[I] We have already said in the preceding books that God willed to establish human beings from one man, in order that the human race might be joined together not only by likeness of nature, but also bound into one concordant unity by the bond of peace through a certain kinship of relationship; and that this race would not have died in any of its individuals, had not the two first ones—of whom one was created out of nothing, the other out of him—merited this by disobedience, by whom so great a sin was committed that human nature was thereby changed for the worse, the obligation of sin and the necessity of death being handed on even to their posterity.
Moreover, the reign of death so held dominion over human beings that it would have hurled all headlong, by a debt of punishment, even into the second death, which has no end, had not the undeserved grace of God delivered some from it. And by this it came about that, although so many and so great nations, living throughout the world by diverse rites and customs, are distinguished by a manifold variety of languages, arms, and dress, there nevertheless exist no more than two kinds of human society, which, according to our Scriptures, we may rightly call two cities.
For one is of those who will to live according to the flesh, the other of those who will to live according to the spirit, each in the peace of its own kind; and when they attain what they seek, each lives in the peace of its own kind. [II] First, then, we must see what it is to live according to the flesh, and what it is to live according to the spirit.
For whoever looks at this which we have said merely on the surface, either not recalling or too little attending to the manner in which the Holy Scriptures speak, may suppose that the Epicurean philosophers indeed live according to the flesh, because they placed the supreme good of man in the pleasure of the body—and if there are any others who in whatever way have held the good of the body to be the supreme good of man, and that whole common crowd who philosophize by no doctrine or in that manner, but, prone to lust, know not how to rejoice except in the pleasures they take through the bodily senses; but that the Stoics, on the other hand, who place the supreme good of man in the mind, live according to the spirit, for what is the mind of man but spirit?
But as the divine Scripture speaks, both are shown to live according to the flesh. For it calls flesh not only the body of an earthly and mortal living thing (as when it says: Not all flesh is the same flesh; one indeed of man, but another the flesh of beasts, another of birds, another of fishes), but it also uses the meaning of this word in many other ways; among which various modes of speech it often calls even man himself, that is, the nature of man, flesh, by that mode of speech in which the whole is signified by a part, such as: By the works of the law shall no flesh be justified. For what did it wish to be understood but every man? Which a little later it says more openly: In the law no one is justified; and to the Galatians:
Knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law. According to this it is understood: And the Word was made flesh, that is, man; which some, not rightly receiving, supposed that a human soul was lacking in Christ. For just as a part is taken for the whole, where the words of Mary Magdalene are read in the Gospel saying: They have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid Him, when she was speaking of Christ's flesh alone, which she thought had been carried off, buried, from the tomb: so also, by naming flesh as a part for the whole, man is understood, as in those instances which we recalled above. Since, therefore, the divine Scripture names flesh in many ways, which it would be long to search out and gather:
in order that we may be able to track down what it is to live according to the flesh (which is assuredly evil, though the nature of the flesh itself is not evil), let us diligently examine that passage of the epistle of the Apostle Paul which he wrote to the Galatians, where he says: Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are: fornications, uncleannesses, luxury, idolatry, sorceries, enmities, contentions, jealousies, animosities, dissensions, heresies, envies, drunkennesses, revelries, and the like; which I foretell to you, as I have foretold, that they who do such things shall not possess the kingdom of God.
This whole passage of the apostolic epistle, considered as far as shall seem sufficient for the present matter, will be able to resolve this question: what it is to live according to the flesh. For among the works of the flesh, which he said are manifest and, having enumerated them, condemned, we find not only those which pertain to the pleasure of the flesh—such as fornications, uncleannesses, luxury, drunkennesses, revelries—but also those by which the vices of the soul, alien to fleshly pleasure, are demonstrated. For who would not understand that the servitude which is rendered to idols, sorceries, enmities, contentions, jealousies, animosities, dissensions, heresies, envies, are vices of the soul rather than of the flesh?
For it can happen that on account of idolatry or the error of some heresy a man abstains from bodily pleasures; and yet even then a man, although he seems to restrain and check the lusts of the flesh, is convicted by this apostolic authority of living according to the flesh, and, in that very thing wherein he abstains from the pleasures of the flesh, is shown to do the damnable works of the flesh. Who does not have enmities in the soul? Or who would speak so as to say to his enemy, or to one whom he thinks an enemy: 'You have evil flesh,' and not rather: 'You have an evil mind against me'? Finally, just as, if anyone heard, so to speak, of 'carnalities,' he would not doubt to attribute them to the flesh, so no one doubts that animosities pertain to the soul.
Why then does the teacher of the nations, in faith and truth, call all these and the like the works of the flesh, unless because, by that mode of speech in which the whole is signified by a part, he wishes man himself to be understood by the name of flesh? [III] But if anyone says that the flesh is the cause of whatever vices there be in evil morals, on the ground that the soul, affected by the flesh, lives thus, assuredly he does not diligently consider the whole nature of man. For the corruptible body indeed weighs down the soul. Whence also the same apostle, treating of this corruptible body, of which he had said a little before: Though our outer man is corrupted:
We know, he says, that if our earthly house of this habitation be dissolved, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For in this we groan, longing to be clothed over with our habitation which is from heaven; if so be that being clothed we shall not be found naked. For while we are in this dwelling, we groan, being burdened; wherein we would not be unclothed, but clothed over, that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. We are then weighed down by the corruptible body; and, knowing the cause of this very weighing-down to be not the nature and substance of the body, but its corruption, we would not be despoiled of the body, but clothed with its immortality. For then indeed it will be, but because it will not be corruptible, it will not weigh down.
So the corruptible body now weighs down the soul, and the earthly dwelling presses down the mind that ponders many things. Nevertheless, because they think that all the evils of the soul have befallen it from the body, they are in error. For although Virgil seems to unfold the Platonic opinion in elegant verses, saying: A fiery vigor and a heavenly origin is in those seeds, so far as noxious bodies do not clog them and earthly limbs and dying members dull them; and, wishing all those most well-known four perturbations of the soul—desire and fear, gladness and sorrow, as it were the origins of all sins and vices—to be understood to befall from the body, he adds and says:
Hence they fear and desire, grieve and rejoice, nor do they look up to the airs, shut up in darkness and a blind prison: yet our faith holds otherwise. For the corruption of the body, which weighs down the soul, is not the cause of the first sin, but its punishment; nor did the corruptible flesh make the soul sinful, but the sinful soul made the flesh corruptible. From which corruption of the flesh, although there arise certain incitements to vices and vicious desires themselves, yet not all the vices of an evil life are to be attributed to the flesh, lest we clear of them all the devil, who has no flesh.
For although the devil cannot be called a fornicator or a drunkard, or anything of this kind of evil which pertains to the pleasures of the flesh—although he is even the hidden persuader and instigator of such sins—yet he is most exceedingly proud and envious. And this viciousness so possessed him that on account of it he was destined to eternal punishment in the prisons of this murky air. But these vices, which hold the primacy in the devil, the apostle attributes to the flesh, which it is certain the devil does not have. For he says that enmities, contentions, jealousies, animosities, envies are works of the flesh; of all which evils the head and origin is pride, which reigns in the devil without flesh. But who is more hostile to the saints than he?
Who is found more contentious against them, more animose and more jealous and envious? But since he has all these without flesh, in what way are they works of the flesh, unless because they are works of man, whom, as I said, he calls by the name of flesh? For it was not by having flesh, which the devil does not have, but by living according to himself, that is, according to man, that man became like the devil; because he too willed to live according to himself, when he did not stand in the truth, so that he spoke a lie not from God's but from his own store, he who is not only a liar but also the father of the lie. For he was the first to lie, and from him, from whom sin began, the lie began to be.
[IV] When therefore man lives according to man, not according to God, he is like the devil; because the angel too ought to have lived not according to the angel, but according to God, that he might stand in the truth and speak the truth from God, not a lie from himself. For concerning man too the same apostle says in another place: But if the truth of God has abounded in my lie. He called the lie ours, the truth God's. When, therefore, man lives according to the truth, he lives not according to himself, but according to God. For it is God who said: I am the truth. But when he lives according to himself, that is, according to man, not according to God, assuredly he lives according to a lie;
not that man himself is a lie, since his author and creator is God, who is by no means the author and creator of a lie, but because man was so made upright that he should live not according to himself, but according to Him by whom he was made, that is, that he should do His will rather than his own: not to live in the manner in which he was made to live—this is a lie. For he wills to be blessed even by not living in such a way that he can be blessed. What is more a lie than that will? Hence it can not be said in vain that every sin is a lie. For sin is not committed except by that will by which we will that it may be well with us, or will not that it may be ill with us.
Therefore it is a lie that, when it is done that it may be well with us, it is thereby rather ill with us; or when it is done that it may be better with us, it is thereby rather worse with us. Whence is this, unless because it can be well with man from God, whom by sinning he forsakes, and not from himself, according to whom by living he sins? What therefore we have said—that there have hence arisen two cities diverse and contrary to each other, in that some live according to the flesh, others according to the spirit—can also be said in this manner: that some live according to man, others according to God. For Paul says most openly to the Corinthians: For whereas there is jealousy and contention among you, are you not carnal and walk according to man?
So then, to walk according to man is to be carnal, because by the flesh, that is, by a part of man, man is understood. For those very same ones whom he had earlier called natural (animal), he afterward called carnal, speaking thus: For what man knows, he says, the things of a man, but the spirit of the man which is in him? So too the things of God no one knows but the Spirit of God. But we, he says, have received not the spirit of this world, but the Spirit which is from God, that we may know the things that are given to us by God; which also we speak, not in the learned words of human wisdom, but taught by the Spirit, comparing spiritual things with spiritual. But the natural (animal) man does not perceive the things that are of the Spirit of God; for it is foolishness to him.
To such then, that is, to the natural (animal), he says a little later: And I, brethren, could not speak to you as to spiritual, but as to carnal; and both this and that in the same mode of speaking, that is, the whole by a part. For both by the soul and by the flesh, which are parts of man, the whole, which is man, can be signified; and thus the natural man is not one thing and the carnal another, but the same is both, that is, a man living according to man; just as nothing other than men is signified, whether where it is read: By the works of the law shall no flesh be justified, or where it is written: Seventy-five souls went down with Jacob into Egypt.
For there too by 'all flesh' every man, and there by 'seventy-five souls' seventy-five men are understood. And what was said: Not in the learned words of human wisdom, could have been said: 'Not in the words of carnal wisdom'; just as what was said: You walk according to man, could have been said: 'According to the flesh.' But this appeared still more in those things which he added: For when one says: I indeed am of Paul, but another: I of Apollo, are you not men? What he was saying: You are natural (animal), and: You are carnal, he expressed more plainly: You are men, which is:
'You live according to man, not according to God; for if you lived according to Him, you would be gods.' [V] There is therefore no need, in our sins and vices, to the injury of the Creator, to accuse the nature of the flesh, which in its own kind and order is good; but, having forsaken the good Creator, to live according to a created good is not good, whether one choose to live according to the flesh, or according to the soul, or according to the whole man, who consists of soul and flesh (whence he can be signified either by the name of the soul alone or by the name of the flesh alone).
For he who praises the nature of the soul as the supreme good and accuses the nature of the flesh as an evil, assuredly both desires the soul carnally and flees the flesh carnally, since he judges this by human vanity, not by divine truth. The Platonists indeed are not so foolish as the Manichaeans, that they should detest earthly bodies as a nature of evil, since they attribute all the elements, of which this visible and tangible world is compacted, and their qualities, to God the Artificer; yet nevertheless they suppose that souls are so affected by earthly limbs and dying members, that from this arise in them the diseases of desires and fears, and of gladness or sorrow;
by which four either perturbations, as Cicero calls them, or passions, as most render the Greek word word-for-word, all the viciousness of human morals is contained. But if this is so, what of the fact that Aeneas in Virgil, when he had heard from his father in the lower world that souls would return again to bodies, marvels at this opinion, exclaiming: O father, is it to be thought that some sublime souls go hence to heaven and return again to sluggish bodies? What so dread a longing for the light seizes the wretched ones? Can this so dread a longing still be present in that most celebrated purity of souls from earthly limbs and dying members?
Does he not assert that they have been purged from all bodily plagues of this kind, as he says, when they begin again to wish to return into bodies? Whence it is gathered that, even if it were so—which is utterly most vain—that there is an unceasing, alternating in turn, cleansing and defiling of souls going and returning, it could not truly be said that all blameworthy and vicious motions of souls grow into them from earthly bodies; if indeed, according to those very men, that dread longing (as the noble speaker says) is so far from being from the body, that it compels the soul, purged from every bodily plague and set outside every body, to be itself in a body.
Whence, even by their own confession, the soul is affected not only from the flesh, so that it may desire, fear, rejoice, grow sick, but it can also be agitated by these motions from itself. [VI] But it matters what the will of man is like; because if it is perverse, it will have these motions perverse; but if it is right, they will be not only blameless, but even praiseworthy. For the will is in all of them; nay, they are all nothing else than wills. For what is desire and gladness but the will in consent to those things which we will? And what is fear and sorrow but the will in dissent from those things which we do not will? But when we consent by seeking those things which we will, it is called desire; and when we consent by enjoying those things which we will, it is called gladness.
Likewise, when we dissent from that which we do not will to happen, such a will is fear; but when we dissent from that which happens against our will, such a will is sorrow. And altogether, according to the variety of the things which are sought and shunned, as the will of man is allured or offended, so it is changed and turned into these or those affections. Wherefore the man who lives according to God, not according to man, must be a lover of good; whence it follows consequently that he hates evil. And since no one is evil by nature, but whoever is evil is evil by vice: he who lives according to God owes a perfect hatred to the evil, so that he neither hates the man on account of the vice, nor loves the vice on account of the man, but hates the vice, loves the man.
For when the vice is healed, all will remain that he ought to love, and nothing that he ought to hate. [VII] For he whose purpose is to love God and to love his neighbor not according to man but according to God, as also himself: without doubt on account of this love he is said to be of a good will, which is more usually in the Holy Scriptures called charity (caritas); but it is called also love (amor) according to those same sacred writings. For the apostle says that he ought to be a lover of good who is enjoined to be chosen for governing the people; and the Lord Himself, questioning the apostle Peter, when He had said: Do you love (diligis) Me more than these? he answered: Lord, You know that I love (amo) You; and again the Lord asked, not whether he loved (amaret) with amor, but whether Peter loved (diligeret) Him with dilectio; but he answered again:
Lord, You know that I love (amo) You; and at the third questioning Jesus Himself too said not: 'Do you love (diligis) Me?' but: Do you love (amas) Me? Whereupon the evangelist follows, saying: Peter was grieved because He said to him the third time: Do you love (amas) Me? whereas the Lord had said not three times, but once: Do you love (amas) Me? but twice had said: Do you love (diligis) Me? Whence we understand that even when the Lord was saying: Do you love (diligis) Me? He was saying nothing other than: Do you love (amas) Me? But Peter did not change the word for this one thing, but even the third time said: Lord, You know all things, You know that I love (amo) You. This I have thought worth recalling, because some suppose that dilectio or charity is one thing, amor (love) another. For they say that dilectio is to be taken in the good, amor in the evil.
But it is most certain that not even the authors of secular literature themselves spoke thus. But let the philosophers see whether, or by what reasoning, they distinguish these things; their books, however, sufficiently declare that they hold amor (love) in high esteem in good things and toward God Himself. But it had to be pointed out that the Scriptures of our religion, whose authority we set before all other writings, do not say that amor is one thing, dilectio or caritas another. For we have already shown that amor is spoken of in the good. But lest anyone suppose that amor indeed is to be spoken of both in the evil and in the good, but dilectio only in the good, let him attend to what is written in the psalm: But he who loves (diligit) iniquity hates his own soul, and to that of the apostle John:
If anyone loves (dilexerit) the world, the love (dilectio) of the Father is not in him. Behold, in one place dilectio both in the good and in the evil. But amor in the evil (since in the good we have already shown it)—lest anyone demand it—let him read what is written: For men shall be lovers (amantes) of their own selves, lovers (amatores) of money. A right will therefore is good love, and a perverse will is evil love. Love then, longing to have what is loved, is desire; but having and enjoying it, it is gladness; fleeing what is adverse to it, it is fear; and, if this befall, feeling it, it is sorrow. Accordingly these are evil, if the love is evil; good, if it is good. What we say, let us prove from the Scriptures. The apostle desires to be dissolved and to be with Christ; and:
My soul has desired to long for Your judgments, or if it be said more fittingly: My soul has longed to desire Your judgments; and: The desire of wisdom leads to the kingdom. Yet this custom of speech has prevailed, that if desire (cupiditas) or concupiscence be named and it not be added of what thing it is, it can be understood only in the evil. Gladness is in the good: Be glad in the Lord and rejoice, you righteous; and: You have given gladness in my heart; and: You will fill me with gladness with Your countenance. Fear is in the good in the apostle, where he says: With fear and trembling work out your own salvation; and: Be not high-minded, but fear; and:
But I fear lest, as the serpent seduced Eve by his cunning, so also your minds should be corrupted from the chastity that is in Christ. But concerning sorrow, which Cicero rather calls sickness (aegritudo), and Virgil grief (dolor), where he says: 'They grieve and rejoice,' (but I have preferred to say sorrow (tristitia), because sickness or grief is more usually said of bodies), there is a more scrupulous question, whether it can be found in the good. [VIII] For those which the Greeks call eupatheiai, but which Cicero in Latin named constancies (constantiae), the Stoics wished to be three, in place of three perturbations, in the mind of the wise man: in place of desire, will (voluntas); in place of gladness, joy (gaudium); in place of fear, caution (cautio);
but in place of sickness or grief, which we, for the sake of avoiding ambiguity, have preferred to call sorrow (tristitia), they denied that anything can be in the mind of the wise man. For will, they say, seeks the good, which the wise man does; joy is about the good obtained, which the wise man everywhere obtains; caution avoids the evil, which the wise man ought to avoid; but sorrow, since it is about the evil that has already happened, and they judge that no evil can happen to the wise man, they said that nothing in his mind can exist in its place. Thus therefore they speak, so that they deny that any but the wise man wills, rejoices, is cautious; but that the foolish man does nothing but desire, be glad, fear, be saddened;
and that those three are constancies, but these four perturbations according to Cicero, but passions according to most. In Greek those three, as I said, are called eupatheiai; but these four pathe. This manner of speech, whether it agrees with the Holy Scriptures, when I inquired as diligently as I could, I found this which the prophet says: There is no rejoicing (gaudere) for the wicked, says the Lord; as though the wicked could be glad (laetari) rather than rejoice (gaudere) over evils, because joy is properly of the good and the pious. Likewise that in the Gospel: Whatsoever you will (vultis) that men should do to you, this do you also to them, seems to be said as though no one could will (velle) anything evil or base for himself, but only desire (cupere).
Finally, on account of the custom of speech, some interpreters added 'good' and thus translated: 'Whatsoever you will that men should do good to you.' For they thought it must be guarded against, lest anyone will (velit) that dishonorable things be done to him by men—to say nothing of the baser things—certainly luxurious banquets, in which, if he too did such for them, he might think this precept fulfilled. But in the Greek Gospel, whence it was translated into Latin, it is not read 'good,' but: Whatsoever you will that men should do to you, this do you also to them; I believe for this reason, because in that which He said 'you will' (vultis), He already willed 'good' to be understood. For He did not say 'you desire' (cupitis).
Yet our speech is not always to be curbed by these proprieties, but sometimes they must be used; and when we read those to whose authority it is not lawful to be resistant, they are to be understood there, where a right sense can find no other outlet; as are those which, by way of example, we have recalled partly from the prophet, partly from the Gospel. For who does not know that the wicked exult with gladness (laetitia)? And yet: There is no rejoicing (gaudere) for the wicked, says the Lord. Whence, unless because to rejoice (gaudere) is something else, when this word is put properly and precisely? Likewise, who would deny that it is not rightly enjoined upon men that whatsoever they desire to be done to them by others, they too should do to them; lest they delight one another with the baseness of unlawful pleasure?
And yet it is a most wholesome and most true precept: Whatsoever you will that men should do to you, the same do you also to them. And whence this, unless because in this place the will (voluntas) is set down in a certain proper manner, which cannot be taken in the evil? But in the more usual manner of speech, which the habit of discourse most frequently employs, it would surely not be said: Do not will (noli velle) to speak every lie, unless there were also an evil will, from whose depravity that will is distinguished which the angels proclaimed, saying: Peace on earth to men of good will. For 'good' was added superfluously, if it cannot be but good. And what great thing would the apostle have said in the praises of charity, that it does not rejoice over iniquity, unless because malignity thus rejoices?
Among the authors of secular letters too such an interchangeable use of these words is found. For Cicero, that most eminent orator, says: 'I desire (cupio), conscript fathers, to be merciful.' Since he set this word in a good sense, who would prove so perversely learned as to contend that he ought to have said not 'I desire' but rather 'I will'? Again, in Terence a debauched young man, blazing with insane lust, says: 'I will (volo) nothing else but Philumena.' That this willing was in fact lust is made plain enough by the reply given there by his more sober-minded servant, who says to his master: 'How much better it would be for you to give your effort to this — to remove that love from your heart — than to say what you say, whereby your lust is the more vainly inflamed?'
That they set joy also in an evil sense is witnessed by that very verse of Virgil, where he embraced these four perturbations with the utmost brevity: 'Hence they fear and desire, they grieve and rejoice.' The same author said also: 'The evil joys of the mind.' Accordingly both the good and the wicked will, are cautious, and rejoice; and, to state the same thing in other words, both the good and the wicked desire, fear, and are glad — but the former rightly, the latter wrongly, according as the will in men is upright or perverse. Sadness itself too, in place of which the Stoics thought that nothing could be found in the mind of the wise man, is found in a good sense, and especially among our own writers. For the Apostle praises the Corinthians because they had been made sorrowful according to God.
But perhaps someone will say that the Apostle congratulated them because they had been made sorrowful by repenting — a sorrow which can belong to none but those who have sinned. For thus he says: 'I see that that letter, though but for an hour, made you sorry; now I rejoice, not that you were made sorry, but that you were made sorry unto repentance. For you were made sorry according to God, that in nothing you might suffer loss from us. For the sorrow that is according to God works repentance unto salvation not to be repented of; but the sorrow of the world works death. For behold, this very thing, that you were made sorry according to God, what earnestness it wrought in you!'
And by this the Stoics can answer on behalf of their own position, that sorrow seems useful for this end — that one may repent of having sinned; but that it cannot exist in the mind of the wise man, because neither does sin, over whose repentance he might grieve, befall him, nor any other evil, by suffering and feeling which he might be made sad. For they relate that Alcibiades too (if my memory does not fail me about the man's name), when he seemed to himself to be happy, wept when Socrates argued with him and demonstrated to him how wretched he was because he was foolish. For this man, then, folly was the cause even of this useful and desirable sorrow, whereby a man grieves that he is what he ought not to be. The Stoics, however, say that not the fool but the wise man cannot be sorrowful.
But as far as concerns this question about the perturbations of the soul, we have already answered these philosophers in the ninth book of this work, showing that they are more eager for contention about words than about things, and for strife rather than for truth. But among us, according to the Holy Scriptures and sound doctrine, the citizens of the holy City of God, living according to God in the pilgrimage of this life, both fear and desire, both grieve and rejoice; and because their love is right, they have all these affections right. They fear eternal punishment, they desire eternal life; they grieve in present reality, because they themselves still groan within themselves, awaiting the adoption, the redemption of their body; they rejoice in hope, because that word shall be fulfilled which is written:
'Death is swallowed up in victory.' Likewise they fear to sin, they desire to persevere; they grieve over sins, they rejoice in good works. For that they may fear to sin, they hear: 'Because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall grow cold'; that they may desire to persevere, they hear what is written: 'He that shall persevere unto the end, the same shall be saved'; that they may grieve over sins, they hear: 'If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us'; that they may rejoice in good works, they hear: 'God loves a cheerful giver.' Likewise, according as their weakness or their strength stands, they fear to be tempted, they desire to be tempted; they grieve in temptations, they rejoice in temptations. For that they may fear to be tempted, they hear:
'If a man be overtaken in any fault, you who are spiritual instruct such a one in the spirit of meekness, considering yourself, lest you also be tempted.' But that they may desire to be tempted, they hear a certain brave man of the City of God saying: 'Prove me, O Lord, and try me; burn my reins and my heart.' That they may grieve in temptations, they see Peter weeping; that they may rejoice in temptations, they hear James saying: 'Count it all joy, my brethren, when you fall into various temptations.' And they are moved by these affections not only on their own account, but also on account of those whom they desire to see set free and fear lest they perish, and grieve if they perish and rejoice if they are set free.
For that best and bravest man, who glories in his infirmities — to make special mention of him, we who from among the Gentiles have come into the Church of Christ, the teacher of the Gentiles in faith and truth, who both labored more than all his fellow-apostles and instructed the peoples of God by many epistles, not only those who were seen to be present to him, but also those who were foreseen as yet to come;
that man, I say, that athlete of Christ, taught by Him, anointed by Him, crucified with Him, glorious in Him, in the theatre of this world, to which he was made a spectacle both to angels and to men, lawfully contending in the great contest and pressing on before him toward the palm of the heavenly calling — with the eyes of faith they most gladly behold him rejoicing with those who rejoice, weeping with those who weep, having without fightings, within fears, desiring to be dissolved and to be with Christ, longing to see the Romans that he might have some fruit among them also, as among the other Gentiles, being jealous over the Corinthians and in that very jealousy fearing lest their minds be seduced from the chastity that is in Christ, having great sorrow and continual pain of heart over the Israelites, because, being ignorant of God's righteousness and wishing to establish their own, they were not subject to the righteousness of God;
and not only declaring his sorrow, but even his mourning over certain ones who had sinned before and had not repented of their uncleanness and fornications. If these movements, these affections, which come from the love of the good and from holy charity, are to be called vices, then let us grant that those things which are truly vices be called virtues. But since these affections follow right reason when they are applied where and when they ought to be, who would then dare to call them diseases or vicious passions? Wherefore even the Lord Himself, deigning to lead a human life in the form of a servant, but having no sin whatsoever, employed them where He judged that they ought to be employed.
For in Him, in whom there was a true body of man and a true soul of man, human affection was not false. When therefore in the Gospel these things are related of Him — that He was grieved with anger over the hardness of the Jews' heart; that He said, 'I am glad for your sakes, that you may believe'; that when about to raise Lazarus He even shed tears; that He desired to eat the Passover with His disciples; that as the Passion drew near His soul was sorrowful — these are surely not related falsely. But He, by the grace of a certain sure dispensation, took up these movements in His human soul when He willed, just as He was made man when He willed.
Accordingly, as must be confessed, even when we have these affections rightly and according to God, they belong to this life, not to that which we hope will be to come; and often we yield to them even against our will. And so sometimes, though moved not by blameworthy desire but by praiseworthy charity, we weep even when we do not wish to. We have them, therefore, from the weakness of the human condition; but not so the Lord Jesus, whose weakness too was from power. But while we bear the weakness of this life, if we should have none of these affections at all, then we would rather not be living rightly. For the Apostle blamed and detested certain persons whom he even said to be without affection. The sacred psalm also censured those of whom it says:
'I looked for one that would grieve together with me, and there was none.' For to feel no grief at all, while we are in this place of misery, certainly — as someone even among the men of letters of this world perceived and said — 'does not come about without a great price of inhumanity in the mind and of stupor in the body.' Wherefore that which in Greek is called apatheia (which, if it could be rendered in Latin, would be called impassibility) — if it is to be so understood (for it is taken as belonging to the mind, not to the body) as that one should live without those affections which happen contrary to reason and disturb the mind, then it is plainly good and most greatly to be desired, but even it is not of this life. For it is not the voice of men of just any kind whatever, but especially of the pious and the very just and holy:
'If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.' That apatheia, then, will exist when there will be no sin at all in man. But now one lives well enough if without crime; yet he who thinks he lives without sin does not act so as to have no sin, but so as to receive no pardon. Furthermore, if that state must be called apatheia in which no affection whatever can touch the mind, who would not judge this stupor to be worse than all vices? It can therefore be said, not absurdly, that perfect blessedness will be without the sting of fear and without any sorrow; but who would say that there will not be love and joy there, unless he were altogether shut off from the truth?
But if that apatheia is where neither any fear terrifies nor pain torments, it is to be shunned in this life, if we wish to live rightly, that is, according to God; yet in that blessed life which is promised as everlasting, it is plainly to be hoped for. For that fear of which the Apostle John speaks: 'There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear, because fear has torment; and he that fears is not perfected in love' — that is not the kind of fear such as that with which the Apostle Paul feared lest the Corinthians be seduced by the serpent's cunning; for charity has this fear, nay rather nothing but charity has it; but of that kind is the fear which is not in love, of which the same Apostle Paul says:
'For you have not received again the spirit of bondage in fear.' But that chaste fear, enduring for ever and ever — if it will exist also in the age to come (for in what other way can it be understood to endure for ever and ever?) — is not a fear that terrifies away from an evil that can befall, but one that holds fast in the good that cannot be lost. For where the love of the good once attained is unchangeable, then surely, if it may be so said, the fear of avoiding evil is secure. For by the name of chaste fear is signified that will by which it will be necessary for us to be unwilling to sin, and to beware of sin not from the anxiety of weakness, lest perchance we sin, but from the tranquillity of charity.
Or if no kind of fear at all will be able to exist in that most certain security of perpetual and blessed joys, then 'The fear of the Lord, chaste, enduring for ever and ever' is said in the same manner as it is said: 'The patience of the poor shall not perish for ever.' For that patience itself will not be eternal, which is not necessary except where evils are to be endured; but that will be eternal to which one attains through patience. So perhaps chaste fear is said to endure for ever and ever because that will endure to which fear itself leads. Since these things are so, since a right life is to be led, by which one is to arrive at the blessed life, the right life has all these affections right, the perverse life has them perverse.
But the blessed and also eternal life will have love and joy not only right, but also secure; yet no fear nor sorrow. Whence it is now in some measure apparent what the citizens of the City of God ought to be in this pilgrimage, living according to the spirit, not according to the flesh — that is, according to God, not according to man — and what they will be in that immortality toward which they tend. But the city, that is, the society, of the impious, who live not according to God but according to man and who in the very worship of false divinity and in the contempt of the true follow the doctrines of men or of demons, is shaken by these depraved affections as by diseases and perturbations.
And if it has any citizens who seem to moderate such movements and, as it were, to temper them, they are so proud and puffed up in their impiety that by this very fact there are in them the greater swellings the fewer sorrows they have. And if some, with the more monstrous vanity the rarer it is, have come to love this in themselves — that they are utterly raised and stirred by no affection, bent and inclined by no affection — they rather lose their whole humanity than attain true tranquillity. For a thing is not therefore right because it is hard, nor healthy because it is unfeeling.
But whether the first man, or the first human beings (for there was a wedded pair of two), had these affections in the animal body before sin — such as we shall not have in the spiritual body when all sin has been purged and ended — is not inquired into without reason. For if they had them, how were they blessed in that memorable place of blessedness, that is, in paradise? For who at all can absolutely be called blessed who is affected by fear or sorrow? What indeed could those human beings fear or grieve at, amid so great an abundance of such great goods, where neither was death dreaded nor any ill health of body, nor was anything lacking which a good will might attain, nor was anything present which might offend the flesh or the mind of a man living happily?
There was undisturbed love toward God and among the wedded pair living in faithful and sincere fellowship, and from this love great joy, since that which was loved did not cease to be there for enjoyment. There was a tranquil avoidance of sin, and while this remained, no evil at all from any quarter rushed in to bring sorrow. Or perhaps they desired to touch the forbidden tree in order to eat, but feared to die, and through this both desire and fear even then disturbed those human beings even in that place? Far be it that we should think this existed where there was no sin at all. For it is not no sin to covet those things which the law of God forbids and to abstain from them through fear of punishment, not through love of righteousness.
Far be it, I say, that before all sin there should already have been there such a sin as that they should commit concerning the tree what the Lord said concerning a woman: 'If anyone shall look upon a woman to lust after her, he has already committed adultery with her in his heart.' How happy therefore they were, and disturbed by no perturbations of soul, injured by no discomforts of body! So happy would the whole human society have been, if neither they had committed the evil which they would also transmit to their descendants, nor anyone from their stock had committed by iniquity anything which he would receive by condemnation; and this happiness enduring until, through that blessing by which it was said:
'Increase and multiply' — the number of the predestined saints should be completed, and another greater blessing be given, which was given to the most blessed angels, where there would already be sure security that no one would sin and no one would die, and the life of the saints, after no experience of toil, of pain, of death, would be such as it will be, after all these things, in the incorruption of bodies restored by the resurrection of the dead. But since God foreknew all things and therefore could not be ignorant that man too would sin, we ought to assert the holy City according to that which He foreknew and disposed, not according to that which could not come into our knowledge, because it was not in God's disposition.
For man could not by his sin disturb the divine counsel, as though he had compelled God to change what He had ordained; since God by foreknowing had anticipated both — that is, both what man, whom He created good, would become as evil, and what good He Himself would even so bring about concerning him. For although God is said to change His ordinances — whence in the Scriptures He is even read, by a figurative expression, to have repented — this is said with reference to what man had hoped, or what the order of natural causes bore, not with reference to what the Almighty had foreknown He would do. God therefore made man, as it is written, upright, and thereby of good will. For he would not be upright not having a good will. A good will, therefore, is the work of God;
for man was made by Him with it. But the first evil will, since it preceded all evil works in man, was rather a certain defection from the work of God to its own works than any work; and therefore they were evil works, because according to itself, not according to God — so that the will itself was, as it were, an evil tree bearing those works as its evil fruits, or the man himself insofar as he was of evil will. Further, though an evil will is not according to nature but contrary to nature, since it is a vice, yet it belongs to that nature of which it is a vice, since it cannot exist except in a nature: but in that nature which the Creator created out of nothing, not in that which He begot of Himself, as He begot the Word, through whom all things were made;
for although God fashioned man out of the dust of the earth, that same earth and all earthly matter is altogether from nothing, and He gave to the body a soul made from nothing, when man was made. But so far indeed are evils overcome by goods that, although they are permitted to exist in order to demonstrate how the most provident justice of the Creator can use even them well, yet goods can exist without evils — as God Himself, the true and supreme, as does every heavenly creature, invisible and visible, above this murky air; but evils cannot exist without goods, since the natures in which they exist, insofar as they are natures, are assuredly good.
Moreover, evil is removed not by some nature which had been added being taken away, or any part of it, but by that which had been vitiated and depraved being healed and corrected. The free choice of the will, then, is truly free when it does not serve vices and sins. Such was it given by God; and being lost through its own fault, it cannot be restored except by Him who was able to give it. Whence the Truth says: 'If the Son shall make you free, then you shall be free indeed.' And this is the same as if He had said: 'If the Son shall save you, then you shall be saved indeed.' For thence is He the Liberator, whence He is the Savior. Man therefore lived according to God in a paradise both bodily and spiritual.
For paradise was not bodily on account of the goods of the body and not spiritual on account of those of the mind; or indeed spiritual so that man might enjoy it through the inner senses and not bodily so that he might enjoy it through the outer senses. It was plainly both for the sake of both.
But afterward, when that proud angel and thereby envious angel, through that same pride turned away from God to himself and, choosing by a certain tyrannical arrogance as it were to rejoice over subjects rather than to be subject, fell from the spiritual paradise (concerning whose fall, and that of his companions, who from being angels of God were made his angels, I have disputed sufficiently, as far as I could, in the eleventh and twelfth books of this work) — striving by ill-persuading craftiness to creep into the sense of man, whom, standing fast, he envied, since he himself had fallen — he chose the serpent in the bodily paradise, where, along with those two human beings, male and female, the other terrestrial animals also dwelt subject and harmless, a slippery animal, that is, moving in tortuous windings, suited to his work, through which he might speak;
and having through his angelic presence and more excellent nature subjected it to himself by spiritual wickedness and abusing it as an instrument, he spoke deceitfully to the woman, beginning, that is, from the inferior part of that human couple, so that he might by degrees reach the whole, not supposing the man to be easily credulous nor able to be deceived by erring himself, but while yielding to another's error. For just as Aaron did not consent to the erring people, being led on, to fashion the idol, but yielded being constrained; nor is it credible that Solomon thought by error that idols were to be served, but was compelled by feminine blandishments to those sacrileges:
so it is to be believed that that man, to his own woman, one to one, human being to human being, spouse to spouse, did not, being seduced, believe her as speaking truth, and so transgress the law of God, but yielded to the bond of social intimacy. For not without reason did the Apostle say: 'And Adam was not seduced, but the woman was seduced' — except because she accepted what the serpent had spoken to her as though it were true, whereas he was unwilling to be separated from his only companion even in fellowship of sin; nor is he therefore any the less guilty, if he sinned knowingly and deliberately. Whence also the Apostle does not say, 'He did not sin,' but 'He was not seduced'; for surely he shows him to have sinned when he says: 'By one man sin entered into the world,' and a little later more openly:
'In the likeness,' he says, 'of Adam's transgression.' But he wished those to be understood as seduced who do not think that what they do is sin; but Adam knew. Otherwise how will it be true, 'Adam was not seduced'? But being inexperienced in the divine severity, he could have been deceived in this — that he believed the offense to be venial. And through this, in that respect indeed in which the woman was seduced, he was not seduced; but he was deceived as to how what he was going to say would have to be judged: 'The woman whom Thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat.' What need of more words? Even though by believing they were not both deceived, yet by sinning both were captured and entangled in the snares of the devil.
But if anyone is moved as to why human nature is not so changed by other sins as it was changed by that transgression of the first two human beings, so that it should be subject to such great corruption as we see and feel, and through this to death, and be disturbed and tossed about by so many and so great and so mutually contrary affections, such as it certainly was not in paradise before sin, although it was in an animal body — if anyone, I say, is moved by this, he ought not therefore to think that that offense was slight and small, because it was committed in food not indeed evil or harmful, except that it was forbidden; for God would not create and plant anything evil in that place of such great felicity.
But obedience was commended in the precept — a virtue which in the rational creature is in a certain manner the mother and guardian of all virtues; since indeed it was so made that submission be useful to it, but that the doing of its own will, and not that of Him by whom it was created, be pernicious. And so this precept about not eating one kind of food, where so great an abundance of others lay at hand — a precept so easy to observe, so brief to retain in memory, especially where desire did not yet resist the will (which resistance followed afterward as the penalty of the transgression) — was violated with the greater injustice the more easily it could have been kept by observance. In secret, moreover, they began to be evil, so that they might slip into open disobedience.
For one would not arrive at an evil work unless an evil will had preceded. Further, what could be the beginning of an evil will but pride? 'For pride is the beginning of all sin.' And what is pride but the appetite for a perverse exaltation? For it is a perverse exaltation to forsake that to which the mind ought to cling as its beginning, and to become in a certain manner one's own beginning, and to be one's own beginning. This happens when one is too much pleased with oneself. And one is thus pleased with oneself when he falls away from that unchangeable good which ought to have pleased him more than he himself.
But that defection is voluntary; for if the will had remained stable in the love of the higher unchangeable good, by which it was illumined that it might see and enkindled that it might love, it would not have turned aside thence to please itself, and from this grown dark and cold, so that either she should believe the serpent had spoken truth, or he should prefer the will of his wife to the command of God and think himself a venial transgressor of the precept, if he did not forsake his life's companion even in the fellowship of sin. Not, therefore, was the evil work done — that is, that transgression, that they should eat the forbidden food — except by those who were already evil. Nor would that fruit have been evil except from an evil tree.
But that it should be an evil tree was done contrary to nature, because it would certainly not come to pass except by a vice of the will, which is contrary to nature. But a nature could not be depraved by a vice unless it had been made out of nothing. Consequently, that it is a nature, it has from this — that it was made by God; but that it falls away from that which it is, from this — that it was made out of nothing. Yet man did not so fall away as to become altogether nothing, but so that, inclined toward himself, he should be less than he was when he clung to Him who supremely is. Therefore, having forsaken God, to be in oneself — that is, to please oneself — is not now to be nothing, but to draw near to nothing. Whence the proud are called by the Holy Scriptures by another name, self-pleasers. For it is good to have the heart lifted up on high;
yet not toward oneself, which belongs to pride, but toward the Lord, which belongs to obedience, which can belong to none but the humble. There is therefore, in a wondrous way, something of humility which makes the heart high, and there is something of exaltation which makes the heart low. This indeed seems as it were contrary — that exaltation should be downward and humility upward. But pious humility makes one subject to a superior; and nothing is superior to God; and therefore humility, which makes one subject to God, exalts. But exaltation, which is in vice, by that very fact rejects subjection and falls away from Him than whom there is nothing superior, and from this it will be lower, and it comes to pass as it is written: 'Thou didst cast them down while they were being lifted up.' For he does not say:
'When they had been lifted up' — as though first they were exalted and afterward cast down; but 'while they were being lifted up,' then they were cast down. For the very being lifted up is already a being cast down. Wherefore, that now in the City of God, and for the City of God on pilgrimage in this present age, humility is especially commended, and is especially proclaimed in her King, who is Christ, while the vice of exaltation contrary to this virtue is taught by the sacred writings especially to hold dominion in His adversary, who is the devil — this surely is that great difference by which the two cities of which we speak are distinguished: the one, namely, the society of pious men, the other of the impious, each with the angels belonging to it, in which the one has love of God preceding, the other love of self.
Therefore, in the manifest and open sin, where that was done which God had forbidden to be done, the devil would not have caught man had man not already begun to please himself. For hence too it gave delight, that which was said: 'You shall be as gods.' Which they could better have been by cleaving through obedience to the supreme and true beginning, than by their own pride existing as their own beginning. For created gods are gods not by their own truth but by participation in the true God. But by seeking more, he becomes less, who, while he chooses to be sufficient for himself, falls away from Him who truly suffices for him.
That evil, then, by which, when a man is pleased with himself as though he too were light, he turns away from that Light which, had he been pleased with It, would have made him also to be light — that evil, I say, preceded in secret, so that this evil, which was committed in the open, might follow. For true is that which is written: 'Before ruin the heart is exalted, and before glory it is humbled.' That ruin which occurs in the hidden place precedes the ruin that occurs in the manifest, while the former is not accounted a ruin at all. For who thinks self-exaltation to be ruin, when there is already present that defect by which the Most High is forsaken? And who does not see it to be ruin, when there occurs an evident and unquestionable transgression of the commandment?
For this reason God forbade that thing which, once it had been committed, could by no imagination of righteousness be defended. And I dare to say that it is profitable for the proud to fall into some open and manifest sin, whereby they may become displeasing to themselves, who had already fallen by being pleased with themselves. For more wholesomely was Peter displeased with himself when he wept, than when he was pleased with himself when he presumed. This too the sacred psalm declares: 'Fill their faces with shame, and they shall seek Thy name, O Lord' — that is, that Thou mayest please them who seek Thy name, who had pleased themselves by seeking their own. [XIV] But there is a worse and more damnable pride, whereby even in manifest sins a refuge of excuse is sought; as with those first men, of whom Scripture said this:
'The serpent deceived me, and I did eat'; and he said: 'The woman whom Thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat.' Nowhere here is there any sound of a plea for pardon, nowhere any imploring of remedy. For although these two do not, like Cain, deny what they have committed, yet pride still seeks to refer elsewhere the wrong it has done: the woman's pride upon the serpent, the man's pride upon the woman. But it is rather accusation than any true excuse, where there is an open transgression of the divine commandment. For they did not on that account fail to do it — because the woman committed it at the serpent's persuading, the man at the woman's imparting — as though anything ought to have been preferred to God, in whom they should either have believed or to whom they should have yielded.
[XV] Because, then, God was despised who was commanding — He who had created man, who had made him after His own image, who had set him above the other animals, who had placed him in paradise, who had furnished him with abundance of all things and of health, who had burdened him with commandments neither many nor great nor difficult, but had supported him with one most brief and most light unto the wholesomeness of obedience, whereby He was reminding that creature, for whom a free servitude was expedient, that He Himself was Lord — a just condemnation followed, and such a condemnation that man, who by keeping the commandment would have been destined to be spiritual even in the flesh, became carnal even in the mind; and he who by his own pride had been pleased with himself, was by God's justice given over to himself;
yet not so as to be in every way in his own power, but, dissenting even from himself, he should under him to whom he consented by sinning, instead of the liberty he had coveted, lead a hard and wretched servitude — dead in spirit willingly, and about to die in body unwillingly; a deserter of eternal life, condemned also to eternal death, unless grace should deliver him. Whosoever thinks a condemnation of this kind either excessive or unjust, assuredly knows not how to measure how great was the iniquity in sinning, where there was so great a facility of not sinning. For just as Abraham's obedience is not without reason proclaimed great, because a most difficult thing was commanded — that he should slay his son —
so in paradise the disobedience was the greater, the more that which was commanded was of no difficulty at all. And just as the obedience of the second Man is the more to be praised, in that He was made obedient even unto death, so the disobedience of the first man is the more to be detested, in that he was made disobedient even unto death. For where the great penalty of disobedience is set forth and an easy thing is commanded by the Creator, who can sufficiently unfold how great an evil it is not to obey in an easy matter, at the command of so great a power, and under so great a threatened punishment? In short, to put it briefly, in the penalty of that sin, what was requited to disobedience but disobedience?
For what other misery is there for man than his own disobedience against himself, so that, because he would not do what he could, he now wills what he cannot? For in paradise, even though before sin he could not do all things, yet whatever he could not do, he did not will; and therefore he could do all that he willed. But now, as we recognize in his offspring and as divine Scripture testifies, 'man has become like unto vanity.' For who can count how many things he wills which he cannot, while his own self — that is, his very mind, and his flesh which is inferior to it — does not obey his own will?
For even against his will his mind is oftentimes disturbed, and his flesh suffers pain and grows old and dies, and whatever else we suffer which we would not suffer against our will, if our nature in every way and in all its parts obeyed our will. But it is objected: the flesh suffers something whereby it is not permitted to serve. What does it matter whence, so long as, by the justice of God who rules us — whom being made subject we would not serve — our flesh, which had been made subject to us, becomes troublesome to us by not serving; although we, by not serving God, could be troublesome to ourselves, but not to Him? For He does not need our service, as we need the service of the body; and therefore what we receive is our own penalty, not His, for what we did.
Further, the pains which are called pains of the flesh are of the soul in the flesh and from the flesh. For what does the flesh by itself, without the soul, either feel as pain or desire? But when the flesh is said to desire or to feel pain, it is either the man himself, as we have discussed, or some part of the soul which the passion of the flesh affects — whether harsh, so as to cause pain, or gentle, so as to cause pleasure. But pain of the flesh is only an offence to the soul from the flesh, and a certain dissent from its passion, as pain of the mind, which is called sadness, is a dissent from those things which have befallen us against our will. But sadness is for the most part preceded by fear, which itself also is in the soul, not in the flesh.
But pain of the flesh is not preceded by any sort of fear of the flesh which is felt in the flesh before the pain. Pleasure, however, is preceded by a certain appetite which is felt in the flesh as its craving, such as hunger and thirst, and that which in the genital parts is more usually called lust — though this be the general term for all craving. For the ancients defined even anger itself to be nothing else than the lust of avenging; although sometimes a man, where there is no sense of retribution, grows angry even at inanimate things, and, being angry, dashes down the pen that writes badly, or breaks the reed.
Yet this too, although more irrational, is nevertheless a certain lust of avenging, and a sort of shadow, so to speak, of retribution — that those who do ill should suffer ill. There is therefore a lust of avenging, which is called anger; there is a lust of possessing money, which is avarice; there is a lust of conquering in any way whatever, which is obstinacy; there is a lust of boasting, which is called vainglory. There are many and various lusts, of which some have even their own proper names, but some have not. For who could readily say what is the name of the lust of domineering, which nevertheless prevails exceedingly in the minds of tyrants, as even civil wars bear witness?
[XVI] Since, therefore, there are lusts of many things, yet when 'lust' is spoken of, and it is not added of what thing the lust is, scarcely anything is wont to occur to the mind except that by which the obscene parts of the body are excited. This lust, moreover, claims for itself not only the whole body, nor only externally, but also internally, and moves the whole man, the affection of the soul being joined and mingled together with the appetite of the flesh, so that there follows a pleasure than which there is none greater among the pleasures of the body; so that at the very moment of time in which it comes to its climax, well-nigh all the keenness and, as it were, the watchfulness of thought is overwhelmed.
But what friend of wisdom and of holy joys, leading a conjugal life but, as the Apostle admonished, 'knowing how to possess his own vessel in sanctification and honour, not in the disease of desire, as also the Gentiles who know not God' — would not prefer, if he could, to beget children without this lust; so that even in this office of propagating offspring, the members created for this work might, just like the other members each assigned to their own works, serve his mind, moved by the beck of his will, not incited by the heat of lust? But not even the very lovers of this pleasure are moved, whether to conjugal intercourse or to the uncleannesses of shameful deeds, when they will;
but sometimes that motion is importunate when no one demands it, and sometimes it forsakes the one who gapes for it, and while in the mind desire is on fire, in the body it is cold; and thus in a marvellous way lust does not serve, not only the will to generate, but also the lust of wantonness; and while for the most part it wholly opposes the mind that would restrain it, sometimes it is even divided against itself, and, having stirred the mind, does not follow itself in stirring the body. [XVII] Deservedly is one most of all ashamed of this lust; deservedly too are those very members, which it moves or does not move by a certain right, so to speak, of its own, not altogether according to our will, called 'pudenda' (the parts of shame), which they were not before man's sin. For as it is written:
'They were naked, and were not ashamed' — not because their nakedness was unknown to them, but because their nakedness was not yet shameful, since not yet did lust move those members apart from the will, nor yet did the flesh, by a certain disobedience of its own, bear witness to reprove man's disobedience. For they were not created blind, as the ignorant crowd supposes; since indeed the man saw the animals to which he gave names, and of the woman it is read: 'The woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes to behold.' Their eyes therefore were open, but not open unto this — that is, not attentive — so as to recognize what was furnished them by the garment of grace, when they knew not their members to resist the will.
When this grace was withdrawn, so that by a reciprocal penalty the disobedience might be punished, there arose in the motion of the body a certain shameless novelty, whence the nakedness became indecent, and it made them attentive and rendered them confounded. Hence it is that, after they had violated God's commandment by open transgression, it is written of them: 'And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons.' 'The eyes of them both were opened,' it says — not unto seeing, for they saw even before, but unto discerning between the good which they had lost and the evil into which they had fallen.
Whence also the tree itself, because it caused this discernment if it should be touched for eating against the prohibition, from that circumstance received its name, so as to be called 'the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.' For once the trouble of disease has been experienced, the pleasantness of health becomes more evident too. They knew, therefore, that they were naked — stripped, that is, of that grace whereby it came to pass that the nakedness of the body did not confound them by any law of sin resisting their mind. This, then, they came to know, which they would more happily have not known, had they, believing and obeying God, not committed that which forced them to experience by their own hurt what infidelity and disobedience harm.
Accordingly, confounded by the disobedience of their own flesh, as by a witness to the penalty of their own disobedience, they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves aprons — that is, girdles for the genitals. For certain interpreters have put 'girdles.' Now 'campestria' is indeed a Latin word, but it is derived from the fact that young men who were exercised naked in the field (campus) used to cover their private parts; whence those who are thus girded the common people call 'campestrati.' What, therefore, lust was moving disobediently against the will already condemned for the fault of disobedience, modesty was decently covering.
From this, all nations, since they are begotten from that stock, hold so ingrained a custom of veiling the pudenda, that certain barbarians do not keep those parts of the body bare even in the baths, but bathe with coverings for them. Through the shady solitudes of India also, when certain men philosophize naked — whence they are called gymnosophists — they nevertheless apply coverings to the genitals, though they go without them over the rest of their members.
[XVIII] But the very act which is performed by such lust seeks concealment not only in all cases of debauchery, where hiding-places are sought to escape human judgments, but even in the use of harlots, which practice the earthly city has made a licensed baseness; although that is done which no law of that city punishes, yet even permitted and unpunished lust shuns the public gaze, and by natural modesty the very brothels have made provision for secrecy; and unchastity could more easily be without the bonds of prohibition than shamelessness could remove the hiding-places of that foulness. But even the shameful themselves call this thing shameful, and though they be lovers of it, they dare not be flaunters of it. What of
conjugal intercourse, which according to the prescriptions of the marriage tablets is done for the sake of begetting children — does not it too, although it be licit and honourable, seek out a chamber removed from witnesses? Does not the husband, before he even begins to caress his wife, send outside all servants, and even the groomsmen themselves, and whomever any necessity had permitted to enter? And since, as even a certain 'greatest author of Roman eloquence' says, all rightly done deeds wish to be placed in the light — that is, they desire to be known — this rightly done deed so desires to be known, that yet it blushes to be seen. For who does not know what married persons do together, that children may be begotten? — since indeed it is with such great festivity that wives are led home for this to be done;
and yet, when that is being done from which children are born, not even the children themselves, if any have already been born from it, are permitted to be witnesses. For this rightly done deed thus desires the light of minds unto knowledge of itself, that yet it shuns the light of eyes. Whence is this, save that what is by nature seemly is so carried on, that there should attend it, from the penalty, even something that shames? [XIX] Hence it is that even those philosophers who came nearer to the truth confessed anger and lust to be vicious parts of the soul, in that they are moved turbulently and inordinately even to those things which wisdom forbids to be committed, and on this account have need of a governing mind and reason.
This third part of the soul they hold to be placed, as it were, in a certain citadel, to govern those two, so that, with it commanding and those serving, righteousness might be preserved in man from every part of the soul. These parts, then, which they confess to be vicious even in a wise and temperate man — so that the mind, by checking and restraining, might rein them in and recall them from those things toward which they are unjustly moved, and permit them toward those which are conceded by the law of wisdom (as anger toward exercising just correction, as lust toward the office of propagating offspring) — these parts, I say, in paradise before sin were not vicious.
For they were not moved toward anything against a right will, so that it would be necessary to restrain them by reason as by reins governing. But that they are now so moved, and by those who live temperately and justly and piously are, sometimes more easily, sometimes with more difficulty, yet by checking and resisting kept in measure, this is assuredly not health from nature, but a languor from fault. But why the works of anger and of the other affections in certain words and deeds are not so concealed by modesty as the works of lust, which are done by the genital members — what is the cause of this, save that in the other cases it is not the affections themselves, but the will, when it has consented to them, that moves the members of the body, and which in their use altogether dominates?
For whoever utters a word in anger, or even strikes anyone, could not do this unless tongue and hand were moved by the will in some way commanding; which members, even when there is no anger, are moved by the same will. But the genital parts of the body, lust has so appropriated to its own right, as it were, that they cannot be moved if it be absent, and unless it, either spontaneously or when excited, has arisen. This is what causes shame; this is what shrinks blushing from the eyes of onlookers; and a man more readily bears a multitude of spectators when he is unjustly angry with a man, than the gaze even of one when he is justly uniting with his wife.
[XX] This those dog-like philosophers — that is, the Cynics — did not see, when they put forth against human modesty what else but a dog-like — that is, an unclean and shameless — opinion? namely, that, since what is done with a wife is just, one need not be ashamed to do it openly, nor to avoid conjugal intercourse in any street or square whatever. Yet natural shame overcame the opinion of this error. For although they relate that Diogenes once did this boastfully, thinking his sect would thereby become more renowned if his shamelessness were more notably fixed in the memory of men, yet afterwards this ceased to be done by the Cynics, and shame prevailed — that men should blush before men — more than error, that men should affect to be like dogs.
Whence also that man, or those men, who are reported to have done this, I rather judge to have presented to the eyes of men who knew not what was going on under the cloak the motions of persons cohabiting, than that that pleasure could be accomplished under the pressure of human gaze. For there the philosophers were not ashamed to be seen willing to cohabit, where lust itself would have been ashamed to arise. And now we see that there are still Cynic philosophers; for these are they who not only clothe themselves with a cloak, but even carry a club; yet none of them dares to do this, and if any had dared, they would have been overwhelmed — not to say with the blows of stone-throwers, at least certainly with the spittle of those spitting upon them. Human nature therefore, without any doubt, is ashamed of this lust, and rightly ashamed.
For in that disobedience which subjected the genital members of the body to their own motions alone and snatched them from the power of the will, it is sufficiently shown what was requited to man for that first disobedience of his; which it was most fitting should appear in that part whereby is generated the very nature which was changed for the worse by that first and great sin — from whose bond no one is delivered, unless that which, when all were in the one, was perpetrated unto common ruin and avenged by God's justice, be expiated in each by God's grace. [XXI] Far be it, therefore, that we should believe those spouses established in paradise would have fulfilled, through this lust for which they covered those same members in shame, what God said in His blessing to them:
'Increase and multiply, and fill the earth.' For it was after sin that this lust arose; after sin that nature — not shameless, having lost the power to which the body served in every part — perceived, took heed, blushed, and covered itself. But that blessing of marriage, that the wedded should increase and multiply and fill the earth, although it remained even among the transgressors, yet was given before they transgressed, so that it might be known that the procreation of children pertains to the glory of wedlock, not to the penalty of sin.
But now men, wholly ignorant of that felicity which was in paradise, suppose that children could not have been begotten except through this which they have experienced — that is, through lust, at which we see that even the very honourableness of marriage blushes: some not at all accepting the divine Scriptures, where it is read that after sin there was shame at nakedness and the pudenda were covered, but faithlessly deriding them; others, however, although they accept and honour them, yet will not have that which was said, 'Increase and multiply,' understood according to carnal fecundity, because something of the sort is read to have been said even according to the soul: 'Thou shalt multiply me in my soul with strength' — so that what follows in Genesis:
'And fill the earth, and have dominion over it' — they understand the earth to be the flesh, which the soul fills by its presence and over which it especially has dominion when it is multiplied in strength; but carnal offspring, without the lust which arose after sin — beheld, confounded, and veiled — could not, they say, have been born then, just as neither now can they, nor would they have been in paradise, but outside, as indeed it came to pass. For after they were dismissed thence, they came together to beget children, and begat them. [XXII] But we in no way doubt that, according to the blessing of God, to increase and multiply and fill the earth is a gift of marriage, which God instituted from the beginning before man's sin, by creating male and female — which sex is assuredly evident in the flesh.
For to this work of God the very blessing itself was subjoined. For when Scripture had said, 'Male and female made He them,' it immediately added, 'And God blessed them, saying, Increase and multiply, and fill the earth, and have dominion over it,' and the rest. All which things, although they can not unfittingly be referred also to the spiritual understanding, yet male and female cannot be understood as of something similar even in one man — namely, in that in him there is one thing that rules, another that is ruled; but, as appears most evidently in bodies of different sex, male and female were so created, that by generating offspring they might increase and multiply and fill the earth: and to resist this is of great absurdity.
For it was not concerning the spirit which commands and the flesh which obeys, nor concerning the rational soul which rules and the irrational desire which is ruled, nor concerning the contemplative virtue which excels and the active which is subordinate, nor concerning the understanding of the mind and the sense of the body, but plainly concerning the conjugal bond, whereby each sex is bound to the other, that the Lord, being asked whether it were lawful to put away a wife for any cause whatever — since on account of the hardness of the Israelites' heart Moses permitted a bill of divorcement to be given — answered and said: 'Have ye not read, that He who made them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave unto his wife, and they twain shall be one flesh?'
'So then they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.' It is certain, therefore, that male and female were so first instituted as we now see and know two human beings of different sex; but they are called one, either on account of their conjunction, or on account of the origin of the woman, who was created from the man's side. For the Apostle also, by this first example which preceded by God's institution, admonishes each individual, that husbands should love their own wives. [XXIII] But whoever says that they would not have come together nor generated, unless they had sinned — what does he say, save that man's sin was necessary for the multitude of the saints?
For if by not sinning they would have remained alone — because, as they suppose, unless they had sinned they could not have generated — then assuredly, in order that not two just men only might exist but many, sin was necessary. But if it is absurd to believe this, then rather is that to be believed, that as great a number of the saints as suffices to complete that most blessed city would have existed, even if no one had sinned, as great a number as is now gathered by God's grace out of the multitude of sinners, so long as the children of this world generate and are generated. And therefore those marriages, worthy of the felicity of paradise, if sin had not been, would both have begotten offspring to be loved, and would not have had lust to be ashamed of. But how this could come to pass, there is now no example whereby it may be demonstrated.
Nor, however, ought it on that account to seem incredible that even that one member could have served the will without this lust, to which so many members now serve. Or do we not move hands and feet, when we will, to those things which are to be done by these members, without any resistance, with such great ease as we see both in ourselves and in others — especially in the craftsmen of any bodily works whatever, where to exercise a nature that is weaker and slower a more agile industry has come — and do we not believe that, for the work of generating children, if there had been no lust (which was requited to the sin of disobedience), those members likewise, just as the rest, could have served men obediently at the beck of the will?
Did not Cicero, in his books on the Republic, when he was disputing about the difference of governments and took a likeness of this matter from human nature, say that the members of the body are commanded like sons, on account of the ease of obeying; but that the vicious parts of the soul, like slaves, are restrained by a harsher command? And assuredly, by the order of nature, the soul is set before the body; and yet the soul itself commands the body more easily than it commands itself. Yet this lust, of which we now discourse, has come to be the more to be blushed at, because the soul in it neither commands itself effectually, so as not to lust at all, nor the body in every way, so that it may be the will rather than lust that moves the shameful members; for if it were so, they would not be shameful.
But now the soul is ashamed that it is resisted by the body, which by nature is subjected to it as inferior. For in other affections, when it resists itself, it is therefore less ashamed, because, when it is conquered by itself, it conquers itself; even if inordinately and viciously, because it is conquered by those parts which ought to be subject to reason, yet by its own parts, and thus, as has been said, by itself. For when the soul in orderly fashion conquers itself, so that its irrational motions are subjected to the mind and reason — provided that itself also be subject to God — it is a matter of praise and virtue.
Yet it is less shameful when the soul does not obey itself from its own vicious parts, than when the body — which is another thing from it, and beneath it, and whose nature does not live without it — does not yield to it when willing and commanding. But when the other members are held by the command of the will, without which those members that are stirred against the will by lust cannot fulfil what they seek, chastity is preserved — the delight of sin being not lost, but not permitted.
This resistance, this repugnance, this strife of will and lust, or at any rate this insufficiency of lust for the will's sufficiency — without doubt, unless a culpable disobedience had been punished by a penal disobedience, the marriages in paradise would not have had; but all the members, like the rest, would in every way have served the will.
So the generative organ would sow its seed into this work as a hand now tills the ground; and although modesty stands in the way of our wishing to dispute more carefully on this matter, and compels us to beg pardon of chaste ears with a preface of honour, yet there would then have been no cause why this should be so. Rather, concerning all things that touched the senses in reflecting upon members of this kind, speech would have flowed freely without any fear of obscenity; nor would there have been words that were called obscene, but whatever was said thereof would have been as decent as when we speak of the other parts of the body. Whoever, then, comes to this writing in an unchaste spirit, let him flee the fault, not nature; let him mark the deeds of his own foulness, not the words of our necessity;
in these a chaste and religious reader or hearer most readily pardons me, while I refute unbelief, arguing not from faith in things untried, but from the perception of things experienced. For he reads these things without offence who does not shudder at the Apostle when he rebukes the horrible outrages of women, who exchanged the natural use for that use which is against nature; especially because we do not now, as he did, recall and rebuke a damnable obscenity, but in explaining, as far as we can, the workings of human generation, we nevertheless, as he did, avoid obscene words.
[XXIV] The man, then, would have sown his offspring, and the woman would have received it in her generative members, when such work was needed and as much as was needed, the members being moved by the will, not roused by lust. For we move at our bidding not only those members that are articulated with joined bones, such as the hands and feet and fingers, but also those that are relaxed with soft sinews: when we wish, we move them by shaking, and by stretching we extend them, and by twisting we bend them, and by tightening we harden them, as are those which the will moves, as far as it can, in the mouth and face.
Finally the lungs themselves, softest of all the viscera except the marrow, and for this reason enclosed within the cavity of the breast, serve the will of one who blows, breathes, speaks, cries out, or sings, for drawing in and letting out the breath and for uttering or modulating the voice, like the bellows of smiths or of organs. I pass over the fact that it is naturally implanted in certain animals that the covering with which the whole body is clothed, if they sense anything in any part of it that must be driven off, they move only there where they feel it, and by a trembling of the skin they shake off not only settled flies but even clinging spears. Because man cannot do this, could the Creator therefore not have granted it to the living creatures he willed?
So, then, man himself could have had the obedience even of his lower members, which by his own disobedience he lost. For it was not difficult for God so to fashion him that in his flesh even that which now is moved only by lust would then have been moved only by his will. For we know that the natures of certain men are far different from the rest, and by their very rarity are marvellous, since they do with their bodies at will some things that others can in no way do and, when heard, scarcely believe. For there are those who move their ears, either singly or both together. There are those who, with the head unmoved, bring down all their hair, as far as it covers the head, to the forehead, and draw it back when they wish.
There are those who, by lightly manipulating their inwards, bring up from what they have swallowed an incredibly great and varied amount, quite whole, whatever they please, as if from a bag. Some so imitate and reproduce the voices of birds and beasts and of any other men that, unless they be seen, they cannot be distinguished at all. Some produce from their lower parts, without any stench, so many rhythmic sounds at will that they seem to sing even from that quarter. I myself have known a man who was accustomed to sweat whenever he wished. It is well known that certain persons weep when they will, and pour forth tears abundantly. But that is far more incredible which very many of the brethren have experienced within most recent memory.
There was a certain presbyter named Restitutus in the parish of the church of Calama. Whenever it pleased him (and he was asked to do this by those who desired to know so marvellous a thing at first hand), at the imitation as it were of the wailing voices of any lamenting man, he would so withdraw himself from his senses and lie most like a dead man, that not only did he not in the least feel those who pinched and pricked him, but sometimes he was even burned by fire applied to him without any sensation of pain, save afterwards from the wound; and that it was not by resistance but by not feeling that his body did not move, was proved by this, that no breathing could be found in him, as in a dead man; yet he afterwards reported that he heard the voices of men, if they spoke more clearly, as though from far off.
Since, therefore, even now the body marvellously serves certain persons—though they lead this laborious life in corruptible flesh—in very many motions and affections beyond the accustomed measure of nature: what reason is there that we should not believe that, before the sin of disobedience and the punishment of corruption, the human members could have served the human will, for the propagation of offspring, without any lust? Man, then, was given over to himself, because he forsook God by pleasing himself; and being disobedient to God, he could not obey even himself. Hence the more evident misery, whereby man does not live as he wills. For if he lived as he willed, he would think himself blessed; yet not even so would he be, if he lived basely.
[XXV] And yet, if we attend more carefully, none but the blessed lives as he wills, and none is blessed but the just. But even the just man himself will not live as he wills, unless he shall have come to that place where he can in no way die, be deceived, or be offended, and where he shall be assured that it will ever be so. For this nature seeks, and it will not be fully and perfectly blessed until it has attained what it seeks. But now, which of men can live as he wills, when the very living is not in his power? For he wills to live, yet is compelled to die. How, then, does he live as he wills, who does not live as long as he wills? But if he should will to die, how can he live as he wills, who does not will to live? And if he wills to die, not because he is unwilling to live, but that after death he may live better:
then he does not yet live as he wills, but only when by dying he shall have arrived at that which he wills. But suppose he does live as he wills, because he has wrung from himself and commanded himself not to will what he cannot, and to will what he can (as Terence says: 'Since that cannot be done which you wish, wish for that which you can'): is he therefore blessed, because he is patiently wretched? For the blessed life, if it is not loved, is not possessed. Furthermore, if it is loved and possessed, it must needs be loved more excellently than all other things, since for its sake is to be loved whatever else is loved. Furthermore, if it is loved as much as it is worthy to be loved (for he is not blessed by whom the blessed life itself is not loved as it is worthy), it cannot be that he who so loves it should not will it to be eternal.
Then, therefore, it will be blessed, when it shall be eternal. [XXVI] Man, then, lived in paradise as he willed, so long as he willed what God had commanded; he lived enjoying God, from which good he was good; he lived without any want, having it in his power ever so to live. Food was at hand, that he might not hunger; drink, that he might not thirst; the tree of life, that old age might not dissolve him. Nothing of corruption in the body, or arising from the body, brought any troubles to any of his senses. No disease was feared from within, no blow from without. In the flesh the highest health, in the mind entire tranquillity. As in paradise there was no heat or cold, so in its inhabitant no offence to a good will arose from desire or fear.
There was nothing at all sad, nothing vainly glad. True joy was perpetuated from God, toward whom charity blazed from a pure heart and a good conscience and faith unfeigned; and between the spouses there was a faithful fellowship of honourable love, a concord of vigilance in mind and body, and a keeping of the commandment without toil. Weariness did not fatigue the leisured, nor did sleep oppress the unwilling. In so great an ease of things and felicity of men, far be it that we should suspect that offspring could not be sown without the disease of lust; but those members would be moved by that nod of the will by which the rest are moved, and without the enticing goad of ardour, with tranquillity of soul and body and no corruption of integrity, the husband would flow into the bosom of the wife.
For it is not to be disbelieved merely because it cannot be proved by experience, that at that time, when those parts of the body were moved not by turbulent heat but by spontaneous power applying itself as need required, the male seed could have been introduced into the womb of the wife with the integrity of the female generative organ preserved, just as now, with that same integrity preserved, the flux of menstrual blood can be discharged from the womb of a virgin. For by the same way that this can be expelled, that could be injected. For as, to give birth, it would be not the groan of pain but the impulse of maturity that relaxed the female inwards, so, to impregnate and conceive, it would be not the appetite of lust but a voluntary exercise that joined the two natures together.
We now speak of things that shame us, and therefore, although—before there was shame of them—we conjecture as best we can what they could have been like, yet it is necessary that our discussion be curbed rather by the modesty that calls us back than aided by the eloquence which is scarcely at our command. For since not even those who could have experienced it have experienced what I speak of—because, sin forestalling them, they deserved exile from paradise before they came together by tranquil choice in the work of sowing offspring—how now, when these things are recalled, does anything present itself to human senses except the experience of turbulent lust, not the conjecture of a placid will? Hence it is that shame hinders the speaker, though reason does not fail the thinker.
Nevertheless, the almighty God, the supreme and supremely good Creator of all natures, the helper and rewarder of good wills, but the forsaker and condemner of evil ones, the orderer of both, did not lack a counsel by which he might fill up the fixed number of citizens predestined in his wisdom for his City, even from the condemned human race—no longer discerning them by their merits, since the whole mass has been condemned as it were in its vitiated root, but by grace; and showing, both in those set free and in those not set free, what he bestows upon the freed.
For it is not by a debt owed, but by a gratuitous goodness, that each one then acknowledges himself rescued from evils, when he is made exempt from the fellowship of those men with whom he would justly have a common punishment. Why, then, should God not create those whom he foreknew would sin, seeing that in them and from them he could show both what their fault deserved and what his grace bestowed, and that under such a Creator and Disposer the perverse disorder of the offenders would not pervert the right order of things? [XXVII] Accordingly, sinners, both angels and men, do nothing whereby the great works of the Lord may be hindered—works sought out unto all his wills—since he who providently and omnipotently distributes to each his own knows how to use well not only the good but even the evil.
And by this means, since the evil angel had, for the merit of his first evil will, been so condemned and hardened that he no longer had a good will, why should God, using him well, not permit the first man—who had been created upright, that is, of good will—to be tempted by him? Seeing that he was so constituted that, if the good man trusted in God's help, he would conquer the evil angel; but if, pleasing himself in pride, he forsook God his Creator and helper, he would be conquered—having good merit in a will made right by divine aid, but evil merit in a perverse will forsaking God.
For even to trust in God's help he could not indeed do without God's help; yet he did not for that reason lack the power to withdraw, by pleasing himself, from these benefits of divine grace. For as, to live in this flesh, it is not in our power to do so without the aid of nourishment, but it is in our power not to live in it, as those do who kill themselves: so, to live well, it was not, even in paradise, in his power to do so without God's help; but it was in his power to live ill—though with a blessedness that would not endure and a most just penalty to follow. Since, therefore, God was not ignorant of this coming fall of man, why should he not allow him to be tempted by the malignity of the envious angel?
in no way indeed uncertain that he would be conquered, yet none the less foreknowing that this same devil was to be conquered, to the greater glory of the saints, by that man's seed aided by his grace. Thus it came to pass that nothing of things to come lay hidden from God, nor did he by foreknowing compel anyone to sin; and by the ensuing experience he demonstrated to the rational creature, angelic and human, what difference there is between each one's own presumption and his own protection. For who would dare to believe or to say that it was not in God's power that neither angel nor man should fall? But he chose rather not to take this away from their power, and thus to show both how much their pride availed for evil and how much his grace for good.
[XXVIII] Two loves, then, have made two cities: namely, self-love unto the contempt of God the earthly, but the love of God unto the contempt of self the heavenly. The one, in short, glories in itself; the other in the Lord. For the one seeks glory from men; but for the other God, the witness of conscience, is the greatest glory. The one lifts up its head in its own glory; the other says to its God: 'My glory, and the lifter up of my head.' In the one the lust of domination dominates over its princes or over the nations it subjugates; in the other men serve one another in charity, both the rulers by counselling and the subjects by obeying. The one loves its own strength in its mighty ones; the other says to its God: 'I will love thee, O Lord, my strength.'
And therefore in the former its wise men, living according to man, pursued either the goods of the body or of their own soul or of both; or those who could know God did not honour him as God nor give thanks, but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened; professing themselves to be wise (that is, exalting themselves in their own wisdom, with pride lording it over them) they became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into the likeness of an image of corruptible man and of birds and of four-footed beasts and of serpents (for to the worship of such idols they were either the leaders of the peoples or their followers), and they worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed for ever.
But in the latter city there is no wisdom of man save piety, whereby the true God is rightly worshipped, looking for this as its reward in the fellowship of the saints—not only of men but also of angels—that God may be all in all.