Letters & Polemics (CSEL) 3 part 47/87

For the city of the saints is on high, although here it brings forth citizens, in whom it sojourns as a stranger, until the time of its kingdom shall come, when it will gather all those rising again in their bodies—when there shall be given to them the kingdom that was promised, where with their prince, the King of the ages, they shall reign without any end of time. CHAPTER II. On the sons of the flesh and the sons of the promise. A certain shadow, indeed, of this city, and a prophetic image, served on earth to signify rather than to present it, at the time when it was fitting that it should be shown; and that very thing was also called the holy city, by the merit of the signifying image, not of the truth expressed as it is to be in the future.

Concerning this serving image and that free city which it signifies, the apostle thus speaks to the Galatians: 'Tell me,' he says, 'you who desire to be under the law, have you not heard the law? For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by the bondwoman and one by the freewoman. But he who was of the bondwoman was born according to the flesh; but he who was of the freewoman, by promise. Which things are an allegory. For these are the two covenants: the one indeed from Mount Sinai, bringing forth unto bondage, which is Hagar. For Sinai is a mountain in Arabia, which is joined to that which is now Jerusalem, and is in bondage with her children. But that Jerusalem which is above is free, which is the mother of us all. For it is written:'

'Rejoice, you barren that bear not; break forth and cry, you that travail not: for many are the children of the desolate, more than of her that has a husband. Now we, brethren, as Isaac was, are the children of promise. But as then he that was born according to the flesh persecuted him that was born according to the spirit, even so it is now. But what does the Scripture say? Cast out the bondwoman and her son; for the son of the bondwoman shall not be heir with the son of the freewoman. Now we, brethren, are not children of the bondwoman, but of the free, with which freedom Christ has set us free.' This form of understanding, descending from apostolic authority, opens to us the way in which we ought to receive the Scriptures of the two Testaments, the old and the new.

For a certain part of the earthly city has been made an image of the heavenly city, signifying not itself but another, and therefore serving. For it was instituted not for its own sake, but to signify another; and being itself prefigured by a preceding signification, it became a prefiguring figure. For Hagar, the bondmaid of Sarah, and her son were a certain image of this image; and because the shadows were to pass away when the light came, therefore Sarah the free woman, who signified the free city, said—she to whom in turn that shadow served in yet another mode of signifying: 'Cast out the bondwoman and her son; for the son of the bondwoman shall not be heir with my son Isaac'—which the apostle renders, 'With the son of the freewoman.'

We find, therefore, in the earthly city two forms: one demonstrating its own presence, the other serving by its presence to signify the heavenly city. Now the citizens of the earthly city are begotten by a nature vitiated by sin, but the citizens of the heavenly city are begotten by grace setting nature free from sin; whence the former are called vessels of wrath, the latter vessels of mercy. This was signified also in the two sons of Abraham: that the one, Ishmael, was born according to the flesh of the bondwoman, who was called Hagar; but the other, Isaac, was born of the free Sarah according to the promise. Both indeed were of the seed of Abraham; but custom, demonstrating nature, begot the one, while the promise, signifying grace, gave the other;

in the one human usage is shown, in the other a divine benefit is commended. CHAPTER III. On the barrenness of Sarah, which God's grace made fruitful. Sarah indeed was barren, and in despair of offspring, desiring to have at least from her bondmaid what she perceived she could not have of herself, gave her to be impregnated by her husband, of whom she had wished to bear but could not. Thus she exacted even in this way the debt from her husband, using her own right in another's womb. So Ishmael was born, as men are born, by the intercourse of both sexes, by the customary law of nature. Therefore it was said: 'According to the flesh';

not that these are not benefits of God, or that God does not work them—God, whose creative Wisdom reaches, as it is written, from end to end mightily, and orders all things sweetly—but where there was need to signify the gift of God, which grace bestows on men though not owed to them, the son had to be given in such a way as was not owed to the courses of nature. For nature denies sons to such an intercourse of male and female as could exist for Abraham and Sarah at that age, with the woman's barrenness also added—she who could not bear even then, when not age was lacking for fertility, but fertility was lacking for age.

Therefore, that the fruit of posterity was not owed to a nature so affected signifies that the nature of the human race, vitiated by sin and on this account justly condemned, deserved no true felicity for the future. Rightly, then, does Isaac, born by promise, signify the children of grace, the citizens of the free city, the companions of eternal peace—where there is not the love of one's own and in a manner private will, but a love rejoicing in a common and unchangeable good, and out of many making one heart, that is, the perfectly concordant obedience of charity. CHAPTER IV. On the strife or the peace of the earthly city.

Moreover the earthly city, which will not be everlasting (for indeed, when it has been condemned to the final punishment, it will no longer be a city), has its good here, in whose fellowship it rejoices, such joy as can come from things of that kind. And since it is not such a good as to cause no straits to its lovers, therefore this city is for the most part divided against itself by litigating, by warring and fighting, and by seeking victories that are either death-dealing or at any rate mortal. For from whatever part of itself it rises up in war against another part of itself, it seeks to be the conqueror of nations, while it is itself the captive of vices; and if indeed, when it has conquered, it is more proudly exalted, the victory is even death-dealing;

but if, considering the human condition and the common chances that may befall, it is more vexed by the adversities that can happen than puffed up by the prosperity that has come about, then that victory is only mortal. For it will not be able always to dominate, by remaining over those whom it has been able to subjugate by conquering. Yet it is not rightly said that the things which this city covets are not goods, since it too, in its own human kind, is the better for them. For it covets a certain earthly peace for the sake of the lowest things; for to this peace it desires to attain by warring, since, if it conquers and there is no one to resist, there will be peace, which the mutually opposed parties did not have while they contended, in unhappy want, for those things which they could not both possess at once.

This peace is what toilsome wars seek; this is what the victory deemed glorious obtains. And when those conquer who were fighting for the juster cause, who would doubt that the victory is to be rejoiced over and that a desirable peace has come about? These are goods, and without doubt gifts of God. But if, neglecting the better things which pertain to the city above—where there will be victory in eternal and supreme peace, secure—these goods are so coveted that they are believed to be the only goods, or are loved more than those things which are believed to be better, then misery must necessarily follow, and that which was already present must be increased. CHAPTER V. On the first founder of the earthly city, a fratricide, to whose impiety the founder of the city of Rome corresponded by the slaying of his brother.

The first founder, then, of the earthly city was a fratricide; for, overcome by envy, he slew his own brother, a citizen of the eternal city sojourning on this earth. Whence it is no wonder that, so long afterward, in the founding of that city which was destined to be the head of this earthly city of which we speak, and to reign over so many nations, there corresponded to this first example—and, as the Greeks call it, archetype—a certain image of its own kind. For there too, as a certain poet recorded that very crime of theirs: 'With a brother's blood the first walls were drenched.' For thus was Rome founded, when Roman history attests that Remus was slain by his brother Romulus; except that both of these were citizens of the earthly city.

Both sought glory from the establishment of the Roman commonwealth, but both could not have so great a glory as they would have had if there were only one. For he who wished to glory by dominating would surely dominate less if his power were diminished by a living partner. In order, therefore, that one might have the whole domination, the partner was removed; and by the crime it grew worse than it would have grown by innocence and for the better.

But these brothers Cain and Abel did not both have between them a like cupidity for earthly things, nor in this did the one envy the other—that his own dominion would become narrower if both were to rule (for Abel indeed did not seek dominion in that city which was being founded by his brother, the one who slew him)—but it was that diabolical envy by which the evil envy the good for no other cause than because they are good and the others evil. For the possession of goodness is in no way made less by the addition or the continuance of a partner; rather, possession is goodness, which the undivided charity of partners possesses the more widely, the more concordantly.

In short, he will not have this possession who is unwilling to have it in common, and he will find it the more ample the more he can love a partner there. That dispute, therefore, which arose between Remus and Romulus shows how the earthly city is divided against itself; but that which was between Cain and Abel demonstrated the enmities between the two cities themselves, of God and of men. The evil therefore fight among themselves; likewise the evil and the good fight among themselves; but the good and the good, if they are perfect, cannot fight among themselves. Those, however, who are progressing and not yet perfect can fight in such a way that any good man fights against another in that part by which he also fights against himself;

for indeed in one man the flesh lusts against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh. Therefore a spiritual lust can fight against another's carnal lust, or a carnal lust against another's spiritual lust, just as the good and the evil fight among themselves; or certainly the carnal lusts themselves of two good men, not yet indeed perfect, fight among themselves, just as the evil and the evil fight among themselves—until the health of those who are being cured is brought through to the final victory. CHAPTER VI. On the infirmities which, from the punishment of sin, even the citizens of the city of God suffer in the pilgrimage of this life, and from which, by God's healing, they are made whole.

For this is indeed an infirmity, that is, that disobedience of which we discoursed in the fourteenth book, the punishment of the first disobedience, and therefore not nature but a vice; on account of which it is said to the good who are progressing and living by faith in this pilgrimage: 'Bear one another's burdens, and so you shall fulfil the law of Christ'; likewise it is said elsewhere: 'Rebuke the unruly, comfort the faint-hearted, support the weak, be patient toward all; see that no one renders evil for evil to anyone'; likewise in another place: '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'; and elsewhere:

'Let not the sun go down upon your wrath'; and in the Gospel: 'If your brother sins against you, rebuke him between you and him alone'; likewise concerning sins in which the offense of many is to be guarded against, the apostle says: 'Those who sin reprove before all, that the rest may have fear.' On account of this, also many things are commanded concerning the pardon to be granted one another, and great care for the keeping of peace, without which no one will be able to see God; wherein is that terror, when the servant of ten thousand talents is commanded to pay back the debts that had been remitted to him, because he had not remitted to his fellow-servant a debt of a hundred denarii; with which similitude proposed, the Lord Jesus added and said: 'So also will My heavenly Father do to you,'

'if you do not each forgive his brother from your hearts.' In this manner are the citizens of the city of God healed, while sojourning on this earth and sighing for the peace of the heavenly fatherland. But the Holy Spirit works inwardly, that the medicine which is applied outwardly may avail something. Otherwise, even if God Himself, using a creature subject to Him, should address human senses in some human form—whether those of the body or those most like to them which we have in dreams—and yet did not rule and move the mind by inward grace, all preaching of the truth would profit a man nothing. But God does this, distinguishing the vessels of wrath from the vessels of mercy, by a dispensation which He Himself knows—much that is hidden, but nevertheless just.

For by His help, in wondrous and hidden ways, when the sin which dwells in our members—which is rather now the punishment of sin—does not reign in our mortal body to obey its desires, as the apostle commands, nor do we present our members as weapons of unrighteousness to it, it is turned to the mind not consenting to itself unto evil (God ruling), and ruling that mind it will now possess it more tranquilly; afterward, when perfect health and immortality have been received, man will reign without any sin in eternal peace. CHAPTER VII. On the cause and obstinacy of Cain's crime, whom not even God's word recalled from the deed conceived.

But this very thing which, as we were able, we have set forth—when God had spoken to Cain in that manner in which He used to speak with the first men through a subject creature, as it were their companion, in a fitting form—what did it profit him? Did he not, even after the word of divine admonition, fulfil the crime conceived in the slaying of his brother? For when He had distinguished the sacrifices of both, looking upon the one and despising the other—which it must not be doubted could be known by some attesting visible sign—and had done this because the works of this one were evil, but those of his brother good: Cain was greatly grieved, and his countenance fell. For thus it is written: 'And the Lord said to Cain, Why are you grieved, and why has your countenance fallen?'

'If you offer rightly, but do not divide rightly, have you not sinned? Be still; for unto you shall be its turning, and you shall rule over it.' In this admonition or warning which God uttered to Cain, that which was said—'If you offer rightly, but do not divide rightly, have you not sinned?'—since it is not clear why or whence it was said, its obscurity has given birth to many interpretations, while each expounder of the divine Scriptures tries to set it forth according to the rule of faith. Now a sacrifice is rightly offered when it is offered to the true God, to whom alone sacrifice is to be made.

But it is not rightly divided when the places, or the times, or the very things which are offered, or he who offers and to whom it is offered, or those to whom what is offered is distributed for eating, are not rightly distinguished—so that here we understand 'division' to mean 'discernment': whether when it is offered where it ought not, or what ought to be offered not there but elsewhere; or when it is offered when it ought not, or what ought not then but at another time; or when that is offered which never and nowhere at all ought to have been; or when a man keeps for himself the choicer things of the same kind than those which he offers to God; or when one becomes a partaker of the thing offered who is profane, or anyone whom it is not lawful to become so. In which of these things Cain displeased God cannot easily be found.

But since the apostle John, when speaking of these brothers, said, 'Not as Cain, who was of the wicked one and slew his brother; and for what cause did he slay him? Because his own works were wicked, but his brother's just'—it is given to be understood that God did not look upon his gift for this reason, because in this very thing he was dividing wickedly: giving to God something of his own, but to himself his own self. Which all do who, following not God's will but their own—that is, living not with an upright but a perverse heart—nevertheless offer a gift to God, by which they think He is bribed, so that He may help them, not in healing their depraved desires, but in fulfilling them.

And this is proper to the earthly city: to worship God or gods, by whose help it may reign in victories and earthly peace—not from the charity of taking counsel, but from the lust of dominating. For the good use the world to this end, that they may enjoy God; but the evil, on the contrary, wish to use God, that they may enjoy the world—those, that is, who already believe that He exists and cares for human affairs. For much worse are those who do not even believe this. When therefore Cain learned that God had looked upon his brother's sacrifice but not upon his own, surely, being changed, he ought to have imitated his good brother, not, being elated, to have envied him. But he was grieved, and his countenance fell. This sin God especially reproves—grief at another's goodness, and that a brother's.

For in reproving this, He inquired, saying: 'Why are you grieved, and why has your countenance fallen?' For because he envied his brother, God saw it and reproved it. For to men, from whom another's heart is hidden, it might be doubtful and altogether uncertain whether that grief lamented his own malignity—by which he had learned that he had displeased God—or his brother's goodness, which had pleased God when He looked upon his sacrifice.

But God, giving the reason why He was unwilling to accept his offering—in order that he might rather deservedly be displeasing to himself than his brother undeservedly to him—showed that he was unjust by not dividing rightly, that is, by not living rightly, and unworthy that his offering should be approved, and yet more unjust in that he hated his just brother without cause. Yet not dismissing him without a holy, just, and good commandment, He said: 'Be still; for unto you shall be its turning, and you shall rule over it.' Over his brother? God forbid. Over what, then, but sin? For He had said, 'You have sinned'; then He added, 'Be still; for unto you shall be its turning, and you shall rule over it.'

It can indeed be understood that the turning of sin ought to be toward the man himself, so that he may know that he ought to attribute to none other than himself what he sins. For this is the wholesome medicine of penitence and a not unfitting petition for pardon, so that where He says, 'For unto you shall be its turning,' we should not supply 'shall be,' but rather 'let it be'—the manner, namely, of one commanding, not of one merely predicting. For then will each one rule over sin, if he does not, by defending it, set it before himself, but, by repenting, subject it; otherwise he will also serve it as it dominates, if he affords patronage to it when it occurs. But that sin may be understood as carnal concupiscence itself, of which the apostle says:

The flesh lusts against the spirit, and among the fruits of this flesh Scripture mentions also envy, by which Cain was assuredly goaded and inflamed to his brother's destruction. The word 'shall be' is rightly to be understood, that is: 'For its turning shall be unto thee, and thou shalt rule over it.' For when that very carnal part is stirred up, which the Apostle calls sin where he says, 'It is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me' (which part of the soul even the philosophers call faulty, not such as ought to drag the mind, but such as the mind ought to command and by reason restrain from unlawful deeds) — when therefore it has been stirred up to commit something perversely, if one is quiet and obeys the Apostle who says:

'Neither yield ye your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin,' then it is subdued and conquered and turned back toward the mind, so that reason may rule it as a subject. This God enjoined upon that man who was inflamed with the torches of envy against his brother, and longed to take away the one whom he ought to have imitated. 'Be still,' He says; 'keep thy hand from crime, let not sin reign in thy mortal body to obey its desires, neither yield thy members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin. For its turning is unto thee,' as long as it is not aided by being given free rein, but is bridled by being kept quiet; 'and thou shalt rule over it,' so that, when it is not permitted to act outwardly, it may grow accustomed, under the power of the ruling and well-disposed mind, not to be moved even inwardly.

Something of this kind is said in the same divine book also concerning the woman, when after the sin, with God questioning and judging, they received the sentences of condemnation — in the serpent the devil, and in themselves the woman and her husband. For when He had said to her, 'Multiplying I will multiply thy sorrows and thy groaning, and in sorrows shalt thou bring forth children,' He then added, 'And thy turning shall be toward thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.' What was said to Cain concerning sin, or concerning the faulty concupiscence of the flesh, this is said in that place concerning the sinful woman; where we must understand that the husband, in ruling his wife, ought to be like the soul that rules the flesh. Wherefore the Apostle says, 'He that loveth his wife loveth himself;'

for no man ever hated his own flesh. For these things are to be healed, as our own, not condemned as another's. But that command of God Cain received as a transgressor. For when the vice of envy grew strong, he lay in wait for his brother and slew him. Such was the founder of the earthly city. And how he also signified the Jews, by whom Christ was slain — the shepherd of the sheep that are men, whom Abel, the shepherd of the sheep that are cattle, prefigured (since the matter lies in prophetic allegory) — I forbear to say now, and I recall that I have said certain things on this against Faustus the Manichee. CHAPTER VIII. What reason there was that Cain, amid the beginnings of the human race, should found a city.

Now however it seems to me that the history must be defended, lest that Scripture be thought incredible which says that a city was built by one man at the time when there appear to have been no more than four men, or rather three, in the land after one brother slew the other — that is, the first man, the father of all, and Cain himself, and his son Enoch, from whose name that city was called. But those whom this troubles consider too little that the writer of this sacred history did not need to name all the men who could then have existed, but only those whom the plan of his undertaken work required.

For the purpose of that writer, through whom the Holy Spirit was doing this, was, through the successions of certain generations propagated from one man, to arrive at Abraham, and then from his seed at the people of God, in whom, being distinguished from the other nations, there should be prefigured and foretold all the things that were foreseen in the Spirit as about to come concerning the city whose kingdom shall be eternal, and concerning its king and likewise its founder, Christ; in such a way that the other society of men also should not be passed over in silence — the one we call the earthly city — but only so much of it as was enough for its commemoration, that the city of God might shine the more clearly by comparison even with its adversary.

Since therefore the divine Scripture, where it also records the number of the years those men lived, concludes in this way, saying of the one of whom it was speaking, 'And he begat sons and daughters, and all the days of him or him whom he lived were so many years, and he died' — surely, because it does not name those same sons and daughters, must we not on that account understand that through so many years, in which they then lived in this world's earliest age, very many men could be born, by whose gatherings even very many cities could be founded?

But it pertained to God, by whose inspiration these things were written, first of all to arrange and distinguish these two societies by their diverse genealogies, so that the generations of men — that is, of those living according to man — should be set down apart, and apart again the generations of the sons of God — that is, of men living according to God — down to the flood, where the separation and the commingling of both societies is narrated: the separation indeed, in that the generations of both are recorded separately, of the one the fratricide Cain, of the other him who was called Seth, who himself had been born of Adam in place of the one whom his brother slew;

the commingling, however, because, as the good declined into the worse, all alike had become such that they were destroyed by the flood — except one righteous man whose name was Noah, and his wife and three sons and as many daughters-in-law; these eight persons deserved to escape through the ark out of that universal destruction of mortals. Now as for what is written, 'And Cain knew his wife, and conceiving she bore Enoch; and he was building a city in the name of his son Enoch' — it does not indeed follow that he is to be believed to have begotten this as his first son. Nor is it to be thought so from the fact that he is said to have known his wife, as though he then for the first time mingled with her by lying together.

For even concerning Adam himself, the father of all, this was said not only when Cain was conceived, whom he seems to have had as firstborn, but afterward the same Scripture says: 'Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived and bore a son, and he called his name Seth.' Hence it is understood that Scripture is wont so to speak — although it is not always when it is read therein that conceptions of men took place — yet not only when the two sexes are joined for the first time. Nor is that a necessary argument for us to suppose Enoch the firstborn to his father, namely that the city was called by his name. For it is not unreasonable that, for some cause, the father, though he had others also, loved him more than the rest.

For neither was Judah the firstborn, from whom Judea was named, and the Jews. But even if this son was the first born to the founder of that city, it is not therefore to be thought that the city's name was imposed by the father when he was born, since a city could not then be founded by one man — a city being nothing else than a multitude of men bound together by some bond of fellowship; but when the family of that man grew to such a number that it now had the size of a people, then it could indeed come to pass that he both founded a city and imposed the name of his firstborn upon the city he had founded.