When, through our Lord Jesus Christ, the Judge of the living and the dead, both cities—of which one is God's, the other the devil's—shall have arrived at their due ends, of what kind the punishment is to be, of the devil and of all who belong to him, must in this book be more diligently discussed by us, so far as by divine aid we shall be able. And I have preferred to keep this order, and afterward to discourse of the felicity of the saints, because both will be with bodies, and it seems more incredible that bodies should endure in eternal torments than that they should remain without any pain in eternal blessedness;
and therefore, when I shall have demonstrated that that punishment ought not to be incredible, it will greatly help me, so that far more easily the immortality of the body, free from all trouble, may be believed to be in the saints in the future. Nor is this order abhorrent to the divine oracles, where sometimes indeed the blessedness of the good is placed first, as is that saying: 'They who have done good, unto the resurrection of life; but they who have done evil, unto the resurrection of judgment'; but sometimes also later, as is this: 'The Son of Man shall send His angels, and they shall gather out of His kingdom all offenses, and shall cast them into the burning furnace of fire; there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth; then shall the righteous shine as the sun in the kingdom of their Father'; and that:
'So these shall go into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life'; and in the prophets, which it would be long to recount, now this, now that order is found, if anyone should examine them. But for what cause I have chosen this order, I have said. What then shall I show, whereby the unbelievers may be convinced that human bodies, animated and living, can not only never be dissolved by death, but also endure in the torments of eternal fires? For they are unwilling that we should refer this to the power of the Almighty, but demand to be persuaded by some example. If we answer them that there are indeed corruptible animals, because mortal, which nevertheless live in the midst of fires;
that a certain kind of worm, too, is found in the bubbling spring of hot waters, whose heat no one handles with impunity; but that those worms are not only there without any harm to themselves, but cannot exist outside it: either they are unwilling to believe, if we are unable to show it; or, if we shall have been able either to demonstrate the things themselves to their eyes or to instruct them through suitable witnesses, they will contend, with the same unbelief, that this is not enough as an example of the matter in question, because these animals do not always live, and they live in those heats without pains; for they are quickened by elements agreeable to their own nature, not tormented; as though it were not more incredible to be quickened than to be tormented by such things.
For it is marvelous to feel pain in fire and yet to live, but more marvelous to live in fire and not feel pain. If, however, this is believed, why not that also? But there is no body, they say, which can feel pain and cannot die. And whence do we know this? For who is certain concerning the bodies of demons, whether in them they feel pain, when they confess that they are afflicted with great torments? But if it be answered that there is no earthly body—solid, that is, and visible—and, to explain it rather by one name, no flesh, which can feel pain and cannot die: what else is said, but what men have gathered by the sense of the body and by experience? For they know no flesh but the mortal;
and this is their whole reasoning, that they judge what they have not experienced by no means able to exist. For of what reasoning is it to make pain an argument for death, when it is rather an indication of life? For although we ask whether it can always live, yet it is certain that everything which feels pain lives, and that all pain cannot exist except in a living thing. It is necessary, therefore, that the one who feels pain should live; it is not necessary that pain should kill, since not even all pain kills these mortal bodies, which are indeed destined to die, and the reason that some pain can kill is this: that the soul is so joined to this body that it yields to the greatest pains and departs;
since the very framework of the members and vital parts is so weak that it cannot sustain that force which causes great or the greatest pain. But then the soul will be joined to such a body, and in such a way, that as that bond will not be dissolved by any length of time, so it will be broken by no pain. Accordingly, even if there is now no such flesh as can suffer the sensation of pain and cannot die: there will nevertheless then be such flesh as is not now, just as there will also be such a death as is not now. For it will be not no death, but an everlasting death, when the soul will be able neither to live by not having God, nor to be free from the pains of the body by dying. The first death drives the unwilling soul out of the body; the second death holds the unwilling soul in the body;
from both deaths there is this in common, that the soul suffers, against its will, from its own body. But these contradictors observe that there is now no flesh which can suffer pain and cannot die, and they do not observe that there is nevertheless something of such a kind which is greater than the body. For the mind itself, by whose presence the body lives and is governed, can both suffer pain and cannot die. Behold, a thing is found which, though it has the sense of pain, is immortal. This, then, will be in the bodies of the damned also, which we now know to be in the minds of all. But if we consider more diligently, the pain which is called that of the body pertains rather to the soul.
For to feel pain belongs to the soul, not to the body, even when the cause of its pain arises from the body, when it feels pain in that place where the body is injured. As, therefore, we speak of bodies as feeling and bodies as living, although the sense and life come to the body from the soul: so we speak of bodies as feeling pain also, although pain cannot be in the body except from the soul. The soul, then, feels pain together with the body in that place of it where something happens so that it feels pain; and it feels pain alone, although it is in the body, when from some cause even invisible it is itself sad while the body is unharmed; it feels pain even when not established in a body; for that rich man surely felt pain among the dead, when he said: 'I am tormented in this flame.' But a body neither feels pain when lifeless, nor, when animated, feels pain without the soul.
If, therefore, an argument were rightly drawn from pain to death, so that death could befall for the reason that pain also could befall, then to die would rather pertain to the soul, to which to feel pain also more pertains. But since that which can more feel pain cannot die, what weight does it carry that we should believe those bodies also to be destined to die, because they are to be in pains? The Platonists indeed said that from earthly bodies and dying members come to souls both fear and desire and grief and joy; whence Virgil:
'Hence,' he says (that is, from the dying members of the earthly body), 'they fear and desire, grieve and rejoice.' But we refuted them in the twelfth book of this work, showing that, according to their own view, souls even purged from every stain of the body have a dread desire by which they again begin to wish to return into bodies. But where there can be desire, assuredly there can also be pain. For desire frustrated, whether by not attaining that toward which it strove, or by losing that which it had attained, is turned into pain. Wherefore, if the soul, which either alone or most of all feels pain, has nevertheless a certain immortality of its own after its own manner, those bodies will not on that account be able to die, because they will feel pain.
Finally, if bodies cause souls to feel pain, why is it that they can inflict pain upon them but cannot inflict death, unless it be that it does not follow that whatever causes pain should also cause death? Why, then, is it incredible that fires should be able to inflict pain upon those bodies, but not death, just as bodies themselves cause souls to feel pain, and yet do not on that account compel them to die? Pain, therefore, is no necessary proof of coming death.
[IV] Wherefore, if — as those who have more curiously investigated the natures of animals have written — the salamander lives in fire, and certain well-known mountains of Sicily, which through so long a stretch and antiquity of time have to this very day and shall hereafter continued to blaze with flames yet remain whole, are sufficiently fitting witnesses that not everything which burns is consumed; and if the soul shows that not everything which can feel pain is also able to die: why then are examples of things still demanded of us, whereby we might teach that it is not incredible that the bodies of men punished with everlasting torment should both not lose their soul in the fire, and should burn without being consumed, and should feel pain without perishing?
For then the substance of the flesh shall have that quality bestowed upon it by Him who bestowed so many wonderful and varied qualities upon all those things which we see, so that, because they are many, we do not marvel at them. For who but God the Creator of all things gave to the flesh of the dead peacock the property of not decaying? When this seemed incredible to hear, it came about that at Carthage this bird was set before us cooked; and we ordered that a portion plucked from the breast of its flesh, as much as seemed good, be kept. After such a span of days as would have made any other cooked flesh whatsoever decay, it was brought out and set before us, and offended our sense of smell in nothing.
Likewise, after being stored more than thirty days, it was found to be the same as it had been; and the same after a year, except that it had become somewhat drier and more shrunken in body. Who gave to chaff a power at once so cold that it preserves snow buried in it, and so warm that it ripens unripe fruit? Of fire itself, who could unfold its marvels — fire by which all things scorched turn black, though it is itself luminous, and which discolours almost everything it surrounds and licks, though most beautiful in colour, and from a glowing ember produces the foulest coal? Nor is this laid down as a fixed rule; for on the contrary, stones baked through by white-hot fire themselves become white, and though the fire is more red, they are white; yet what is white agrees with light, as what is black agrees with darkness.
Since, therefore, fire burns in wood so as to bake stones, it produces contrary effects upon things which are not contrary. For although stones and wood are diverse, yet they are not contrary, as white and black are — one of which it produces in stones, the other in wood, giving brightness to the stones by making them bright and darkening the wood, since it would fail in the stones unless it lived in the wood.
And what of coals? Is not their weakness a thing to marvel at — so great that they are broken by the lightest blow and crushed by the easiest pressure — together with a firmness so great that no moisture corrupts them and no age overcomes them, so much so that men who fix boundaries are wont to lay them underneath the boundary-stones, to convict a litigant, whoever after however long a time may arise and contend that the fixed stone is no boundary? Who brought it about that these coals, buried in moist earth where wood would rot, could last incorruptibly so long — save that corrupter of things, fire? Let us also consider the marvel of lime.
Apart from that of which we have already said enough — that it grows white from the fire by which other things are made foul — it also most secretly conceives fire from fire, and now, as a lump cold to the touch, keeps it so hidden that it appears to none of our senses at all, yet, having been ascertained by experiment, is known to lie within, dormant even while it does not appear. On this account we call it living lime, as though the hidden fire itself were the invisible soul of a visible body. And now, how marvellous it is that, when it is quenched, then it is kindled! For, that it may be deprived of its hidden fire, it is plunged into water or drenched with water; and though before it was cold, from that it grows hot, from the very source by which all hot things grow cold.
As though, then, that lump were breathing out its life, the fire which lay hidden departs and appears; and thereafter it is cold as if in death, so that if water be added it will not burn, and what we called living lime we now call quenched. What could seem capable of being added to this marvel? And yet something is added. For if you apply not water, but oil, which is rather the fuel of fire, it grows hot by no sprinkling or drenching of it. If we read or heard of this marvel concerning some Indian stone, and it could not come within our own experience, surely we should either think it a lie or certainly marvel greatly.
But those things whose daily demonstrations are before our eyes — no less marvellous in kind, but cheapened by their very constancy — so that even from that India itself, which is a part of the world remote from us, we have ceased to marvel at not a few things which could be brought to us as objects of wonder. The diamond stone many among us possess, and especially goldsmiths and setters of gems, which stone is said to be conquered neither by iron, nor by fire, nor by any other force, save the blood of a he-goat. But do those who possess and are acquainted with it marvel at it as those do to whom its power is first shown? Those to whom it is not shown perhaps do not even believe it; or if they believe, they marvel at what they have not tried.
And if it should happen that they try it, at first indeed they marvel at the unfamiliar thing, but constancy of experience gradually withdraws the incitement of wonder. We know the magnet stone to be a marvellous snatcher of iron; and when I first saw this, I shuddered violently. For I perceived an iron ring snatched up and held suspended by the stone; then, as though it had imparted its own power to the iron it had snatched and made it common to both, that same ring was brought near to another and held it suspended; and as the first ring clung to the stone, so the second ring clung to the first. A third was added in the same way, a fourth was added; and now, by rings linked to one another in mutual circles, not intertwined within but adhering from without, there hung as it were a chain of rings.
Who would not be astounded at that power of the stone, which not only dwelt within it, but also passed through so many suspended rings and bound them with invisible bonds? But far more marvellous is what I learned about this stone from my brother and fellow-bishop Severus of Milevis. For he related that he himself had seen how Bathanarius, once count of Africa, when the bishop was dining with him, brought out that same stone and held it beneath a silver plate, and placed iron above the silver; then, as he moved his hand beneath, with which he held the stone, so the iron above was moved; and with the silver between and suffering nothing, the stone below was moved by the man in a most rapid course and recourse, while above, the iron was snatched to and fro by the stone.
I have told what I myself beheld; I have told what I heard from him, whom I believed as though I had seen it myself. Let me also tell what I have read about this magnet. When a diamond is placed near it, it does not snatch iron; and if it had already snatched it, as soon as the diamond approaches, it at once releases it. India sends these stones; but if we, now that we know them, cease to marvel at them, how much more do those from whom they come, if they have them so readily to hand — as perhaps they do — just as we do not marvel at lime, which grows hot in water (by which fire is wont to be quenched) in a marvellous manner, and does not grow hot in oil (by which fire is wont to be kindled), because it is at hand for us.
[V] Yet nevertheless, unbelieving men, who, when we proclaim the divine miracles whether past or future which we are unable to show them for their own experience, demand from us the reason for these things — which, since we cannot render it (for they exceed the powers of the human mind), they suppose that what we say is false — these same men ought themselves to render a reason for so many marvellous things which we can either see or do see. And if they perceive clearly that this cannot be done by man, they must confess that a thing is not thereby proved not to have been, or not to be about to be, merely because a reason for it cannot be rendered, seeing that these things exist for which likewise it cannot.
I will not, then, go through the many things which are committed to writing, not as deeds done and past, but as abiding in various places; whither, if anyone should wish and be able to go, he shall find out whether they are true; but I mention a few. They say that the salt of Agrigentum in Sicily, when it is brought near fire, flows as if in water; but when brought to water itself, crackles as if in fire. Among the Garamantes there is a certain spring so cold by day that it cannot be drunk, so hot by night that it cannot be touched. In Epirus there is another spring, in which torches already kindled are extinguished, as in others; but, unlike others, extinguished ones are kindled. The Arcadian stone asbestos is so called because, once kindled, it can no longer be extinguished.
The wood of a certain Egyptian fig-tree does not, like other woods, float in water, but sinks; and — what is more marvellous — when it has been at the bottom for some while, from thence it rises again to the water's surface, at the very time when, being soaked, it ought to have been weighed down by the burden of moisture. Apples grow indeed in the land of Sodom and come to the appearance of ripeness; but when tested by biting or pressing, with the rind cracking they vanish into smoke and ashes. The Persian pyrites stone burns the hand of him who holds it, if it be pressed rather firmly, and on that account received its name from fire. In the same Persia there is also produced the stone selenite, whose inner brightness waxes and wanes with the moon. In Cappadocia, moreover, mares conceive by the wind, and those same offspring live no more than three years.
The island Tylos in India is preferred to all other lands in this, that every tree which grows in it is never stripped of its covering of leaves. Concerning these and countless other marvels, which history holds not of deeds done and past, but of abiding places — for me, being engaged upon another matter, to pursue them would be too long — let these unbelievers, who refuse to believe the divine writings, render a reason, if they can. For what else do they do than think those writings not divine, on the ground that they contain incredible things, such as this is of which we now treat? For no reason, they say, admits that flesh should burn and not be consumed, should feel pain and not die — great reasoners, forsooth, who could render a reason concerning all things which are agreed to be marvellous!
Let them, then, render a reason concerning these few things which we have set down; for if they did not know these to exist, and we said that they would come to be, they would believe it far less than what they now refuse to believe us when we say it shall one day come to pass. For who among them would believe us, if, in the same way as we say that the living bodies of men are to be, which shall always burn and always feel pain, yet never at any time die, so we said that in the world to come there shall be a salt which fire would make flow as if in water, and which water would make crackle as if in fire; or that there shall be a spring whose water in the coolness of night burns so that it cannot be touched, but in the heats of day is so cold that it cannot be drunk;
or that there shall be a stone, either one which by its own heat would burn the hand of him who grasps it, or one which, once kindled from any source, could not be extinguished at all — and the rest which, passing over countless others, I have thought worthy meanwhile to record? If, then, we said that these things were to be in that world which is to come, and the unbelievers answered us: 'If you wish us to believe these things, render a reason for each,' we should confess that we cannot, on the ground that by these and similar marvellous works of God the feeble reasoning of mortals is overcome; yet that this reason is fixed with us, that the Almighty does not without reason do that for which the feeble human mind cannot render a reason;
and that in many things indeed it is uncertain to us what He wills, but this at least is most certain, that nothing whatsoever He shall have willed is impossible to Him; and that we believe Him who foretells it, whom we cannot believe to be either powerless or lying. What, then, do these censurers of faith and exactors of reason answer to those things concerning which a reason cannot be rendered by man, and yet they exist, and seem to be contrary to the very reason of nature? If we said that these were to come to be, in like manner a reason would be demanded of us by the unbelievers, just as of those things which we say are to come.
And on this account, since in such works of God the reason of the human heart and speech fails, then, just as these things are not therefore non-existent, so likewise those things shall not therefore fail to be, seeing that a reason concerning both cannot be rendered by man. [VI] Here perhaps they may answer: 'These things assuredly neither exist, nor do we believe them; false things have been said, false things written of them'; and let them add, reasoning and saying:
'If such things are to be believed, believe also, you yourselves, what has been recorded in those same writings — that there was or is a certain temple of Venus, and in it a candelabrum, and upon it a lamp burning under the open sky in such a way that no storm, no rain could quench it; whence, just as that stone, so this lamp was named asbestos, that is, an inextinguishable lamp.' This they will be able to say for this purpose, to force upon us the straits of answering; because, if we say it is not to be believed, we shall weaken those writings of miracles; but if we grant that it is to be believed, we shall confirm the deities of the pagans.
But we, as I have already said in the eighteenth book of this work, are under no necessity to believe all that the history of the nations contains, since even the historians themselves, as Varro says, disagree among themselves on many points, as though by deliberate design and industry; but we believe, if we wish, those things which are not opposed to the books which we do not doubt we ought to believe. Concerning these places of miracles, however, for the purpose of persuading unbelievers of the things to come, let those suffice which we too are able to experience, and witnesses of which it is not difficult to find. But concerning this temple of Venus and the inextinguishable lamp, we are not only cramped into no straits, but even a broad field is opened up to us.
For to that inextinguishable lamp we add the many miracles both of human and of magical arts — that is, arts demonic through human agency — and of the demons themselves acting through their own power; which, if we should wish to deny, we shall be opposing the very truth of the sacred writings which we believe. Either, therefore, in that lamp human art wrought something mechanical out of the stone asbestos, or it was made by magic art, so that men might marvel at it in that temple, or some demon under the name of Venus presented himself with such efficacy that this prodigy both appeared to men there and remained a long while.
Now demons are enticed to dwell in creatures — which not they themselves, but God created — by delights varying according to their several diversities, not as animals by foods, but as spirits by signs, which suit each one's delight, through various kinds of stones, herbs, woods, animals, chants, and rites. But that they may be enticed by men, they first seduce these very men by most cunning craft, either by breathing a hidden poison into their hearts, or even by appearing in deceitful friendships, and make a few of them their disciples and the teachers of very many. For it could not have been learned, save by their first teaching, what each of them desires, what he abhors, by what name he is invited, by what he is compelled;
whence magic arts and their practitioners arose. But most of all they possess the hearts of mortals, and in this possession above all they glory, when they transform themselves into angels of light. There are, then, very many deeds of theirs, which the more marvellous we confess them to be, the more cautiously ought we to shun them; but for the purpose of that which we now treat, even these things profit us. For if unclean demons can do these things, how much more powerful are the holy angels — how much more powerful than all these is God, who made the very angels the effectors of such great miracles!
Wherefore, if so many and such great marvels — which they call mechanemata (contrivances) — are wrought out of God's creation by men using human arts, so that those who do not know them suppose them to be divine (whence it came about that in a certain temple, with magnet stones set in the floor and in the vault in proportion to their size, an iron image, in the midst of that air between both stones, hung as though by the power of a deity, to those ignorant of what was above and below; something of which kind we have already said could have been wrought by a craftsman in that lamp of Venus out of the stone asbestos);
if the works of magicians, whom our Scripture calls sorcerers and enchanters, could exalt demons to such a degree that a noble poet thought it agreed with the senses of men, saying of a certain woman who was mighty in such art: 'She promises by her charms to loose the minds she wills, but on others to send hard cares; to stay the water in the rivers and turn the stars backward; and she rouses the nocturnal shades: you will see the earth bellow beneath your feet, and the mountain-ashes come down from the mountains' — how much more is God able to do the things which are incredible to unbelievers, but easy to His power;
seeing that He Himself created the power of stones and of other things, and the ingenuities of men, who use them in marvellous ways, and the angelic natures more powerful than all earthly living things — surpassing all marvels by a marvellous power, and by the wisdom of working, commanding, and permitting, using all things as marvellously as He created them. [VII] Why, then, should God be unable to bring it to pass that the bodies of the dead should rise again, and the bodies of the damned be tormented in eternal fire — He who made the world, full of innumerable miracles in heaven and earth, in air and waters, since without doubt the world itself is a greater and more excellent miracle than all those with which it is full?
But those with whom, or against whom, we contend — who both believe that there is a God by whom the world was made, and that there are gods made by Him, through whom the world is administered by Him, and who either do not deny, or even besides proclaim, worldly powers as effectors of miracles, whether spontaneous, or obtained by any worship and rite, or even magical — when we set before them the marvellous power of other things, which are neither rational animals nor spirits endowed with any reason, such as those are of which we have mentioned a few, are wont to answer: