There shall be for them month out of month and sabbath out of sabbath, as it were moon out of moon and rest out of rest—both of which they themselves shall be, when from these old and temporal shadows they shall pass into those new and everlasting lights. But in the punishments of the wicked, both the unquenchable fire and the most living worm have been expounded by various persons in various ways. For some have referred both to the body, some both to the soul; others, properly the fire to the body, but figuratively the worm to the soul—which seems the more credible. But now there is no time to dispute concerning this difference. For it is the last judgment, in which the separation of the good and the bad shall take place, that we have undertaken to fill this volume;
but concerning the rewards and punishments themselves, we must discourse more diligently at another time. [XXIII] Daniel prophesies thus concerning this last judgment, so as to foretell that Antichrist too shall come first, and he carries on his narrative down to the eternal kingdom of the saints. For when in a prophetic vision he had seen four beasts signifying four kingdoms, and that fourth kingdom overcome by a certain king who is recognized as Antichrist, and after these the eternal kingdom of the Son of man, who is understood to be Christ, he says: My spirit was troubled, I Daniel, in the midst of my body, and the visions of my head disturbed me. And I drew near, he says, to one of them that stood by, and sought the truth from him concerning all these things, and he told me the truth.
Then, what he heard from him of whom he had inquired concerning all these things, he relates thus, as if that one were expounding it to him: These four great beasts are four kingdoms which shall arise on the earth, which shall be taken away, and the saints of the Most High shall receive the kingdom and shall possess it unto the age and unto the age of ages. And I sought diligently, he says, concerning the fourth beast, which was different beyond every beast, exceedingly terrible—its teeth of iron and its claws of bronze, devouring and crushing and treading down the rest with its feet—and concerning its ten horns, which were on its head, and concerning the other, which came up and shook off three of the former ones;
that horn in which were eyes and a mouth speaking great things, and whose look was greater than the rest. I beheld, and that horn made war with the saints, and prevailed against them, until the Ancient of days came and gave the kingdom to the saints of the Most High; and the time arrived, and the saints obtained the kingdom. These things Daniel says he inquired about. Then, adding at once what he heard, he says: And he said (that is, the one of whom he had inquired answered and said): The fourth beast shall be a fourth kingdom on the earth, which shall prevail over all kingdoms; and it shall devour the whole earth, and shall tread it down and cut it in pieces. And its ten horns are ten kings that shall arise; and after them shall arise another, who shall surpass in evils all who were before him;
and he shall humble three kings, and shall speak words against the Most High, and shall wear out the saints of the Most High, and shall think to change the times and the law; and it shall be given into his hand until a time and times and half a time. And the judgment shall sit, and they shall remove his dominion to consume it and destroy it unto the end; and the kingdom and the power and the greatness of the kings who are under the whole heaven has been given to the saints of the Most High. And his kingdom is an everlasting kingdom; and all dominions shall serve and obey him. Thus far, he says, is the end of the discourse. I Daniel—my thoughts greatly troubled me, and my countenance was changed upon me, and I kept the word in my heart.
Those four kingdoms some have expounded as of the Assyrians, the Persians, the Macedonians, and the Romans. But how fittingly they have done this, those who desire to know may read the book of the presbyter Jerome on Daniel, written learnedly and carefully enough. Nevertheless, that the most savage kingdom of Antichrist against the Church, though it must be endured for a short space of time, until by the last judgment of God the saints receive the everlasting kingdom—of this, whoever reads these things even half-asleep is not permitted to doubt. For that 'a time and times and half a time' is one year and two and a half, and thereby three years and a half, becomes clear from the number of days set down afterwards, and is sometimes declared in Scripture by the number of months;
for 'times' (tempora) seem here to be said indefinitely in the Latin tongue; but they are said by the dual number, which the Latins do not have. But as the Greeks, so the Hebrews too are said to have this dual number. Thus, then, 'times' are said as if 'two times' were said. I confess indeed that I am somewhat afraid lest in the ten kings, whom Antichrist seems about to find as ten men, we should perhaps be deceived, and so he come unexpectedly, there not being so many kings in the Roman world. What if by this number ten the whole company of kings is signified, after whom he is to come—just as by a thousand, a hundred, a seven, a universality is often signified, and by various other numbers which it is not now necessary to recall?
In another place the same Daniel says: And there shall be, he says, a time of tribulation, such as was not from the time a nation was born upon the earth until that time. And in that time thy people shall all be saved, whosoever shall be found written in the book. And many of them that sleep in the mound of the earth shall arise; these unto life eternal, and these unto reproach and unto eternal confusion. And they that understand shall shine as the brightness of the firmament, and of the just many as the stars for ages and beyond. This passage is most like that evangelical saying, at least concerning the resurrection of the dead bodies. For those who are there said to be in the tombs are here those sleeping in the mound of the earth, or, as others have translated, in the dust of the earth;
and as there it is said 'they shall come forth,' so here 'they shall arise'; as there 'those who have done good, unto the resurrection of life, but those who have done evil, unto the resurrection of judgment'; so also in this place 'these unto life eternal, and these unto reproach and unto eternal confusion.' Nor let it be thought different that, whereas there it is set down 'all who are in the tombs,' here the prophet does not say 'all,' but 'many of those sleeping in the mound of the earth.' For Scripture sometimes puts 'many' for 'all.' Therefore also it was said to Abraham: I have made thee a father of many nations, to whom nevertheless in another place He says: In thy seed shall all nations be blessed. And concerning such a resurrection it is also said a little later to this same prophet Daniel: But go thou and rest;
for still there are days until the completion of the consummation, and thou shalt rest and shalt rise again in thy lot at the end of days. [XXIV] Many things are said concerning the last judgment in the Psalms, but most of them in passing and briefly. Yet this, which is there said most plainly concerning the end of this world, I shall by no means pass over in silence. In the beginning Thou, O Lord, didst found the earth, and the heavens are the works of Thy hands. They shall perish, but Thou remainest; and they all shall grow old as a garment, and as a covering Thou shalt change them, and they shall be changed; but Thou art the selfsame, and Thy years shall not fail.
What is it that Porphyry, while he praises the piety of the Hebrews—by which the great and true God, terrible even to the very deities, is worshipped by them—charges the Christians on this account with the greatest folly, even out of the oracles of his own gods, because they say that this world is to perish? Behold, in the writings of the piety of the Hebrews it is said to God, at whom, on the confession of so great a philosopher, even the deities themselves shudder: The heavens are the works of Thy hands; they shall perish. And can it be that, when the heavens shall perish, the world, of which those same heavens are the higher and safer part, shall not perish? If this sentence displeases Jove, by whose oracle—as, of weightier authority, this philosopher writes—the Christians are blamed in their belief:
why does he not likewise blame as folly the wisdom of the Hebrews, in whose most pious books it is found? Furthermore, if in that wisdom which pleases Porphyry so much that he proclaims it even by the voices of his own gods, it is read that the heavens are to perish: why is this deceit so utterly vain, that in the faith of the Christians they detest, whether among other things or above all others, this—that the world is believed in it to perish, which assuredly the heavens cannot perish unless it perish? And indeed in the sacred writings which are properly ours, not common to us with the Hebrews, that is, in the evangelical and apostolic books, it is read: The figure of this world passeth away; it is read: The world passeth away; it is read: Heaven and earth shall pass away.
But I think that 'passeth away,' 'passeth,' 'shall pass away' are said somewhat more mildly than 'shall perish.' In the epistle also of the apostle Peter, where the world which then was, flooded with water, is said to have perished, it is clear enough both what part of the world is signified by the whole, and in what sense it is said to have perished, and which are the heavens reserved and kept in store for fire unto the day of judgment and of the perdition of impious men; and in that which he says a little after: The day of the Lord shall come as a thief, in which the heavens shall pass away with a great rushing, and the elements shall be dissolved with burning heat, and the earth and the works that are in it shall be burned up; and then he adds: Seeing then that all these things shall perish, what manner of persons ought you to be?
Those heavens can be understood as about to perish which he said were reserved and kept in store for fire; and those elements can be understood as about to burn which subsist in this lowest, stormy, and turbulent part of the world, in which he said those same heavens were reserved—the higher heavens remaining safe and abiding in their integrity, in whose firmament the stars are set. For that too which is written, that the stars shall fall from heaven—besides that it can much more probably be understood also in another way—rather shows that those heavens shall abide, if indeed the stars are to fall from them; since either the expression is figurative, which is more credible, or it shall come to pass in this lower heaven—assuredly more marvellous than what now happens.
Whence also that Virgilian star, drawing a torch, ran with much light, and hid itself in the Idaean wood. But this which I have recalled from the psalm seems to leave none of the heavens which it did not say was to perish. For where it is said: The heavens are the works of Thy hands, they shall perish, as none of them is set apart from the work of God, so none of them is set apart from perdition. For they will not deign, out of the speech of the apostle Peter, whom they vehemently hate, to defend the piety of the Hebrews, approved by the oracles of their own gods, so as at least—lest the whole world be believed to perish—to take, from the whole, a part in that which was said:
They shall perish—as though only the lowest heavens shall perish, in the manner in which, in that apostolic epistle, a part is taken from the whole when the world is said to have perished by the flood, although only its lowest part with its heavens perished. But because, as I said, they will not deign to do this—lest they either approve the meaning of the apostle Peter, or concede to the final conflagration as much as we say the flood availed—they who contend that the whole human race can perish by no waters and no flames: it remains that they say that their gods praised the Hebrew wisdom for this reason, that they had not read this psalm. In the forty-ninth psalm also, it is understood to be said concerning the last judgment of God: God shall come manifest, our God, and shall not keep silence.
A fire shall burn before Him, and round about Him a mighty tempest. He shall call the heaven above and the earth to judge His people. Gather to Him His just ones, who order His covenant above sacrifices. This we understand of the Lord Jesus Christ, whom we hope is to come from heaven to judge the living and the dead. For He shall come manifest to judge justly between the just and the unjust, who first came hidden to be judged unjustly by the unjust.
He, I say, shall come manifest and shall not keep silence—that is, He shall appear evident in the voice of the judge, who, when He first came hidden, was silent before the judge, when as a sheep He was led to be sacrificed and as a lamb was without voice before the one shearing, as we read prophesied of Him through Isaiah and see fulfilled in the Gospel. But concerning the fire and the tempest, when we were treating of some such thing in the prophecy of Isaiah, we have already said how these things are to be understood. But as to what was said: He shall call the heaven above—since the saints and the just are rightly called heaven, this is doubtless what the apostle says: We shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet Christ in the air.
For according to the surface of the letter, how is the heaven called above, as though it could be anywhere but above? But that which was added: And the earth to judge His people—if only 'He shall call' is to be supplied, that is, 'He shall call also the earth,' and 'above' is not to be supplied, this seems to have this sense according to the right faith: that heaven is understood in those who shall judge with Him, and earth in those who are to be judged; so that 'He shall call the heaven above' we understand here not as 'He shall catch up into the air,' but 'He shall raise up into judicial seats.' That too can be understood, 'He shall call the heaven above,' as 'He shall call the angels in the supernal and lofty places, with whom He may descend to hold judgment';
'He shall call also the earth,' that is, men on the earth assuredly to be judged. But if both are to be supplied, when it is said 'and the earth,' that is, 'He shall call also above,' so that this be the sense: 'He shall call the heaven above, and the earth He shall call above'—I think nothing better can be understood than all who shall be caught up to meet Christ in the air, but 'heaven' said on account of the souls, 'earth' on account of the bodies. Furthermore, to judge His people—what is it but by judgment to separate the good from the bad, as sheep from goats? Then the turning of the discourse is made to the angels: Gather to Him His just ones; for assuredly so great a matter is to be accomplished through angelic ministry. But if we ask who are the just whom the angels shall gather to Him:
Those, he says, who order His covenant above sacrifices. This is the whole life of the just: to order the covenant of God above sacrifices. For either works of mercy are above sacrifices, that is, to be preferred to sacrifices, according to the sentence of God, who says: I desire mercy rather than sacrifice; or if 'above sacrifices' is understood as 'in sacrifices'—in the manner in which what is done upon the earth is said to be done assuredly in the earth—then assuredly the works of mercy themselves are sacrifices by which God is pleased, as I remember I discoursed in the tenth book of this work; in which works the just order the covenant of God, because they do these things on account of the promises which are contained in His New Testament.
Whence, when His just ones have been gathered to Him and set at His right hand, at the last judgment Christ shall assuredly say: 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—and the rest which are there brought forward concerning the good works of the good and their everlasting rewards, through the final sentence of the one judging. [XXV] The prophet Malachiel, or Malachi, who was also called an angel, who is by some believed to be also Esdras the priest, whose other writings were received into the canon (for Jerome says this to be the opinion of the Hebrews concerning him), prophesies the last judgment, saying: Behold, He comes, saith the Lord Almighty;
and who shall endure the day of His entrance, or who shall be able to bear it so as to look upon Him? For He enters as the fire of a refining furnace and as the herb of the fullers; and He shall sit refining and cleansing as silver and as gold, and He shall cleanse the sons of Levi, and shall pour them out as gold and silver; and they shall be to the Lord offering sacrifices in righteousness, and the sacrifice of Judah and Jerusalem shall please the Lord, as in the days of old and as in the former years.
And I will draw near to you in judgment, and I will be a swift witness against the sorcerers and against the adulterers and against those who swear falsely in my name, and who defraud the hired laborers of their wages and oppress widows by power and strike the fatherless and pervert the judgment of the stranger, and who do not fear me, saith the Lord Almighty; for I am the Lord your God, and I change not. From the things which have been said it seems to appear more evidently that in that judgment there shall be certain purgatorial punishments for certain persons. For where it is said: Who shall endure the day of His entrance, or who shall be able to bear it so as to look upon Him? For He enters as the fire of a refining furnace and as the herb of the fullers;
and He shall sit refining and cleansing as silver and as gold, and shall cleanse the sons of Levi and pour them out as gold and silver: what else is to be understood? Isaiah too says something of the same kind: The Lord shall wash away the filth of the sons and daughters of Sion, and shall purge out the blood from the midst of them by the spirit of judgment and by the spirit of burning. Unless perhaps we must say that they are thus cleansed from their filth and in a manner refined, when the wicked are separated from them by the penal judgment, so that the segregation and damnation of such persons is the purgation of these, because they shall live henceforth without the admixture of such men. But when he says: And He shall cleanse the sons of Levi and pour them out as gold and silver;
and they shall be to the Lord offering sacrifices in righteousness, and the sacrifice of Judah and Jerusalem shall please the Lord—assuredly He shows that those very persons who shall be cleansed are thereafter to please the Lord in the sacrifices of righteousness, and thus they themselves shall be cleansed from their own unrighteousness, in which they displeased the Lord. Moreover, in full and perfect righteousness, when they have been cleansed, they themselves shall be the sacrifices. For what more acceptable do such offer to God than their very selves? But this question concerning purgatorial punishments, that it may be treated more diligently, is to be deferred to another time. But by the sons of Levi and Judah and Jerusalem itself we ought to understand the Church of God, gathered not only from the Hebrews but also from other nations;
and not such as it now is, where, if we shall say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us; but such as it shall then be, purged as a threshing-floor by winnowing, so purged by the last judgment—those also being cleansed by fire for whom such cleansing is necessary—so that there shall be absolutely none who offers sacrifice for his own sins. For all who so offer are assuredly in sins, for the remission of which they offer, so that when they have offered and it has been accepted by God, then they may be remitted. [XXVI] But God, wishing to show that His city shall not then be in this custom, said that the sons of Levi would offer sacrifices in righteousness; therefore not in sin, and thereby not for sin.
Whence it can be understood, in that which he added following and said: And the sacrifice of Judah and Jerusalem shall please the Lord, as in the days of old and as in the former years, that the Jews vainly promise themselves the past times of their sacrifices according to the law of the Old Testament. For then they offered victims not in righteousness, but in sins, since they offered chiefly and first of all for sins, to such a degree that the priest himself—whom we must assuredly believe to have been more righteous than the rest—according to God's command used to offer first for his own sins, then for the people's. Wherefore we must explain in what sense that is to be taken which was said: As in the days of old and as in the former years.
Perhaps it recalls that time when the first human beings were in paradise. For then, pure and whole, free from all filth and stain of sin, they offered themselves to God as most spotless sacrifices; but from the time when, on account of the transgression committed, they were dismissed thence and human nature was condemned in them, then—except for the one Mediator, and after the laver of regeneration for whatever infants are as yet such—no one is clean from filth, as it is written, not even the infant whose life upon the earth is of a single day. But if it be answered that even those may be rightly said to offer sacrifices in righteousness who offer in faith (for the just man lives by faith; although he deceives himself if he says he has no sin, and therefore let him not say that he lives by faith):
will anyone say that this time of faith is to be made equal to that end, when by the fire of the last judgment those shall be cleansed who are to offer sacrifices in righteousness? And thereby, since after such cleansing it must be believed that the just shall have no sin, assuredly that time, as far as pertains to not having sin, is to be compared to no time, except when the first human beings lived in paradise before the transgression in most innocent felicity. Rightly therefore is it understood to have been signified by this, when it was said: As in the days of old and as in the former years.
For through Isaiah too, after the new heaven and the new earth had been promised, among the other things which he there sets forth concerning the blessedness of the saints through allegories and riddles—to which the care of avoiding prolixity has forbidden us to render a fitting exposition—he says: According to the days of the tree of life shall be the days of my people. But who has touched the sacred writings and is ignorant of where God planted the tree of life, from whose food those human beings were separated when their own iniquity cast them out of paradise, and around which same tree a fiery and terrible guard was set?
But if anyone contends that those days of the tree of life which the prophet Isaiah recalled are these days of the Church of Christ which are now being lived, and that Christ Himself was prophetically called the tree of life, because He is the very Wisdom of God, of which Solomon says: She is a tree of life to all who embrace her; and that those first human beings passed no years in paradise, whence they were so quickly cast out that they begot no son there, and therefore that that time cannot be understood in what was said, As in the days of old and as in the former years: this question I pass over, lest I be compelled—which would be a lengthy matter—to discuss everything, so that some manifested truth may confirm one or other of these views.
For indeed I see another meaning, lest we believe that the days of old and the former years of carnal sacrifices were promised to us as a great gift through the prophet. For those victims of the old law were commanded to be offered, in every kind of cattle, unblemished and without any fault whatever, and they signified holy men, such as Christ alone was found to be, without any sin at all.
Therefore, since after the judgment, when those who are worthy of such a cleansing shall have been purified even by fire, no sin whatever will be found in all the saints, and thus they will offer themselves in righteousness so that such sacrifices shall in every way be immaculate and without any blemish, they will surely be 'as in the days of old, and as in former years,' when in the shadow of this thing to come the purest sacrifices were offered. For this will then be the purity in the immortal flesh and mind of the saints, which was prefigured in the bodies of those sacrificial victims. Then, on account of those who are worthy not of cleansing but of condemnation:
'And I will draw near to you in judgment,' He says, 'and I will be a swift witness against sorcerers and against adulterers'—and after having enumerated the rest of these damnable crimes, He added: 'For I am the Lord your God, and I change not'; as though He were saying: 'Though your guilt has changed you for the worse and My grace for the better, I do not change.' He says He will be a witness, because in His judgment He has no need of witnesses; and a swift one, either because He is to come suddenly, and the judgment will be exceedingly swift by His very unexpected arrival, which seemed most delayed; or because He will convict the very consciences without any lengthy discourse. For, as it is written, 'in the thoughts of the ungodly there shall be examination'; and the Apostle:
'Their thoughts,' he says, 'accusing or even excusing one another, in the day when God shall judge the secrets of men, according to my gospel, through Jesus Christ.' In this way too, then, the Lord is to be understood as a swift witness to come, when without delay He will recall to memory that whereby He may convict and punish the conscience. That passage also, which for another purpose I set down from this same prophet in the eighteenth book, pertains to the last judgment, where He says: 'They shall be Mine, says the Lord Almighty, in the day when I make them My possession; and I will choose them as a man chooses his son who serves him; and I will turn again, and you shall see the difference between the righteous and the unrighteous, and between him who serves God and him who serves Him not.'
'For behold, the day comes, burning like an oven, and it shall consume them; and all the aliens and all who work iniquity shall be stubble, and the day that comes shall set them ablaze, says the Lord Almighty, and there shall not be left in them root nor branch. But to you who fear My name shall arise the Sun of righteousness, and healing in His wings; and you shall go forth and leap like calves loosed from their bonds; and you shall tread down the wicked, and they shall be ashes under your feet, says the Lord Almighty.'
This distinction of rewards and punishments, separating the righteous from the unrighteous—which is not discerned under this sun in the vanity of this life, but which will shine forth under that Sun of righteousness in the manifestation of that life—then indeed there will be a judgment such as never was before. As for what the same prophet adds: 'Remember the law of Moses My servant, which I commanded him in Horeb for all Israel, both the precepts and the judgments,' he opportunely brings this to mind after declaring how great a distinction was to come between those who keep the law and those who despise it; and at the same time that they might learn to understand the law spiritually and find in it Christ, through whom, as judge, that very separation between the good and the evil is to be made. For not in vain did the same Lord say to the Jews: