As we promised in the immediately preceding book, this last book of the whole work shall contain the discussion of the eternal blessedness of the City of God — which has received the name of eternity, not because of any length of ages through many centuries that must nevertheless at some time be ended, but, as it is written in the Gospel, of His kingdom there shall be no end; nor in such a way that, some passing away by dying and others succeeding by being born, an appearance of perpetuity should show itself in it, as in a tree which is clothed with perennial foliage, where the same greenness seems to remain while, as the leaves fall and drop, others which are born from time to time preserve the aspect of shadiness;
but all the citizens in it shall be immortal, men also attaining that which the holy angels never lost. This the most omnipotent God, its Founder, shall accomplish. For He has promised, and He cannot lie; and to make faith firm on this point as well, He has already done many of His works both unpromised and promised. For He it is who in the beginning founded the world, full of all good things both visible and intelligible, in which He established nothing better than the spirits to whom He gave intelligence and rendered capable and fit for His contemplation and for Himself, and bound them together in one fellowship, which we call the holy and heavenly City, in which the reality by which they are sustained and made blessed is God Himself, as it were their common life and sustenance;
who granted to that same intellectual nature a free will of such a kind that, if it willed, it might forsake God — that is, its own blessedness — with misery immediately to follow; who, though He foreknew that certain angels, through the pride by which they would wish to suffice of themselves for a blessed life, would become deserters of so great a good, did not take from them this power, judging it more mighty and better even to bring good out of evils than not to permit evils to be at all (which would be no evils whatever, unless a mutable nature — though good, and instituted by the supreme God and immutable good, who created all good things — had by sinning made these evils for itself; by which very sin of hers she is convicted, herself being the witness, to have been created a good nature;
for unless she too were a great good — though not equal to her Creator — surely the forsaking of God, as of her own light, could not be her evil; for just as blindness of the eye is a defect, and this very fact indicates that the eye was created for seeing the light, and thereby even by its own defect it is shown that this member, above the other members, is capable of light — for there would be no other cause for its being a defect to lack light — so a nature which enjoyed God teaches, even by that very defect whereby it is miserable because it does not enjoy God, that it was instituted the best);
who bound the voluntary fall of the angels by the most just penalty of everlasting unhappiness, and to the rest who remained in that supreme good, that they might be certain of their own remaining without end, He gave, as it were, the reward of that very remaining; who made man also himself upright with the same free will, an earthly animal indeed, yet worthy of heaven if he should cleave to his Author, with misery likewise to follow if he should forsake Him — a misery such as befitted a nature of this kind (whom likewise, though He foreknew that he would sin by transgression of God's law through the forsaking of God, He did not take from him the power of free will, foreseeing at the same time what good He Himself would make out of his evil);
who out of the mortal progeny justly and deservedly condemned gathers by His grace so great a people, that from it He may supply and restore the part of the angels which fell, and so that beloved and heavenly City may not be defrauded of the number of its citizens, but may perhaps even rejoice in a yet more abundant one. [II] For many things are indeed done by the wicked contrary to the will of God; but of so great is His wisdom and so great His power, that toward those outcomes or ends which He Himself has foreknown to be good and just, all things tend which seem contrary to His will. And therefore, when God is said to change His will — so that, for example, to those to whom He was gentle He is rendered angry — it is rather they than He that are changed, and they find Him in a certain manner changed in the things which they suffer;
just as the sun is changed for injured eyes, and in a certain manner becomes harsh instead of mild, and troublesome instead of delightful, while it remains in itself the same as it was. The will of God is also so called which He works in the hearts of those who obey His commandments, concerning which the Apostle says: For it is God who works in you both to will; just as the righteousness of God is spoken of not only as that by which He Himself is righteous, but also as that which He works in the man who is justified by Him. So too His law is called that which is rather men's, but given by Him; for surely they were men to whom Jesus said: In your law it is written, whereas in another place we read: The law of his God is in his heart.
According to this will, which God works in men, He is even said to will that which He Himself does not will, but makes His own people to will it; just as He is said to have known that which He brought about that it should be known by those to whom it was unknown. For when the Apostle says: But now, knowing God, or rather being known of God, it is not lawful for us to believe that God then knew them, whom He had foreknown before the foundation of the world; but He is said to have then known that which He then brought about that it should be known. Of these modes of expression I recall having already disputed in the preceding books also. According to this will, then, by which we say that God wills that which He causes others to will, from whom things to come are hidden, He wills many things and does them not.
For His saints will many things to be done, being inspired by Him with a holy will, and they are not done; as they pray for certain persons piously and holily, and He does not do what they pray for, though He Himself has wrought this will of praying in them by His Holy Spirit. And therefore, when the saints will and pray according to God that anyone should be saved, we can in that mode of expression say: "God wills and does not do it"; so that we say that He wills, who makes these to will. But according to that will of His, which is coeternal with His foreknowledge, assuredly in heaven and on earth whatsoever He has willed — not only things past or present, but even things future — He has already done.
But before the time comes at which He willed that it should come to pass — which before all ages He foreknew and disposed — we say: "It will be when God wills"; but if we are ignorant not only of the time at which it is to be, but even whether it is to be, we say: "It will be, if God wills" — not because God will then have a new will which He did not have, but because that which from eternity has been prepared in His immutable will shall then be. [III] Wherefore, to pass over so many other things, just as we now see fulfilled in Christ what He promised to Abraham, saying: In your seed shall all nations be blessed, so what He promised to that same seed of his shall be fulfilled, where He says through the prophet: They that were in the tombs shall rise again; and what He says:
There shall be a new heaven and a new earth, and they shall not be mindful of the former things, nor shall it come up into their heart, but they shall find joy and exultation in it. Behold, I will make Jerusalem an exultation, and My people a joy; and I will exult in Jerusalem and rejoice in My people, and the voice of weeping shall no more be heard in her. And what through another prophet He foretold, saying to that same prophet: In that time your people shall all be saved, every one that shall be found written in the book; and many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth (or, as some have interpreted it, in the mound) shall rise up, these to eternal life and these to reproach and to eternal confusion. And in another place through the same prophet:
The saints of the Most High shall receive the kingdom, and shall possess it unto the age and unto the age of ages; and a little after: His kingdom, He says, is an everlasting kingdom. And the other things pertaining to this which I set down in the twentieth book — or which I did not set down, and yet are written in those same Scriptures — these too shall come to pass, just as those did which the unbelievers did not think would come. For the same God promised both, and foretold that both would come to pass — the God whom the deities of the pagans dread, even by the testimony of Porphyry, the most noble of the pagan philosophers.
[IV] But, forsooth, men learned and wise, against the force of so great an authority — which, as it foretold so long beforehand, has turned every kind of men to this belief and hope — seem to themselves to argue acutely against the resurrection of bodies, and to say what is recorded by Cicero in the third book On the Republic. For when he was asserting that Hercules and Romulus had been made gods out of men, he says: "Whose bodies were not raised up into heaven; for nature would not suffer that which is of earth to abide anywhere but in earth." This is the great reasoning of the wise, whose thoughts the Lord knows, that they are vain.
For if we were souls only — that is, spirits without any body — and, dwelling in heaven, knew nothing of earthly animals, and it were told us that it should come to pass that we should be bound by some wondrous bond to be joined to earthly bodies for animating them: would we not argue much more forcefully, refusing to believe it, and say that nature does not suffer that an incorporeal thing should be bound by a bodily tie? And yet the earth is full of living souls quickened by these earthly members, connected and entwined with them in a marvelous manner. Why then, at the will of the same God who made this animal, shall an earthly body not be able to be raised into a heavenly body, if a soul, more excellent than every body — and therefore than a heavenly body also — could be bound to an earthly body?
Or could so tiny a particle of earth hold within itself something better than a heavenly body, so that it should have sense and life, and yet heaven will disdain to receive it when it feels and lives, or, having received it, will not be able to sustain it — though it perceives and lives by that better reality which is superior to every heavenly body? But it does not now come to pass, because it is not yet the time at which He willed that it should come to pass, who has done this thing which, by our seeing it, has already become cheap, far more marvelously than that which is not believed by these men.
For why do we not more vehemently marvel that incorporeal souls, superior to a heavenly body, are bound to earthly bodies, than that bodies, though earthly, are exalted to seats which, though heavenly, are nevertheless corporeal — unless it be that we have grown accustomed to seeing the former and are this ourselves, whereas we are not yet the latter, nor have we ever yet seen it? For assuredly, when consulted with sober reason, it is found to be a work of more marvelous divinity in a certain manner to weave corporeal things onto incorporeal, than to couple bodies with bodies, though diverse — because the one are heavenly, the other earthly — yet bodies and bodies. [V] But this may once have been incredible: behold, now the world too has believed that a turbid, smoky, corruptible, and corrupting mass...
Yet it does not corrupt the mountains in which it ceaselessly boils, nor the caverns of the earth. But be it so: let that fire be unlike this one, so as to suit earthly habitations — why then are they unwilling that we should believe that the nature of earthly bodies shall at some time be made incorruptible and fit for heaven, just as now corruptible fire is fitting for these earthly regions? They bring forward, therefore, nothing from the weights and order of the elements whereby they might prescribe to the omnipotent God that He should not make our bodies such that they can dwell even in heaven. [XII] But most scrupulously they inquire and are wont thus, by inquiring, to mock the faith by which we believe that the flesh shall rise again: whether aborted fetuses shall rise; and since the Lord says:
Amen, I say to you, a hair of your head shall not perish — whether the stature and strength shall be equal for all, or the sizes of bodies shall be diverse. For if there shall be equality of bodies, whence shall those aborted ones have that which they did not have here in bodily mass, if they too shall rise? Or if they shall not rise, because they were not even born but poured out, they raise the same question about little children: whence shall accrue to them the measure of body which we now see to have been lacking, since they die at this age? For we shall not say that those shall not rise who are capable not only of generation but also of regeneration. Then they ask, of what manner that very equality shall be.
For if all shall be as large and as tall as were any who were here the largest and tallest, then not only about little children but about very many they ask whence shall accrue to them that which was here lacking, if each receives that which he had here; but if — as the Apostle says — we shall all meet in the measure of the age of the fullness of Christ, and that other saying: Whom He predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, is so to be understood that the stature and measure of the body of all who shall be in His kingdom is to be that of the body of Christ, they say: "From many there will have to be subtracted much of the greatness and length of body; and where then shall be:
A hair of your head shall not perish — where shall that stand, if of the very quantity of the body so much shall perish?" Although about the hairs themselves it might also be inquired whether whatever fell off to those cutting them shall return. But if it is to return, who would not shudder at that deformity? For this seems necessarily to follow about the nails also, that there return as much as the tending of the body cut away. And where then shall be the comeliness, which certainly ought to be greater in that immortality than it could be amid this corruption? But if it shall not return, then it will perish. How then, they say, shall a hair of the head not perish? About leanness too, or fatness, they dispute in like manner. For if all shall be equal, surely some shall not be lean, others fat.
Something, therefore, will be added to some, and diminished from others; and thereby not what was is to be received, but somewhere there is to be added what was not, and somewhere lost what was. Concerning also the very corruptions and dissolutions of dead bodies — since one part is turned into dust, another is exhaled into the air, some are consumed by beasts, some by fire, and some perish by shipwreck or by waters of whatever kind, in such a way that rottenness dissolves their flesh into moisture — they are not a little disturbed, and they do not believe that all these things can be gathered again into flesh and restored to integrity.
They pursue also every kind of foulness and defects, whether these befall or are inborn, where with horror and mockery they recall even monstrous births, and they demand what the resurrection of each deformity shall be. For if we shall say that nothing of the sort returns into the body of man, they presume that they will confute our answer concerning the marks of the wounds with which we proclaim that the Lord Christ rose again. But amid all these, that most difficult question is proposed: into whose flesh shall the flesh return, wherewith the body of another man, feeding on human entrails, is nourished when hunger compels him. For it has been turned into the flesh of him who lived on such nourishment, and it supplied the losses which leanness had shown.
Whether, therefore, it shall return to that man whose flesh it first was, or rather to him whose it afterward became, they inquire to this end: that they may mock the faith of the resurrection, and thus assert that human souls either — alternating, as Plato held — are promised true miseries and false blessednesses, or, after many revolutions likewise through diverse bodies, do at last, as Porphyry held, put an end to their miseries and never return to them; yet not by having an immortal body, but by fleeing every body. [XIII] To these things, then, which by the party opposed to them seem to me, as I set them forth, to be objected, let me reply, the mercy of God bringing aid to my efforts.
As to aborted fetuses, which, having already lived in the womb, there died, I dare neither to affirm nor to deny that they shall rise again; although I do not see how the resurrection of the dead should not pertain to them, if they are not excluded from the number of the dead. For either not all the dead shall rise, and there shall be certain human souls forever without the bodies which — though within the maternal viscera — they bore; or, if all human souls shall receive their rising bodies which they had, wherever they left them living and dying, I do not find how I may say that the resurrection of the dead does not pertain to any dead whatsoever, even those who died within their mothers' wombs.
But whichever of these each may hold concerning them, what we shall have said about infants already born must be understood of these also, if they shall rise. [XIV] What, then, shall we say about infants, except that they shall not rise in that smallness of body in which they died, but shall receive by the marvelous and most swift work of God that which would have accrued to them more slowly in time? For in that saying of the Lord, where He says: A hair of your head shall not perish, it is said that what was shall not be lacking; it is not, however, denied that what was lacking shall be present. But there was lacking to the dead infant the perfect quantity of his body;
for to a perfect infant there is certainly lacking the perfection of bodily magnitude, which, when it shall have accrued, the stature can no longer be taller. This measure of perfection all have in such a way that they are conceived and born with it; but they have it in principle, not in mass; just as all the members themselves are already latent in the seed, though in those already born some are still lacking, such as teeth and the like. In which principle, implanted in the corporeal matter of each one, that which is not yet — nay rather, which lies hidden — seems in a certain manner, so to speak, to be already threaded in, and by the passage of time will be, or rather will appear. In this principle, therefore, the infant is already short or tall, who is destined to be short or tall.
According to this principle, assuredly, in the resurrection of the body we do not fear any losses of the body; for even if there were to be an equality of all, so that all should attain to gigantic magnitudes, lest those who were the greatest should have something less in stature which would, against the sentence of Christ — who said that not even a hair of the head would perish — perish for them, how could there be lacking to the Creator (who created all things out of nothing) that from which He might add what the wondrous Artificer knew must be added?
[XV] But Christ, assuredly, rose again in that measure of body in which He died; nor is it lawful to say that, when the time of the resurrection of all shall have come, there shall accrue to His body that magnitude which He did not have when He appeared in it to the disciples, in that form in which He was known to them, so that He might be made equal to the very tallest. But if we should say that even everyone's larger bodies are to be reduced to the measure of the Lord's body, then from the bodies of many the greater part shall perish, whereas He Himself promised that not even a hair should perish.
It remains, therefore, that each should receive his own measure — either that which he had in youth, even if he died an old man, or that which he would have had, if he died before his time; and that saying which the Apostle mentioned about the measure of the age of the fullness of Christ we should understand either to have been said with reference to something else — that is, that to that Head, by the accession of the perfection of all the members among Christian peoples, the measure of His age may be completed — or, if this was said of the resurrection of bodies, we should take it as said in such a way that the bodies of the dead shall rise neither below nor beyond the youthful form, but in that age and vigor to which we know Christ to have here attained (for even the most learned men of this world have defined youth to be about thirty years;
which, when it has been bounded by its own span, thereafter the man begins to decline into the losses of a graver and senile age); and therefore it was not said in the measure of the body or in the measure of stature, but in the measure of the age of the fullness of Christ. [XVI] That saying also, that the predestined are made conformed to the image of the Son of God, can be understood according to the inner man as well (whence He says to us in another place: Be not conformed to this world, but be reformed in the newness of your mind; where, therefore, we are reformed, that we be not conformed to this world, there we are conformed to the Son of God); it can also be taken thus, that just as He became conformed to us in mortality, so we may be made conformed to Him in immortality;
which indeed pertains also to the very resurrection of bodies. But if in these words too we are admonished as to what form the bodies shall rise in, then, just as that measure, so also this conformation is to be understood not of quantity but of age. All shall therefore rise as great in body as they were, or would have been, in the age of youth; although it will do no harm even if there be the form of an infantile or senile body, where there shall remain no infirmity either of mind or of the body itself. Whence also, if anyone contends that each shall rise in that measure of body in which he died, we need not contend with him in laborious contradiction. [XVII] Some, on account of what is said:
Until we all meet into the unity of the faith, into a perfect man, into the measure of the age of the fullness of Christ, and: Conformed to the image of the Son of God, believe that women shall not rise in the female sex, but say that all shall rise in the male sex, since God made man alone from the mud, and woman from man. But those seem to me to be wiser who do not doubt that both sexes shall rise. For there will be no lust there, which is the cause of shame. For before they sinned, they were naked, and the man and the woman were not ashamed. From those bodies, therefore, the defects shall be taken away, but the nature shall be preserved. Now the female sex is not a defect, but a nature — which then indeed shall be immune both from intercourse and from childbearing;
There will nevertheless be female members, not adapted to their old use, but to a new comeliness, by which the lust of the beholder will not be enticed—for there will be none—but the wisdom and clemency of God will be praised, who both made what did not exist and freed from corruption what He had made. For just as at the beginning of the human race a rib was drawn from the side of the sleeping man that woman might be formed, so already then it was fitting that by such a deed Christ and the Church should be prophesied. Indeed, that sleep of the man was the death of Christ, whose side, as He hung lifeless upon the cross, was pierced by a lance, and thence flowed blood and water; and these we know to be the sacraments by which the Church is built up. For Scripture used this very word, where it is not read that God 'formed' or 'fashioned' her, but:
'He built her into a woman'; whence also the Apostle speaks of the building up of the body of Christ, which is the Church. Woman, therefore, is God's creature just as man is; but that she should be made from man, unity was commended; and that she should be made in that manner, Christ, as has been said, and the Church were prefigured. He, then, who instituted both sexes will also restore both. Finally, Jesus Himself, when questioned by the Sadducees—who denied the resurrection—as to whose wife she would be, the woman whom the seven brothers had each in turn possessed, when each of them wished, as the Law had commanded, to raise up seed for the deceased, said: 'You err, not knowing the Scriptures nor the power of God'; and although there was occasion for Him to say:
'For she about whom you question me will herself also be a man, not a woman'—He did not say this, but said: 'For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven,' being indeed equal to the angels in immortality and felicity, not in flesh; just as not in resurrection either, which the angels did not need, since they could not even die. The Lord therefore denied that there would be marriages in the resurrection, not that there would be women; and He denied it there, where such a question was being raised, so that He might have dissolved it more swiftly and easily by denying the female sex, had He foreknown that it would not exist there; indeed He rather affirmed that it would exist by saying: 'They shall not marry'—which pertains to women—'nor take wives'—which pertains to men.
There will be, therefore, those who here are wont either to be given in marriage or to take wives; but there they will not do so. [XVIII] Accordingly, as to what the Apostle says, that we shall all meet 'unto a perfect man,' we ought to consider the whole context of that very passage, which runs thus: 'He who descended,' he says, 'is the same also who ascended above all the heavens, that He might fill all things. And He Himself gave some indeed as apostles, some as prophets, some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers, for the perfecting of the saints, unto the work of the ministry, unto the building up of the body of Christ, until we all meet in the unity of faith and the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the age of the fullness of Christ.'
'that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, in cunning craftiness whereby they lie in wait to deceive; but, doing the truth in charity, may grow up in Him in all things, who is the head, Christ; from whom the whole body, joined together and compacted by every joint of supply, according to the working in the measure of each single part, makes increase of the body unto the building up of itself in charity.' Behold who is the perfect man: the head and the body, which consists of all its members, which shall be completed in their own time, yet daily are added to that same body while the Church is being built up, to which it is said: 'You are the body of Christ and members'; and elsewhere:
'For His body's sake,' he says, 'which is the Church'; and again elsewhere: 'We being many are one bread, one body.' Concerning the building up of this body it was said here too: 'For the perfecting of the saints, unto the work of the ministry, unto the building up of the body of Christ,' and then follows that with which we are now concerned: 'Until we all meet in the unity of faith and the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the age of the fullness of Christ,' and so on; until he might show in what body that same measure was to be understood, saying: 'Let us grow up in Him in all things, who is the head, Christ, from whom the whole body, joined together and compacted by every joint of supply, according to the working in the measure of each single part.'
As, therefore, there is a measure of each single part, so of the whole body, which consists of all its parts, there is assuredly a measure of fullness, concerning which it was said: 'Unto the measure of the age of the fullness of Christ.' This fullness he also called to mind in that place where he says of Christ: 'And Him He gave as head over all things to the Church, which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all.' But if this were to be referred to the form of the resurrection, in which each one will be, what would hinder us, when 'man' is named, from understanding woman also, so that we take 'man' as put for 'human being'? Just as in that which is said, 'Blessed is the man that fears the Lord,' there too are surely included the women who fear the Lord.
[XIX] What now shall I answer concerning hair and nails? Once it has been understood that nothing shall perish from the body in such a way that anything be deformed in the body, it is at the same time understood that those things which would have made a deformed excess will accrue to the mass itself, not to the places in which the form of the members would be made unsightly. Just as if a vessel were made from clay, which, reduced again to the same clay, were made wholly anew from the whole, it would not be necessary that that part of the clay which had been in the handle should return to the handle, or that which had made the bottom should again make the bottom—provided only that the whole returned into the whole, that is, that all that clay returned into the whole vessel with no part of itself lost.
Wherefore, if the hairs so often shorn and the nails so often clipped were to return to their places in an unsightly manner, they shall not return thus; nor yet shall they perish for anyone rising again, since they shall be turned into the same flesh—into whatever place of the body they may hold there—by a changing of the matter, with the fitting proportion of the parts preserved. And yet what the Lord says, 'A hair of your head shall not perish,' may much more fitly be understood as spoken not of the length but of the number of the hairs; whence He also says elsewhere: 'The very hairs of your head are all numbered.' Nor would I say this because I think that anything will perish from any body which naturally belonged to it;
but that what had been born deformed (assuredly for no other reason than that hence too might be shown how penal this mortal condition is) shall so return that, with the integrity of its substance preserved, the deformity shall perish. For if a human craftsman can melt down a statue which for some reason he had made deformed, and render it most beautiful, so that nothing of the substance but only the deformity perishes; and if anything in that former figure stood out unbecomingly and did not agree with the symmetry of the parts, he does not cut off and separate it from the whole from which he had made it, but so distributes and mingles it throughout the whole that he neither makes any ugliness nor diminishes the quantity: what is to be thought of the almighty Craftsman?
Shall He, then, not be able so to take away and destroy any deformities of human bodies—not only the usual ones, but even those rare and monstrous ones which suit this wretched life but are abhorrent to that future felicity of the saints—so that whatever of them produce the unseemly, though natural, excrescences of bodily substance may be removed with no diminution of it? And by this the lean and the fat have nothing to fear, lest there too they be such as, if they could, they would not have wished to be even here. For all beauty of body is a harmony of the parts with a certain agreeableness of color. But where there is no harmony of parts, something offends either because it is distorted, or because it is too little, or because it is too much.
Accordingly, there will be no deformity, such as is produced by the incongruity of the parts, where both what is distorted shall be corrected, and what is less than is fitting shall be supplied from whence the Creator knows, and what is more than is fitting shall be taken away, with the integrity of the matter preserved. Moreover, how great will be the agreeableness of color, where the just shall shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father! Which brightness in the body of Christ, when He rose again, is to be believed to have been hidden from the eyes of the disciples rather than to have been lacking. For human and infirm sight could not have borne it, at the time when He had to be gazed upon by His own in such a way that He could be recognized.
To which end it also served that He showed to those who touched Him the scars of His wounds, and that He even took food and drink, not from need of nourishment, but by that power whereby He was able to do this also. But when something is not seen, although present, by those to whom other things which are equally present are seen—as we say that that brightness was present unseen by those to whom other things were seen—it is called 'aorasia' in Greek, which our translators, unable to render it in Latin, in the book of Genesis interpreted as 'blindness.' For the Sodomites suffered this, when they sought the door of the righteous man and could not find it.
For if it had been the blindness by which it comes about that nothing can be seen, they would have sought not the door by which to enter, but guides for the way by whom they might be led away from there. But somehow we are so affected by love of the blessed martyrs that we would wish, in that kingdom, to see in their bodies the scars of the wounds which they bore for the name of Christ; and perhaps we shall see them. For in them there will be no deformity, but dignity; and a certain beauty will shine forth—though in the body, yet not of the body but of virtue. Nor, however, if some members have been cut off and taken from the martyrs, shall they on that account be without those very members in the resurrection of the dead, to whom it was said: 'A hair of your head shall not perish.'
But if it will be seemly in that new age that the marks of glorious wounds be seen in that immortal flesh, then where the members were struck or cut so as to be severed, there the scars will appear—yet with those same members restored, not lost. Although, therefore, all the defects which befell the body will then not exist, nevertheless the marks of virtue are not to be reckoned or called defects. [XX] But far be it that, for the raising up of bodies and their restoration to life, the omnipotence of the Creator should not be able to recall all that either beasts or fire have consumed, or that has collapsed into dust or ash, or been dissolved into moisture, or exhaled into the air.
Far be it that any recess or secret place of nature should so receive anything withdrawn from our senses that it should either escape the knowledge or elude the power of the Creator of all things. Cicero, that great authority among the pagans themselves, wishing to define God as best he could, says: 'It is a certain Mind, loosed and free, separated from all mortal admixture, perceiving and moving all things, and itself endowed with everlasting motion.' This, moreover, he found in the teachings of the great philosophers. That I may therefore speak according to them: how can anything either lie hidden from Him who perceives all things, or irrevocably flee from Him who moves all things?
Hence now also that question is to be resolved, which seems more difficult than the rest, where it is asked: when the flesh of a dead man becomes even the flesh of another living man, to which of them rather shall it be restored in the resurrection? For if anyone, wasted by famine and driven to it, feed upon the corpses of men—an evil which both ancient history attests has sometimes happened, and the unhappy experiences of our own times have taught—will anyone by truthful reasoning contend that the whole of it was digested through the lower passages, and that nothing thereof was changed and converted into his flesh, since the very leanness which was and is no longer sufficiently indicates what losses were made good by those foods?
And so I have already set forth a little before some things which ought to avail for resolving this knot too. For whatever flesh famine has consumed has surely been exhaled into the air, whence we said that Almighty God can recall what has fled. That flesh, therefore, shall be restored to the man in whom human flesh first began to be. For by the other man it is to be reckoned as taken on loan, as it were; and this, like a debt, must be repaid to him from whom it was taken. But his own flesh, which famine had emptied out, shall be restored to him by Him who can recall even what has been exhaled. And yet, even if it had perished in all ways and no matter of it had remained in any hiding-places of nature, the Omnipotent would repair it from whatever source He willed. But because of the sentence of Truth, whereby it was said:
'A hair of your head shall not perish,' it is absurd that we should think that, since a hair of a man cannot perish, such great quantities of flesh eaten and consumed by famine could have perished. All these things having been considered and treated according to our small measure, this sum is drawn: that in the resurrection of the flesh the magnitude of bodies shall have forever those measures which the constitution of youth, implanted in each body to be perfected or already perfected, was having; with the fitting comeliness preserved also in the proportions of all the members. And that this comeliness may be preserved, if anything be taken from some unbecoming largeness situated in some part, which may be spread throughout the whole, so that it neither perish and the harmony of the parts be everywhere maintained:
it is not absurd that we should believe something can thence even be added to the body's stature, when it is distributed among all the parts—so that they may keep their comeliness—which, if it were enormously in one part, would surely be unbecoming. Or if it be contended that each shall rise again in that stature of body in which he died, we need not strive contentiously against it; only let there be absent all deformity, all infirmity, all sluggishness, and all corruption, and whatever else does not befit that kingdom, in which the sons of the resurrection and of the promise shall be equal to the angels of God—if not in body, not in age, yet certainly in felicity.
[XXI] There shall therefore be restored whatever perished from living bodies or, after death, from corpses; and together with that which remained in the tombs, it shall rise again, changed from the oldness of the animal body into the newness of the spiritual body, clothed with incorruption and immortality. But even if by some grievous chance or by the savagery of enemies it be utterly ground into dust and scattered into the air or into the waters, so that, as far as can be, it be nowhere suffered to exist at all: in no way shall it be able to be withdrawn from the omnipotence of the Creator, but a hair of the head therein shall not perish. There shall therefore be flesh subject to the spirit, spiritual flesh, but yet flesh, not spirit; just as the spirit itself was carnal, subject to the flesh, but yet spirit, not flesh.
Of this we have proof in the deformity of our penalty. For they were carnal not according to the flesh, but assuredly according to the spirit, to whom the Apostle says: 'I could not speak to you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal'; and a man is called spiritual in this life in such a way that in body he is still carnal and sees another law in his members warring against the law of his mind; but he shall be spiritual also in body, when the same flesh shall so rise again that what is written may be fulfilled: 'It is sown a natural body, it shall rise a spiritual body.' But what and how great the grace of the spiritual body may be, since it has not yet come into experience, I fear that every utterance which is put forth concerning it may be rash.
Nevertheless, since the joy of our hope must not be kept silent, for the sake of God's praise, and since it was said from the inmost marrow of ardent holy love, 'Lord, I have loved the beauty of Thy house,' let us, with His help, conjecture from His gifts, which in this most toilsome life He bestows upon good and evil alike—as best we can, how great is that which, not having yet experienced it, we are assuredly unable worthily to express. For I pass over the time when He made man upright—I pass over that life of the two spouses, happy in the fecundity of paradise, since it was so brief that it did not even reach the awareness of those born of them:
in this life which we know, in which we still are, whose temptations—nay, which is itself wholly a temptation—as long as we are in it, however much we advance, we do not cease to endure: who shall be able to unfold what are the tokens of God's goodness toward the human race? [XXII] For as to what pertains to our first origin, that the whole progeny of mortals has been condemned, this very life—if it is to be called life—full of so many and so great evils, bears witness. For what else does that horrible depth of ignorance indicate, from which all error arises, which has received all the sons of Adam into a certain dark bosom, so that man cannot be freed from it without toil, pain, and fear?
What of that very love of so many vain and hurtful things, and from this the gnawing cares, disquietudes, sorrows, fears, insane joys, discords, strifes, wars, plots, angers, enmities, deceit, flattery, fraud, theft, rapine, perfidy, pride, ambition, envy, murders, parricides, cruelty, savagery, wickedness, luxury, insolence, impudence, shamelessness, fornications, adulteries, incests, and against nature so many defilements and impurities of both sexes which it is shameful even to name, sacrileges, heresies, blasphemies, perjuries, oppressions of the innocent, calumnies, circumventions, prevarications, false witness, unjust judgments, violences, robberies, and whatever of such evils does not come to mind and yet does not depart from this life of men?
But these are the evils of men, coming nonetheless from that root of error and perverse love with which every son of Adam is born. For who does not know with how great an ignorance of the truth—which is already manifest in infants—and with how great an abundance of vain desire—which begins to appear in children—man comes into this life, so that, if he be permitted to live as he pleases and to do whatever he pleases, he would arrive at either all or many of those crimes and disgraceful deeds which I have mentioned, and which I could not mention?
But since divine governance does not in every way abandon the condemned, and since God does not, in His anger, withhold His mercies, in the very senses of the human race prohibition and instruction keep watch against those darknesses with which we are born, and are set against these assaults—yet these too are full of toils and pains. For what do those manifold terrors mean, which are applied to restrain the vanities of little children? What of pedagogues, what of masters, what of rods, what of straps, what of switches, what of that discipline whereby Holy Scripture says that the sides of a beloved son are to be beaten, lest he grow up untamed and, when already hard, be either scarcely tameable, or perhaps not at all?
What is accomplished by all these penalties, except that ignorance be conquered and depraved desire be bridled—the evils with which we come into this world? For what is the reason that with toil we remember, without toil we forget; with toil we learn, without toil we remain ignorant; with toil we are diligent, without toil we are sluggish? Does it not hence appear toward what our corrupt nature is inclined and prone, as by its own weight, and how great a help it needs in order to be freed therefrom? Idleness, sloth, laziness, negligence are surely vices by which toil is shunned, since toil itself, even that which is useful, is a penalty.
But besides the punishments of childhood, without which what elders wish cannot be learned—elders who scarcely wish anything usefully—by how many and how great penalties is the human race harassed, which pertain not to the malice and wickedness of the unjust, but to the common condition and misery? Who can set forth in any discourse, who can comprehend in any thought, how great is the fear, how great the calamity, from bereavements and mourning, from losses and condemnations, from the deceptions and lies of men, from false suspicions, from all the violent misdeeds and crimes of others?
seeing that from these there often befall plundering and captivity, chains and prisons, exiles and tortures, the amputation of limbs and the deprivation of the senses, the abuse of the body to satisfy the obscene lust of the abuser, and many other horrors. What then?
What of the countless mishaps which are feared for the body from without—heats and colds, storms, rains, floods, lightning-flash and thunder, hail and thunderbolt, the movements and gapings of the earth, the crushings of collapsing buildings, the shocks and terror or even malice of beasts of burden, the many poisons of shrubs, waters, airs, and beasts, the bites of wild animals whether merely troublesome or even deadly, the rabies which comes from a mad dog—so that even a fawning and friendly animal, dear to its own master, is sometimes to be feared more vehemently and bitterly than lions and dragons, and makes the man whom it may perchance have infected so rabid by its pestilent contagion that he is dreaded by his parents, spouse, and children worse than any beast!
What evils do those who sail endure! What evils those who go by land journeys! Who walks anywhere without being subject to unforeseen mishaps? A certain man returning home from the forum on his own sound feet fell, broke his foot, and from that wound ended this life. What seems safer than one sitting? Eli the priest fell from the seat on which he sat, and died. Farmers—nay rather all men—how many and how great mishaps to the fruits of their fields do they fear from heaven and earth or from destructive animals! Yet they are wont at last to be secure about their grain once gathered and stored. But from some, as we know, a sudden river cast forth and swept away an excellent yield of grain from the granaries, while the men fled.
Against the thousand-fold assaults of demons, who trusts in his own innocence? Since indeed—that no one might trust—they sometimes so vex even baptized little ones, than whom surely nothing is more innocent, that in them especially, God permitting this, may be shown both the lamentable calamity of this life and the desirable felicity of the other. Now indeed from the body itself there arise so many evils of diseases that not all of them are comprehended even in the books of physicians; and in most of these, and almost in all, the very aids and medicines are torments, so that men are rescued from the destruction of their penalties by a penal remedy. Has not fierce burning thirst driven thirsting men to the point of drinking even human urine, or even their own?
Has not famine driven them to the point that they could not abstain from human flesh, and devoured not men found already dead, but those slain for this purpose—and not merely strangers, but even mothers their own children, with an incredible cruelty which raging hunger produced? Finally, sleep itself, which has properly received the name of rest—who can unfold in words how unquiet it often is with the visions of dreams, and with how great terrors, though of false things, which it so presents and in a manner expresses that we cannot distinguish them from true ones, that it disturbs the wretched soul and the senses? By which falsity of visions even the waking are more miserably agitated in certain diseases and poisonings;
although by a manifold variety of deceit malignant demons sometimes deceive even sound men with such visions, so that, even if they cannot lead them through these to their own ends, they nonetheless delude their senses merely by the appetite for somehow persuading them of falsehood. From this life so wretched, as from a kind of hell, none frees us save the grace of the Savior Christ, our God and Lord (for this very name is Jesus; indeed it is interpreted 'Savior'), especially lest after this life a more wretched and everlasting one receive us—not life, but death.
For in this life, although there are through holy things and holy persons great solaces of healings, nevertheless even these benefits are not always granted to those who ask, lest religion be sought for the sake of this, whereas it is to be sought rather for the sake of that other life, where there will be no evils at all; and to this end grace helps all the better ones amid these evils, that they may be borne with a heart the stronger the more faithful it is. To which matter the learned of this world say that philosophy too is profitable, which the gods, says Tully, have given true to certain few; nor, he says, has any greater gift been given to men by them, nor could any be given.
To such a degree are even those against whom we contend somehow compelled, in acknowledging not any philosophy whatever, but the true one, to confess divine grace. Furthermore, if to a few it has been divinely given to have in true philosophy the sole aid against the miseries of this life, from this too it sufficiently appears that the human race has been condemned to pay the penalties of its miseries. But just as this—as they confess—is no greater divine gift, so it is to be believed to be given by no god save by Him, than whom even those who worship many gods say there is none greater.
[XXIII] But besides these evils of this life common to good and evil alike, the just also have in it certain labors of their own, by which they war against the vices and are engaged in the temptations and perils of such conflicts.
For sometimes more fiercely, sometimes more remissly, yet without ceasing, the flesh lusts against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh, so that we do not do the things that we would, by wholly consuming all evil concupiscence, but rather subdue it to ourselves, as far as by divine aid we can, by not consenting to it—keeping watch with continual vigils, lest an opinion resembling truth deceive us, lest crafty speech beguile us, lest the darkness of some error be spread over us, lest what is good be believed evil or what is evil be believed good, lest fear recall us from the things that must be done, lest desire hurl us into the things that must not be done, lest the sun go down upon our wrath, lest enmities provoke us to return evil for evil, lest unseemly or
immoderate sadness swallow us up, lest an ungrateful mind bring sluggishness in bestowing benefits, lest a good conscience be wearied by slanderous rumors, lest rash suspicion (about another) deceive us in what is our own, lest the false suspicion of others about us break us, lest sin reign in our mortal body to obey its desires, lest our members be presented as weapons of iniquity unto sin, lest the eye follow after concupiscence, lest the desire of vengeance overcome us, lest in that which delights us evilly either the sight or the thought linger, lest a wicked or unseemly word be willingly heard, lest that be done which is not lawful even if it please, lest in this war most full of toils and perils victory be either hoped to be won by our own strength or, when won, be attributed to our own strength, but to His grace, of whom the Apostle says:
But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ; who in another place also says: 'In all these things we more than conquer through him who loved us.' Yet let us know that, however great the valor of combat with which we fight back against our vices, or even overcome and subdue them, so long as we are in this body there cannot but be lacking to us that for which we say to God: 'Forgive us our debts.' But in that kingdom, where we shall be forever with immortal bodies, there will be for us no battles at all nor any debts; which would nowhere and never have existed, if our nature, just as it was created upright, had continued so.
And therefore this very conflict of ours, in which we are imperiled and from which we desire to be delivered by the final victory, belongs to the evils of this life, which by the testimony of so many and so great evils we prove to be condemned. It must now be considered how, in this very misery of the human race—in which the justice of him who punishes is praised—the same goodness of him who administers all that he created has filled it with what kind and how many good things. First, that blessing which he had uttered before sin, saying: 'Increase and multiply and fill the earth,' he did not wish to withhold even after sin, and the fecundity once bestowed remained in the condemned stock;
nor could the fault of sin—by which even the necessity of death was inflicted on us—take away that marvelous power of seeds, or rather the still more marvelous power by which the seeds themselves are produced, implanted in human bodies and in a certain way woven into them. But both run together, as in this river and torrent of the human race: the evil which is drawn from the parent, and the good which is bestowed by the Creator. In the original evil there are two things, sin and punishment; in the original good, another two, propagation and formation. But so far as concerns our present purpose, of the evils—one of which comes from our own audacity, that is, sin, the other from the judgment of God, that is, punishment—we have already said enough.
Now I have set myself to speak of the good things of God, which he has bestowed, or even until now bestows, upon this very vitiated and condemned nature. For neither in condemning did he take away all that he had given—otherwise it would not exist at all—nor did he remove it from his own power, even when he penally subjected it to the devil, since he did not even estrange the devil himself from his dominion; seeing that, in order that the very nature of the devil may subsist, he brings this about who supremely is, and who makes to be whatever in any way is. Of those two things, then, which we said are good things flowing even into a nature vitiated by sin and condemned to punishment, as it were from a certain fountain of his goodness—the propagation he lavished by a blessing among the first works of the world, from which works he rested on the seventh day;
but the formation is in that work of his by which he works even until now. For if he were to withdraw his effective power from things, they would neither be able to advance and complete their appointed motions in their measured courses, nor would they in any degree continue at all in that which they were created to be. Thus therefore God created man, so as to add to him a certain fertility by which he might propagate other men, begetting together with them the very possibility of propagating—not the necessity: yet from those men whom he willed God took this away, and they were barren; nevertheless he did not take it from the human race, once given by a general blessing to the first two spouses. This propagation therefore, although it was not taken away by sin, yet is not itself such as it would have been if no one had sinned.
For from the time that man, having been set in honor, after he transgressed, was made like the beasts, he begets in like manner; yet there is not in him utterly extinguished a certain spark, as it were, of reason, in which he was made after the image of God. But if formation were not applied to this propagation, neither would it proceed into the forms and modes of its own kind. For if men had not come together, and God nonetheless willed to fill the lands with men, just as he created one without the intercourse of male and female, so could he create all; but those who come together cannot be begetting unless he creates. As therefore the Apostle says concerning spiritual instruction, by which man is formed to piety and righteousness:
'Neither he that plants is anything, nor he that waters, but God who gives the increase': so also here it may be said: 'Neither he that lies together nor he that sows is anything, but God who forms; nor is the mother who carries the conceived and nourishes the offspring anything, but God who gives the increase.' For he himself, by the operation with which he works until now, brings it about that seeds unfold their numbers and evolve from certain hidden and invisible wrappings into the visible forms of this beauty which we behold; he himself, coupling and connecting in wondrous ways the incorporeal and corporeal nature—the former set over, the latter made subject—makes a living being.
This work of his is so great and marvelous that it instills a stupor of mind and produces praise of the Creator in one who considers it well, not only in man—who is a rational animal and on this account more excellent and superior to all earthly living things—but in any tiny little fly whatever. He it is, therefore, who gave to the human soul a mind, in which reason and understanding are as it were lulled to sleep in the infant, as though they were nothing, to be awakened, of course, and drawn forth by the increase of age, whereby it may become capable of knowledge and doctrine and fit for the perception of truth and the love of the good;
by which capacity it may drink in wisdom and be endowed with the virtues, whereby it may prudently, bravely, temperately, and justly contend against errors and the other inborn vices, and overcome them by the desire of nothing but that highest and immutable Good. And even if it should not do this, how great a good, how marvelous a work of the Almighty is that very capacity for such goods, divinely established in the rational nature—who worthily can utter or conceive it?
For besides the arts of living well and of attaining to immortal felicity—which are called virtues, and are given only by the grace of God, which is in Christ, to the children of promise and of the kingdom—have not so many and so great arts been discovered and practiced by human genius, partly necessary, partly for pleasure, so that this so excellent force of mind and reason, even in those things which it seeks as superfluous, nay even dangerous and pernicious, may testify how great a good it has in its nature, whence it was able to invent, or learn, or practice these things? To what marvelous, what stupendous works of clothing and of building has human industry come; what progress it has made in agriculture, in navigation;
what it has devised and accomplished in the fashioning of vessels of every kind, or even in the variety of statues and paintings; what marvels for spectators, what incredible things to be done and displayed for those who hear, it has contrived in theaters; in capturing, killing, and taming irrational animals, what and how great things it has discovered; against men themselves so many kinds of poisons, so many of weapons, so many of engines; and for protecting and restoring mortal health, how many medicines and aids it has comprehended; for the pleasure of the palate, how many seasonings and incitements to gluttony it has discovered; for indicating and persuading thoughts, what a multitude and variety of signs, among which words and letters hold the chief place;
for delighting the mind, what ornaments of eloquence, what abundance of diverse songs; for soothing the ears, how many musical instruments, what modes of melody it has devised; how great a skill of measures and of numbers, and with what sagacity it has comprehended the courses and orders of the stars; with how great a knowledge of worldly things it has filled itself—who could tell it, especially if we should wish not to heap up all things in a mass, but to dwell upon them singly? Finally, in the very defense of errors and falsehoods, how great have shone the talents of philosophers and heretics—who would suffice to estimate it?
For we are now speaking of the nature of the human mind, by which this mortal life is adorned, not of faith and the way of truth, by which that immortal life is acquired. Since the Author of so great a nature is assuredly the true and supreme God, who administers all that he made and possesses supreme power and supreme justice, it would surely never have fallen into these miseries, nor from these would it have gone (save for those alone who shall be delivered) into eternal ones, unless a too great sin had gone before in the first man, from whom the rest have sprung. But now in the body itself—although it is common to us with the beasts in mortality, and is found weaker than many of them—how great is the goodness of God, how great the providence of so great a Creator that appears!
Are not the locations of the senses and the other members in it so arranged, and the very appearance and figure and stature of the whole body so modified, that it shows itself to have been made for the ministry of the rational soul? For man was not created bent toward the earth, as we see the animals devoid of reason to be; but the form of his body, erect toward heaven, admonishes him to relish the things that are above. Moreover, the marvelous mobility which has been assigned to the tongue and the hands—apt and suitable for speaking and writing and for accomplishing the works of very many arts and duties—does it not sufficiently show what kind of soul such a body has been joined to serve?
And yet, even apart from the necessities of working, the harmony of all the parts is so numerically ordered and beautiful, answering to itself in a fitting equality, that you would not know whether in its constitution more regard was had for usefulness than for beauty. For assuredly we see nothing created in the body for the sake of usefulness which has not also its place of beauty. And this would appear to us still more, if we knew the numbers of measures by which all things are connected and fitted together among themselves; which perhaps, in the things that stand out externally, human ingenuity might, with deliberate effort, trace out; but those which are hidden and removed from our sight—such as the great complexity of veins and nerves and inward organs, the secrets of the vital parts—no one can find out.
For although the diligence of physicians, whom they call anatomists, has cruelly mangled the bodies of the dead, or even, amid the hands of one cutting and searching the dying, and quite inhumanly probing into all things hidden in human flesh, has done so that it might learn what and how and in what places treatment should be applied: yet as for the numbers of which I speak, by which the fitting-together—which in Greek is called harmony (harmonia)—of the whole body, externally and internally, as of some instrument, consists, what shall I say? No one has been able to find these out, which no one has dared to seek.
But if these could be known, then even in the inner organs, which display no comeliness, the beauty of proportion would so delight us that it would be preferred, in the judgment of the mind itself which uses the eyes, above every apparent form which pleases the eyes. There are indeed certain things so placed in the body that they have only beauty and not also use; as the male breast has nipples, as the face has a beard, which the smooth faces of women show to be not for protection but for manly ornament, since they, being surely weaker, would more safely be protected. If therefore there is no member—among these visible ones, at least, whereof no one is in doubt—so accommodated to some work that it is not also comely; and there are moreover some whose only beauty and no use exists:
I think it is easily understood that in the making of the body, dignity was preferred to necessity. For necessity is indeed destined to pass away, and a time is to come when we shall enjoy one another by beauty alone, without any lust; which is especially to be referred to the praise of the Creator, to whom it is said in the psalm: 'You have put on confession and comeliness.' Now, as for the rest of the beauty and usefulness of the creation, which has been granted by divine bounty to man—though cast down and condemned into these labors and miseries—to behold and to take up, by what discourse can it be bounded?
in the manifold and varied beauty of heaven and earth and sea; in the very great abundance and so marvelous appearance of light itself; in the sun and moon and stars; in the shadows of the groves; in the colors and odors of flowers; in the diversity and multitude of chattering and painted birds; in the manifold appearance of so many and so great living creatures, of which those have more of wonder which are least in bulk (for we are more amazed at the works of ants and bees than at the immense bodies of whales); in the so grand spectacle of the sea itself, when it clothes itself as it were in garments of diverse colors, and now is green, and this in many ways, now purple, now blue.
And how delightfully is it beheld even whenever it is stirred up, and thence arises a greater pleasantness, because it so soothes the beholder that it does not toss and shake the voyager! What of the everywhere-abundance of foods against hunger? What of the diversity of flavors against loathing, poured forth by the riches of nature, not sought by the art and labor of cooks? What in so many things are the aids for guarding or recovering health! How grateful the alternation of day and night succeeding each other! How gentle the temperateness of the breezes! In shrubs and cattle, how great a supply of material for making garments! Who could recount all things?
But these things alone, which have been compressed by me as it were into a certain heap, if I should wish to unbind and shake out the bundles as if tied up, how great a delay would there be for me in the single items, in which very many things are contained! And all these are the solaces of the wretched and condemned, not the rewards of the blessed. What then are those rewards, if these things are so many and such and so great? What will he give to those whom he has predestined to life, who has given these things even to those whom he has predestined to death? What good things will he make in that blessed life for the sake of him whom, in this wretched one, he willed his only-begotten Son to endure so great evils even unto death? Whence the Apostle, speaking of those very ones predestined to that kingdom:
'He that spared not,' he says, 'his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how has he not also with him freely given us all things?' When this promise shall be fulfilled, what shall we be! what kind shall we be! What good things are we to receive in that kingdom, seeing that, Christ dying for us, we have already received such a pledge! Of what kind will be the spirit of man, having no vice at all, neither one under which it may lie prostrate, nor one to which it may yield, nor one against which it may at least laudably contend, but perfected in most peaceful virtue! Of all things there how great, how splendid, how certain the knowledge, without any error or labor, where the wisdom of God shall be drunk from its very own fountain, with the highest felicity, without any difficulty!
Of what kind will be the body, which, in every way subject to the spirit and sufficiently vivified by it, will need no nourishments! For it will not be animal, but spiritual, having indeed the substance of flesh, but without any carnal corruption. But concerning the goods of the soul, which the most blessed man shall enjoy after this life, the noble philosophers do not dissent from us: concerning the resurrection of the flesh they contend, and deny it as much as they can. But many believing have left the deniers very few, and, converted with faithful heart to Christ—who showed in his own resurrection this which seems absurd to those men—both the learned and the unlearned, the wise of this world and the foolish.
For the world has believed this, which God foretold, who also foretold this, that the world would believe this thing. For he was not compelled, by any sorceries of Peter, to foretell so long beforehand these things, with the praise of the believers. For he is that God whom—as I have already said several times, nor does it irk me to remind—by the confession of Porphyry, who desires to prove it by the oracles of his own gods, the very divinities dread with horror; whom he so praised that he called him both God the Father and King. Far be it that those things which he foretold should be understood in the way in which these men wish—men who did not believe, together with the world, that which he foretold the world would believe.
For why not rather thus, just as the world was so long beforehand foretold as going to believe, and not as the very few chatter—who refused to believe, together with the world, this which the world was foretold to be going to believe? For if they say that these things are therefore to be believed in another way, lest, if they should say that vain things had been written, they do injury to that God to whom they bear so great a testimony: they surely do him as great, or even a graver injury, if they say the things are to be understood otherwise than as the world believed them—the world which he himself praised, himself promised, himself fulfilled as going to believe. For either he cannot bring it about that the flesh should rise again and live forever, or it is therefore not to be believed that he will do this because it is evil and unworthy of God?
But concerning his omnipotence, by which he does so many and so great incredible things, we have already said much. If they wish to find something which the Omnipotent cannot do, they have it outright, I will say: he cannot lie. Let us therefore believe what he can do, by not believing what he cannot do. Not therefore believing that he can lie, let them believe that he will do what he promised he would do; and let them so believe, as the world believed—the world which he foretold would believe, which he praised as going to believe, which he promised would believe, which he has already shown to have believed. But whence do they demonstrate this to be evil? There will be there no corruption, which is the evil of the body. Concerning the order of the elements we have already disputed; concerning the other conjectures of men we have said enough;
how great will be, in the incorruptible body, the ease of motion—from the temperament of present good health, which is in no way whatever to be compared to that immortality—we have, as I think, sufficiently shown in the thirteenth book. Let those read the earlier parts of this work who either have not read them or wish to recollect what they read. But Porphyry says, they object, that in order for the soul to be blessed, every body is to be fled. It profits nothing, therefore, that we have said the body will be incorruptible, if the soul will not be blessed unless it has fled every body. But already even from this point I have disputed as much as was fitting in the book mentioned; yet here I will recall from thence only one thing.
Let Plato, the master of all these men, emend his books and say that their gods, in order to be blessed, will flee their bodies, that is, will be about to die—the gods whom he said were enclosed in celestial bodies; to whom nevertheless God, by whom they were made, promised immortality—that is, eternal permanence in those same bodies—so that they might be able to be secure, their nature not having this of itself, but his counsel prevailing. Here he also overthrows that which they say, namely, that because it is impossible, therefore the resurrection of the flesh is not to be believed. For most openly, according to the same philosopher, when God the unmade promised immortality to the gods made by himself, he said that he would do what is impossible. For thus Plato relates that he spoke:
'Since you have come into being,' he said, 'you cannot be immortal and indissoluble; yet you shall not be dissolved, nor shall any fates of death destroy you, nor shall they be stronger than my counsel, which is a greater bond unto your perpetuity than those by which you are bound together.' If those who hear these things are not only absurd, but not deaf, they surely do not doubt that, according to Plato, that which is impossible was promised to the gods made by that God who made them. For he who says: 'You indeed cannot be immortal, but by my will you shall be immortal,' what else does he say than 'that which cannot come to be, you shall nevertheless be, by my doing'?
He, therefore, will raise up the flesh incorruptible, immortal, spiritual, who, according to Plato, promised that he would do that which is impossible. Why then do they still cry out that what God promised, what the world—which was itself also promised as going to believe—believed God who promises, is impossible, seeing that we cry out that God, who even according to Plato does the impossible, will do this? Not therefore, in order that souls may be blessed, is every body to be fled, but an incorruptible body is to be received. And in what body will they more fittingly rejoice, incorruptible, than in that in which, corruptible, they groaned? For thus there will not be in them that dire desire which Vergil placed from Plato, where he says:
'And again they begin to wish to return into bodies'; thus, I say, they will not have the desire of returning to bodies, since they will have with them the bodies into which they desire to return, and will so have them that they may never not have them, never at all lay them down, even for however small a time, by any death. Plato and Porphyry each said certain things which, if they had been able to communicate between themselves, they would perhaps have become Christians. Plato said that souls cannot be forever without bodies. For therefore he said that even the souls of the wise, after however long a time, would nevertheless return to bodies. But Porphyry said that the most purified soul, when it has returned to the Father, will never return to these evils of the world.
And through this, that which Plato saw to be true, if he had granted to Porphyry—that even the most purified souls of the just and wise would return to human bodies; and again, that which Porphyry saw to be true, if he had granted to Plato—that holy souls would never return to the miseries of a corruptible body; so that not each should say each single thing, but both, and each, should say both: I think that they would see it to be already consequent, that souls should both return to bodies, and receive such bodies as those in which they might live blessedly and immortally. For according to Plato, even holy souls will return to human bodies; according to Porphyry, holy souls will not return to the evils of this world. Let Porphyry therefore say with Plato: 'They will return to bodies';
let Plato say with Porphyry: 'They will not return to evils': and they will agree that souls return to those bodies in which they may suffer no evils. And these therefore will be none other than those which God promises, that blessed souls shall live forever with their own eternal flesh. For this, as far as I estimate, both would now easily concede to us, that they who confessed that the souls of the saints would return to immortal bodies would permit them to return to their own bodies, in which they endured the evils of this age, in which they piously and faithfully worshiped God, so that they might be freed from these evils.
Some of our own people, on account of a certain most illustrious kind of speaking and on account of certain things which he truly perceived, loving Plato, say that he perceived something like ourselves even concerning the resurrection of the dead. Which indeed Tully touches upon thus in his books On the Republic, that he wished to say Plato had rather sported than affirmed that this is true. For he introduces a man who had come back to life and narrated certain things which accorded with the Platonic disputations. Labeo too says that two men died on one day and met each other at a certain crossroads, and were then ordered to return to their bodies, and agreed among themselves that they would live as friends, and that so it came about, until they afterward died.
But these authors narrated that such a resurrection of the body took place as was that of those whom we know to have risen and to have been indeed restored to this life, but not in such a way that they would not die further. But Marcus Varro sets down something more marvelous in the books which he wrote On the Race of the Roman People, whose very words I thought should be set down. 'Certain astrologers,' he says, 'have written that there is in the reborn of men that which the Greeks call palingenesia;
by this they have written that it comes about in the number of four hundred and forty years, that the same body and the same soul, which had at some time been joined together in a man, should the same again return into conjunction.' This Varro indeed, or those astrologers I know not who (for he did not divulge the names of those whose opinion he recalled), said something which, although it is false (for when once the souls have returned to the same bodies which they bore, they are never afterward to leave them), nevertheless overturns and destroys many arguments of that impossibility with which these men chatter against us.
For those who hold this, or have held it, did not think it impossible that cadavers dissolved into the air, into dust, into ash, into moisture, into the bodies of feeding beasts or even of men themselves, should again return to that which they were.
Wherefore Plato and Porphyry, or rather whoever love them and are still living, if they agree with us that even holy souls will return to bodies, as Plato says, and yet will not return to any evils, as Porphyry says—so that from these there results the consequence which the Christian faith proclaims, that they will receive such bodies as those in which they may live happily forever without any evil—let them also take this from Varro, that they return to the same bodies in which they were before, and among them the whole question of the resurrection of the flesh unto eternity will be resolved.
Now let us see, as far as the Lord deigns to help, what the saints are to do in immortal and spiritual bodies, their flesh now living no longer carnally, but spiritually. And indeed of what kind that action—or rather that rest and repose—will be, if I should wish to speak the truth, I do not know. For I have never seen this through the senses of the body. But if I should say that I have seen it with the mind, that is, with the understanding, how great, or what, is our understanding compared to that excellence? For there is the peace of God, which, as the Apostle says, surpasses all understanding; whose, but ours, or perhaps also that of the holy angels? For not, indeed, that of God.
If therefore the saints are to live in the peace of God, assuredly they are to live in that peace which surpasses all understanding. That it surpasses ours, indeed, there is no doubt; but if it surpasses also that of the angels, so that he who says 'all understanding' seems not to have excepted even them: according to this we ought to take it as said, because the peace of God, by which God himself is at peace, as God knows it, we cannot so know it, nor can any angels. It surpasses therefore all understanding—no doubt, save his own. But because we too, according to our measure, having been made partakers of his peace, know the highest peace within us and among ourselves and with him, as far as is our highest: in this manner, according to their own measure, the holy angels know it;
Men, however, are now far below, however much they may excel in the advancement of the mind. For it must be considered how great a man it was who said: 'We know in part, and we prophesy in part, until that which is perfect shall come'; and: 'We see now through a glass in an enigma, but then face to face.' Thus already the holy angels see, who have also been called our angels, because, delivered from the power of darkness and having received the pledge of the Spirit, we have begun to belong to the kingdom of Christ, to those angels with whom that City of God itself will be for us a holy and most sweet common possession, concerning which we have already written so many books. Thus, then, they are our angels who are the angels of God, just as Christ, who is God's Christ, is ours. They are God's, because they have not forsaken God;
they are ours, because they have begun to have us as their fellow citizens. And the Lord Jesus said: 'See that you despise not one of these little ones. For I say unto you, that their angels in heaven always behold the face of my Father who is in heaven.' As therefore they see, so also shall we see; but we do not yet so see. Wherefore the Apostle says what I mentioned a little before: 'We see now through a glass in an enigma, but then face to face.' As the reward of faith, therefore, this vision is reserved for us, of which the Apostle John also speaks: 'When he shall appear,' he says, 'we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.'
But the face of God is to be understood as his manifestation, not any such member as we have in the body and designate by that name. Wherefore, when it is asked of me what the saints shall do in that spiritual body, I do not say what I already see, but I say what I believe, according to that which I read in the Psalm: 'I believed, therefore have I spoken.' I say, then: They shall see God in that very body; but whether they shall see him through the body itself, as we now see the sun, moon, stars, sea and earth and the things that are in it through the body, is no small question. For it is hard to say that the saints shall then have such bodies that they cannot close and open their eyes when they will;
but it is harder to say that whoever shall have closed his eyes there shall not see God. For if the prophet Elisha, absent in body, saw his servant Gehazi receiving the gifts which Naaman the Syrian gave him—Naaman whom the said prophet had freed from the deformity of leprosy—which the wicked servant had thought he had done secretly, his master not seeing: how much more shall the saints in that spiritual body see all things, not only if they close their eyes, but even where they are absent in body! For then shall be perfect that of which the Apostle speaks: 'In part,' he says, 'we know, and in part we prophesy; but when that which is perfect is come, that which is in part shall be done away.'
Then, that he might show by some likeness, so far as he could, how far this life—not of ordinary men, but even of those endowed here with pre-eminent holiness—is distant from that which is to come, he says: 'When I was a child, I understood as a child, I spoke as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away the things that were of a child. We see now through a glass in an enigma, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then shall I know even as also I am known.' If, then, in this life, where the prophecy of wondrous men is to be compared with that life as a child to a young man, Elisha nevertheless saw his servant receiving gifts where he himself was not:
is it then the case that, when that which is perfect shall have come, and no longer shall the corruptible body weigh down the soul, but the incorruptible shall hinder nothing, those saints shall need bodily eyes for those things which are to be seen—eyes which Elisha, being absent, did not need to see his servant? For according to the Seventy interpreters, these are the prophet's words to Gehazi: 'Did not my heart go with you, when the man turned from his chariot to meet you, and you received the money?' and the rest; but as the presbyter Jerome translated it from the Hebrew: 'Was not my heart,' he says, 'present, when the man returned from his chariot to meet you?' The prophet therefore said that he had seen this with his own heart, aided indeed marvellously—no one doubting—by divine power.
But how much more abundantly shall all then abound in this gift, when God shall be all in all! Yet even those bodily eyes shall have their function, and shall be in their place, and the spirit shall use them through the spiritual body. For not because that prophet did not need them to see one who was absent did he therefore not use them for seeing things present—which nevertheless he could see with the spirit even if he closed them, as he saw things absent, where he himself was not present with them. Far be it, therefore, that we should say those saints in that life shall not see God with closed eyes, whom they shall always see with the spirit. But whether they shall see him also through the eyes of the body when they have them open—that is the question.
For if they shall be able in the spiritual body only in such manner as these very eyes are, spiritual though they be, as much as those which we now have are able: without doubt God cannot be seen through them. They shall therefore be of a far different power, if through them that incorporeal nature shall be seen, which is not contained by place, but is everywhere whole. For not because we say that God is both in heaven and on earth (for he himself says through the prophet: 'I fill heaven and earth'), are we going to say that he has one part in heaven and another on earth; but he is wholly in heaven, wholly on earth, not at alternating times, but both at once, which no bodily nature can do.
The power of those eyes shall therefore be more excellent, not that they may see more sharply than certain serpents or eagles are said to see (for however great their keenness of vision, those same animals can see nothing else but bodies), but that they may see even incorporeal things. And perhaps this great power of seeing was granted for an hour even in this mortal body to the eyes of the holy man Job, when he said to God: 'I had heard of thee by the hearing of the ear before, but now mine eye seeth thee. Therefore I abhor myself, and I have melted away, and I have counted myself dust and ashes'—although nothing here forbids us to understand the eye of the heart, of which eyes the Apostle says: 'That you may have the eyes of your heart enlightened.'
But that God shall be seen by these very eyes, when he shall be seen, no Christian doubts who faithfully receives what that divine Master says: 'Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.' But whether he shall be seen there also with bodily eyes, this is what we are examining in this question. For that which is written: 'And all flesh shall see the salvation of God,' can be understood without any knot of difficulty, as if it had been said: 'And every man shall see the Christ of God,' who indeed was seen in the body and shall be seen in the body, when he shall judge the living and the dead. And that he himself is the salvation of God, there are many other testimonies of the Scriptures;
but the words of that venerable old man Simeon declare it more evidently, who, when he had taken the infant Christ into his hands, said: 'Now, Lord, thou lettest thy servant depart according to thy word in peace, for mine eyes have seen thy salvation.' That also which the above-mentioned Job says, as it is found in the copies which are from the Hebrew: 'And in my flesh I shall see God,' without doubt prophesied the resurrection of the flesh, yet he did not say: 'Through my flesh.' Which if he had said, God—that is, Christ—might be understood, who through flesh shall be seen in flesh; but as it is, it can also be taken thus: 'In my flesh I shall see God,' as if he had said: 'I shall be in my flesh, when I shall see God.' And that which the Apostle says:
'Face to face,' does not compel us to believe that we shall see God—whom we shall see without intermission with the spirit—through this bodily face where the bodily eyes are. For unless there were also a face of the inner man, the same Apostle would not say: 'But we all, with unveiled face beholding the glory of the Lord, are transformed into the same image from glory to glory, as by the Spirit of the Lord'; nor do we understand otherwise that which is sung in the Psalm: 'Come unto him and be enlightened, and your faces shall not be ashamed.' For it is by faith that one approaches God, which faith is agreed to be of the heart, not of the body.
But since we do not know how great capacities the spiritual body shall have (for we are speaking of a thing untried), where the authority of the divine Scriptures does not come to hand and aid us in something that cannot be otherwise understood, it is necessary that there should befall us that which is read in the Book of Wisdom: 'The thoughts of mortals are timid, and our foresight uncertain.' For that reasoning of the philosophers, by which they argue that intelligible things are so seen by the gaze of the mind and sensible—that is, corporeal—things by the sense of the body, that neither can the mind behold intelligible things through the body nor corporeal things through itself: if it could be most certain to us, it would surely be certain that God can in no way be seen through the eyes of the body, even the spiritual body.
But both true reason and prophetic authority mock this reasoning. For who is so averse from the truth as to dare to say that God does not know these corporeal things? Does he then have a body, through whose eyes he can learn them? Furthermore, what we said a little before concerning the prophet Elisha—does it not sufficiently indicate that corporeal things can be discerned even by the spirit, not through the body? For when that servant received the gifts, the deed was certainly done corporeally; which nevertheless the prophet saw not through the body, but through the spirit. As, then, it is established that bodies are seen by the spirit, what if the power of the spiritual body shall be so great that even spirit shall be seen by the body? For God is spirit.
Furthermore, each one knows his own life, by which he now lives in the body and quickens these earthly members and makes them living, by an inner sense, not through the bodily eyes; but the lives of others, though they are invisible, he sees through the body. For whence do we distinguish living bodies from non-living, unless we see bodies and lives together—which lives we cannot see except through the body? But lives without bodies we do not see with bodily eyes.
Wherefore it can happen—and is greatly credible—that we shall then so see the worldly bodies of the new heaven and the new earth, that we shall see God everywhere present and governing even all corporeal things, through the bodies which we shall wear and which we shall behold, wherever we turn our eyes, with the clearest perspicuity; not as now the invisible things of God are seen, being understood by the things that are made, through a glass in an enigma and in part, where faith by which we believe avails more in us than the appearance of corporeal things which we discern through the corporeal eyes.
But just as men, among whom we live as living and exercising vital motions, as soon as we look at them, we do not believe them to be living, but we see it—although we cannot see their life without bodies, yet in them, through the bodies, we behold it with all ambiguity removed: so, whatever spiritual lights of our bodies we shall carry about, we shall contemplate the incorporeal God ruling all things even through bodies. Either, therefore, God shall be seen through those eyes in such a way that they have in that great excellence something like the mind, whereby even the incorporeal nature may be discerned—which it is either difficult or impossible to show by any examples or testimonies of the divine Scriptures;
or—which is easier to understand—God shall be so known and conspicuous to us, that he shall be seen in the spirit by each of us in each of us, seen by one in another, seen in himself, seen in the new heaven and the new earth and in every creature which shall then exist, seen also through bodies in every body, wherever the eye of the spiritual body shall be directed with its penetrating gaze. Our thoughts too shall lie open to one another. For then shall be fulfilled that which the Apostle, when he had said: 'Judge nothing before the time,' immediately added: 'Until the Lord come, who both will bring to light the hidden things of darkness, and will manifest the thoughts of the heart; and then shall every man have praise of God.'
How great shall that felicity be, where there shall be no evil, no good shall be hidden, where there shall be leisure for the praises of God, who shall be all in all! For what else is done, where neither is one idle in any sloth nor labours in any want, I know not. I am admonished also by the holy canticle, where I read or hear: 'Blessed are they that dwell in thy house; they shall praise thee for ever and ever.' All the members and organs of the incorruptible body, which now we see distributed for the various uses of necessity, since then there shall not be that necessity, but full, certain, secure, everlasting felicity, shall avail for the praises of God.
For all those numbers of bodily harmony, of which I have already spoken, which now lie hidden, shall not lie hidden, disposed throughout all the parts of the body within and without; and together with the other things which shall there appear great and wonderful, they shall kindle the rational minds, by the delight of rational beauty, to the praise of so great an Artificer. What motions of such bodies shall then be, I do not dare rashly to define, because I am not able to conceive it; nevertheless both the motion and the state, like the appearance itself, shall be seemly, whatever it shall be, where that which is unseemly shall not be. Certainly, wherever the spirit shall will, there straightway shall the body be; nor shall the spirit will anything which could befit neither the spirit nor the body.
There shall be true glory, where no one shall be praised by the error or flattery of him who praises; true honour, which shall be denied to no one worthy, conferred on no one unworthy; nor shall any unworthy one aspire to it, where none shall be permitted to be save the worthy; true peace, where no one shall suffer anything adverse either from himself or from any other. The reward of virtue shall be he himself who gave the virtue, and promised himself to it, than whom nothing better or greater can be. For what else is it that he said through the prophet: 'I will be their God, and they shall be my people,' but: 'I will be that whereby they shall be satisfied, I will be whatever is honourably desired by men—both life and salvation and food and abundance and glory and honour and peace and all good things'?
For thus also is rightly understood that which the Apostle says: 'That God may be all in all.' He shall be the end of our desires, who shall be seen without end, loved without weariness, praised without fatigue. This gift, this affection, this act, shall surely be common to all, like eternal life itself. But who is fit to conceive, much less to tell, what degrees of honours and glories there shall be according to the merits of rewards? Yet that there shall be such degrees is not to be doubted. And this too that blessed City shall see as a great good in itself: that no inferior shall envy any superior, just as now the other angels do not envy the archangels;
and each one shall as little wish to be what he has not received, though he be bound in a most peaceful bond of concord to him who has received it, as in the body the eye does not wish to be a finger, though the peaceful structure of the whole body contains both members. So, then, one shall have a gift less than another, in such a way that he has this gift also, that he does not wish for more. Nor shall they on that account not have free will, because sins shall not be able to delight them. For the will shall be the more free, in that it is freed from the delight of sinning unto the delight of not sinning, which cannot be turned away. For the first free will, which was given to man when he was first created upright, was able not to sin, but was also able to sin;
but this last shall be more powerful, in that it shall not be able to sin—yet this too by the gift of God, not by the possibility of its own nature. For it is one thing to be God, another to be a partaker of God. God by nature cannot sin: but the partaker of God received from him that he cannot sin. And the degrees of the divine gift were to be preserved, that first should be given the free will by which man could not sin, and last that by which he could not sin, and that the former should pertain to acquiring merit, the latter to receiving reward. But because this nature sinned when it could sin, it is freed by a more bountiful grace, that it may be brought to that liberty in which it cannot sin.
For as the first immortality, which Adam lost by sinning, was the ability not to die, so the last shall be the inability to die: thus the first free will was the ability not to sin, the last the inability to sin. For thus shall the will of piety and equity be as inamissible as that of felicity. For surely by sinning we retained neither piety nor felicity, yet the will of felicity we did not lose even when felicity was lost. Certainly, is God himself, because he cannot sin, therefore to be denied to have free will?
There shall therefore be in that City one free will, common to all and inseparable in each, freed from all evil and filled with all good, unfailingly enjoying the delight of eternal joys, forgetful of faults, forgetful of punishments; nor yet on that account forgetful of its own liberation, so that it should be ungrateful to its Liberator. As far, then, as pertains to rational knowledge, it shall be mindful even of its own past evils; but as far as pertains to the sense of experience, it shall be wholly unmindful of them. For even a most skilled physician knows almost all the diseases of the body as they are known by art; but as they are felt in the body, he does not know very many, which he himself has not suffered. As, then, there are two kinds of knowledge of evils;
one, by which they do not escape the power of the mind, the other, by which they cleave to the senses of the one experiencing (for all vices are known in one way through the teaching of wisdom, in another way through the wicked life of the fool): so also there are two kinds of forgetting of evils. For the learned and instructed man forgets them in one way, the one who has experienced and suffered them in another; the former, if he neglect his skill, the latter, if he be free from misery. According to this forgetting, which I have placed in the latter position, the saints shall not be mindful of past evils; for they shall be free from all of them, so that they are utterly blotted out from their senses. Yet by that power of knowledge, which shall be great in them, not only their own past, but also the everlasting misery of the damned shall not lie hidden from them.
Otherwise, if they shall not know that they had been wretched, how, as the Psalm says, shall they sing the mercies of the Lord for ever? By which canticle, to the glory of the grace of Christ, by whose blood we have been freed, nothing surely shall be more delightful to that City. There shall be fulfilled: 'Be still, and see that I am God'; which shall be truly the greatest Sabbath, having no evening, which the Lord commended in the first works of the world, where it is read: 'And God rested on the seventh day from all his works which he had made; and God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it he rested from all his works which God had begun to do.'
For the seventh day shall be we ourselves also, when we shall be full and refreshed by his blessing and sanctification. There, being at leisure, we shall see that he himself is God; which we ourselves wished to be, when we fell away from him, listening to the seducer: 'Ye shall be as gods,' and departing from the true God, by whose doing we should be gods by his participation, not by desertion. For what did we do without him, but that in his wrath we failed? Refreshed by whom and perfected by a greater grace, we shall be at leisure for ever, seeing that he himself is God, of whom we shall be full, when he shall be all in all. For even our own good works, when they are understood to be rather his than ours, are then imputed to us for the obtaining of this Sabbath;
for if we ascribe them to ourselves, they shall be servile, since it is said concerning the Sabbath: 'Ye shall do no servile work'; wherefore it is also said through the prophet Ezekiel: 'And I gave them my Sabbaths, to be a sign between me and them, that they might know that I am the Lord who sanctify them.' This we shall then know perfectly, when we shall perfectly be at leisure, and perfectly see that he himself is God. This very number of the ages, as of days, if it be computed according to those articles of time which seem expressed in the Scriptures, this Sabbath-rest shall appear more evidently, since it is found to be the seventh; so that the first age, as the first day, is from Adam to the flood, the second thence to Abraham, not by equality of times, but by the number of generations;
for they are found to have ten each. Hence now, as the evangelist Matthew determines, three ages follow up to the coming of Christ, each of which is unfolded in fourteen generations: from Abraham to David one, another thence to the migration into Babylon, the third thence to the carnal nativity of Christ. Thus all become five. The sixth is now being enacted, to be measured by no number of generations, because of that which is said: 'It is not for you to know the times which the Father has put in his own power.' After this, as on the seventh day, God shall rest, when he shall make that same seventh day, which we shall be, to rest in himself, God.
Now to discuss diligently each of these ages would be long; yet this seventh shall be our Sabbath, whose end shall not be an evening, but the Lord's day, as it were an eighth eternal day, which has been consecrated by the resurrection of Christ, prefiguring the eternal rest not only of the spirit but also of the body. There we shall be at leisure and shall see, shall see and shall love, shall love and shall praise. Behold what shall be in the end without end. For what other end is ours, but to come to that kingdom of which there is no end? I seem to myself, with the Lord's help, to have discharged the debt of this vast work. Let those to whom it is too little or too much pardon me; but let those to whom it is enough render thanks, congratulating not me, but God together with me. Amen.
Amen. In this codex are contained the books of Saint Augustine on the City of God against the pagans, twenty-two in number. From the first book to the fifth, a disputation against those who think the gods are to be worshipped for the sake of the good things of this life. From the sixth book to the tenth, a disputation against those who reckon that the worship of the gods is to be maintained for the sake of the life which is to be after death, and at the same time against the most excellent of the philosophers who are renowned among them and who agree with us in many things concerning the immortality of the soul, and that the true God created the world, and concerning his providence by which he governs all things that he created.
From the tenth book to the twenty-second, the impious objections having been refuted, the City of God and true piety and the worship of God are argued and established, in which everlasting blessedness is truly promised.