But just as with the human beings among whom we live—living and putting forth the motions of life—the moment we look upon them we do not merely believe them to be alive but actually see it (although we cannot see their life apart from their bodies, yet we behold it in them through their bodies with every ambiguity removed): so, wherever we shall direct those spiritual eyes of our bodies, we shall through bodies also contemplate the incorporeal God who governs all things. Either, then, God will be seen through those eyes in such a way that they will possess in their great excellence something like the mind, by which even an incorporeal nature may be discerned—which is either difficult or impossible to show by any examples or by the testimonies of the divine Scriptures;
or—what is easier to understand—God will be so known and visible to us that He will be seen in the spirit by each of us in each of us, will be seen by one in another, will be seen in Himself, will be seen in the new heaven and the new earth and in every creature that shall then exist, will be seen also through bodies in every body, wherever the eyes of the spiritual body shall be directed with their keen gaze reaching forth. Our very thoughts also will lie open to one another. For then will be fulfilled what the Apostle, after saying, «Judge nothing before the time,» at once added: «Until the Lord come, who will both bring to light the hidden things of darkness and make manifest the thoughts of the heart; and then shall every man have praise from God.» CHAPTER XXX.
Concerning the eternal felicity of the City of God and the perpetual Sabbath. How great will be that felicity, where there shall be no evil, where 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 there, where there shall be no idleness through sloth nor any toil through want, I do not know. I am admonished too by the sacred song, where I read or hear: «Blessed are they who dwell in Thy house; they shall praise Thee for ever and ever.» All the members and inward parts of the incorruptible body, which we now see distributed among the various uses of necessity—since then there shall be no such necessity, but full, sure, secure, everlasting felicity—shall be employed in the praises of God.
For indeed all those proportions of bodily harmony of which I have already spoken, which now lie hidden, shall then not lie hidden, disposed within and without throughout all the parts of the body; and together with all the other things which there shall appear great and marvelous, they shall kindle the rational minds with the delight of rational beauty unto the praise of so great an Artificer. What movements such bodies shall then have, I do not presume rashly to define, since I am unable to imagine it; yet both their movement and their repose, like their very appearance, shall be seemly, for there whatever shall not be seemly shall not be. Assuredly, wherever the spirit shall will, there the body shall instantly be; nor shall the spirit will anything that could befit neither spirit nor body.
There shall be true glory, where no one shall be praised by the error or the flattery of him who praises; true honor, which shall be denied to none who is worthy, conferred on none who is unworthy; nor shall any unworthy one even 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 another. The reward of virtue shall be He Himself who gave the virtue, and who has 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 from which they are satisfied, I will be whatever is honorably desired by men—both life and health and nourishment and abundance and glory and honor and peace and all good things»?
For thus too is rightly understood that which the Apostle said: «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 activity, shall assuredly be common to all, even as eternal life itself. As for what shall be the degrees of honors and glories proportioned to merits in the rewards, who is competent to think it, much less to utter it? Yet that there shall be such degrees is not to be doubted. And that blessed City shall also see in itself this great good, 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, although bound by the most peaceful bond of concord to him who has received it, as in the body the finger does not wish to be the eye, since the peaceful structure of the whole flesh holds both members together. So, therefore, one shall have a gift less than another in such a way that he shall have this gift also—that he shall not wish for more. Nor on that account shall they not have free will, because sins shall not be able to delight them. For it shall be the more free in that it is freed from delight in sinning unto a delight in not sinning that cannot be turned aside. 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 free will shall be the more powerful in that it shall not be able to sin—yet this too by the gift of God, not by the power 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 receives from Him the inability to sin. Now the degrees of the divine gift had to be preserved, so that first free will should be given by which man could not sin, and last that by which he cannot sin; and the former should pertain to acquiring merit, the latter to receiving the reward. But because this nature sinned when it was able to sin, it is set free by a more abundant grace, so that it may be brought to that liberty in which it cannot sin.
For just as the first immortality, which Adam lost by sinning, was the ability not to die, and the last shall be the inability to die: so the first free will was the ability not to sin, the last the inability to sin. For the will to godliness and equity shall be as inalienable as the will to felicity. For surely by sinning we held fast neither godliness nor felicity, yet we did not lose the will to felicity even when felicity was lost. Surely God Himself—because He cannot sin—is He on that account to be denied the possession of free will?
Therefore the will of that City shall be both one in all and inseparable in each—a free will, freed from all evil and filled with all good, enjoying unfailingly the delight of eternal joys, forgetful of faults, forgetful of punishments; yet not on that account so forgetful of its own deliverance as to be ungrateful to its Deliverer. 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 experience of sense, it shall be wholly unmindful of them. For even the most skilled physician knows nearly all the diseases of the body as they are known by his art; but as they are felt in the body, he is ignorant of very many which he himself has not suffered.
As, therefore, the knowledge of evils is twofold—one by which they do not escape the power of the mind, the other by which they cleave to the senses of one who experiences them (for all vices are known in one way through the teaching of wisdom, in another way through the most wicked life of the foolish)—so also there are two kinds of forgetfulness of evils. For the learned and instructed man forgets them in one way, the man who has experienced and suffered them in another; the former, if he neglects his knowledge, the latter, if he lacks the misery. According to this forgetfulness, which I have set in the latter place, the saints shall not be mindful of their past evils; for they shall be free of all of them, so that they shall be 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 are not to know that they were once miserable, how, as the psalm says, shall they «sing the mercies of the Lord for ever»? Than which song nothing assuredly shall be more delightful to that City, unto the glory of the grace of Christ, by whose blood we have been set free. There shall be fulfilled: «Be still, and see that I am God»; which shall be in truth 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 make.»
For the seventh day shall be we ourselves, when we shall be full and refreshed by His blessing and sanctification. There, being at rest, we shall see that He Himself is God; which we wished to be to ourselves when we fell away from Him, listening to the seducer, «Ye shall be as gods,» and so departing from the true God, by whose doing we should have been gods by participation in Him, not by desertion of Him. For what did we do without Him, except that in His wrath we failed? But restored by Him, and perfected by greater grace, we shall be at rest for ever, seeing that He Himself is God, with whom we shall be filled when He Himself shall be all in all. For even our own good works, when they are understood to be His rather than ours, are then reckoned to us for the attaining of this Sabbath;
because if we ascribe them to ourselves, they shall be servile, since concerning the Sabbath it is said, «Ye shall do no servile work»; on which account it is also said through the prophet Ezekiel, «And I gave them My Sabbaths to be a sign between Me and between them, that they might know that I am the Lord who sanctifies them.» This we shall then perfectly know, when we shall perfectly rest, and shall perfectly see that He Himself is God. The very number of the ages, as it were of days, if it be reckoned according to those articulations of time which seem to be 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 until 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. So they all become five. The sixth is now being passed, 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 God Himself.
Now to discuss each of these ages in detail would be tedious; this seventh age, however, shall be our Sabbath, whose end shall not be an evening, but the Lord's Day, as it were an eternal eighth day, which has been hallowed by the resurrection of Christ, prefiguring the eternal rest not only of the spirit but also of the body. There we shall be at rest and shall see, we shall see and shall love, we shall love and shall praise. Behold what shall be in the end without end. For what other is our end but to attain to the kingdom of which there is no end? I think that, with the Lord's help, I have discharged the debt of this huge work. Let those for whom it is too little, or those for whom it is too much, forgive me; but let those for whom it is enough render thanks, not to me, but with me to God, joining in congratulation. Amen.