a due subordination, so that its unreasonable
motions are controlled by reason, while it again is subject to God, this is
a conquest virtuous and praiseworthy. Yet there is less shame when the soul
is resisted by its own vicious parts than when its will and order are
resisted by the body, which is distinct from and inferior to it, and
dependent on it for life itself.

   But so long as the will retains under its authority the other members,
without which the members excited by lust to resist the will cannot
accomplish what they seek, chastity is preserved, and the delight of sin
foregone. And certainly, had not culpable disobedience been visited with
penal disobedience, the marriage of Paradise should have been ignorant of
this struggle and rebellion, this quarrel between will and lust, that the
will may be satisfied and lust restrained, but those members, like all the
rest, should have obeyed the will. The field of generation(1) should have
been sown by the organ created for this purpose, as the earth is sown by
the hand. And whereas now, as we essay to investigate this subject more
exactly, modesty hinders us, and compels Us to ask pardon of chaste ears,
there would have been no cause to do so, but we could have discoursed
freely, and without fear of seeming obscene, upon all those points which
occur to one who meditates on the subject. There would not have been even
words which could be called obscene, but all that might be said of these
members would have been as pure as what is said of the other parts of the
body. Whoever, then, comes to the perusal of these pages with unchaste
mind, let him blame his disposition, not his nature; let him brand the
actings of his own impurity, not the words which necessity forces us to
use, and for which every pure and pious reader or hearer will very readily
pardon me, while I expose the folly of that scepticism which argues solely
on the ground of its own experience, and has no faith in anything beyond.
He who is not scandalized at the apostle's censure of the horrible
wickedness of the women who "changed the natural use into that which is
against nature,"(2) will lead all this without being shocked, especially as
we are not, like Paul, citing and censuring a damnable uncleanness, but are
explaining, so far as we can, human generation, while with Paul we avoid
all obscenity of language.

CHAP. 24.--THAT IF MEN HAD REMAINED INNOCENT AND OBEDIENT IN PARADISE, THE
GENERATIVE ORGANS SHOULD HAVE BEEN IN SUBJECTION TO THE WILL AS THE OTHER
MEMBERS ARE.

   The man, then, would have sown the seed, and the woman received it, as
need required, the generative organs being moved by the will, not excited
by lust. For we move at will not only those members which are furnished
With joints of solid bone, as the hands, feet, and fingers, but we move
also at will those Which are composed of slack and soft nerves: we can put
them in motion, or stretch them out, or bend and twist them, or contract
and stiffen them, as we do with the muscles of the mouth and face. The
lungs, which are the very tenderest of the viscera except the brain,  and
are therefore carefully sheltered in the cavity of the chest, yet for all
purposes of inhaling and exhaling the breath, and of uttering and
modulating the voice, are obedient to the will when we breathe, exhale,
speak, shout, or sing, just as the bellows obey the smith or the organist.
I will not press the fact that some animals have a natural power to move a
single spot of the skin with which their whole body is covered, if they
have felt on it anything they wish to drive off,--a power so great, that by
this shivering tremor of the skin they can not only shake off flies that
have settled on them, but even spears that have fixed in their flesh. Man,
it is true, has not this power; but is this any reason for supposing that
God could not give it to such creatures as He wished to possess it? And
therefore man himself also might very well have enjoyed absolute power over
his members had he not forfeited it by his disobedience; for it was not
difficult for God to form him so that what is now moved in his body only by
lust should have been moved only at will.

   We know, too, that some men are differently constituted from others,
and have some rare and remarkable faculty of doing with their body what
other men can by no effort do, and, indeed, scarcely believe when they hear
of others doing. There are persons who can move their ears, either one at a
time, or both together. There are some who, without moving the head, can
bring the hair down upon the forehead, and move the whole scalp backwards
and forwards at pleasure. Some, by lightly pressing their stomach, bring up
an incredible quantity and variety of things they have swallowed, and
produce whatever they please, quite whole, as if out of a bag. Some so
accurately mimic the voices of birds and beasts and other men, that, unless
they are seen, the difference cannot be told. Some have such command of
their bowels, that they can break wind continuously at pleasure, so as to
produce the effect of singing. I myself have known a man who was accustomed
to sweat whenever he wished. It is well known that some weep when they
please, and shed a flood of tears. But far more incredible is that which
some of our brethren saw quite recently. There was a presbyter called
Restitutus, in the parish of the Calamensian(3) Church, who, as often as he
pleased (and he was asked to do this by those who desired to witness so
remarkable a phenomenon), on some one imitating the wailings of mourners,
became so insensible, and lay in a state so like death, that not only had
he no feeling when they pinched and pricked him, but even when fire was
applied to him, and he was burned by it, he had no sense of pain except
afterwards from the wound. And that his body remained motionless, not by
reason of his self-command, but because he was insensible, was proved by
the fact that he breathed no more than a dead man; and yet he said that,
when any one spoke with more than ordinary distinctness, he heard the
voice, but as if it were a long way off. Seeing, then, that even in this
mortal and miserable life the body serves some men by many remarkable
movements and moods beyond the ordinary course of nature, what reason is
there for doubting that, before man was involved by his sin in this weak
and corruptible condition, his members might have served his will for the
propagation of offspring without lust? Man has been given over to himself
because he abandoned God, while he sought to be self-satisfying; and
disobeying God, he could not obey even himself. Hence it is that he is
involved in the obvious misery of being unable to live as he wishes. For if
he lived as he wished, he would think himself blessed; but he could not be
so if he lived wickedly.

CHAP. 25.--OF TRUE BLESSEDNESS, WHICH THIS PRESENT LIFE CANNOT ENJOY.

   However, if we look at this a little more closely, we see that no one
lives as he wishes but the blessed, and that no one is blessed but the
righteous. But even the righteous himself does not live as he wishes, until
he has arrived where he cannot die, be deceived, or injured, and until he
is assured that this shall be his eternal condition. For this nature
demands; and nature is not fully and perfectly blessed till it attains what
it seeks. But what man is at present able to live as he Wishes, when it is
not in his power so much as to live? He wishes to live, he is compelled to
die. How, then, does he live as he wishes who does not live as long as he
wishes? or if he wishes to die, how can he live as he wishes, since he does
not wish even to live? Or if he wishes to die, not because he dislikes
life, but that after death he may live better, still he is not yet living
as he wishes, but only has the prospect of so living when, through death,
he reaches that which he wishes. But admit that he lives as he wishes,
because he has done violence to himself, and forced himself not to wish
what he cannot obtain, and to wish only what he can (as Terence has it,
"Since you cannot do what you will, will what you can"(1), is he therefore
blessed because he is patiently wretched? For a blessed life is possessed
only by the man Who loves it. If it is loved and possessed, it must
necessarily be more ardently loved than all besides; for whatever else is
loved must be loved for the sake of the blessed life. And if it is loved as
it deserves to be,--and the man is not blessed who does not love the
blessed life as it deserves,--then he who so loves it cannot but wish it to
be eternal. Therefore it shall then only be blessed when it is eternal.

CHAP. 26.--THAT WE ARE TO BELIEVE THAT IN PARADISE OUR FIRST PARENTS BEGAT
OFFSPRING WITHOUT BLUSHING.

   In Paradise, then, man lived as he desired so long as he desired what
God had commanded. He lived in the enjoyment of God, and was good by God's
goodness; he lived without any want, and had it in his power so to live
eternally. He had food that he might not hunger, drink that he might not
thirst, the tree of life that old age might not waste him. There was in his
body no corruption, nor seed of corruption, which could produce in him any
unpleasant sensation. He feared no inward disease, no outward accident.
Soundest health blessed his body, absolute tranquillity his soul. As in
Paradise there was no excessive heat or cold, so its inhabitants were
exempt from the vicissitudes of fear and desire. No sadness of any kind was
there, nor any foolish joy; true gladness ceaselessly flowed from the
presence of God, who was loved "out of a pure heart, and a good conscience,
and faith unfeigned."(2) The honest love of husband and wife made a sure
harmony between them. Body and spirit worked harmoniously together, and the
commandment was kept without labor. No languor made their leisure
wearisome; no sleepiness interrupted their desire to labor.(3) In tanta
facilitate rerum et felicitate hominum, absit ut suspicemur, non potuisse
prolem seri sine libidinis morbo: sed eo voluntatis nutu moverentur illa
membra qua caetera, et sine ardoris illecebroso stimulo cum tranquillitate
animi et corporis nulla corruptione integritatis infunderetur gremio
maritus uxoris. Neque enim quia experientia probari non potest, ideo
credendum non est; quando illas corporis partes non ageret turbidus calor,
sed spontanea potestas, sicut opus, adhibebret; ita tunc potuisse utero
conjugis salva integritate feminei genitalis virile semen immitti, sicut
nunc potest cadem integritate salva ex utero virginis fluxus menstrui
cruoris emitti. Eadem quippe via posset illud injici, qua hoc potest ejici.
Ut enim ad pariendum non doloris gemitus, sed maturitatis impulsus feminea
viscera relaxaret: sic  ad  foetandum et concipiendum non libidinis
appetitus, sed voluntarius usus naturam utramque conjungeret. We speak of
things which are now shameful, and although we try, as well as we are able,
to conceive them as they were before they became shameful, yet necessity
compels us rather to limit our discussion to the bounds set by modesty than
to extend it as our moderate faculty of discourse might suggest. For since
that which I have been speaking of was not experienced even by those who
might have experienced it,--I mean our first parents (for sin and its
merited banishment from Paradise anticipated this passionless generation on
their part),--when sexual intercourse is spoken of now, it suggests to
men's thoughts not such a placid obedience to the will as is conceivable in
our first parents, but such violent acting of lust as they themselves have
experienced. And therefore modesty shuts my mouth, although my mind
conceives the matter clearly. But Almighty God, the supreme and supremely
good Creator of all natures, who aids and rewards good wills, while He
abandons and condemns the had, and rules both, was not destitute of a plan
by which He might people His city with the fixed number of citizens which
His wisdom had foreordained even out of the condemned human race,
discriminating them not now by merits, since the whole mass was condemned
as if in a vitiated root, but by grace, and showing, not only in the case
of the redeemed, but also in those who were not delivered, how much grace
He has bestowed upon them. For every one acknowledges that he has been
rescued from evil, not by deserved, but by gratuitous goodness, when he is
singled out from the company of those with whom he might justly have borne
a common punishment, and is allowed to go scathless. Why, then, should God
not have created those whom He foresaw would sin, since He was able to show
in and by them both what their guilt merited, and what His grace bestowed,
and since, under His creating and disposing hand, even the perverse
disorder of the wicked could not pervert the right order of things?

CHAP. 27.--OF THE ANGELS AND MEN WHO SINNED, AND THAT THEIR WICKEDNESS DID
NOT DISTURB THE ORDER OF GOD'S PROVIDENCE.

   The sins of men and angels do nothing to impede the "great works of the
Lord which accomplish His will."(1) For He who by His providence and
omnipotence distributes to every one his own portion, is able to make good
use not only of the good, but also of the wicked. And thus making a good
use of the wicked angel, who, in punishment of his first wicked volition,
was doomed to an obduracy that prevents him now from willing any good, why
should not God have permitted him to tempt the first man, who had been
created upright, that is to say, with a good will? For he had been so
constituted, that if he looked to God for help, man's goodness should
defeat the angel's wickedness; but if by proud self-pleasing he abandoned
God, his Creator and Sustainer, he should be conquered. If his will
remained upright, through leaning on God's help, he should be rewarded; if
it became wicked, by forsaking God, he should be punished. But even this
trusting in God's help could not itself be accomplished without God's help,
although man had it in his own power to relinquish the benefits of divine
grace by pleasing himself. For as it is not in our power to live in this
world without sustaining ourselves by food, while it is in our power to
refuse this nourishment and cease to live, as those do who kill themselves,
so it was not in man's power, even in Paradise, to live as he ought without
God's help; but it was in his power to live wickedly, though thus he should
cut short his happiness, and incur very just punishment. Since, then, God
was not ignorant that man would fall, why should He not have suffered him
to be tempted by an angel who hated and envied him? It was not, indeed,
that He was unaware that he should be conquered. but because He foresaw
that by the man's seed, aided by divine grace, this same devil himself
should be conquered, to the greater glory of the saints. All was brought
about in such a manner, that neither did any future event escape God's
foreknowledge, nor did His foreknowledge compel any one to sin, and so as
to demonstrate in the experience of the intelligent creation, human and
angelic, how great a difference there is between the private presumption of
the creature and the Creator's protection. For who will dare to believe or
say that it was not in God's power to prevent both angels and men from
sinning? But God preferred to leave this in their power, and thus to show
both what evil could be wrought by their pride, and what good by His grace.

CHAP.28.--OF THE NATURE OF THE TWO CITIES, THE EARTHLY AND THE HEAVENLY.

   Accordingly, two cities have been formed by two loves: the earthly by
the love of self, even to the contempt of God; the heavenly by the love of
God, even to the contempt of self. The former, in a word, glories in
itself, the latter in the Lord. For the one seeks glory from men; but the
greatest glory of the other is God, the witness of conscience. The one
lifts up its head in its own glory; the other says to its God, "Thou art my
glory, and the lifter up of mine head."(1) In the one, the princes  and the
nations it subdues are ruled by the love of ruling; in the other, the
princes and the subjects serve one another in love, the latter obeying,
while the former take thought for all. The one delights in its own
strength, represented in the persons of its rulers; the other says to its
God, "I will love Thee, O Lord, my strength."(2) And therefore the wise men
of the one city, living according to man, have sought for profit to their
own bodies or souls, or both, and those who have known God "glorified Him
not as God, neither were thankful, but became vain in their imaginations,
and their foolish heart was darkened; professing themselves to be wise,"--
that is, glorying in their own wisdom, and being possessed by pride,--"they
became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image
made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and four-footed beasts, and
creeping things." For they were either leaders or followers of the people
in adoring images, "and worshipped and served the  creature more than the
Creator, who is blessed  for ever."(3) But in the other city there is no
human wisdom, but only godliness, which offers due worship to the true God,
and looks for its reward in the society of the saints, of holy angels as
well as holy men, "that God may be all in all."(4)


BOOK XV.

ARGUMENT: HAVING TREATED IN THE FOUR PRECEDING BOOKS OF THE ORIGIN OF THE
TWO CITIES, THE EARTHLY AND THE HEAVENLY, AUGUSTIN EXPLAINS THEIR GROWTH
AND PROGRESS IN THE FOUR BOOKS WHICH FOLLOW; AND, IN ORDER TO DO SO, HE
EXPLAINS THE CHIEF PASSAGES OF THE SACRED HISTORY WHICH BEAR UPON THIS
SUBJECT. IN THIS FIFTEENTH BOOK HE OPENS THIS PART OF HIS WORK BY
EXPLAINING THE EVENTS RECORDED IN GENESIS FROM THE TIME OF CAIN AND ABEL TO
THE DELUGE.

CHAP. 1.--OF THE TWO LINES OF THE HUMAN RACE WHICH FROM FIRST TO LAST
DIVIDE IT.

   OF the bliss of Paradise, of Paradise itself, and of the life of our
first parents there, and of their sin and punishment, many have thought
much, spoken much, written much. We ourselves, too, have spoken of these
things in the foregoing books, and have written either what we read in the
Holy Scriptures, or what we could reasonably deduce from them. And were we
to enter into a more detailed investigation of these matters, an endless
number of endless questions would arise, which would involve us in a larger
work than the present occasion admits. We cannot be expected to find room
for replying to every question that may be started by unoccupied and
captious men, who are ever more ready to ask questions than capable of
understanding the answer. Yet I trust we have already done justice to these
great and difficult questions regarding the beginning of the world, or of
the soul, or of the human race itself. This race we have distributed into
two parts, the one consisting of those who live according to man, the other
of those who live according to God. And these we also mystically call the
two cities, or the two communities of men, of which the one is predestined
to reign eternally with God, and the other to suffer eternal punishment
with the devil. This, however, is their end, and of it we are to speak
afterwards. At present, as we have said enough about their origin, whether
among the angels, whose numbers we know not, or in the two first human
beings, it seems suitable to attempt an account of their career, from the
time when our two first parents began to propagate the race until all human
generation shall cease. For this whole time or world-age, in which the
dying give place and those who are born succeed, is the career of these two
cities concerning which we treat.

   Of these two first parents of the human race, then, Cain was the first-
born, and he belonged to the city of men; after him was born Abel, who
belonged to the city of God. For as in the individual the truth of the
apostle's statement is discerned, "that is not first which is spiritual,
but that which is natural, and afterward that which is spiritual,"(1)
whence it comes to pass that each man, being derived from a condemned
stock, is first of all born of Adam evil and carnal, and becomes good and
spiritual only afterwards, when he is grafted into Christ by regeneration:
so was it in the human race as a whole. When these two cities began to run
their course by a series of deaths and births, the citizen of this world
was the first-born, and after him the stranger in this world, the citizen
of the city of God, predestinated by grace, elected by grace, by grace a
stranger below, and by grace a citizen above. By grace,--for so far as
regards himself he is sprung from the same mass, all of  which is condemned
in its origin: but God, like a potter (for this comparison is introduced by
the apostle judiciously, and not without thought), of the same lump made
one vessel to honor, another to dishonor.(1) But first the vessel to
dishonor was made, and after it another to honor. For in each individual,
as I have already said, there is first of all that which is reprobate, that
from which we must begin, but in which we need not necessarily remain;
afterwards is that which is well-approved, to which we may by advancing
attain, and in which, when we have reached it we may abide. Not, indeed,
that every wicked man shall be good, but that no one will be good who was
not first of all wicked but the sooner any one becomes a good man, the more
speedily does he receive this title, and abolish the old name in the new.
Accordingly, it is recorded of Cain that he built a city,(2) but Abel,
being a sojourner, built none. For the city of the saints is above,
although here below it begets citizens, in whom it sojourns till the time
of its reign arrives, when it shall gather together all in the day of the
resurrection; and then shall the promised kingdom be given to them, in
which they shall reign with their Prince, the King of the ages, time
without end.

CHAP. 2.--OF THE CHILDREN OF THE FLESH AND THE CHILDREN OF THE PROMISE.

   There was indeed on earth, so long as it was needed, a symbol and
foreshadowing image of this city, which served the purpose of reminding men
that such a city was to be rather than of making it present; and this image
was itself called the holy city, as a symbol of the future city, though not
itself the reality. Of this city which served as an image, and of that free
city it typified, Paul writes to the Galatians in these terms: "Tell me, ye
that desire to be under the law, do ye not hear the law? For it is written,
that Abraham had two sons, the one by a bond maid, the other by a free
woman. But he who was of the bond woman was born after the flesh, but he of
the free woman was by promise. Which things are an allegory:(3) for these
are the two covenants; the one from the mount Sinai, which gendereth to
bondage, which is Agar. For this Agar is mount Sinai in Arabia, and
answereth to Jerusalem which now is, and is in bondage with her children.
But Jerusalem which is above is free, which is the mother of us all. For it
is written, Rejoice, thou barren that bearest not; break forth and cry,
thou that travailest not for the desolate hath many more children than she
which hath an husband. Now we, brethren,  as Isaac was, are the children of
promise.  But as then he that was born after the flesh persecuted him that
was born after the Spirit, even so it is now. Nevertheless, what saith the
Scripture? Cast out the bond woman and her son: for the son of the bond
woman shall not be heir with the son of the free woman. And we, brethren,
are not children of the bond woman, but of the free, in the liberty
wherewith Christ hath made us free."(4) This interpretation of the passage,
handed down to us with apostolic authority, shows how we ought to
understand the Scriptures of the two covenants--the old and the new. One
portion of the earthly city became an image of the heavenly city, not
having a significance of its own, but signifying another city, and
therefore serving, or" being in bondage." For it was founded not for its
own sake, but to prefigure another city; and this shadow of a city was also
itself foreshadowed by another preceding figure. For Sarah's handmaid Agar,
and her son, were an image of this image. And as the shadows were to pass
away when the full light came, Sarah, the free woman, who prefigured the
free city (which again was also prefigured in another way by that shadow of
a city Jerusalem), therefore said, "Cast out the bond woman and her son;
for the son of the bond woman shall not be heir with my son Isaac," or, as
the apostle says, "with the son of the free woman." In the earthly city,
then, we find two things--its own obvious presence, and its symbolic
presentation of the heavenly city. Now citizens are begotten to the earthly
city by nature vitiated by sin, but to the heavenly city by grace freeing
nature from sin; whence the former are called "vessels of wrath," the
latter "vessels of mercy."(5) And this was typified in the two sons of
Abraham,--Ishmael, the son of Agar the handmaid, being born according to
the flesh, while Isaac was born of the free woman Sarah, according to the
promise. Both, indeed, were of Abraham's seed; but the one was begotten by
natural law, the other was given by gracious promise. In the one birth,
human action is revealed; in the other, a divine kindness comes to light.

CHAP, 3.--THAT SARAH'S BARRENNESS WAS MADE PRODUCTIVE BY GOD'S GRACE.

   Sarah, in fact, was barren; and, despairing of offspring, and being
resolved that she would have at least through her handmaid that blessing
she saw she could not in her own person procure, she gave her handmaid to
her husband, to whom she herself had been unable to bear children. From him
she required this conjugal duty, exercising her own right in another's
womb. And thus Ishmael was born according to the common law of human
generation, by sexual intercourse. Therefore it is said that he was born
"according to the flesh,"--not because such births are not the gifts of
God, nor His handiwork, whose creative wisdom" reaches," as it is written,
"from one end to another mightily, and sweetly cloth she order all
things,"(1) but because, in a case in which the gift of God, which was not
due to men and was the gratuitous largess of grace, was to be conspicuous,
it was requisite that a son be given in a way which no effort of nature
could compass. Nature denies children to persons of the age which Abraham
and Sarah had now reached; besides that, in Sarah's case, she was barren
even in her prime. This nature, so constituted that offspring could not be
looked for, symbolized the nature of the human race vitiated by sin and by
just consequence condemned. which deserves no future felicity. Fitly,
therefore, does Isaac, the child of promise, typify the children of grace,
the citizens of the free city, who dwell together in everlasting peace, in
which self-love and self-will have no place, but a ministering love that
rejoices in the common joy all, of many hearts makes one, that is to say,
secures a perfect concord.

CHAP. 4.--OF THE CONFLICT AND PEACE OF THE EARTHLY CITY.

   But the earthly city, which shall not be everlasting (for it will no
longer be a city when it has been committed to the extreme penalty), has
its good in this world, and rejoices in it with such joy as such things can
afford. But as this is not a good which can discharge its devotees of all
distresses, this city is often divided against itself by litigations, wars,
quarrels, and such victories as are either life-destroying or short-lived.
For each part of it that arms against another part of it seeks to triumph
over the nations through itself in bondage to vice. If, when it has
conquered, it is inflated with pride, its victory is life-destroying; but
if it turns its thoughts upon the common casualties of our mortal
condition, and is rather anxious concerning the disasters that may befall
it than elated with the successes already achieved, this victory, though of
a higher kind, is still only shot-lived; for it cannot abidingly rule over
those whom it has victoriously subjugated. But the things which this city
desires cannot justly be said to be evil, for it is itself, in its own
kind, better than all other human good. For it desires earthly peace for
the sake of enjoying earthly goods, and it makes war in order to attain to
this peace; since, if it has conquered, and there remains no one to resist
it, it enjoys a peace which it had not while there were opposing parties
who contested for the enjoyment of those things which were too small to
satisfy both. This peace is purchased by toilsome wars; it is obtained by
what they style a glorious victory. Now, when victory remains with the
party which had the juster cause, who hesitates to congratulate the victor,
and style  it a desirable peace?  These things, then, are good things, and
without doubt the gifts of God. But if they neglect the better things of
the heavenly city, which are secured by eternal victory and peace never-
ending, and so inordinately covet these present good things that they
believe them to be the only desirable things, or love them better than
those things which are believed to be better,--if this be so, then it is
necessary that misery follow and ever increase.

CHAP. 5.--OF THE FRATRICIDAL ACT OF THE FOUNDER OF THE EARTHLY CITY, AND
THE CORRESPONDING CRIME OF THE FOUNDER OF ROME.

   Thus the founder of the earthly city was a fratricide. Overcome with
envy, he slew his own brother, a citizen of the eternal city, and a
sojourner on earth. So that we cannot be surprised that this first
specimen, or, as the Greeks say, archetype of crime, should, long
afterwards, find a corresponding crime at the foundation of that city which
was destined to reign over so many nations, and be the head of this earthly
city of which we speak. For of that city also, as one of their poets has
mentioned, "the first walls were stained with a brother's blood,"(2) or, as
Roman history records, Remus was slain by his brother Romulus. And thus
there is no difference between the foundation of this city and of the
earthly city, unless it be that Romulus and Remus were both citizens of the
earthly city. Both desired to have the glory of founding the Roman
republic, but both could not have as much glory as if one only claimed it;
for he who wished to have the glory of ruling would certainly rule less if
his power were shared by a living consort. In order, therefore, that the
whole glory might be enjoyed by one, his consort was removed; and by this
crime the empire was made larger indeed, but inferior, while otherwise it
would have been less, but better. Now these brothers, Cain and Abel, were
not both animated by the same earthly desires, nor did the murderer envy
the other because he feared that, by both ruling, his own dominion would be
curtailed,--for Abel was not solicitous to rule in that city which his
brother built,--he was moved by that diabolical, envious hatred with which
the evil regard the good, for no other reason than because they are good
while themselves are evil. For the possession of goodness is by no means
diminished by being shared with a partner either permanent or temporarily
assumed; on the contrary, the possession of goodness is increased in
proportion to the concord and charity of each of those who share it. In
short, he who is unwilling to share this possession cannot have it; and he
who is most willing to admit others to a share of it will have the greatest
abundance to himself. The quarrel, then, between Romulus and Remus shows
how the earthly city is divided against itself; that which fell out between
Cain and Abel illustrated the hatred that subsists between the two cities,
that of God and that of men. The wicked war with the wicked; the good also
war with the wicked. But with the good, good men, or at least perfectly
good men, cannot war; though, while only going on towards perfection, they
war to this extent, that every good man resists others in those points in
which he resists himself. And in each individual "the flesh lusteth against
the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh."(1) This spiritual lusting,
therefore, can be at war with the carnal lust of another man; or carnal
lust may be at war with the spiritual desires of another, in some such way
as good and wicked men are at war; or, still more certainly, the carnal
lusts of two men, good but not yet perfect, contend together, just as the
wicked contend with the wicked, until the health of those who are under the
treatment of grace attains final victory.

CHAP. 6.--OF THE WEAKNESSES WHICH EVEN THE CITIZENS OF THE CITY OF GOD
SUFFER DURING THIS EARTHLY PILGRIMAGE IN PUNISHMENT OF SIN, AND OF WHICH
THEY ARE HEALED BY GOD'S CARE.

   This sickliness--that is to say, that disobedience of which we spoke in
the fourteenth book--is the punishment of the first disobedience. It is
therefore not nature, but vice; and therefore it is said to the good who
are growing in grace, and living in this pilgrimage by faith, "Bear ye one
another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ."(2) In like manner it
is said elsewhere, "Warn them that are unruly, comfort the feeble-minded,
sup port the weak, be patient toward all men. See  that none render evil
for evil unto any man."(3)  And in another place, "If a man be overtaken in
a fault, ye which are spiritual restore such an one in the spirit of
meekness; considering thyself, lest thou also be tempted."(4) And
elsewhere, "Let not the sun go down upon your wrath."(5) And in the Gospel,
"If thy brother shall trespass against thee, go and tell him his fault
between thee and him alone."(6) So too of sins which may create scandal the
apostle says, "Them that sin rebuke before all, that others also may
fear."(7) For this purpose, and that we may keep that peace without which
no man can see the Lord,(8) many precepts are given which carefully
inculcate  mutual forgiveness; among which we may  number that terrible
word in which the servant is ordered to pay his formerly remitted debt of
ten thousand talents, because he did not remit to his fellow-servant his
debt of two hundred pence. To which parable the Lord Jesus added the words,
"So likewise shall my heavenly Father do also unto you, if ye from your
hearts forgive not every one his brother."(9) It is thus the citizens of
the city of God are healed while still they sojourn in this earth and sigh
for the peace of their heavenly country. The Holy Spirit, too, works
within, that the medicine externally applied may have some good result.
Otherwise, even though God Himself make use of the creatures that are
subject to Him, and in some human form address our human senses, whether we
receive those impressions in sleep or in some external appearance, still,
if He does not by His own inward grace sway and act upon the mind, no
preaching of the truth is of any avail. But this God does, distinguishing
between the vessels of wrath and the vessels of mercy, by His own very
secret but very just providence. When He Himself aids the soul in His own
hidden and wonderful ways, and the sin which dwells in our members, and is,
as the apostle teaches,  rather the punishment of sin, does not reign  in
our mortal body to obey the lusts of it, and when we no longer yield our
members as instruments of unrighteousness,(10) then the soul is converted
from its own evil and selfish desires, and, God possessing it, it possesses
itself in peace even in this life, and afterwards, with perfected health
and endowed with immortality, will reign without sin in peace everlasting.

CHAP. 7.--OF THE CAUSE OF CAIN'S CRIME HIS OBSTINACY, WHICH NOT EVEN THE
WORD OF GOD COULD SUBDUE.

   But though God made use of this very mode of address which we have been
endeavoring to explain, and spoke to Cain in that form by which He was wont
to accommodate Himself to our first parents and converse with them as a
companion, what good influence had it on Cain? Did he not fulfill his
wicked intention of killing his brother even after he was warned by God's
voice? For when God had made a distinction between their sacrifices,
neglecting Cain's, regarding Abel's, which was doubtless intimated by some
visible sign to that effect; and when God had done so because the works of
the one were evil but those of his brother good, Cain was very wroth, and
his countenance fell. For thus it is written: "And the Lord said unto Cain,
Why are thou wroth, and why is thy countenance fallen? If thou offerest
rightly, but dost not rightly distinguish, hast thou not sinned? Fret not
thyself, for unto thee shall be his turning, and thou shalt rule over him."
In this admonition administered by God to Cain, that clause indeed, "If
thou offerest rightly, but dost not rightly distinguish, hast thou not
sinned?" is obscure, inasmuch as it is not apparent for what reason or
purpose it was spoken, and many meanings have been put upon it, as each one
who discusses it attempts to interpret it according to the rule of faith.
The truth is, that a sacrifice is "rightly offered" when it is offered to
the true God, to whom alone we must sacrifice. And it is "not rightly
distinguished" when we do not rightly distinguish the places or seasons or
materials of the offering, or the person offering, or the person to whom it
is presented, or those to whom it is distributed for food after the
oblation. Distinguishing(2) is here used for discriminating,--whether when
an offering is made in a place where it ought not or of a material which
ought to be offered not there but elsewhere; or when an offering is made at
a wrong time, or of a material suitable not then but at some other time; or
when that is offered which in no place nor any time ought to be offered; or
when a man keeps to himself choicer specimens of the same kind than he
offers to God; or when he or any other who may not lawfully partake
profanely eats of the oblation. In which of these particulars Cain
displeased God, it is difficult to determine. But the Apostle John,
speaking of these brothers, says, "Not as Cain, who was of that wicked one,
and slew his brother. And wherefore slew he him? Because his own works were
evil, and his brother's righteous."(3) He thus gives us to understand that
God did not respect his offering because it was not rightly "distinguished"
in this, that he gave to God something of his own but kept himself to
himself. For this all do who follow not God's will but their own, who live
not with an upright but a crooked heart, and yet offer to God such gifts as
they suppose will procure from Him that He aid them not by healing but by
gratifying their evil passions. And this is the characteristic of the
earthly city, that it worships God or gods who may aid it in reigning
victoriously and peacefully on earth not through love of doing good, but
through lust of rule. The good use the world that they may enjoy God: the
wicked, on the contrary, that they may enjoy the world would fain use God,-
-those of them, at least, who have attained to the belief that He is and
takes an interest in human affairs. For they who have not yet attained even
to this belief are still at a much lower level. Cain, then, when he saw
that God had respect to his brother's sacrifice, but not to his own, should
have humbly chosen his good brother as his example, and not proudly counted
him his rival. But he was wroth, and his countenance fell. This angry
regret for another person's goodness, even his brother's, was charged upon
him by God as a great sin. And He accused him of it in the interrogation,
"Why are thou wroth, and why is thy countenance fallen?" For God saw that
he envied his brother, and of this He accused him. For to men, from whom
the heart of their fellow is hid, it might be doubtful and quite uncertain
whether that sadness bewailed his own wickedness by which, as he had
learned, he had displeased God, or his brother's goodness, which had
pleased God, and won His favorable regard to his sacrifice. But God, in
giving the reason why He refused to accept Cain's offering and why Cain
should rather have been displeased at himself than at his brother, shows
him that though he was unjust in "not rightly distinguishing," that is, not
rightly living and being unworthy to have his offering received, he was
more unjust by far in hating his just brother without a cause.

   Yet He does not dismiss him without counsel, holy, just, and good.
"Fret not thyself," He says, "for unto thee shall be his turning, and thou
shall rule over him." Over his brother, does He mean? Most certainly not.
Over what, then, but sin? For He had said, "Thou hast sinned," and then He
added, "Fret not thyself, for to thee shall be its turning, and thou shall
rule over it."(1)  And the "turning" of sin to the man can be understood of
his conviction that the guilt of sin can be laid at no other man's door but
his own. For this is the health-giving medicine of penitence, and the fit
plea for pardon; so that, when it is said, "To thee its turning," we must
not supply "shall be," but we must read, "To thee let its turning be,"
understanding it as a command, not as a prediction. For then shall a man
rule over his sin when he does not prefer it to himself and defend it, but
subjects it by repentance; otherwise he that becomes protector of it shall
surely become its prisoner. But if we understand this sin to be that carnal
concupiscence of which the apostle says, "The flesh lusteth against the
spirit,"(3) among the fruits of which lust he names envy, by which
assuredly Cain was stung and excited to destroy his brother, then we may
properly supply the words "shall be," and read, "To thee shall be its
turning, and thou shalt rule over it." For when the carnal part which the
apostle calls sin, in that place where he says, "It is not I who do it, but
sin that dwelleth in me,"(3) that part which the philosophers also call
vicious, and which ought not to lead the mind, but which the mind ought to
rule and restrain by reason from illicit motions,--when, then, this part
has been moved to perpetrate any wickedness, if it be curbed and if it obey
the word of the apostle, "Yield not your members instruments of
unrighteousness unto sin,"(4) it is turned towards the mind and subdued and
conquered by it, so that reason rules over it as a subject. It was this
which God enjoined on him who was kindled with the fire of envy against his
brother, so that he sought to put out of the way him whom he should have
set as an example. "Fret not thyself," or compose thyself, He says:
withhold thy hand from crime; let not sin reign in your mortal body to
fulfill it in the lusts thereof, nor yield your members instruments of
unrighteousness unto sin. "For to thee shall be its turning," so long as
you do not encourage it by giving it the rein, but bridle it by quenching
its fire. "And thou shall rule over it;" for when it is not allowed any
external actings, it yields itself to the rule of the governing mind and
righteous will, and ceases from even internal motions. There is something
similar said in the same divine book of the woman, when God questioned and
judged them after their sin, and pronounced sentence on them all,--the
devil in the form of the serpent, the woman and her husband in their own
persons. For when He had said to her, "I will greatly multiply thy sorrow
and thy conception; in sorrow shall thou bring forth children," then He
added, "and thy turning shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over
thee."(5) What is said to Cain about his sin, or about the vicious
concupiscence of his flesh, is here said of the woman who had sinned; and
we are to understand that the husband is to rule his wife as the soul rules
the flesh. And therefore, says the apostle, "He that loveth his wife,
loveth himself; for no man ever yet hated his own flesh."(6) This flesh,
then, is to be healed, because it belongs to ourselves: is not to be
abandoned to destruction as if it were alien to our nature. But Cain
received that counsel of God in the spirit of one who did not wish to
amend. In fact, the vice of envy grew stronger in him; and, having
entrapped his brother, he slew him. Such was the founder of the earthly
city. He was also a figure of the Jews who slew Christ the Shepherd of the
flock of men, prefigured by Abel the shepherd of sheep: but as this is an
allegorical and prophetical matter, I forbear to explain it now; besides, I
remember that I have made some remarks upon it in writing against Faustus
the Manichaean.(7)

CHAP. 8.--WHAT CAIN'S REASON WAS FOR BUILDING A CITY SO EARLY IN THE
HlSTORY OF THE HUMAN RACE.

   At present it is the history which I aim at defending, that Scripture
may not be reckoned incredible when it relates that one man built a city at
a time in which there seem to have been but four men upon earth, or rather
indeed but three, after one brother slew the other,--to wit, the first man
the father of all, and Cain himself, and his son Enoch, by whose name the
city was itself called. But they who are moved by this consideration forget
to take into account that the writer of the sacred history does not
necessarily mention all the men who might be alive at that time, but those
only whom the scope of his work required him to name. The design of that
writer (who in this matter was the instrument of the Holy Ghost) was to
descend to Abraham through the successions of ascertained generations
propagated from one man, and then to pass from Abraham's seed to the people
of God, in whom, separated as they were from other nations, was prefigured
and predicted all that relates to the city whose reign is eternal, and to
its king and founder Christ, which things were foreseen in the Spirit as
destined to come; yet neither is this object so effected as that nothing is
said of the other society of men which we call the earthly city, but
mention is made of it so far as seemed needful to enhance the glory of the
heavenly city by contrast to its opposite. Accordingly, when the divine
Scripture, in mentioning the number of years which those men lived,
concludes its account of each man of whom it speaks, with the words, "And
he begat sons and daughters, and all his days were so and so, and he died,"
are we to understand that, because it does not name those sons and
daughters, therefore, during that long term of years over which one
lifetime extended in those early days, there might not have been born very
many men, by whose united numbers not one but several cities might have
been built? But it suited the purpose of God, by whose inspiration these
histories were composed, to arrange and distinguish from the first these
two societies in their several generations,--that on the one side the
generations of men, that is to say, of those who live according to man, and
on the other side the generations of the sons of God, that is to say, of
men living according to God, might be traced down together and yet apart
from one another as far as the deluge, at which point their dissociation
and association are exhibited: their dissociation, inasmuch as the
generations of both lines are recorded in separate tables, the one line
descending from the fratricide Cain, the other from Seth, who had been born
to Adam instead of him whom his brother slew; their association, inasmuch
as the good so deteriorated that the whole race became of such a character
that it was swept away by the deluge, with the exception of one just man,
whose name was Noah, and his wife and three sons and three daughters-in-
law, which eight persons were alone deemed worthy to escape from that
desolating visitation which destroyed all men.

   Therefore, although it is written, "And Cain knew his wife, and she
conceived and bare Enoch, and he builded a city and called the name of the
city after the name of his son Enoch,"(1) it does not follow that we are to
believe this to have been his first-born; for we cannot suppose that this
is proved by the expression "he knew his wife," as if then for the first
time he had had intercourse with her. For in the case of Adam, the father
of all, this expression is used not only when Cain, who seems to have been
his first-born, was conceived, but also afterwards the same Scripture says,
"Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived, and bare a son, and called his
name Seth."(2) Whence it is obvious that Scripture employs this expression
neither always when a birth is recorded nor then only when the birth of a
first-born is mentioned. Neither is it necessary to suppose that Enoch was
Cain's first-born because he named his city after him, For it is quite
possible that though he had other sons, yet tot some reason the father
loved him more than the rest. Judah was not the first-born, though he gives
his name to Judaea and the Jews. But even though Enoch was the first-born
of the city's founder, that is no reason for supposing that the father
named the city after him as soon as he was born; for at that time he, being
but a solitary man, could not have founded a civic community, which is
nothing else than a multitude of men bound together by some associating
tie. But when his family increased to such numbers that he had quite a
population, then it became possible to him both to build a city, and give
it, when founded, the name of his son. For so long was the life of those
antediluvians, that he who lived the shortest time of those whose years are
mentioned in Scripture attained to the age of 753 years.(3) And though no
one attained the age of a thousand years, several exceeded the age of nine
hundred. Who then can doubt that during the lifetime of one man the human
race might be so multiplied that there would be a population to build and
occupy not one but several cities? And this might very readily be
conjectured from the fact that from one man, Abraham, in not much more than
four hundred years, the numbers of the Hebrew race so increased, that in
the exodus of that people from Egypt there are recorded to have been six
hundred thousand men capable of bearing arms,(4) and this over and above
the Idumaeans, who, though not numbered with Israel's descendants, were yet
sprung from his brother, also a grandson of Abraham; and over and above the
other nations which were of the same stock of Abraham, though not through
Sarah,--that is, his descendants by Hagar and Keturah, the Ishmaelites,
Midianites, etc.

CHAP. 9.--OF THE LONG LIFE AND GREATER STATURE OF THE ANTEDILUVIANS.

   Wherefore no one who considerately weighs facts will doubt that Cain
might have built a city, and that a large one, when it is observed how
prolonged were the lives of men, unless perhaps some sceptic take exception
to this very length of years which our authors ascribe to the antediluvians
and deny that this is credible. And so, too, they do not believe that the
size of men's bodies was larger then than now, though the most esteemed of
their own poets, Virgil, asserts the same, when he speaks of that huge
stone which had been fixed as a landmark, and which a strong man of those
ancient times snatched up as he fought, and ran, and hurled, and cast it,--

  "Scarce twelve strong men of later mould
   That weight could on their necks uphold."(1)

thus declaring his opinion that the earth then produced mightier men. And
if in the more recent times, how much more in the ages before the world-
renowned deluge? But the large size of the primitive human body is often
proved to the incredulous by the exposure of sepulchres, either through the
wear of time or the violence of torrents or some accident, and in which
bones of incredible size have been found or have rolled out. I myself,
along with some others, saw on the shore at Utica a man's molar tooth of
such a size, that if it were cut down into teeth such as we have, a
hundred, I fancy, could have been made out of it. But that, I believe,
belonged to some giant. For though the bodies of ordinary men were then
larger than ours, the giants surpassed all in stature. And neither in our
own age nor any other have there been altogether wanting instances of
gigantic stature, though they may be few. The younger Pliny, a most learned
man, maintains that the older the world becomes, the smaller will be the
bodies of men.(2) And he mentions that Homer in his poems often lamented
the same decline; and this he does not laugh at as a poetical figment, but
in his character of a recorder of natural wonders accepts it as
historically true. But, as I said, the bones which are from time to time
discovered prove the size of the bodies of the ancients,(3) and will do so
to future ages, for they are slow to decay. But the length of an
antediluvian's life cannot now be proved by any such monumental evidence.
But we are not on this account to withhold our faith from the sacred
history, whose statements of past fact we are the more inexcusable in
discrediting, as we see the accuracy of its prediction of what was future.
And even that same Pliny(4) tells us that there is still a nation in which
men live 200 years. If, then, in places unknown to us, men are believed to
have a length of days which is quite beyond our own experience, why should
we not believe the same of times distant from our own? Or are we to believe
that in other places there is what is not here, while we do not believe
that in other times there has been anything but what is now?

CHAP. 10.--OF THE DIFFERENT COMPUTATION OF THE AGES OF THE ANTEDILUVIANS,
GIVEN BY THE HEBREW MANUSCRIPTS AND BY OUR OWN.(5)

   Wherefore, although there is a discrepancy for which I cannot account
between our manuscripts and the Hebrew, in the very number of years
assigned to the antediluvians, yet the discrepancy is not so great that
they do not agree about their longevity. For the very first man, Adam,
before he begot his son Seth, is in our manuscripts found to have lived 230
years, but in the Hebrew mss. 130. But after he begot Seth, our copies read
that he lived 700 years, while the Hebrew give 800. And thus, when the two
periods are taken together, the sum agrees. And so throughout the
succeeding generations, the period before the father begets a son is always
made shorter by 100 years in the Hebrew, but the period after his son is
begotten is longer by 100 years in the Hebrew than in our copies. And thus,
taking the two periods together, the result is the same in both. And in the
sixth generation there is no discrepancy at all. In the seventh, however,
of which Enoch is the representative, who is recorded to have been
translated without death because he pleased God, there is the same
discrepancy as in the first five generations, 100 years more being ascribed
to him by our mss. before he begat a son. But still the result agrees; for
according to both documents he lived before he was translated 365 years. In
the eighth generation the discrepancy is less than in the others, and of a
different kind. For Methuselah, whom Enoch begat, lived, before he begat
his successor, not 100 years less, but 100 years more, according to the
Hebrew reading; and in our MSS. again these years are added to the period
after he begat his son; so that in this case also the sum-total is the
same. And it is only in the ninth generation, that is, in the age of
Lamech, Methuselah's son and Noah's father, that there is a discrepancy in
the sum total; and even in this case it is slight. For the Hebrew MSS.
represent him as living twenty-four years more than ours assign to him. For
before he begat his son, who was called Noah, six years fewer are given to
him by the Hebrew MSS. than by ours; but after he begat this son, they give
him thirty years more than ours; so that, deducting the former six, there
remains, as we said, a surplus of twenty-four.

CHAP. 11.--OF METHUSELAH'S AGE, WHICH SEEMS TO EXTEND FOURTEEN YEARS BEYOND
THE DELUGE.

   From this discrepancy between the Hebrew books and our own arises the
well-known question as to the age of Methuselah;(1) for it is computed that
he lived for fourteen years after the deluge, though Scripture relates that
of all who were then upon the earth only the eight souls in the ark escaped
destruction by the flood, and of these Methuselah was not one. For,
according to our books, Methuselah, before he begat the son whom he called
Lamech, lived 167 years; then Lamech himself, before his son Noah was born,
lived 188 years, which together make 355 years. Add to these the age of
Noah at the date of the deluge, 600 years, and this gives a total of 955
from the birth of Methuselah to the year of the flood. Now all the years of
the life of Methuselah are computed to be 969; for when he had lived 167
years, and had begotten his son Lamech, he then lived after this 802 years,
which makes a total, as we said, of 969 years. From this, if we deduct 955
years from the birth of Methuselah to the flood, there remains fourteen
years, which he is supposed to have lived after the flood. And therefore
some suppose that, though he was not on earth (in which it is agreed that
every living thing which could not naturally live in water perished), he
was for a time with his father, who had been translated, and that he lived
there till the flood had passed away. This hypothesis they adopt, that they
may not cast a slight on the trustworthiness of versions which the Church
has received into a position of high authority,(2) and because they believe
that the Jewish MSS. rather than our own are in error. For they do not
admit that this is a mistake of the translators, but maintain that there is
a falsified statement in the original, from which, through the Greek, the
Scripture has been translated into our own tongue. They say that it is not
credible that the seventy translators, who simultaneously and unanimously
produced one rendering, could have erred, or, in a case in which no
interest of theirs was involved, could have falsified their translation;
but that the Jews, envying us our translation of their Law and Prophets,
have made alterations in their texts so as to undermine the authority of
ours. This opinion or suspicion let each man adopt according to his own
judgment. Certain it is that Methuselah did not survive the flood, but died
in the very year it occurred, if the numbers given in the Hebrew MSS. are
true. My own opinion regarding the seventy translators I will, with God's
help, state more carefully in its own place, when I have come down
(following the order which this work requires) to that period in which
their translation was executed.(3) For the present question, it is enough
that, according to our versions, the men of that age had lives so long as
to make it quite possible that, during the lifetime of the first-born of
the two sole parents then on earth, the human race multiplied sufficiently
to form a community.

CHAP. 12.--OF THE OPINION OF THOSE WHO DO NOT BELIEVE THAT IN THESE
PRIMITIVE, TIMES MEN LIVED SO LONG AS IS STATED.

   For they are by no means to be listened to who suppose that in those
times years were differently reckoned, and were so short that one of our
years may be supposed to be equal to ten of theirs. So that they say, when
we read or hear that some man lived 900 years, we should understand ninety,
ten of those years making but one of ours, and ten of ours equalling 100 of
theirs. Consequently, as they suppose, Adam was twenty-three years of age
when he begat Seth, and Seth himself was twenty years and six months old
when his son Enos was born, though the Scripture calls these months 205
years. For, on the hypothesis of those whose opinion we are explaining, it
was customary to divide one such year as we have into ten parts, and to
call each part a year. And each of these parts was composed of six days
squared; because God finished His works in six days, that He might rest the
seventh. Of this I disputed according to my ability in the eleventh
book.(4) Now six squared, or six times six, gives thirty-six days; and this
multiplied by ten amounts to 360 days, or twelve. lunar months. As for the
five remaining days which are needed to complete the solar year, and for
the fourth part of a day, which requires that into every fourth or leap-
year a day be added, the ancients added such days as the Romans used to
call "intercalary," in order to complete the number of the years. So that
Enos, Seth's son, was nineteen years old when his son Cainan was born,
though Scripture calls these years 190. And so through all the generations
in which the ages of the antediluvians are given, we find in our versions
that almost no one begat a son at the age of 100 or under/or even at the
age of 120 or thereabouts; but the youngest fathers are recorded to have
been 160 years old and upwards. And the reason of this, they say, is that
no one can beget children when he is ten years old, the age spoken of by
those men as 100, but that sixteen is the age of puberty, and competent now
to propagate offspring; and this is the age called by them 160. And that it
may not be thought incredible that in these days the year was differently
computed from our own, they adduce what is recorded by several writers of
history, that the Egyptians had a year of four months, the Acarnanians of
six, and the Lavinians of thirteen months.(1) The younger Pliny, after
mentioning that some writers reported that one man had lived 152 years,
another ten more, others 200, others 300, that some had even reached 500
and 600, and a few 800 years of age, gave it as his opinion that all this
must be ascribed to mistaken computation. For some, he says, make summer
and winter each a year; others make each season a year, like the Arcadians,
whose years, he says, were of three months. He added, too, that the
Egyptians, of whose little years of four months we have spoken already,
sometimes terminated their year at the wane of each moon; so that with them
there are produced lifetimes of 1000 years.

   By these plausible arguments certain persons, with no desire to weaken
the credit of this sacred history, but rather to facilitate belief in it by
removing the difficulty of such incredible longevity, have been themselves
persuaded, and think they act wisely in persuading others, that in these
days the year was so brief that ten of their years equal but one of ours,
while ten of ours equal 100 of theirs. But there is the plainest evidence
to show that this is quite false. Before producing this evidence, however,
it seems right to mention a conjecture which is yet more plausible. From
the Hebrew manuscripts we could at once refute this confident statement;
for in them Adam is found to have lived not 230 but 130 years before he
begat his third son. If, then, this mean thirteen years by our ordinary
computation, then he must have begotten his first son when he was only
twelve or thereabouts. Who can at this age beget children according to the
ordinary and familiar course of nature? But not to mention him, since it is
possible he may have been able to beget his like as soon as he was
created,--for tt is not credible that he was created so little as our
infants are,--not to mention him, his son was not 205 years old when he
begot Enos, as our versions have it, but 105, and consequently, according
to this idea, was not eleven years old. But what shall I say of his son
Cainan, who, though by our version 170 years old, was by the Hebrew text
seventy when he beget Mahalaleel? If seventy years in those times meant
only seven of our years, what man of seven years old begets children?

CHAP. 13.--WHETHER, IN COMPUTING YEARS, WE OUGHT TO FOLLOW THE HEBREW OR
THE SEPTUAGINT.

   But if I say this, I shall presently be answered, It is one of the
Jews' lies. This, however, we have disposed of above, showing that it
cannot be that men of so just a reputation as the seventy translators
should have falsified their version. However, if I ask them which of the
two is more credible, that the Jewish nation, scattered far and wide, could
have unanimously conspired to forge this lie, and so, through envying
others the authority of their Scriptures, have deprived themselves of their
verity; or that seventy men, who were also themselves Jews, shut up in one
place (for Ptolemy king of Egypt had got them together for this work),
should have envied foreign nations that same truth, and by common consent
inserted these errors: who does not see which can be more naturally and
readily believed? But far be it from any prudent man to believe either that
the Jews, however malicious and wrong-headed, could have tampered with so
many and so widely-dispersed manuscripts; or that those renowned seventy
individuals had any common purpose to grudge the truth to the nations. One
must therefore more plausibly maintain, that when first their labors began
to be transcribed from the copy in Ptolemy's library, some such
misstatement might find its way into the first copy made, and from it might
be disseminated far and wide; and that this might arise from no fraud, but
from a mere copyist's error. This is a sufficiently plausible account of
the difficulty regarding Methuselah's life, and of that other case in which
there is a difference in the total of twenty-four years. But in those cases
in which there is a methodical resemblance in the falsification, so that
uniformly the one version allots to the period before a son and successor
is born 100 years more than the other, and to the period subsequent 100
years less, and vice versa, so that the totals may agree,--and this holds
true of the first, second, third, fourth, fifth, and seventh generations,--
in these cases error seems to have, if we may say so, a certain kind of
constancy, and savors not of accident, but of design.

   Accordingly, that diversity of numbers which distinguishes the Hebrew
from the Greek and Latin copies of Scripture, and which consists of a
uniform addition and deduction of 100 years in each lifetime for several
consecutive generations, is to be attributed neither to the malice of the
Jews nor to men so diligent and prudent as the seventy translators, but to
the error of the copyist who was first allowed to transcribe the manuscript
from the library of the above-mentioned king. For even now, in cases where
numbers contribute nothing to the easier comprehension or more satisfactory
knowledge of anything, they are both carelessly transcribed, and still more
carelessly emended. For who will trouble himself to learn how many thousand
men the several tribes of Israel contained? He sees no resulting benefit of
such knowledge. Or how many men are there who are aware of the vast
advantage that lies hid in this knowledge? But in this case, in which
during so many consecutive generations 100 years are added in one
manuscript where they are not reckoned in the other, and then, after the
birth of the son and successor, the years which were wanting are added, it
is obvious that the copyist who contrived this arrangement designed to
insinuate that the antediluvians lived an excessive number of years only
because each year was excessively brief, and that he tried to draw the
attention to this fact by his statement of their age of puberty at which
they became able to beget children. For, lest the incredulous might stumble
at the difficulty of so long a lifetime, he insinuated that Too of their
years equalled but ten of ours; and this insinuation he conveyed by adding
100 years whenever he found the age below 160 years or thereabouts,
deducting these years again from the period after the son's birth, that tim
total might harmonize. By this means he intended to ascribe the generation
of offspring to a fit age, without diminishing the total sum of years
ascribed to the lifetime of the individuals. And the very fact that in the
sixth generation he departed from this uniform practice, inclines us all
the rather to believe that when the circumstance we have referred to
required his alterations, he made them; seeing that when this circumstance
did not exist, he made no alteration. For in the same generation he found
in the Hebrew MS., that Jared lived before he begat Enoch 162 years, which,
according to the short year computation, is sixteen years and somewhat less
than two months, an age capable of procreation; and therefore it was not
necessary to add 100 short years, and so make the age twenty-six years of
the usual length; and of course it was not necessary to deduct, after the
son's birth, years which he had not added before it. And thus it comes to
pass that in this instance there is no variation between the two
manuscripts.

   This is corroborated still further by the fact that in the eighth
generation, while the Hebrew books assign 182(1) years to Methuselah before
Lamech's birth, ours assign to him twenty less, though usually 100 years
are added to this period; then, after Lamech's birth, the twenty years are
restored, so as to equalize the total in the two books. For if his design
was that these 170 years be understood as seventeen, so as to suit the age
of puberty, as there was no need for him adding anything, so there was none
for his subtracting anything; for in this case he found an age fit for the
generation of children, for the sake. of which he was in the habit of
adding those 100 years m cases where he did not find the age already
sufficient. This difference of twenty years we might, indeed, have supposed
had happened accidentally, had he not taken care to restore them afterwards
as he had deducted them from the period before, so that there might be no
deficiency in the total. Or are we perhaps to suppose that there was the
still more astute design of concealing the deliberate and uniform addition
of 100 years to the first period and their deduction from the subsequent
period--did he design to conceal this by doing something similar, that is
to say, adding and deducting, not indeed a century, but some years, even in
a case in which there was no need for his doing so? But whatever may be
thought of this, whether it be believed that he did so or not, whether, in
fine, it be so or not, I would have no manner of doubt that when any
diversity is found in the books, since both cannot be true to fact, we do
well to believe in preference that language out of which the translation
was made into another by translators. For there are three Greek Mss., one
Latin, and one Syriac, which agree with one another, and in all of these
Methuselah is said to have died six years before the deluge.

CHAP. 14.--THAT THE YEARS IN THOSE ANCIENT TIMES WERE OF THE SAME LENGTH AS
OUR OWN.

   Let us now see how it can be plainly made out that in the enormously
protracted lives of those men the years were not so short that ten of their
years were equal to only one of ours, but were of as great length as our
own, which are measured by the course of the sun. It is proved by this,
that Scripture states that the flood occurred in the six hundredth year of
Noah's life. But why in the same place is it also written, "The waters of
the flood were upon the earth in the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in
the second month, the twenty-seventh day of the month,"(1) if that very
brief year (of which it took ten to make one of ours) consisted of thirty-
six days? For so scant a year, if the ancient usage dignified it with the
name of year, either has not months, or this month must be three days, so
that it may have twelve of them. How then was it here said, "In the six
hundredth year, the second month, the twenty-seventh day of the month,"
unless the months then were of the same length as the months now? For how
else could it be said that the flood began on the twenty-seventh day of the
second month? Then afterwards, at the end of the flood, it is thus written:
"And the ark rested in the seventh month, on the twenty-seventh day of the
month, on the mountains of Ararat. And the waters decreased continually
until the eleventh month: on the first day of the month were the tops of
the mountains seen."(2) But if the months were such as we have, then so
were the years. And certainly months of three days each could not have a
twenty-seventh day. Or if every measure of time was diminished in
proportion, and a thirtieth part of three days was then called a day, then
that great deluge, which is recorded to have lasted forty clays and forty
nights, was really over in less than four of our days. Who can away with
such foolishness and absurdity? Far be this error from us,--an error which
seeks to build up our fifth in the divine Scriptures on false conjecture
only to demolish our faith at another point. It is plain that the day then
was what it now is, a space of four-and-twenty hours, determined by the
lapse of day and night; the month then equal to the month now, which is
defined by the rise and completion of one moon; the year then equal to the
year now, which is completed by twelve lunar months, with the addition of
five days and a fourth to adjust it with the course of the sun. It was a
year of this length which was reckoned the six hundredth of Noah's life,
and in the second month, the twenty-seventh day of the month, the flood
began,--a flood which, as is recorded, was caused by heavy rains continuing
for forty days, which days had not only two hours and a little more, but
four, and-twenty hours, completing a night and a day. And consequently
those antediluvians lived more than 900 years, which were years as long as
those which afterwards Abraham lived 175 of, and after him his son Isaac
180, and his son Jacob nearly 150, and some time after, Moses 120, and men
now seventy or eighty, or not much longer, of which years it is said,
"their strength is labor and sorrow."(3)

   But that discrepancy of numbers which is found to exist between our own
and the Hebrew text does not touch the longevity of the ancients; and if
there is any diversity so great that both versions cannot be true, we must
take our ideas of the real facts from that text out of which our own
version has been translated. However, though any one who pleases has it in
his power to correct this version, yet it is not unimportant to observe
that no one has presumed to emend the Septuagint from the Hebrew text in
the many places where they seem to disagree. For this difference has not
been reckoned a falsification; and for my own part I am persuaded it ought
not to be reckoned so. But where the difference is not a mere copyist's
error, and where the sense is agreeable to truth and illustrative of truth,
we must believe that the divine Spirit prompted them to give a varying
version, not in their function of translators, but in the liberty of
prophesying. And therefore we find that the apostles justly sanction the
Septuagint, by quoting it as well as the Hebrew when they adduce proofs
from the Scriptures. But as I have promised to treat this subject more
carefully, if God help me, in a more fitting place, I will now go on with
the matter in hand. For there can be no doubt that, the lives of men being
so long, the first-born of the first man could have built a city,--a city,
however, which was earthly, and not that which is called the city of God,
to describe which we have taken in hand this great work.

CHAP. 15.--WHETHER IT IS CREDIBLE THAT THE MEN OF THE PRIMITIVE AGE
ABSTAINED FROM SEXUAL INTERCOURSE UNTIL THAT DATE AT WHICH IT IS RECORDED
THAT THEY BEGAT CHILDREN.

   Some one, then, will say, Is it to be believe that a man who intended
to beget children, and had no intention of continence, abstained from
sexual intercourse a hundred years and more, or even, according to the
Hebrew version, only a little less, say eighty, seventy, or sixty years;
or, if he did not abstain, was unable to beget offspring? This question
admits of two solutions. For either puberty was so much later as the whole
life was longer, or, which seems to me more likely, it is not the first-
born sons that are here mentioned, but those whose names were required to
fill up the series until Noah was reached, from whom again we see that the
succession is continued to Abraham, and after him down to that point of
time until which it was needful to mark by pedigree the course of the most
glorious city, which sojourns as a stranger in this world, and seeks the
heavenly country. That which is undeniable is that Cain was the first who
was born of man and woman. For had he not been the first who was added by
birth to the two unborn persons, Adam could not have said what he is
recorded to have said, "I have gotten a man by the Lord."(1) He was
followed by Abel, whom the eider brother slew, and who was the first to
show by a kind of foreshadowing of the sojourning city of God, what
iniquitous persecutions that city would suffer at the hands of wicked and,
as it were, earth-born men, who love their earthly origin, and delight in
the earthly happiness of the earthly city. But how old Adam was when he
begat these sons does not appear. After this the generations diverge, the
one branch deriving from Cain, the other from him whom Adam begot in the
room of Abel slain by his brother, and whom he called Seth, saying, as it
is written, "For God hath raised me up another seed for Abel whom Cain
slew."(2) These two series of generations accordingly, the one of Cain, the
other of Seth, represent the two cities in their distinctive ranks, the one
the heavenly city, which sojourns on earth, the other the earthly, which
gapes after earthly joys, and grovels in them as if they were the only
joys. But though eight generations, including Adam, are registered before
the flood, no man of Cain's line has his age recorded at which the son who
succeeded him was begotten. For the Spirit of God refused to mark the times
before the flood in the generations of the earthly city, but preferred to
do so in the heavenly line, as if it were more worthy of being remembered.
Further, when Seth was born, the age of his father is mentioned; but
already he had begotten other sons, and who will presume to say that Cain
and Abel were the only ones previously begotten? For it does not follow
that they alone had been begotten of Adam, because they alone were named in
order to continue the series of generations which it was desirable to
mention. For though the names of all the rest are buried in silence, yet it
is said that Adam begot sons and daughters; and who that cares to be free
from the charge of temerity will dare to say how many his offspring
numbered? It was possible enough that Adam was divinely prompted to say,
after Seth was born, "For God hath raised up to me another seed for Abel,"
because that son was to be capable of representing Abel's holiness, not
because he was born first after him in point of time. Then because it is
written, "And Seth lived 205 years," or, according to the Hebrew reading,
"105 years, and begat Enos,"(3) who but a rash man could affirm that this
was his first-born? Will any man do so to excite our wonder, and cause us
to inquire how for so many years he remained free from sexual intercourse,
though without any purpose of continuing so, or how, if he did not abstain,
he yet had no children? Will any man do so when it is written of him, "And
he begat sons and daughters, and all the days of Seth were 912 years, and
he died?"(4) And similarly regarding those whose years are afterwards
mentioned, it is not disguised that they begat sons and daughters.

   Consequently it does not at all appear whether he who is named as the
son was himself the first begotten. Nay, since it is incredible that those
fathers were either so long in attaining puberty, or could not get wives,
or could not impregnate them, it is also incredible that those sons were
their first-born. But as the writer of the sacred history designed to
descend by well-marked intervals through a series of generations to the
birth and life of Noah, in whose time the flood occurred, he mentioned not
those sons who were first begotten, but those by whom the succession was
handed down.

   Let me make this clearer by here inserting an example, in regard to
which no one can have any doubt that what I am asserting is true. The
evangelist Matthew, where he designs to commit to our memories the
generation of the Lord's flesh by a series of parents, beginning from
Abraham and intending to reach David, says, "Abraham begat Isaac;"(1) why
did he not say Ishmael, whom he first begat? Then "Isaac begat Jacob;" why
did he not say Esau, who was the first-born? Simply because these sons
would not have helped him to reach David. Then follows, "And Jacob begat
Judah and his brethren:" was Judah the first begotten? "Judah," he says,
"begat Pharez and Zara;" yet neither were these twins the first-born of
Judah, but before them he had begotten three other sons. And so in the
order of the generations he retained those by whom he might reach David, so
as to proceed onwards to the end he had in view. And from this we may
understand that the antediluvians who are mentioned were not the first-
born, but those through whom the order of the succeeding generations might
be carried on to the patriarch Noah. We need not, therefore, weary
ourselves with discussing the needless and obscure question as to their
lateness of reaching puberty.

CHAP. 16.--OF MARRIAGE BETWEEN BLOOD-RELATIONS, IN REGARD TO WHICH THE
PRESENT LAW COULD NOT BIND THE MEN OF THE EARLIEST AGES.

   As, therefore, the human race, subsequently to the first marriage of
the man who was made of dust, and his wife who was made out of his side,
required the union of males and females in order that it might multiply,
and as there were no human beings except those who had been born of these
two, men took their sisters for wives,--an act which was as certainly
dictated by necessity in these ancient days as afterwards it was condemned
by the prohibitions of religion. For it is very reasonable and just that
men, among whom concord is honorable and useful, should be bound together
by various relationships; and one man should not himself sustain many
relationships, but that the various relationships should be distributed
among several, and should thus serve to bind together the greatest number
in the same social interests. "Father" and "father-in-law" are the names of
two relationships. When, therefore, a man has one person for his father,
another for his father-in-law, friendship extends itself to a larger
number. But Adam in his single person was obliged to hold both relations to
his sons and daughters, for brothers and sisters were united in marriage.
So too Eve his wife was both mother and mother-in-law to her children of
both sexes; while, had there been two women, one the mother, the other the
mother-in-law, the family affection would have had a wider field. Then the
sister herself by becoming a wife sustained in her single person two
relationships, which, had they been distributed among individuals, one
being sister, and another being wife, the family tie would have embraced a
greater number of persons. But there was then no material for effecting
this, since there were no human beings but the brothers and sisters born of
those two first parents. Therefore, when an abundant population made it
possible, men ought to choose for wives women who were not already their
sisters; for not only would there then be no necessity for marrying
sisters, but, were it done; it would be most abominable. For if the
grandchildren of the first pair, being now able to choose their cousins for
wives, married their sisters, then it would no longer be only two but three
relationships that were held by one man, while each of these relationships
ought to have been held by a separate individual, so as to bind together by
family affection a larger number. For one man would in that case be both
father, and father-in-law, and uncle(2) to his own children (brother and
sister now man and wife); and his wife would be mother, aunt, and mother-
in-law to them; and they themselves would be not only brother and sister,
and man and wife, but cousins also, being the children of brother and
sister. Now, all these relationships, which combined three men into one,
would have embraced nine persons had each relationship been held by one
individual, so that a man had one person for his sister, another his wife,
another his cousin, another his father, another his uncle, another his
father-in-law, another his mother, another his aunt, another his mother-in-
law; and thus the social bond would not have been tightened to bind a few,
but loosened to embrace a larger number of relations.

   And we see that, since the human race has increased and multiplied,
this is so strictly observed even among the profane worshippers of many and
false gods, that though their laws perversely allow a brother to marry his
sister,(3) yet custom, with a finer morality, prefers to forego this
license; and though it was quite allowable in the earliest ages of the
human race to marry one's sister, it is now abhorred as a thing which no
circumstances could justify. For custom has very great power either to
attract or to shock human feeling. And in this matter, while it restrains
concupiscence within due bounds, the man who neglects and disobeys it is
justly branded as abominable. For if it is iniquitous to plough beyond our
own boundaries through the greed of gain, is it not much more iniquitous to
transgress the recognized boundaries of morals through sexual lust? And
with regard to marriage in the next degree of consanguinity, marriage
between cousins, we have observed that in our own time the customary
morality has prevented this from being frequent, though the law allows it.
It was not prohibited by divine law, nor as yet had human law prohibited
it; nevertheless, though legitimate, people shrank from it, because it lay
so close to what was illegitimate, and in marrying a cousin seemed almost
to marry a sister,--for cousins are so closely related that they are called
brothers and sisters,' and are almost really so. But the ancient fathers,
fearing that near relationship might gradually in the course of generations
diverge, and become distant relationship, or cease to be relationship at
all, religiously endeavored to limit it by the bond of marriage before it
became distant, and thus, as it were, to call it back when it was escaping
them. And on this account, even when the world was full of people, though
they did not choose wives from among their sisters or half-sisters, yet
they preferred them to be of the same stock as themselves. But who doubts
that the modern prohibition of the marriage even of cousins is the more
seemly regulation--not merely on account of the reason we have been urging,
the multiplying of relationships, so that one person might not absorb two,
which might be distributed to two persons, and so increase the number of
people bound together as a family, but also because there is in human
nature I know not what natural and praiseworthy shamefacedness which
restrains us from desiring that connection which, though for propagation,
is yet lustful and which even conjugal modesty blushes over, with any one
to whom consanguinity bids us render respect?

   The sexual intercourse of man and woman, then, is in the case of
mortals a kind of seed-bed of the city; but while the earthly city needs
for its population only generation, the heavenly needs also regeneration to
rid it of the taint of generation. Whether before the deluge there was any
bodily or visible sign of regeneration, such as was afterwards enjoined
upon Abraham when he was circumcised, or what kind of sign it was, the
sacred history does not inform us. But it does inform us that even these
earliest of mankind sacrificed to God, as appeared also in the case of the
two first brothers; Noah, too, is said to have offered sacrifices to God
when he had come forth from the ark after the deluge. And concerning this
subject we have already said in the foregoing books that the devils
arrogate to themselves divinity, and require sacrifice that they may be
esteemed gods, and delight in these honors on no other account than this,
because they know that true sacrifice is due to the true God.

CHAP. 17.--OF THE TWO FATHERS AND LEADERS WHO SPRANG FROM ONE PROGENITOR.

   Since, then, Adam was the father of both lines,--the father, that is to
say, both of the line which belonged to the earthly, and of that which
belonged to the heavenly city,--when Abel was slain, and by his death
exhibited a marvellous mystery, there were henceforth two lines proceeding
from two fathers, Cain and Seth, and in those sons of theirs, whom it
behoved to register, the tokens of these two cities began to appear more
distinctly. For Cain begat Enoch, in whose name he built a city, an earthly
one, which was not from home in this world, but rested satisfied with its
temporal peace and happiness. Cain, too, means "possession;" wherefore at
his birth either his father or mother said," I have gotten a man through
God." Then Enoch means "dedication;" for the earthly city is dedicated in
this world in which it is built, for in this world it finds the end towards
which it aims and aspires. Further, Seth signifies" resurrection," and Enos
his son signifies "man," not as Adam, which also signifies man, but is used
in Hebrew indifferently for man and woman, as it is written, "Male and
female created He them, and blessed them, and called their name Adam,"(2)
leaving no room to doubt that though the woman was distinctively called
Eve, yet the name Adam, meaning man, was common to both. But Enos means man
in so restricted a sense, that Hebrew linguists tell us it cannot be
applied to woman: it is the equivalent of the "child of the resurrection,"
when they, neither marry nor are given in marriage.(3) For there shall be
no generation in that place to which regeneration shall have brought us.
Wherefore I think it not immaterial to observe that in those generations
which are propagated from him who is called Seth, although daughters as
well as sons are said to have been begotten, no woman is expressly
registered by name; but in those which sprang from Cain at the very
termination to which the line runs, the  last person named as begotten is a
woman. For we read, "Methusael begat Lamech. And Lamech took unto him two
wives: the name of the one was Adah, and the name of the other Zillah. And
Adah bare Jabal: he was the father of the shepherds that dwell in tents.
And his brother's name was Jubal: he was the father of all such as handle
the harp and organ. And Zillah, she also bare Tubal-cain, an instructor of
every artificer in brass and iron: and the sister of Tubal-cain was
Naamah."(1) Here terminate all the generations of Cain, being eight in
number, including Adam,--to wit, seven from Adam to Lamech, who married two
wives, and whose children, among whom a woman also is named, form the
eighth generation. Whereby it is elegantly signified that the earthly city
shall to its termination have carnal generations proceeding from the
intercourse of males and females. And therefore tile wives themselves of
the man who is the last named father of Cain's line, are registered in
their own names,--a practice nowhere followed before the deluge save in
Eve's case. Now as Cain, signifying possession, the founder of the earthly
city, and his son Enoch, meaning dedication, in whose name it was founded,
indicate that this city is earthly both in its beginning and in its end,--a
city in which nothing more is hoped for than can be seen in this world,--so
Seth, meaning resurrection, and being the father of generations registered
apart from the others, we must consider what this sacred history says of
his son.

CHAP. 18.--THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ABEL, SETH, AND ENOS TO CHRIST AND HIS BODY
THE CHURCH.

   "And to Seth," it is said, "there was born a son, and he called his
name Enos: he hoped to call on the name of the Lord God."(2) Here we have a
loud testimony to the truth. Man, then, the son of the resurrection, lives
in hope: he lives in hope as long as the city of God, which is begotten by
faith in the resurrection, sojourns in this world. For in these two men,
Abel, signifying "grief," and his brother Seth, signifying "resurrection,"
the death of Christ and His life from the dead are prefigured. And by faith
in these is begotten in this world the city of God, that is to say, the man
who has hoped to call on the name of the Lord. "For by hope," says the
apostle, "we are saved: but hope that is seen is not hope: for what a man
seeth, why doth he yet hope for? But if we hope for that we see not, then
do we with patience wait for it."(3) Who can avoid referring this to a
profound mystery? For did not Abel hope to call upon the name of the Lord
God when his sacrifice is mentioned in Scripture as having been accepted by
God? Did not Seth himself hope to call on the name of the Lord God, of whom
it was said, "For God hath appointed me another seed instead of Abel?" Why
then is this which is found to be common to all the godly specially
attributed to Enos, unless because it was fit that in him, who is mentioned
as the first-born of the father of those generations which were separated
to the better part of the heavenly city, there should be a type of the man,
or society of men, who live not according to man in contentment with
earthly felicity, but according to God in hope of everlasting, felicity?
And it, was not said, "He hoped in the Lord God," nor He called on the name
of the Lord God," but" He hoped to call on the name of the Lord God." And
what does this "hoped to call" mean, unless it is a prophecy that a people
should arise who, according to the election of grace, would call on the
name of the Lord God? It is this which has been said by another prophet,
and which the apostle interprets of the people who belong to the grace of
God: "And it shall be that whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord
shall be saved."(4) For these two expressions, "And he called his name
Enos, which means man," and "He hoped to call on the name of the Lord God,"
are sufficient proof that man ought not to rest his hopes in himself; as it
is elsewhere written, "Cursed is the man that trusteth in man."(5)
Consequently no one ought to trust in himself that he shall become a
citizen of that other city which is not dedicated in the name of Cain's son
in this present time, that is to say, in the fleeting course of this mortal
world, but in the immortality of perpetual blessedness.

CHAP. 19.--THE SIGNIFICANCE OP ENOCH'S TRANSLATION.

   For that line also of which Seth is the father has the name
"Dedication" in the seventh generation from Adam, counting Adam. For the
seventh from him is Enoch, that is, Dedication. But this is that man who
was translated because he pleased God, and who held in the order of the
generations a remarkable place, being the seventh from Adam, a number
signalized by the consecration of the Sabbath. But, counting from the
diverging point of the two lines, or from Seth, he was the sixth Now it was
on the sixth day God made man, and consummated His works. But the
translation of Enoch prefigured our deferred dedication; for though it is
indeed already accomplished in Christ our Head, who so rose again that He
shall die no more, and who was Himself also translated, yet there remains
another dedication of the whole house, of which Christ Himself is the
foundation, and this dedication is deferred till the end, when all shall
rise again to die no more. And whether it is the house of God, or the
temple of God, or the city of God, that is said to be dedicated, it is all
the same, and equally in accordance With the usage of the Latin language.
For Virgil himself calls the city of widest empire "the house of
Assaracus,"(1) meaning the Romans, who were descended through the Trojans
from Assaracus. He also calls them the house of Aeneas, because Rome was
built by those Trojans who had come to Italy under Aeneas.(2) For that poet
imitated the sacred writings, in which the Hebrew nation, though so
numerous, is called the house of Jacob.

CHAP. 20.--HOW IT IS THAT CAIN'S LINE TERMINATES IN THE EIGHTH GENERATION,
WHILE NOAH, THOUGH DESCENDED FROM THE SAME FATHER, ADAM, IS FOUND TO BE THE
TENTH FROM HIM.

   Some one will say, If the writer of this history intended, in
enumerating the generations from Adam through his son Seth, to descend
through them to Noah, in whose time the deluge occurred, and from him again
to trace the connected generations down to Abraham, with whom Matthew
begins the pedigree of Christ the eternal King of the city of God, what did
he intend by enumerating the generations from Cain, and to what terminus
did he mean to trace them? We reply, To the deluge, by which the whole
stock of the earthly city was destroyed, but repaired by the sons of Noah.
For the earthly city and community of men who live after the flesh will
never fail until the end of this world, of which our Lord says, "The
children of this world generate, and are generated."(3) But the city of
God, which sojourns in this world, is conducted by regeneration to the
world to come, of which the children neither generate nor are generated. In
this world generation is common to both cities; though even now the city of
God has many thousand citizens who abstain from the act of generation; yet
the other city also has some citizens who imitate these, though
erroneously. For to that city belong also those who have erred from the
faith, and introduced divers heresies; for they live according to man, not
according to God. And the Indian gymnosophists, who are said to
philosophize in the solitudes of India in a state of nudity, are its
citizens; and they abstain from marriage. For continence is not a good
thing, except when it is practised in the faith of the highest good, that
is, God. Yet no one is found to have practised it before the deluge; for
indeed even Enoch himself, the seventh from Adam, who is said to have been
translated without dying, begat sons and daughters before he was
translated, and among these was Methuselah, by whom the succession of the
recorded generations is maintained.

   Why, then, is so small a number of Cain's generations registered, if it
was proper to trace them to the deluge, and if there was no such delay of
the date of puberty as to preclude the hope of offspring for a hundred or
more years? For if the author of this book had not in view some one to whom
he might rigidly trace the series of generations, as he designed in those
which sprang from Seth's seed to descend to Noah, and thence to start again
by a rigid order, what need was there of omitting the first-born sons for
the sake of descending to Lamech, in whose sons that line terminates,--that
is to say, in the eighth generation from Adam, or the seventh from Cain,--
as if from this point he had wished to pass on to another series, by which
he might reach either the Israelitish people, among whom the earthly
Jerusalem presented a prophetic figure of the heavenly city, or to Jesus
Christ, "according to the flesh, who is over all, God blessed for ever,"(4)
the Maker and Ruler of the heavenly city? What, I say, was the need of
this, seeing that the whole of Cain's posterity were destroyed in the
deluge? From this it is manifest that they are the first-born sons who are
registered in this genealogy. Why, then, are there so few of them? Their
numbers in the period before the deluge must have been greater, if the date
of puberty bore no proportion to their longevity, and they had children
before they were a hundred years old. For supposing they were on an average
thirty years old when they began to beget children, then, as there are
eight generations, including Adam and Lamech's children, 8 times 30 gives
240 years; did they then produce no more children in all the rest of the
time before the deluge? With what intention, then, did he who wrote this
record make no mention of subsequent generations? For from Adam to the
deluge there are reckoned, according to our copies of Scripture, 2262
years,(5) and according to the Hebrew text, 1656 years. Supposing, then,
the smaller number to be the true one, and subtracting from 1656 years 240,
is it credible that during the remaining 1400 and odd years until the
deluge the posterity of Cain begat no children?

   But let any one who is moved by this call to mind that when I discussed
the question, how it is credible that those primitive men could abstain for
so many years from begetting children, two modes of solution were found,--
either a puberty late in proportion to their longevity, or that the sons
registered in the genealogies were not the first-born, but those through
whom the author of the book intended to reach the point aimed at, as he
intended to reach Noah by the generations of Seth. So that, if in the
generations of Cain there occurs no one whom the writer could make it his
object to reach by omitting the first-born and inserting those who would
serve such a purpose, then we must have recourse to the supposition of late
puberty, and say that only at some age beyond a hundred years they became
capable of besetting children, so that the order of the generations ran
through the first-born, and filled up even the whole period before the
deluge, long though it was. It is, however, possible that, for some more
secret reason which escapes me, this city, which we say is earthly, is
exhibited in all its generations down to Lamech and his sons, and that then
the writer withholds from recording the rest which may have existed before
the deluge. And without supposing so late a puberty in these men, there
might be another reason for tracing the generations by sons who were not
first-born, viz., that the same city which Cain built, and named after his
son Enoch, may have had a widely extended dominion and many kings, not
reigning simultaneously, but successively, the reigning king besetting
always his successor. Cain himself would be the first of these kings; his
son Enoch, in whose name the city in which he reigned was built, would be
the second; the third Irad, whom Enoch begat; the fourth Mehujael, whom
Irad begat; the fifth Methusael, whom Mehujael begat; the sixth Lamech,
whom Methusael begat, and who is the seventh from Adam through Cain. But it
was not necessary that the first-born should succeed their fathers in the
kingdom, but those would succeed who were recommended by the possession of
some virtue useful to the earthly city, or who were chosen by lot, or the
son who was best liked by his father would succeed by a kind of hereditary
right to the throne. And the deluge may have happened during the lifetime
and reign of Lamech, and may have destroyed him along with all other men,
save those who were in the ark. For we cannot be surprised that, during so
long a period from Adam to the deluge, and with the ages of individuals
varying as they did, there should not be an equal number of generations in
both lines, but seven in Cain's, and ten in Seth's; for as I have already
said, Lamech is the seventh from Adam, Noah the tenth; and in Lamech's case
not one son only is registered, as in the former instances, but more,
because it was uncertain which of them would have succeeded when he died,
if there had intervened any time to reign between his death and the deluge.

   But in whatever manner the generations of Cain's line are traced
downwards, whether it be by first-born sons or by the heirs to the throne,
it seems to me that I must by no means omit to notice that, when Lamech had
been set down as the seventh from Adam, there were named, in addition, as
many of his children as made up this number to eleven, which is the number
signifying sin; for three sons and one daughter are added. The wives of
Lamech have another signification, different from that which I am now
pressing. For at present I am speaking of the children, and not of those by
whom the children were begotten. Since, then, the law is symbolized by the
number ten,--whence that memorable Decalogue,--there is no doubt that the
number eleven, which goes beyond(1) ten, symbolizes the transgression of
the law, and consequently sin. For this reason, eleven veils of goat's skin
were ordered to be hung in the tabernacle of the testimony, which served in
the wanderings of God's people as an ambulatory temple. And in that
haircloth there was a reminder of sins, because the goats were to be set on
the left hand of the Judge; and therefore, when we confess our sins, we
prostrate ourselves in haircloth, as if we were saying what is written in
the psalm, "My sin is ever before me."(2) The progeny of Adam, then, by
Cain the murderer, is completed in the number eleven, which symbolizes sin;
and this number itself is made up by a woman, as it was by the same sex
that beginning was made of sin by which we all die. And it was committed
that the pleasure of the flesh, which resists the spirit, might follow; and
so Naamah, the daughter of Lamech, means "pleasure." But from Adam to Noah,
in the line of Seth, there are ten generations. And to Noah three sons are
added, of whom, while one fell into sin, two were blessed by their father;
so that, if you deduct the reprobate and add the gracious sons to the
number, you get twelve,--a number signalized in the case of the patriarchs
and of the apostles, and made up of the parts of the number seven
multiplied into one another,--for three times four, or four times three,
give twelve. These things being so, I see that I must consider and mention
how these two lines, which by their separate genealogies depict the two
cities one of earth-born, the other of regenerated persons, became
afterwards so mixed and confused, that the whole human race, with the
exception of eight persons, deserved to perish in the deluge.

CHAP. 21.--WHY IT IS THAT, AS SOON AS CAIN'S SON ENOCH HAS BEEN NAMED, THE
GENEALOGY IS FORTHWITH CONTINUED AS FAR AS THE DELUGE, WHILE AFTER THE
MENTION OF ENOS, SETH'S SON, THE NARRATIVE RETURNS AGAIN TO THE CREATION OF
MAN.

   We must first see why, in the enumeration of Cain's posterity, after
Enoch, in whose name the city was built, has been first of all mentioned,
the rest are at once enumerated down to that terminus of which I have
spoken, and at which that race and the whole line was destroyed in the
deluge; while, after Enos the son of Seth, has been mentioned, the rest are
not at once named down to the deluge, but a clause is inserted to the
following effect: "This is the book of the generations of Adam. In the day
that God created man, in the likeness of God made He him; male and female
created He them; and blessed them, and called their name Adam, in the day
when they were created."(1) This seems to me to be inserted for this
purpose, that here again the reckoning of the times may start from Adam
himself--a purpose which the writer had not in view in speaking of the
earthly city, as if God mentioned it, but did not take account of its
duration. But why does he return to this recapitulation after mentioning
the son of Seth, the man who hoped to call on the name of the Lord God,
unless because it was fit thus to present these two cities, the one
beginning with a murderer and ending in a murderer (for Lamech, too,
acknowledges to his two wives that he had committed murder), the other
built up by him who hoped to call upon the name of the Lord God? For the
highest and complete terrestrial duty of the city of God, which is a
stranger in this world, is that which was exemplified in the individual who
was begotten by him who typified the resurrection of the murdered Abel.
That one man is the unity of the whole heavenly city, not yet indeed
complete, but to be completed, as this prophetic figure foreshows. The son
of Cain, therefore, that is, the son of possession (and of what but an
earthly possession?), may have a name in the earthly city which was built
in his name. It is of such the Psalmist says, "They call their lands after
their own names."(2)  Wherefore they incur what is written in another
psalm: "Thou, O Lord, in Thy city wilt despise their image."(3)  But as for
the son of Seth, the son of the resurrection, let him hope to call on the
name of the Lord God. For he prefigures that society of men which says,
"But I am like a green olive-tree in the house of God: I have trusted in
the mercy of God."(4) But let him not seek the empty honors of a famous
name upon earth, for "Blessed is the man that maketh the name of the Lord
his trust, and respecteth not vanities nor lying follies."(5) After having
presented the two cities, the one founded in the material good of this
world, the other in hope in God, but both starting from a common gate
opened in Adam into this mortal state, and both running on and running out
to their proper and merited ends, Scripture begins to reckon the times, and
in this reckoning includes other generations, making a recapitulation from
Adam, out of whose condemned seed, as out of one mass handed over to
merited damnation, God made some vessels of wrath to dishonor and others
vessels of mercy to honor; in punishment rendering to the former what is
due, in grace giving to the latter what is not due: in order that by the
very comparison of itself with the vessels of wrath, the heavenly city,
which sojourns on earth, may learn not to put confidence in the liberty of
its own will, but may hope to call on the name of the Lord God. For will,
being a nature which was made good by the good God, but mutable by the
immutable, because it was made out of nothing, can both decline from good
to do evil, which takes place when it freely chooses, and can also escape
the evil and do good, which takes place only by divine assistance.

CHAP. 22.--OF THE FALL OF THE SONS OF GOD WHO WERE CAPTIVATED BY THE
DAUGHTERS OF MEN, WHEREBY ALL, WITH THE EXCEPTION OF EIGHT PERSONS,
DESERVEDLY PERISHED IN THE DELUGE.

   When the human race, in the exercise of this freedom of will, increased
and advanced, there arose a mixture and confusion of the two cities by
their participation in a common iniquity. And this calamity, as well as the
first, was occasioned by woman, though not in the same way; for these women
were not themselves betrayed, neither did they persuade the men to sin, but
having belonged to the earthly city and society of the earthly, they had
been of corrupt manners from the first, and were loved for their bodily
beauty by the sons of God, or the citizens of the other city which sojourns
in this world. Beauty is indeed a good gift of God; but that the good may
not think it a great good, God dispenses it even to the wicked. And thus,
when the good that is great and proper to the good was abandoned by the
sons of God, they fell to a paltry good which is not peculiar to the good,
but common to the good and the evil; and when they were captivated by the
daughters of men, they adopted the manners of the earthly to win them as
their brides, and forsook the godly ways they had followed in their own
holy society. And thus beauty, which is indeed God's handiwork, but only a
temporal, carnal, and lower kind of good, is not filly loved in preference
to God, the eternal, spiritual, and unchangeable good. When the miser
prefers his gold to justice, it is through no fault of the gold, but of the
man; and so with every created thing. For though it be good, it may be
loved with an evil as well as with a good love: it is loved rightly when it
is loved ordinately; evilly, when inordinately, It is this which some one
has briefly said in these verses in praise of the Creator:(1)  "These are
Thine, they are good, because Thou art good who didst create them. There is
in them nothing of ours, unless the sin we commit when we forget the order
of things, and instead of Thee love that which Thou hast made."

   But if the Creator is truly loved, that is, if He Himself is loved and
not another thing in His stead, He cannot be evilly loved; for love itself
is to be ordinately loved, because we do well to love that which, when we
love it, makes us live well and virtuously. So that it seems to me that it
is a brief but true definition of virtue to say, it is the order of love;
and on this account, in the Canticles, the bride of Christ, the city of
God, sings, "Order love within me."(2)  It was the order of this love,
then, this charity or attachment, which the sons of God disturbed when they
forsook God, and were enamored of the daughters of men.(3) And by these two
names (sons of God and daughters of men) the two cities are sufficiently
distinguished. For though the former were by nature children of men, they
had come into possession of another name by grace. For in the same
Scripture in which the sons of God are said to have loved the daughters of
men, they are also called angels of God; whence many suppose that they were
not men but angels.

CHAP. 23.--WHETHER WE ARE TO BELIEVE THAT ANGELS, WHO ARE OF A SPIRITUAL
SUBSTANCE, FELL IN LOVE WITH THE BEAUTY OF WOMEN, AND SOUGHT THEM IN
MARRIAGE, AND THAT FROM THIS CONNECTION GIANTS WERE BORN.

   In the third book of this work (c. 5) we made a passing reference to
this question, but did not decide whether angels, inasmuch as they are
spirits, could have bodily intercourse with women. For it is written, "Who
maketh His angels spirits,"(4) that is, He makes those who are by nature
spirits His angels by appointing them to the duty of bearing His messages.
For the Greek word a'ggelos, which in Latin appears as "angelus," means a
messenger. But whether the Psalmist speaks of their bodies when he adds,
"and His ministers a flaming fire," or means that God's ministers ought to
blaze with love as with a spiritual fire, is doubtful. However, the same
trustworthy Scripture testifies that angels have appeared to men in such
bodies as could not only be seen, but also touched. There is, too, a very
general rumor, which many have verified by their own experience, or which
trustworthy persons who have heard the experience of others corroborate,
that sylvans and fauns, who are commonly called "incubi," had often made
wicked assaults upon women, and satisfied their lust upon them; and that
certain devils, called Duses by the Gauls, are constantly attempting and
effecting this impurity is so generally affirmed, that it were impudent to
deny it.(5) From these assertions, indeed, I dare not determine whether
there be some spirits embodied in an aerial substance (for this element,
even when agitated by a fan, is sensibly felt by the body), and who are
capable of lust and of mingling sensibly with women; but certainly I could
by no means believe that God's holy angels could at that time have so
fallen, nor can I think that it is of them the Apostle Peter said, "For if
God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell, and
delivered them into  chains of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment."(1)
I think he rather speaks of these who first apostatized from God, along
with their chief the devil, who enviously deceived the first man under the
form of a serpent But the same holy Scripture affords the most ample
testimony that even godly man have been called angels; for of John it is
written: "Behold, I send my messenger (angel) before Thy face, who shall
prepare Thy way."(2) And the prophet Malachi, by a peculiar grace specially
communicated to him, was called an angel.(3)

   But some are moved by the fact that we have read that the fruit of the
connection between those who are called angels of God and the women they
loved were not men like our own breed, but giants; just as if there were
not born even in our own time (as I have mentioned above) men of much
greater size than the ordinary stature. Was there not at Rome a few years
ago, when the destruction of the city now accomplished by the Goths was
drawing near, a woman, with her father and mother, who by her gigantic size
over-topped all others? Surprising crowds from all quarters came to see
her, and that which struck them most was the circumstance that neither of
her parents were quite up to the tallest ordinary stature. Giants therefore
might well be born, even before the sons of God, who are also called angels
of God, formed a connection with the daughters of men, or of those living
according to men, that is to say, before the sons of Seth formed a
connection with the daughters of Cain. For thus speaks even the canonical
Scripture itself in the book in which we read of this; its words are: "And
it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and
daughters were born unto them, that the sons of God saw the daughters of
men that they were fair [good]; and they took them wives of all which they
chose. And the Lord God said, My Spirit shall not always strive with man,
for that he also is flesh: yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty
years. There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that,
when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare
children to them, the same became the giants, men of renown."(4) These
words of the divine book sufficiently indicate that already there were
giants in the earth in those days, in which the sons of God took wives of
the children of men, when they loved them because they were good, that is,
fair. For it is the custom of this Scripture to call those who are
beautiful in appearance "good." But after this connection had been formed,
then too were giants born. For the words are: "There were giants in the
earth in those days, and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto
the daughters of men." Therefore there were giants both before, "in those
days," and "also after that." And the words, "they bare children to them,"
show plainly enough that before the sons of God fell in this fashion they
begat children to God, not to themselves,--that is to say, not moved by the
lust of sexual intercourse, but discharging the duty of propagation,
intending to produce not a family to gratify their own pride, but citizens
to people the city of God; and to these they as God's angels would bear the
message, that they should place their hope in God, like him who was born of
Seth, the son of resurrection, and who hoped to call on the name of the
Lord God, in which hope they and their offspring would be co-heirs of
eternal blessings, and brethren in the family of which God is the Father.

   But that those angels were not angels in the sense of not being men, as
some suppose, Scripture itself decides, which unambiguously declares that
they were men. For when it had first been stated that "the angels of God
saw the daughters of men that they were fair, and they took them wives of
all which they chose," it was immediately added, "And the Lord God said, My
Spirit shall not always strive with these men, for that they also are
flesh." For by the Spirit of God they had been made angels of God, and sons
of God; but declining towards lower things, they are called men, a name of
nature, not of grace; and they are called flesh, as deserters of the
Spirit, and by their desertion deserted [by Him]. The Septuagint indeed
calls them both angels of God and sons of God, though all the copies do not
show this, some having only the name" sons of God." And Aquila, whom the
Jews prefer to the other interpreters,(5) has translated neither angels of
God nor sons of God, but sons of gods. But both are correct. For they were
both sons of God, and thus brothers of their own fathers, who were children
of the same God; and they were sons of gods, because begotten by gods,
together with whom they themselves also were gods, according to that
expression of the psalm: "I have said, Ye are gods, and all of you are
children of the Most High."(1)  For the Septuagint translators are justly
believed to have received the Spirit of prophecy; so that, if they made any
alterations under His authority, and did not adhere to a strict
translation, we could not doubt that this was divinely dictated. However,
the Hebrew word may be said to be ambiguous, and to be susceptible of
either translation, "sons of God," or "sons of gods."

   Let us omit, then, the fables of those scriptures which are called
apocryphal, because their obscure origin was unknown to the fathers from
whom the authority of the true Scriptures has been transmitted to us by a
most certain and well-ascertained succession. For though there is some
truth in these apocryphal writings, yet they contain so many false
statements, that they have no canonical authority. We cannot deny that
Enoch, the seventh from Adam, left some divine writings, for this is
asserted by the Apostle Jude in his canonical epistle. But it is not
without reason that these writings have no place in that canon of Scripture
which was preserved in the temple of the Hebrew people by the diligence of
successive priests; for their antiquity brought them under suspicion, and
it was impossible to ascertain whether these were his genuine writings, and
they were not brought forward as genuine by the persons who were found to
have carefully preserved the canonical books by a successive transmission.
So that the writings which are produced under his name, and which contain
these fables about the giants, saying that their fathers were not men; are
properly judged by prudent men to be not genuine; just as many writings are
produced by heretics under the names both of other prophets, and more
recently, under the names of the apostles, all of which, after careful
examination, have been set apart from canonical authority under the title
of Apocrypha. There is therefore no doubt that, according to the Hebrew and
Christian canonical Scriptures, there were many giants before the deluge,
and that these were citizens of the earthly society of men, and that the
sons of God, who were according to the flesh the sons of Seth, sunk into
this community when they forsook righteousness, Nor need we wonder that
giants should be born even from these. For all of their children were not
giants; but there were more then than in the remaining periods since the
deluge. And it pleased the Creator to produce them, that it might thus be
demonstrated that neither beauty, nor yet size and strength, are of much
moment to the wise man, whose blessedness lies in spiritual and immortal
blessings, in far better and more enduring gifts, in the good things that
are the peculiar property of the good, and are not shared by good and bad
alike. It is this which another prophet confirms when he says, "These were
the giants, famous from the beginning, that were of so great stature, and
so expert in war. Those did not the Lord choose, neither gave He the way of
knowledge unto them; but they were destroyed because they had no wisdom,
and perished through their own foolishness."(2)

CHAP. 24.--HOW WE ARE TO UNDERSTAND THIS WHICH THE LORD SAID TO THOSE WHO
WERE TO PERISH IN THE FLOOD: "THEIR DAYS SHALL BE 120 YEARS."

   But that which God said, "Their days shall be a hundred and twenty
years," is not to be understood as a prediction that henceforth men should
not live longer than 120 years,--for even after the deluge we find that
they lived more than 500 years,--but we are to understand that God said
this when Noah had nearly completed his fifth century, that is, had lived
480 years, which Scripture, as it frequently uses the name of the whole of
the largest part, calls 500 years. Now the deluge came in the 600th year of
Noah's life, the second month; and thus 120 years were predicted as being
the remaining span of those who were doomed, which years being spent, they
should be destroyed by the deluge, And it is not unreasonably believed that
the deluge came as it did, because already there were not found upon earth
any who were not worthy of sharing a death so manifestly judicial,--not
that a good man, who must die some time, would be a jot the worse of such a
death after it was past. Nevertheless there died in the deluge none of
those mentioned in the sacred Scripture as descended from Seth. But here is
the divine account of the cause of the deluge: "The Lord God saw that the
wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the
thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And it repented(3)  the
Lord that He had made man on the earth, and it grieved Him at His heart.
And the Lord said, I will destroy man, whom I have created, from the face
of the earth; both man and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of
the air: for I am angry that I have made them."(4)

CHAP. 25.--OF THE ANGER OF GOD, WHICH DOES NOT INFLAME HIS MIND, NOR
DISTURB HIS UNCHANGEABLE TRANQUILLITY.

   The anger of God is not a disturbing emotion of His mind, but a
judgment by which punishment is inflicted upon sin. His thought and
reconsideration also are the unchangeable reason which changes things; for
He does not, like man, repent of anything He has done, because in all
matters His decision is as inflexible as His prescience is certain. But if
Scripture were not to use such expressions as the above, it would not
familiarly insinuate itself into the minds of all classes of men, whom it
seeks access to for their good, that it may alarm the proud, arouse the
careless, exercise the inquisitive, and satisfy the intelligent; and this
it could not do, did it not first stoop, and in a manner descend, to them
where they lie. But its denouncing death on all the animals of earth and
air is a declaration of the vastness of the disaster that was approaching:
not that it threatens destruction to the irrational animals as if they too
had incurred it by sin.

CHAP. 26.--THAT THE ARK WHICH NOAH WAS ORDERED TO MAKE FIGURES IN EVERY
RESPECT CHRIST AND THE CHURCH.

   Moreover, inasmuch as God commanded Noah, a just man, and, as the
truthful Scripture says, a man perfect in his generation,--not indeed with
the perfection of the citizens of the city of God in that immortal
condition in which they equal the angels, but in so far as they can be
perfect in their sojourn in this world,--inasmuch as God commanded him, I
say, to make an ark, in which he might be rescued from the destruction of
the flood, along with his family, i.e., his wife, sons, and daughters-in-
law, and along with the animals who, in obedience to God's command, came to
him into the ark: this is certainly a figure of the city of God sojourning
in this world; that is to say, of the church, which is rescued by the wood
on which hung the Mediator of God and men, the man Christ Jesus.(1) For
even its very dimensions, in length, breadth, and height, represent the
human body in which He came, as it had been foretold. For the length of the
human body, from the crown of the head to the sole of the foot, is six
times its breadth from side to side, and ten times its depth or thickness,
measuring from back to front: that is to say, if you measure a man as he
lies on his back or on his face, he is six times as long from head to foot
as he is broad from side to side, and ten tittles as long as he is high
from the ground. And therefore the ark was made 300 cubits in length, 50 in
breadth, and 30 in height. And its having a door made in the side of it
certainly signified the wound which was made when the side of the Crucified
was pierced with the spear; for by this those who come to Him enter; for
thence flowed the sacraments by which those who believe are initiated. And
the fact that it was ordered to be made of squared timbers, signifies the
immoveable steadiness of the life of the saints; for however you turn a
cube, it still stands. And the other peculiarities of the ark's
construction are signs of features of the church.

   But we have not now time to pursue this subject; and, indeed, we have
already dwelt upon it in the work we wrote against Faustus the Manichean,
who denies that there is anything prophesied of Christ in the Hebrew books.
It may be that one man's exposition excels another's, and that ours is not
the best; but all that is said must be referred to this city of God we
speak of, which sojourns in this wicked world as in a deluge, at least if
the expositor would not widely miss the meaning of the author. For example,
the interpretation I have given in the work against Faustus, of the words,
"with lower, second, and third stories shalt thou make it," is, that
because the church is gathered out of all nations, it is said to have two
stories, to represent the two kinds of men,--the circumcision, to wit, and
the uncircumcision, or, as the apostle otherwise calls them, Jews and
Gentiles; and to have three stories, because all the nations were
replenished from the three sons of Noah. Now any one may object to this
interpretation, and may give another which harmonizes with the rule of
faith. For as the ark was to have rooms not only on the lower, but also on
the upper stories, which were called "third stories," that there might be a
habitable space on the third floor from the basement, some one may
interpret these to mean the three graces commended by the apostle.--faith,
hope, and charity. Or even more suitably they may be supposed to represent
those three harvests in the gospel, thirty-fold, sixty-fold, an hundred-
fold,--chaste marriage dwelling in the ground floor, chaste widowhood in
the upper, and chaste virginity in the top story. Or any better
interpretation may be given, so long as the reference to this city is
maintained. And the same statement I would make of all the remaining
particulars in this passage which require exposition, viz., that although
different explanations are given, yet they must all agree with the one
harmonious catholic faith.

CHAP. 27.--OF THE ARK AND THE DELUGE, AND THAT WE CANNOT AGREE WITH THOSE
WHO RECEIVE THE BARE HISTORY, BUT REJECT THE ALLEGORICAL INTERPRETATION,
NOR WITH THOSE WHO MAINTAIN THE FIGURATIVE AND NOT THE HISTORICAL MEANING.

   Yet no one ought to suppose either that these things were written for
no purpose, or that we should study only the historical truth, apart from
any allegorical meanings; or, on the contrary, that they are only
allegories, and that there were no such facts at all, or that, whether it
be so or no, there is here no prophecy of the church.  For what right-
minded man will contend that books so religiously preserved during
thousands of years, and transmitted by so orderly a succession, were
written without an object, or that only the bare historical facts are to be
considered when we read them? For, not to mention other instances, if the
number of the animals entailed the construction of an ark of great size,
where was the necessity of sending into it two unclean and seven clean
animals of each species, when both could have been preserved in equal
numbers? Or could not God, who ordered them to be preserved in order to
replenish the race, restore them in the same way He had created them?

   But they who contend that these things never happened, but are only
figures setting forth other things, in the first place suppose that there
could not be a flood so great that the water should rise fifteen cubits
above the highest mountains, because it is said that clouds cannot rise
above the top of Mount Olympus, because it reaches the sky where there is
none of that thicker atmosphere in which winds, clouds, and rains have
their origin. They do not reflect that the densest element of all, earth,
can exist there; or perhaps they deny that the top of the mountain is
earth. Why, then, do these measurers and weighers of the elements contend
that earth can be raised to those aerial altitudes, and that water cannot,
while they admit that water is lighter, and liker to ascend than earth?
What reason do they adduce why earth, the heavier and lower element, has
for so many ages scaled to the tranquil ether, while water, the lighter,
and more likely to ascend, is not suffered to do the same even for a brief
space of time?

   They say, too, that the area of that ark could not contain so many
kinds of animals of both sexes, two of the unclean and seven of the clean.
But they seem to me to reckon only one area of 300 cubits long and 50
broad, and not to remember that there was another similar in the story
above, and yet another as large in the story above that again; and that
there was consequently an area of 900 cubits by 150. And if we accept what
Origen(1) has with some appropriateness suggested, that Moses the man of
God, being, as it is written, "learned in all the wisdom of the
Egyptians,"(2) who delighted in geometry, may have meant geometrical
cubits, of which they say that one is equal to six of our cubits, then who
does not see what a capacity these dimensions give to the ark? For as to
their objection that an ark of such size could not be built, it is a very
silly calumny; for they are aware that huge cities have been built, and
they should remember that the ark was an hundred years in building. Or,
perhaps, though stone can adhere to stone when cemented with nothing but
lime, so that a wall of several miles may be constructed, yet plank cannot
be riveted to plank by mortices, bolts, nails, and pitch-glue, so as to
construct an ark which was not made with curved ribs but straight timbers,
which was not to be launched by its builders, but to be lifted by the
natural pressure of the water when it reached it, and which was to be
preserved from shipwreck as it floated about rather by divine oversight
than by human skill.

   As to another customary inquiry of the scrupulous about the very minute
creatures, not only such as mice and lizards, but also locusts, beetles,
flies, fleas, and so forth, whether there were not in the ark a larger
number of them than was determined by God in His command, those persons who
are moved by this difficulty are to be reminded that the words "every
creeping thing of the earth" only indicate that it was not needful to
preserve in the ark the animals that can live in the water, whether the
fishes that live submerged in it, or the sea-birds that swim on its
surface. Then, when it is said "male and female," no doubt reference is
made to the repairing of the races, and consequently there was no need for
those creatures being in the ark which are born without the union of the
sexes from inanimate things, or from their corruption; or if they were in
the ark, they might be there as they commonly are in houses, not in any
determinate numbers; or if it was necessary that there should be a definite
number of all those animals that cannot naturally live in the water, that
so the most sacred mystery which was being enacted might be bodied forth
and perfectly figured in actual realities, still this was not the care of
Noah or his sons, but of God. For Noah did not catch the animals and put
them into the ark, but gave them entrance as they came seeking it. For this
is the force of the words, "They shall come unto thee,"(1)--not, that is to
say, by man's effort, but by God's will. But certainly we are not required
to believe that those which have no sex also came; for it is expressly and
definitely said, "They shall be male and female."' For there are some
animals which are born out of corruption, but yet afterwards they
themselves copulate and produce offspring, as flies; but others, which have
no sex, like bees. Then, as to those animals which have sex, but without
ability to propagate their kind, like mules and shemules, it is probable
that they were not in the ark, but that it was counted sufficient to
preserve their parents, to wit, the horse and the ass; and this applies to
all hybrids. Yet, if it was necessary for the completeness of the mystery,
they were there; for even this species has "male and female."

   Another question is commonly raised regarding the food of the
carnivorous animals,--whether, without transgressing the command which
fixed the number to be preserved, there were necessarily others included in
the ark for their sustenance; or, as is more probable, there might be some
food which was not flesh, and which yet suited all. For we know how many
animals whose food is flesh eat also vegetable products and fruits.
especially figs and chestnuts. What wonder is it, therefore, if that wise
and just man was instructed by God what would suit each, so that without
flesh he prepared and stored provision fit for every species? And what is
there which hunger would not make animals eat? Or what could not be made
sweet and wholesome by God, who, with a divine facility, might have enabled
them to do without food at all, had it not been requisite to the
completeness of so great a mystery that they should be fed? But none but a
contentious man can suppose that there was no prefiguring of the church in
so manifold and circumstantial a detail. For  the nations have already so
filled the church, and are comprehended in the framework of its unity, the
clean and unclean together, until the appointed end, that this one very
manifest fulfillment leaves no doubt how we should interpret even those
others which are somewhat more obscure, and which cannot so readily be
discerned. And since this is so, if not even the most audacious will
presume to assert that these things were written without a purpose, or that
though the events really happened they mean nothing, or that they did not
really happen, but are only allegory, or that at all events they are far
from having any figurative reference to the church; if it has been made out
that, on the other hand, we must rather believe that there was a wise
purpose in their being committed to memory and to writing, and that they
did happen, and have a significance, and that this significance has a
prophetic reference to the church, then this book, having served this
purpose, may now be closed, that we may go on to trace in the history
subsequent to the deluge the courses of the two cities,--the earthly, that
lives according to men, and the heavenly, that lives according to God.


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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