Works (City of God, On the Trinity, etc.) 21

Being about to speak, as He Himself shall grant, of the day of God's last judgment, and to assert it against the impious and unbelieving, we ought first, as in the foundation of a building, to lay down the divine testimonies; and those who are unwilling to believe them attempt to oppose them with human petty reasonings, false and fallacious, to this end — that they may either contend that what is adduced as testimony from the sacred writings signifies something else, or deny altogether that it was spoken by God.

For I judge that there is no mortal who, when he has understood these things as they were spoken, and has believed that they were spoken by the supreme and true God through holy souls, does not yield and assent to them — whether he also confess it with his mouth, or through some fault blush or fear to confess it, or even, with an obstinacy most like madness, strive most contentiously to defend what he knows or believes to be false against what he knows or believes to be true. What, then, the whole Church of the true God holds in confession and profession, that Christ is to come from heaven to judge the living and the dead, this we call the last day of the divine judgment, that is, the final time. For over how many days this judgment shall be extended is uncertain;

but that in the manner of the holy Scriptures a day is wont to be put for a time, no one is ignorant who has read those writings, however carelessly. Therefore, when we say the day of God's judgment, we add "last" or "final," because He both judges now and has judged from the beginning of the human race, when He dismissed from paradise and separated from the tree of life the first men, the perpetrators of the great sin; indeed even when He spared not the sinning angels, whose prince, having subverted himself, subverted men by envy, He without doubt judged; nor is it without His high and just judgment that both in this airy heaven and on earth the life of demons and of men is most wretched, most full of errors and miseries.

But even if no one had sinned, it would not be without good and right judgment that He would retain in eternal blessedness the whole rational creation most perseveringly cleaving to Him its Lord. He judges also not only universally concerning the race of demons and of men, that they should be wretched on account of the desert of the first sins, but also concerning the proper works of individuals, which they perform by the choice of the will. For the demons too pray that they be not tormented, nor indeed is it unjustly that they are either spared or, each according to his own wickedness, tormented; and men, for the most part openly, always secretly, pay divinely appointed penalties for their deeds, whether in this life or after death — although no man acts rightly unless he is aided by divine help;

and no one of demons or of men acts unjustly, unless it be permitted by the divine and same most just judgment. For as the Apostle says, there is no iniquity with God; and as he himself elsewhere says, His judgments are unsearchable and His ways past finding out. Therefore in this book I will dispute not of those first, nor of these intermediate judgments of God, but of that last judgment itself, as far as He Himself shall grant, when Christ is to come from heaven to judge the living and the dead. This indeed is now properly called the day of judgment, because there will be there no place for ignorant complaint, why that unjust man is happy and why that just man is unhappy.

For then there will appear the true and full felicity of none but the good, and the deserved and utmost infelicity of none but the wicked. But now we are learning both to bear with an even mind the evils which the good also suffer, and not to make much of the goods which the wicked also obtain; and by this means, even in those matters in which the divine justice does not appear, the divine teaching is salutary. For we know not by what judgment of God that good man is poor, that bad man is rich; that this man rejoices, whom we suppose ought rather to have been tortured with griefs for his ruined morals, while that man is saddened, whom a praiseworthy life persuades us ought to have rejoiced;

that an innocent man goes out from the court not only unavenged but even condemned, either crushed by the iniquity of the judge or overwhelmed by false testimonies, while on the contrary his wicked adversary, not only unpunished but even vindicated, insults him; that the impious man is in the best of health, the pious man wastes away in weakness; that the healthiest youths turn robbers, while infants who could not injure anyone even by a word are afflicted with divers cruelties of diseases; that one useful to human affairs is snatched away by untimely death, while one who seems as though he ought never even to have been born lives on besides for a very long time; that one full of crimes is exalted with honors, while a man without reproach is hidden by the darkness of obscurity — and other things of this kind, which who collects, who enumerates?

Now if these things had, in their very seeming absurdity, a certain constancy — such that in this life, in which man, as the sacred psalm declares, is made like to vanity and his days pass away like a shadow, none but the wicked obtained these transitory and earthly goods, and none but the good suffered such evils — this could be referred to the just, or even benign, judgment of God: that those who were not to attain the eternal goods which make men blessed should either be deceived by temporal goods for their wickedness, or be consoled by them through God's mercy; and those who were not to suffer eternal torments should either be afflicted by temporal evils for their sins, whatever and however great, or be exercised by them for the fulfilling of virtues.

But now, since not only are the good in evil and the bad in good, which seems unjust, but for the most part also evils befall the bad and goods come to the good, the judgments of God become the more unsearchable and His ways past finding out. Although, therefore, we know not by what judgment God either does these things or permits them to be done — He with whom is the highest power, the highest wisdom, the highest justice, no infirmity, no rashness, no iniquity — yet we salutarily learn not to make much of either the goods or the evils which we see to be common to the good and the bad, and to seek those goods which belong to the good, and above all to flee those evils which are proper to the wicked.

But when we shall come to that judgment of God, whose time is now properly called the day of judgment, and sometimes the day of the Lord, not only whatever things shall then be judged, but also whatever things have been judged from the beginning, and whatever things up to that time are still to be judged, will appear to be most just. There this too will be made manifest, by how just a judgment of God it comes to pass that now so many, indeed almost all, of God's just judgments lie hidden from the senses and minds of mortals, while nevertheless in this matter it does not lie hidden from the faith of the pious that what is hidden is just. Truly Solomon, the wisest king of Israel, who reigned in Jerusalem, thus began the book which is called Ecclesiastes and is held by the Jews also in the canon of the sacred writings:

Vanity of vanities, said Ecclesiastes; vanity of the vain, all is vanity. What abundance has a man in all his labor with which he labors under the sun? And when from this sentence he connected the rest, recounting the miseries and errors of this life, and the meanwhile vanishing lapses of the times, wherein nothing solid, nothing stable is retained, in that vanity of things under the sun he also in a manner laments this: that although there is an abundance of wisdom over folly, as the abundance of light over darkness, and the eyes of the wise man are in his head while the fool walks in darkness, yet one event happens to all — namely in this life which is passed under the sun — signifying, of course, those evils which we see to be common to the good and the bad.

He says also this: that both the good suffer evils, as though they were bad, and the bad obtain goods, as though they were good, thus speaking: There is, he says, a vanity which is done upon the earth, that there are just men upon whom comes as it were the deed of the impious, and there are impious upon whom comes as it were the deed of the just. I said that this too is vanity. In this vanity, to the setting forth of which, as far as seemed sufficient, that most wise man devoted this whole book — for no other reason, surely, than that we should desire that life which has no vanity under this sun, but truth under Him who made this sun — in this vanity, then, would man, made like unto the same vanity, vanish by any other than the just and right judgment of God?

Yet in the days of his vanity it makes a very great difference whether a man resists or obeys the truth, and whether he is destitute of true piety or a partaker of it — not for the sake of the goods of this life to be acquired or the evils to be avoided, things passing away by vanishing, but for the sake of the future judgment, through which both goods for the good and evils for the bad shall remain without end. Finally, that wise man so concluded this book as to say: Fear God and keep His commandments, for this is the whole man; because God will bring every work into judgment, in every despised thing, whether good or evil. What could be said more briefly, more truly, more wholesomely? Fear God, he says, and keep His commandments, for this is the whole man. For whoever exists, this he is — the keeper, that is, of God's commandments;

since he who is not this, is nothing; for he is not reformed to the image of truth, but remains in the likeness of vanity. For every work — that is, whatever is done by man in this life, whether good or evil — God will bring into judgment, in every despised thing, that is, in every man who here seems contemptible and therefore is not even noticed; since God both sees him and does not despise him, nor passes him by when He judges. This last judgment of God, then, the testimonies concerning which from the holy Scriptures I have set myself to adduce, are first to be chosen from the books of the New Testament, afterwards from those of the Old. For although the old are prior in time, the new are nevertheless to be preferred in dignity, since those old things are the heralds of the new.

The new, therefore, shall be set down first, which, that we may prove them the more firmly, the old too shall be brought in to support. In the old are contained the law and the prophets, in the new the Gospel and the apostolic writings. Now the Apostle says: For by the law is the knowledge of sin. But now, without the law, the righteousness of God has been manifested, being testified by the law and the prophets; but the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ upon all who believe. This righteousness of God pertains to the New Testament and has its testimony from the old books, that is, the law and the prophets. First, therefore, the cause itself is to be set forth, and afterwards the witnesses are to be introduced. And Christ Jesus Himself, showing that this order was to be observed:

A scribe, He says, instructed in the kingdom of God is like a man that is a householder, bringing forth out of his treasure things new and old. He did not say "old and new," which He surely would have said, had He not preferred to keep the order of merits rather than of times. Therefore the Saviour Himself, when He was upbraiding the cities in which He had done great mighty works and which had not believed, and was preferring foreigners to them: Nevertheless, He says, I say to you, it shall be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon in the day of judgment than for you; and a little after, to another city: Verily, He says, I say to you, that it shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom in the day of judgment than for thee (here He most evidently proclaims that a day of judgment is to come); and in another place:

The men of Nineveh, He says, shall rise up in the judgment with this generation and shall condemn it; because they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and behold, a greater than Jonah is here. The queen of the South shall rise up in the judgment with this generation and shall condemn it; because she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon, and behold, a greater than Solomon is here. In this place we learn two things: both that a judgment is to come, and that it is to come with the resurrection of the dead. For of the Ninevites and of the queen of the South, when He said these things, He was without doubt speaking of the dead, whom nevertheless He foretold would rise in the day of judgment. Nor did He say "they will condemn" because they themselves will judge, but because by comparison with them these will deservedly be damned.

Again in another place, when He was speaking of the now intermingling and afterward separation of good and bad men, which will assuredly take place on the day of judgment, He employed a similitude of wheat sown and tares over-sown, and expounding it to His disciples: He that soweth, He says, the good seed is the Son of man; and the field is the world; but the good seed, these are the children of the kingdom; but the tares are the children of the wicked one; and the enemy that sowed them is the devil; but the harvest is the consummation of the age, and the reapers are the angels. As therefore the tares are gathered and burned with fire, so shall it be in the consummation of the age.

The Son of man shall send forth His angels, and they shall gather out of His kingdom all offenses and them that do iniquity, and shall cast them into the furnace of fire; there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Then shall the righteous shine as the sun in the kingdom of their Father. He that hath ears, let him hear. Here indeed He did not name the judgment or the day of judgment, but expressed it much more clearly by the very things, and foretold that it would be at the end of the age. Likewise to His disciples: Verily, He says, I say to you, that you who have followed Me, in the regeneration, when the Son of man shall sit on the throne of His majesty, you also shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. Here we learn that Jesus will judge with His disciples. Whence also elsewhere He said to the Jews:

If I by Beelzebub cast out demons, by whom do your sons cast them out? Therefore they shall be your judges. Nor, because He said that they would sit upon twelve thrones, ought we to suppose that only twelve men will judge with Him. For by the number twelve a certain universal multitude of those who judge is signified, on account of the two parts of the number seven, by which universality is for the most part signified; which two parts, that is, three and four, multiplied the one by the other make twelve, for four times three and three times four are twelve — and if any other reason of this number twelve is found which avails to this end.

Otherwise, since we read that in the place of Judas the traitor the apostle Matthias was ordained, the apostle Paul, who labored more than all those, would have nowhere to sit for judging; yet he assuredly shows that he belongs, with the other saints, to the number of the judges, when he says: Know ye not that we shall judge angels? Concerning those also who are to be judged, there is a like reason in this number twelve. For not because it was said, Judging the twelve tribes of Israel, will the tribe of Levi, which is the thirteenth, therefore not be judged by them, nor will they judge that people alone and not also the other nations. And when He said, In the regeneration, He without doubt willed the resurrection of the dead to be understood by the name of regeneration.

For thus our flesh will be regenerated through incorruption, in the manner in which our soul has been regenerated through faith. Many things I pass over which seem to be so spoken concerning the last judgment that, when diligently considered, they are found ambiguous or rather to pertain to something else — namely, either to that coming of the Saviour by which He comes throughout all this time in His Church, that is, in His members, part by part and little by little, since the whole is His body; or to the destruction of earthly Jerusalem, for when He speaks of that too, He for the most part speaks in such a way as though He were speaking of the end of the age and of that last and great day of judgment;

so that it cannot be discerned at all, unless all the things which are similarly said concerning this matter in the three evangelists — Matthew, Mark, and Luke — are compared together among themselves. For some things one relates more obscurely, another explains more plainly, so that the things which are said as pertaining to one matter may appear whence they are said. This I have taken care to do, in whatever measure, in a certain letter which I wrote back to a man of blessed memory, Hesychius, bishop of the city of Salona, the title of which letter is: On the End of the Age. Accordingly I will now here say that which is read in the Gospel according to Matthew concerning the separation of good and bad men, through the most present and last judgment of Christ.

But when the Son of man, He says, shall come in His majesty, and all the angels with Him, then shall He sit upon the throne of His majesty, and before Him shall be gathered all the nations, and He shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divides the sheep from the goats, and He shall set the sheep indeed on His right hand, but the goats on the left. Then shall the King say to those who shall be on His right hand: Come, ye blessed of My Father, possess the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry, and ye gave Me to eat; I was thirsty, and ye gave Me to drink; I was a stranger, and ye took Me in; naked, and ye covered Me; sick, and ye visited Me; I was in prison, and ye came to Me. Then shall the righteous answer Him, saying:

Lord, when did we see Thee hungry, and fed Thee; thirsty, and gave Thee drink? And when did we see Thee a stranger, and took Thee in; or naked, and clothed Thee? Or when did we see Thee sick or in prison, and came to Thee? And the King, answering, shall say to them: Verily I say to you, inasmuch as ye did it to one of these My least brethren, ye did it to Me. Then shall He say, He says, also to those who shall be on the left hand: Depart from Me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, which is prepared for the devil and his angels. Then likewise He enumerates to these also that they did not do those things which He recorded the ones on the right hand to have done. And to them likewise asking, when they had seen Him set in the need of these things:

He answers that what was not done to the least of His own was not done to Himself; and concluding the discourse He says: 'And these shall go into everlasting punishment, but the just into life everlasting.' John the Evangelist, moreover, most plainly relates that He foretold a judgment to come at the resurrection of the dead. For when He had said: 'For neither doth the Father judge any man, but hath given all judgment to the Son, that all may honour the Son as they honour the Father; he who honoureth not the Son honoureth not the Father who sent Him,' He straightway added: 'Amen, amen I say unto you, that he who heareth my word and believeth Him that sent me hath life everlasting, and cometh not into judgment, but hath passed from death unto life.'

Behold, here He said that His faithful ones come not into judgment. How then shall they be separated from the wicked by judgment and stand at His right hand, unless because in this place He put 'judgment' for 'condemnation'? For into such judgment they shall not come who hear His word and believe Him that sent Him. Then He adds and says: 'Amen, amen I say unto you, that the hour cometh, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and they that hear shall live. For as the Father hath life in Himself, so hath He given to the Son also to have life in Himself.' He is not yet speaking of the second resurrection, that is, of bodies, which shall be at the end, but of the first, which now is. For to mark this off He said: 'The hour cometh, and now is.'

But this is not the resurrection of bodies, but of souls. For souls too have their own death in impiety and sins, according to which death those men are dead of whom the same Lord says: 'Let the dead bury their dead'; that is, that those dead in soul should bury the dead in body. Therefore concerning those dead in soul through impiety and iniquity He says: 'The hour cometh, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God; and they that hear shall live.' By 'they that hear' He meant 'they that obey, that believe, and persevere unto the end.' Nor did He here make any distinction between the good and the wicked. For it is good for all to hear His voice and to live, by passing over from the death of impiety unto the life of piety.

Of this death the apostle Paul says: 'Therefore all are dead, and He died for all, that they who live may now not live to themselves, but to Him who died for them and rose again.' All therefore are dead in sins, with absolutely none excepted, whether the original sins, or those added also by their own will, either by not knowing or by knowing yet not doing what is just; and for all the dead, one who was living died, that is, one having no sin whatsoever;

so that they who live through the remission of sins should now not live to themselves, but to Him who died for all on account of our sins and rose again on account of our justification; in order that, believing in Him who justifieth the impious, being justified from impiety and, as it were, quickened from death, we might be able to belong to the first resurrection, which now is. For to this first resurrection none belong save those who shall be blessed for ever; but to the second, of which He is soon to speak, He will teach that both the blessed and the wretched belong. The one is of mercy, the other of judgment. Wherefore it is written in the Psalm: 'Mercy and judgment will I sing unto Thee, O Lord.' Of which judgment He consequently added, saying:

'And He hath given Him power to execute judgment, because He is the Son of man.' Here He shows that He shall come to judge in that flesh in which He had come to be judged. For to this end He says: 'Because He is the Son of man.' And then, subjoining that of which we are treating, He says: 'Marvel not at this, for the hour cometh in which all that are in the graves shall hear His voice and shall come forth; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; but they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of judgment.' This is that judgment which a little before, as also now, He had put for condemnation, saying:

'He who heareth my word and believeth Him that sent me hath life everlasting and cometh not into judgment, but hath passed from death unto life' — that is, by belonging to the first resurrection, by which one now passes from death to life, he shall not come into condemnation, which He signified by the term 'judgment,' as also in this place where He says: 'They that have done evil, unto the resurrection of judgment,' that is, of condemnation. Let him therefore rise in the first, who does not wish to be condemned in the second resurrection. For 'the hour cometh, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and they that hear shall live,' that is, they shall not come into condemnation, which is called the second death;

into which death, after the second resurrection, that is, of bodies, which is to come, those shall be cast headlong who do not rise in the first, which is of souls. For 'the hour cometh' (where He does not say: 'and now is,' because it shall be at the end of the world, that is, in the last and greatest judgment of God) 'when all who are in the graves shall hear His voice and shall come forth.' He did not say, as in the first: 'and they that hear shall live.' For not all shall live, namely with that life which, since it is blessed, alone ought to be called life. For assuredly they could not, without some sort of life, hear and come forth from the graves with the flesh rising again. And why not all shall live, He teaches in what follows: 'They that have done good,' He says, 'unto the resurrection of life' — these are they who shall live;

'but they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of judgment' — these are they who shall not live, because they shall die by the second death. For they did evil, because they lived evilly; and they lived evilly, because in the first resurrection of souls, which now is, they did not live again, or, having lived again, they did not remain unto the end in that in which they had lived again. As therefore there are two regenerations, of which I have already spoken above — one according to faith, which now takes place through baptism; the other according to the flesh, which shall take place in its incorruption and immortality through the great and final judgment — so there are also two resurrections: one the first, which both now is and is of souls, which does not permit one to come into the second death;

the other the second, which is not now, but shall be at the end of the world, and is not of souls, but of bodies, which through the last judgment sends some into the second death, others into that life which has no death. [VII] Concerning these two resurrections the same John the Evangelist, in the book which is called the Apocalypse, has spoken in such a way that the first of them, not being understood by some of our own people, was moreover even turned into certain ridiculous fables. For in the aforesaid book the apostle John says: 'And I saw an angel coming down from heaven, having the key of the abyss and a chain in his hand. And he laid hold on that dragon, the old serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years, and cast him into the abyss;'

'and shut it and sealed it over him, that he should no more seduce the nations, till the thousand years be finished; and after this he must be loosed for a little season. And I saw seats, and them that sat upon them, and judgment was given unto them. And the souls of those slain for the testimony of Jesus and for the word of God, and whosoever had not worshipped the beast nor his image, neither had received his inscription on their forehead or on their hand; and they reigned with Jesus a thousand years. The rest of them lived not, until the thousand years be finished. This is the first resurrection. Blessed and holy is he that hath part in this first resurrection. Over these the second death hath no power; but they shall be priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign with Him a thousand years.'

Those who, on account of these words of this book, have supposed that the first resurrection to come is a bodily one, have been moved among other things chiefly by the number of a thousand years, as though it were fitting that there should be in the saints, as it were, a Sabbath-keeping of so long a time — a holy leisure, that is, after the labours of the six thousand years since man was created and, by the desert of that great sin, was dismissed from the felicity of paradise into the miseries of this mortality — so that, since it is written: 'One day with the Lord is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day,' the six thousand years being fulfilled as it were six days, there should follow, as it were, the seventh, of the Sabbath, in the last thousand years, the saints rising again, namely, to celebrate this Sabbath.

This opinion would be in some way tolerable, if it were believed that some spiritual delights would be present to the saints in that Sabbath through the presence of the Lord. For we too once held this opinion. But since they say that those who then shall have risen will give themselves over to the most immoderate carnal feastings, in which there shall be so much food and drink that they not only keep no moderation, but exceed even the measure of credibility itself: these things can in no way be believed except by carnal men. But those who are spiritual call those who believe these things by the Greek word 'chiliasts'; which, expressing it word for word, we might name 'millenarians.' But it would be tedious to refute them point by point;

but rather we ought now to show in what manner this Scripture is to be understood. The Lord Jesus Christ Himself says: 'No one can enter into the house of the strong man and carry off his vessels, unless he first bind the strong man' — meaning by 'the strong man' the devil to be understood, because he was able to hold the human race captive; and by 'his vessels,' which He was to carry off, His own future faithful ones, whom the devil possessed in divers sins and impieties. Therefore, that this strong man might be bound, that apostle saw in the Apocalypse an angel coming down from heaven, having the key of the abyss and a chain in his hand.

'And he laid hold,' he says, 'on that dragon, the old serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, and bound him a thousand years' — that is, he restrained and curbed his power from seducing and possessing those who were to be delivered. Now the thousand years can, so far as occurs to me, be understood in two ways:

either because this thing takes place in the last thousand years, that is, in the sixth millennium of years as in the sixth day, whose latter spaces are now rolling on, with the Sabbath then to follow which has no evening — namely the rest of the saints which has no end — so that he has called the last part, as it were, of this millennium-day, which remained until the end of the world, a thousand years, by that manner of speaking whereby the part is signified by the whole; or else assuredly he put a thousand years for all the years of this world, so that by a perfect number the very fullness of time should be denoted. For the number one thousand renders the solid square of the number ten. For ten times ten make a hundred, which is now indeed a square figure, but a plane one;

but that it may rise into height and become solid, again a hundred is multiplied ten times, and there are a thousand. Further, if a hundred is sometimes put for the whole, as is that which the Lord promised to one who forsakes all his goods and follows Him, saying: 'He shall receive in this world a hundredfold' — which the apostle expounding in a certain manner says: 'As having nothing, and possessing all things,' because it had already been said before: 'The whole world of riches belongs to the faithful man' — how much more is a thousand put for the whole, where there is the solidity of that tenfold square? Whence too that is best understood which is read in the Psalm: 'He hath been mindful for ever of His covenant, of the word which He commanded to a thousand generations,' that is, unto all.

'And he cast him,' he says, 'into the abyss' — assuredly he cast the devil into the abyss, by which name is signified the innumerable multitude of the impious, whose hearts are very deep in malignity against the Church of God; not because the devil was not there before, but he is therefore said to be cast thither, because, being excluded from believers, he began to possess the impious the more. For he is possessed the more by the devil who is not only estranged from God, but also without cause hates those who serve God. 'And he shut it,' he says, 'and sealed it over him, that he should no more seduce the nations, till the thousand years be finished.' By 'he shut it over him' is said 'he forbade him that he might not be able to go out,' that is, to transgress what was prohibited.

But that he 'sealed it,' which he added, has seemed to me to signify that he willed it to be hidden who belong to the devil's party and who do not. For this in this world lies wholly concealed, because it is uncertain both whether he who seems to stand is about to fall, and whether he who seems to lie is about to rise. But from seducing those nations the devil is prohibited and restrained by the bond and barrier of this prohibition — those nations which, belonging to Christ, he formerly seduced or held. For these God chose before the foundation of the world, to rescue them from the power of darkness and to translate them into the kingdom of the Son of His love, as the apostle says.

For that he seduces even now the nations, and drags them with himself into eternal punishment — but not those predestined unto eternal life — what faithful man is ignorant? Nor let it disturb anyone that the devil often seduces even those who, already regenerated in Christ, walk in the ways of God. 'For the Lord knoweth them that are His'; of these he seduces none into eternal damnation. For the Lord knows them thus, as God, from whom nothing even of things future lies hidden — not as a man, who sees a man for the present (if indeed he sees him, whose heart he does not see), but what he shall afterward be he does not see even in himself. To this end, therefore, the devil is bound and shut up in the abyss, that he may no more seduce the nations of which the Church consists, which nations, formerly seduced, he held before they were the Church.

For it was not said 'that he should seduce no one,' but 'that he should no more seduce,' he says, 'the nations' — in which he undoubtedly wished the Church to be understood — 'till the thousand years be finished,' he says; that is, either what remains of the sixth day, which consists of a thousand years, or all the years through which this world is henceforth to be completed. Nor is that which He says to be so understood — 'That he should no more seduce the nations, till the thousand years be finished' — as though he were afterward to seduce those nations, at least, of which the predestined Church consists, from seducing whom he is prohibited by that bond and barrier. But either it is said by that manner of speech which is sometimes found in the Scriptures, such as that in the Psalm:

'So our eyes are unto the Lord our God, until He have mercy upon us'; for not, when He shall have had mercy, will the eyes of His servants no more be unto the Lord their God. Or else assuredly the order of the words is this: 'And he shut it and sealed it over him, till the thousand years be finished'; but what he interposed — 'that he should no more seduce the nations' — is so to be taken that it should be free from the connexion of this order and understood apart, as if it were added afterward, so that the whole sentence should run thus: 'And he shut it and sealed it over him, till the thousand years be finished, that he should no more seduce the nations'; that is, therefore he shut it, till the thousand years be finished, that he should no more seduce the nations. [VIII] 'After this,' he says, 'he must be loosed for a little season.'

If for the devil to be bound and shut up is to be unable to seduce the Church, will then this be his loosing, that he should be able to? Away with the thought! For never shall the Church be seduced by him — the Church predestined and elect before the foundation of the world, of which it was said: 'The Lord knoweth them that are His.' And yet it shall be here even at that time when the devil is to be loosed, just as, from the time it was instituted, it has been here and shall be at every time, namely in those who succeed by being born to those who die. For a little after he says that the devil, being loosed, shall draw the seduced nations over the whole world into war against the Church, and the number of these enemies shall be as the sand of the sea.

'And they went up,' he says, 'over the breadth of the earth, and compassed the camp of the saints and the beloved city; and fire came down from heaven from God and devoured them; and the devil, who seduced them, was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where also are the beast and the false prophet; and they shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever.' But this now pertains to the last judgment, which I have thought fit to mention here for this reason, that no one should suppose that in that very little time in which the devil shall be loosed, the Church shall not be in this land — either he not finding it here when he shall have been loosed, or destroying it when he shall have persecuted it by every means.

Not therefore throughout all this time which this book embraces — namely from the first coming of Christ until the end of the world, which shall be His second coming — is the devil so bound that this very binding of his is, during this interval which he calls by the number of a thousand years, not to seduce the Church, since indeed not even when loosed will he seduce it. For assuredly, if for him to be bound is to be unable to seduce or not to be permitted, what shall it be to be loosed but to be able to seduce or to be permitted? Which God forbid should come to pass! But the binding of the devil is his not being permitted to put forth the whole temptation which he can, either by force or by guile, to seduce men and to force them violently or fraudulently deceive them into his own party.

For if it were permitted, in so long a time and amid the great weakness of many, he would cast down very many such as God wills not to suffer this, and would hinder many from believing; and that he might not do this, he was bound. But then he shall be loosed, when both the time shall be brief (for he is read to be about to rage with all his own and his followers' forces for three years and six months) and those shall be such against whom he must wage war, that they cannot be overcome by so great an onset and by his snares.

But if he were never loosed, his malignant power would appear less, the most faithful patience of the holy city would be less proved, and finally it would be less clearly perceived how great an evil of his the Almighty has used so well — He who neither wholly took him away from the temptation of the saints (although cast forth from their inner men, where God is believed in, that by his assault from without they might profit), and, in those who are of his own party, bound him, lest, by pouring forth and exercising as much malice as he could upon the innumerable weak ones — of whom the Church was to be multiplied and filled, some about to believe, others already believing — he should deter these from the faith of piety and break those;

and He shall loose him at the end, that the city of God may behold, with the immense glory of its Redeemer, Helper, and Deliverer, how strong an adversary it has overcome. In comparison, indeed, with those saints and faithful ones who shall then exist, what are we? Since for the proving of them so great an enemy shall be loosed, with whom, while he is bound, we contend amid such great perils. And yet it is not to be doubted that even in this interval of time some soldiers of Christ have been and are so prudent and strong that, even if they were living in this mortal state at the time when he shall be loosed, they would both most wisely beware of all his snares and assaults and most patiently endure them.

But this binding of the devil was not only done from the time when the Church began to be spread out from the land of Judaea into the other nations one after another; but it is also being done now and shall be done until the end of the world, when he is to be loosed; because even now men are converted from the unbelief in which he himself possessed them unto the faith, and shall without doubt be converted until that end; and assuredly for each individual this strong man is then bound, when he is snatched away from him as his vessel; and the abyss, wherein he is shut up, has not been consumed in them when those have died who existed at the time when he began to be shut up;

but others have succeeded them by being born, and do succeed, until this world be finished — those who hate Christians, in whose blind and deep hearts, as it were in an abyss, he is daily shut up. But whether, even in those last three years and six months, when, being loosed, he is to rage with all his forces, anyone shall come to the faith, in which he had not before been, is no small question. For how shall that stand which was said: 'Who entereth into the house of the strong man, to carry off his vessels, unless he first bind the strong man,' if his vessels are snatched away even when he is loosed?

And by this, this saying seems to compel us to believe that in that little time, however brief, no one shall come over to the Christian people, but that the devil shall fight with those who shall already have been found Christians; of whom, even if some, being overcome, follow him, they do not pertain to the predestined number of the sons of God. For not in vain does the same apostle John, who also wrote this Apocalypse, say in his epistle concerning certain persons: 'They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would surely have remained with us.' But what becomes of the little ones?

For it is exceedingly incredible that no children of Christians, already born and not yet baptized, should be forestalled as infants at that time, and that none should be born to them in those very days; or, if there shall be, that they should not be brought by their parents in some manner to the laver of regeneration. But if this shall be, in what way, the devil being now loosed, shall these vessels be snatched away — into whose house no one enters to carry off his vessels, unless he first bind him? Nay rather, this is the more to be believed, that neither those who fall from the Church nor those who come to the Church shall be wanting at that time;

but assuredly both the parents shall be so strong on behalf of their little ones to be baptized, and those who shall then first believe, that they may overcome that strong man even when he is not bound — that is, they may both vigilantly discern all his devices, whether ensnaring by such arts as never before, or pressing with force, and patiently endure them, and so may be snatched from him even when he is not bound. Nor therefore shall that Gospel saying be false: 'Who entereth into the house of the strong man, to carry off his vessels, unless he first bind the strong man?'

For according to the truth of that saying this order has been preserved, that first the strong man should be bound and his vessels snatched away, and that the Church should so be multiplied far and wide among all nations, from the strong and the weak, that out of its own most robust faith in things divinely foretold and fulfilled it might be able, even when he is loosed, to carry off his vessels. For as it must be confessed that the charity of many grows cold when iniquity abounds, and that, through the unwonted and greatest persecutions and deceits of the devil now loosed, many who are not written in the book of life shall yield:

so it is to be thought that that time shall find not only good faithful ones, but that some also who shall as yet be outside, with the help of the grace of God, through consideration of the Scriptures — in which both other things and the end itself was foretold, which they now perceive to be coming — shall become firmer to believe what they did not believe, and stronger to overcome the devil even when he is not bound. And if it shall be so, therefore his binding is to be said to have gone before, that the despoiling both of the bound and of the loosed might follow; since concerning this matter it was said: 'Who shall enter into the house of the strong man, to carry off his vessels, unless he first bind the strong man?'

[IX] Meanwhile, during the thousand years that the devil is bound, the saints also reign with Christ, likewise for a thousand years — the same, without doubt, and to be understood in the same way, that is, this present time of His first coming. For, apart from that kingdom of which He shall say at the end: 'Come, ye blessed of my Father, possess the kingdom prepared for you,' unless in some other way, far unequal indeed, His saints even now reigned with Him, to whom He says: 'Behold, I am with you even unto the consummation of the world,' assuredly the Church would not even now be called His kingdom or the kingdom of heaven. For surely at this time that scribe is instructed in the kingdom of God who brings forth from his treasure things new and old, of whom we spoke above;

and from the Church those reapers are to gather the tares, which He permitted to grow together with the wheat until the harvest; expounding which He says: 'The harvest is the end of the world, but the reapers are the angels.' As therefore the tares are gathered and burned with fire, so shall it be in the consummation of the world; the Son of man shall send His angels, and they shall gather out of His kingdom all scandals. Is it out of that kingdom where there are no scandals? Out of this kingdom of His, then, which is here the Church, they shall be gathered. Likewise He says: 'Whosoever shall loose one of these least commandments and shall so teach men, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whosoever shall do and shall so teach, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.'

Both He says are in the kingdom of heaven — both he who does not do the commandments which he teaches (for this is to loose them: not to keep, not to do), and he who does and so teaches; but the former least, the latter great. And immediately following He adds: 'For I say unto you, that unless your righteousness shall abound above that of the scribes and Pharisees' — that is, above those who loose what they teach (for of the scribes and Pharisees He says in another place: 'For they say, and do not') — 'unless therefore your righteousness shall abound above these,' that is, that you loose not, but rather do what you teach, 'ye shall not enter,' He says, 'into the kingdom of heaven.'

In another way, therefore, the kingdom of heaven is to be understood where both are — namely he who looses what he teaches, and he who does; but the one least, the other great: in another way, however, is the kingdom of heaven spoken of, into which none enters save he who does. And by this, where both kinds are, there is the Church as it now is; but where that alone shall be, there is the Church as it shall then be, when the wicked shall not be in it. Therefore even now the Church is the kingdom of Christ and the kingdom of heaven. Accordingly His saints reign with Him even now, in another manner indeed than they shall then reign; nor yet do the tares reign with Him, although they grow in the Church with the wheat. For they reign with Him who do what the apostle says:

'If ye be risen with Christ, mind the things that are above, where Christ is, sitting at the right hand of God; seek the things that are above, not the things that are upon the earth'; of whom likewise He says that 'their conversation is in heaven.' Finally, they reign with Him who are in His kingdom in such a way that they themselves are also His kingdom. But in what way are they the kingdom of Christ who — to say nothing of other things — although they are there until at the end of the world all scandals be gathered out of His kingdom, yet there seek their own things, not the things of Jesus Christ?

Concerning, then, this kingdom of warfare, in which we still contend with the enemy and at times fight against resisting vices, while at other times we command them as they yield, until we come to that most peaceful kingdom where we shall reign without an enemy — and concerning this first resurrection, which is now — this book of Scripture speaks thus. For when it had said that the devil was bound for a thousand years, and afterward loosed for a short time, then, recapitulating what the Church does during these thousand years, or what is done in her, it says: 'And I saw thrones, and them that sat upon them, and judgment was given.' This must not be thought to be said of the last judgment; rather the thrones are to be understood as those of the rulers, and the rulers themselves, through whom the Church is now governed.

Now no better sense of 'judgment given' seems to be received than that which was said: 'Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatsoever ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.' Whence the Apostle says: 'For what have I to do to judge them also that are without? Do ye not judge them that are within?' 'And the souls,' he says, 'of them that were slain for the testimony of Jesus and for the word of God' — with which is to be understood what he is going to say afterward: 'They reigned with Jesus a thousand years' — namely the souls of the martyrs, not yet restored to their bodies. For the souls of the pious dead are not separated from the Church, which even now is the kingdom of Christ. Otherwise their memory would not be made at the altar of God in the communion of the body of Christ;

nor would it be of any profit to run into perils for his baptism, lest this life should end without it; nor to seek reconciliation, if perchance through penance or an evil conscience someone has been separated from that same body. For why are these things done, unless because the faithful, even when deceased, are his members? Therefore, although not yet with their bodies, yet already their souls reign with him, while these thousand years run their course. Whence in this same book it is read elsewhere: 'Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord. From henceforth, saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their labours; for their works follow them.' The Church, then, reigns with Christ now first of all among the living and the dead.

For on this account, as the Apostle says, 'Christ died, that he might be Lord both of the living and of the dead.' But he made mention only of the souls of the martyrs, because they above all reign, being dead who contended even unto death for the truth. Yet by the part we understand the whole, that the other dead also, who belong to the Church, which is the kingdom of Christ, are meant. As for what follows: 'And whosoever had not worshipped the beast nor his image, neither had received his inscription upon their forehead or in their hand' — we must take it of the living and the dead together.

What, moreover, this beast is, although it must be inquired into more carefully, yet it is not repugnant to right faith that the impious city itself be understood, and the people of the unbelieving who are opposed to the faithful people and to the city of God. His image, indeed, seems to me to be his counterfeit, namely in those men who, as it were, profess the faith and live unfaithfully. For they feign themselves to be what they are not, and are called Christians not by a true likeness but by a deceptive image. For to that same beast belong not only the open enemies of the name of Christ and of his most glorious city, but also the tares which are to be gathered out of his kingdom, which is the Church, at the end of the world.

And who are they who do not worship the beast nor his image, except those who do what the Apostle says: 'Be not unequally yoked together with unbelievers'? For to 'not worship' is not to consent, not to submit; 'neither to receive the inscription' — that is, the mark of the crime — 'upon the forehead' on account of profession, 'in the hand' on account of operation. Free, therefore, from these evils, whether still living in this mortal flesh or deceased, they reign with Christ even now, in a certain manner suited to this time, throughout this whole interval which is signified by the number of a thousand years. 'The rest of them,' it says, 'lived not.' For 'now is the hour when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and they that hear shall live.' The rest of them, therefore, shall not live. But as to what he added:

'until the thousand years should be finished' — this is to be understood that during that time they did not live, in which they ought to have lived, namely by passing over from death unto life. And therefore, when the day shall come in which the resurrection of the bodies also takes place, they shall come forth from their tombs not unto life but unto judgment; namely unto damnation, which is called the second death. For 'until the thousand years be finished,' whoever has not lived — that is, throughout this whole time in which the first resurrection is enacted — has not heard the voice of the Son of God and passed from death unto life, shall assuredly, in the second resurrection, which is of the flesh, pass over into the second death together with that very flesh. For it follows and says: 'This is the first resurrection.'

'Blessed and holy is he who has part in this first resurrection' — that is, who is a partaker of it. Now he is a partaker of it who not only revives from the death which is in sins, but also perseveres in that in which he has revived. 'On such,' it says, 'the second death has no power.' It has power, therefore, over the rest, of whom it said above: 'The rest of them lived not until the thousand years be finished'; since throughout that whole interval of time, which it calls a thousand years, however long each of them lived in the body, he did not revive from the death in which impiety held him, so as by thus reviving to become a partaker of the first resurrection, and so that over him the second death should have no power.

[X] There are some who think that a resurrection can be spoken of only of bodies, and therefore contend that this first resurrection too is to be in bodies. For, they say, whose it is to fall, theirs it is to rise again. But it is bodies that fall by dying; for indeed corpses (cadavera) are so named from falling (a cadendo). Therefore, they say, there cannot be a resurrection of souls, but of bodies. But what do they say against the Apostle, who calls it a resurrection? For it was according to the inner, not the outer man, that they had assuredly risen again, to whom he says: 'If ye be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above.' Which sense he set forth in other words elsewhere, saying: 'That, as Christ rose from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.'

Hence too is that: 'Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light.' But as to their saying that none can rise again except those who fall, and therefore their thinking that the resurrection pertains to bodies, not to souls, because it belongs to bodies to fall — why do they not hear: 'Depart not from him, lest ye fall,' and: 'To his own master he stands or falls,' and: 'Let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall'? For I think that this falling is to be guarded against in the soul, not in the body. If, therefore, resurrection belongs to those who fall, and souls also fall, then assuredly it must be confessed that souls too rise again. And as to the fact that, when he had said, 'On such the second death has no power,' he added and said: 'But they shall be priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign with him a thousand years':

this was assuredly not said of bishops and presbyters alone, who are now properly called priests in the Church; but just as we call all 'christs' (anointed) on account of the mystical chrism, so we call all priests, since they are members of the one Priest — of whom the Apostle Peter says: 'A holy people, a royal priesthood.' Certainly, though briefly and in passing, he intimated that Christ is God by saying: 'Priests of God and of Christ' — that is, of the Father and of the Son; although on account of the form of a servant, just as he became the Son of man, so also Christ became a priest for ever after the order of Melchizedek. On which matter we have spoken not once in this work.

[XI] 'And when the thousand years shall be finished,' it says, 'Satan shall be loosed from his prison, and shall go forth to seduce the nations which are in the four corners of the earth, Gog and Magog, and shall draw them into battle, whose number is as the sand of the sea.' To this end, therefore, will he then seduce them, that he may draw them into this war. For before, too, by the means he could, he was seducing them into many and various evils. But 'he shall go forth' is said, meaning 'he shall break forth into open persecution out of the lurking-places of his hatreds.' For this will be the last persecution, with the last judgment impending, which the holy Church throughout the whole world shall suffer — namely the whole city of Christ from the whole city of the devil, however great each of the two shall be upon the earth.

These nations, indeed, which it calls Gog and Magog, are not to be so understood as though they were certain barbarians settled in some part of the earth — whether those whom some suspect to be the Getae and Massagetae on account of the first letters of these names, or certain other foreigners separated from Roman jurisdiction. For it is signified that these are throughout the whole world, when it is said 'the nations which are in the four corners of the earth,' and it added that they are Gog and Magog. The interpretation of whose names we have found to be: Gog, 'a roof'; Magog, 'from the roof' — as it were, a house and he himself who comes forth from the house.

They are, therefore, the nations in which we understood the devil, as it were, to be shut up above as in an abyss, and he himself in a certain manner lifting himself up out of them and coming forth; so that they are the roof, he 'from the roof.' But if we refer both to the nations, and not one of these to them and the other to the devil, then: they themselves are the roof, because in them the ancient enemy is now shut up and in a certain way covered; and they themselves shall be 'from the roof' when out of concealment they shall break forth into open hatred. As to what it says: 'And they went up over the breadth of the earth and compassed the camp of the saints and the beloved city':

they are assuredly not signified to have come or to be about to come to one place, as though the camp of the saints and the beloved city were to be in some one place — since this is nothing other than the Church of Christ diffused throughout the whole world; and hence wherever it shall then be — which shall be among all nations, as is signified by the name 'breadth of the earth' — there shall be the camp of the saints, there shall be that city beloved of God; there shall it be encompassed by all its enemies (since they too shall be with it among all nations) by the monstrousness of that persecution — that is, it shall be pressed, urged, and hemmed into the straits of tribulation; yet it shall not desert its warfare, which is designated by the word 'camp.' [XII] But as to what it says: