Letters & Polemics (CSEL) 3 part 60/87

yet the Church, especially the Western, received them of old into authority. In one of these, which is called the Wisdom of Solomon, the passion of Christ is most openly prophesied. For his impious slayers are recorded as saying: 'Let us circumvent the righteous one, because he is unpleasant to us and contrary to our works, and reproaches us with sins against the law, and lays to our charge sins against our discipline. He professes to have the knowledge of God, and names himself the Son of God. He has become to us a reproof of our thoughts. He is grievous to us even to behold, because his life is unlike that of others, and his ways are changed. We are esteemed by him as triflers, and he abstains from our ways as from uncleannesses;'

'he prefers the last estate of the righteous, and glories that he has God for his father. Let us see, then, if his words are true, and let us test what shall befall him, and we shall know what shall be his last end. For if he is the righteous Son of God, he will receive him and deliver him from the hand of his adversaries. With contumely and torment let us question him, that we may know his reverence and prove his patience. Let us condemn him to a most shameful death; for there shall be regard for him out of his own words.' These things they thought, and they erred; for their own malice blinded them. But in Ecclesiasticus the future faith of the nations is foretold in this manner: 'Have mercy on us, O Sovereign God of all, and send thy fear upon all the nations;'

'lift up thy hand against the strange nations, that they may see thy power. As thou wast sanctified in us before them, so be thou magnified in them before us, that they may acknowledge thee, even as we also have acknowledged thee, that there is no God beside thee, O Lord.' This prophecy, under the appearance of wishing and praying, we see fulfilled through Christ the lawgiver. But against gainsayers, those things are not brought forth with such great firmness which are not written in the canon of the Jews. But in those three which are agreed to be Solomon's and which the Jews hold as canonical, in order to show that what is found in them of this kind pertains to Christ and the Church, a laborious disputation is necessary, which would extend us further than is fitting, if it were now applied.

Yet that which is read in Proverbs, that impious men say: 'Let us hide the righteous man in the earth unjustly, let us swallow him up alive like hell, and let us take away his memory from the earth, let us lay hold on his precious possession'—is not so obscure but that, without a laborious exposition, it can be understood of Christ and his possession, the Church. For something of this kind the Lord Jesus himself also showed that the wicked husbandmen said, through the evangelical parable: 'This is the heir; come, let us kill him, and the inheritance shall be ours.'

Likewise that passage in the same book which we have already touched upon before, when we were treating of the barren woman who bore seven, is wont to be understood as pronounced—as soon as it was uttered—of none other than Christ and the Church, by those who have known Christ to be the wisdom of God: 'Wisdom hath built herself a house, and hath set up seven pillars; she hath slain her victims, mingled her wine in the bowl, and prepared her table. She hath sent her servants, calling with excellent proclamation to the bowl, saying: Who is foolish? Let him turn aside to me. And to those wanting in sense she said: Come, eat of my bread, and drink the wine which I have mingled for you.'

Here certainly we recognize the wisdom of God, that is, the Word coeternal with the Father, to have built itself a house in the virginal womb—a human body—and to have joined to this, as members to a head, the Church; to have slain the victims of the martyrs; to have prepared a table in wine and bread, where appears also the priesthood after the order of Melchizedek; to have called the foolish and those wanting in sense, because, as the apostle says, 'God chose the weak things of this world, that he might confound the strong.' Yet to these weak ones it says what follows: 'Forsake foolishness, that ye may live, and seek prudence, that ye may have life.' But to become a partaker of that table is itself to begin to have life. For also in another book, which is called Ecclesiastes, where it says:

'There is no good for a man except that he eat and drink'—what is understood to be more credibly said than that which pertains to the participation of this table, which the Mediator of the new testament, the priest himself after the order of Melchizedek, exhibits of his own body and blood? For that sacrifice succeeded all those sacrifices of the old testament, which were immolated in shadow of the thing to come; on which account we also recognize that voice in the thirty-ninth psalm of the same Mediator speaking through prophecy: 'Sacrifice and offering thou wouldest not, but a body thou hast perfected for me'; because, in place of all those sacrifices and offerings, his body is offered and ministered to the partakers.

For that this Ecclesiastes, in this saying about eating and drinking which he often repeats and most highly commends, does not relish the carnal feasts of pleasure, that is sufficiently shown where he says: 'It is better to go into the house of mourning than to go into the house of drinking'; and a little after he says: 'The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning, and the heart of the foolish in the house of feasting.' But I think that more is to be commemorated from this book which pertains to the two cities, the one of the devil, the other of Christ, and to their kings, the devil and Christ: 'Woe to thee, O land,' he says, 'whose king is a youth, and whose princes eat in the morning. Blessed art thou, O land, whose king is the son of nobles, and whose princes eat in due season, in strength, and not in confusion.'

He called the devil a youth, on account of his folly and pride and rashness and wantonness and the other vices which are wont to abound in this age of life; but Christ the son of nobles—that is, of the holy patriarchs, who belong to the free city, out of whom he was begotten in the flesh. The princes of that city eat in the morning, that is, before the fitting hour, because they do not wait for the opportune felicity, which is the true one, in the age to come, desiring hastily to be made blessed by the celebrity of this age; but the princes of the city of Christ patiently await the time of a felicity that does not deceive. This he says: 'In strength, and not in confusion,' because the hope does not deceive them, of which the apostle says: 'But hope confoundeth not';

and the psalm also says: 'For they that wait for thee shall not be confounded.' Now indeed the Song of Songs is a certain spiritual pleasure of holy minds in the marriage of that King and Queen of the city, which is Christ and the Church. But this pleasure is wrapped in allegorical coverings, that it may be more ardently desired and more delightfully laid bare, and that the Bridegroom may appear, to whom it is said in the same song: 'Equity hath loved thee'; and the Bride, who there hears: 'Charity is in thy delights.' Many things we pass over in silence, in our care to bring this work to an end. CHAPTER XXI. Concerning the kings after Solomon, whether in Judah or in Israel.

The other kings of the Hebrews after Solomon are scarcely found to have prophesied—whether in Judah or in Israel—through any riddles of their words or deeds concerning what pertains to Christ and the Church. For thus were the parts of that people named, from the time when, on account of Solomon's offense, in the days of his son Rehoboam, who succeeded his father in the kingdom, it was divided by God's avenging judgment. Accordingly the ten tribes, which Jeroboam, Solomon's servant, received—being set up as king over them in Samaria—were properly called Israel, although this had been the name of that whole people.

But to the two tribes, namely Judah and Benjamin, which for David's sake had remained subject to the city of Jerusalem—lest the kingdom of his line should have been wholly rooted out—the name of Judah was given, because Judah was the very tribe from which David came. Benjamin, however, was the other tribe belonging to that same kingdom, as I have said, from which had come Saul, king before David. But together these two tribes, as has been said, were called Judah, and by this name they were distinguished from Israel, which was the proper name of the ten tribes that had their own king. For the tribe of Levi, since it was priestly, bound to the service of God and not of kings, was reckoned as the thirteenth.

For Joseph, one of the twelve sons of Israel, made not one tribe, as the rest each made a single one, but two tribes, Ephraim and Manasseh. Yet nevertheless the tribe of Levi too belonged rather to the kingdom of Jerusalem, where was the temple of God, which it served. When therefore the people had been divided, Rehoboam, king of Judah, the son of Solomon, reigned first in Jerusalem, and Jeroboam, king of Israel, Solomon's servant, in Samaria. And when Rehoboam wished to pursue with war the tyranny, as it were, of that divided part, the people were forbidden to fight with their brethren, since God declared through a prophet that He had done this. Hence it appeared that in that matter there had been no sin either of the king of Israel or of the people, but rather that the will of God in His avenging judgment had been fulfilled.

When this was known, both sides were appeased and settled in peace among themselves; for the division had been made not of religion but of the kingdom. CHAPTER XXII. Of Jeroboam, who profaned the people subject to him by the impiety of idolatry, in which nevertheless God did not cease both to inspire prophets and to keep many from the crime of idolatry. But Jeroboam, king of Israel, with a perverse mind, not believing God—whom he had proved truthful by the kingdom promised and given to him—feared lest, by coming to the temple of God which was in Jerusalem (whither, according to the divine law, that whole nation had to come for the sake of sacrifice), the people should be seduced away from him and restored to the line of David as to the royal seed; and so he established

idolatry in his own kingdom, and by abominable impiety deceived the people of God, binding them with himself to the worship of images. Yet by no means did God cease to reprove through the prophets not only that king, but also his successors and imitators of his impiety, and the people themselves. For there arose those great and renowned prophets, who also did many wonders, Elijah and his disciple Elisha; there too, when Elijah said, 'Lord, they have slain Thy prophets, they have dug down Thine altars, and I am left alone, and they seek my life,' the answer was given that there were there seven thousand men who had not bowed their knees before Baal. CHAPTER XXIII.

Of the varying condition of both kingdoms of the Hebrews, until both peoples were led into captivity at different times, Judah being afterward recalled to its own kingdom, which at last passed into the power of the Romans. Likewise in the kingdom of Judah pertaining to Jerusalem, even in the times of the kings who succeeded one another, prophets were not lacking; just as it pleased God to send them, either to foretell what was needful, or to rebuke sins and enjoin righteousness. For there too, though far less than in Israel, yet there arose kings who by their impieties grievously offended God and were chastised with moderate scourges together with a like people. The merits of the godly kings there, indeed, are praised as not small;

but in Israel we read that the kings were reprobate—some more, some less, yet all of them. Each part, therefore, as the divine providence either commanded or permitted, was both raised up by various prosperities and pressed down by adversities; and so it was afflicted not only by external wars but also by civil wars among themselves, so that, with certain causes arising, either the mercy or the wrath of God might be made manifest, until, as His indignation grew, that whole nation was not only overthrown in its own seats by the conquering Chaldeans, but also for the greatest part transferred into the lands of the Assyrians—first that part which was called Israel in the ten tribes, and afterward Judah also, when Jerusalem and that most noble temple had been destroyed;

and in those lands it spent its captive leisure for seventy years. After these, being thence dismissed, it restored the temple which had been destroyed; and although very many of them dwelt in the lands of foreigners, yet thereafter it no longer had two parts of the kingdom and two different kings in the separate parts; but in Jerusalem their chief was one, and to the temple of God, which was there, all came from every side, wherever they were and from wherever they could, at appointed times. But not even then were enemies and assailants from other nations lacking to them; for indeed Christ found them already tributaries of the Romans. CHAPTER XXIV.

Of the prophets who were either the last among the Jews, or whom the Gospel history sets forth as living about the time of Christ's nativity. Throughout all that time, from when they returned from Babylon, after Malachi, Haggai and Zechariah, who prophesied then, and Ezra, they had no prophets until the Saviour's coming—except another Zechariah, the father of John, and Elizabeth his wife, when Christ's nativity was now near at hand; and, He being now born, the aged Simeon, and the widow Anna, now well advanced in years; and John himself, the last, who, being young, did not indeed foretell Christ, now also young, as one to come, but pointed Him out, though unknown, by prophetic knowledge; on account of which the Lord Himself says: 'The Law and the prophets were until John.'

But the prophesying of these five is known to us from the Gospel; where also the Virgin Mother of the Lord herself is found to have prophesied before John. But this prophecy of theirs the reprobate Jews do not receive; yet those countless ones among them who believed the Gospel did receive it. For then was Israel truly divided in two, by that division which through the prophet Samuel was unalterably foretold to King Saul. But Malachi, Haggai, Zechariah, and Ezra even the reprobate Jews hold as received into canonical authority as the last. For there are also writings of theirs, just as of the others, who among the great multitude of prophets were very few who wrote the things that should obtain the authority of the canon.

Of the things foretold by these, which pertain to Christ and His Church, I see that some must be set down by me in this work; which will be done more conveniently, with the Lord's help, in the following book, lest I burden this one, already so long, still further. Of those things which down to the times of the Saviour have been discussed in seventeen books.

Of the two cities—one of which is God's, the other of this world, in which, so far as pertains to the human race, this one also is a pilgrim—I promised that I would write of their origin, their progress, and their due ends, when first I had refuted the enemies of the city of God, who prefer their own gods to Christ its founder and, with a most pernicious envy, bitterly grudge the Christians; which, so far as His grace helped me, I did in the first ten books.

But of this my threefold promise which I just now mentioned, the origin of both cities was set forth in the four books following the tenth; then their progress from the first man down to the flood in one book, which is the fifteenth of this work; and thence down to Abraham again both cities ran their course, as in time, so also in our writings. But from father Abraham down to the time of the kings of the Israelites, where we finished the sixteenth volume, and thence down to the coming of the Saviour Himself in the flesh, to which the seventeenth book extends, only the city of God seems to have run its course in my pen;

although in this world it ran its course not alone, but assuredly both cities ran together in the human race, as from the beginning, and varied the times by their joint progress. But I did this for this reason: that first, from when God's promises began to be plainer, down to His birth from the Virgin (in which were to be fulfilled the things that were promised at the first), this city which is God's, running on without interruption from the opposing side of the other city, might appear more distinctly; although down to the revelation of the new testament it ran its course not in light, but in shadow. Now therefore, what I had laid aside, I see must be done: that from the times of Abraham I may touch upon how that other city also ran its course, so far as seems sufficient, so that both may be compared with each other by the consideration of readers.

CHAPTER II. Of the kings and times of the earthly city, with which, from the rise of Abraham, the reckoned times of the saints agree. The society, then, of mortals, everywhere spread abroad through the lands and bound together in places of however great diversity by a certain communion of one and the same nature—each pursuing his own interests and desires—while what is sought suffices either for no one or not for all, because it is not the very thing itself, is for the most part divided against itself, and the part that prevails oppresses the other part. For the conquered yields to the conqueror, preferring any kind of peace and safety to dominion or even to liberty, so that those have been a great wonder who chose rather to perish than to serve.

For in almost all nations the voice of nature has in a certain way thus resounded, that those whose lot it was to be conquered preferred to be subjugated by the victors rather than to be destroyed by every kind of warlike devastation. Hence it has come about, not without the providence of God—in whose power it lies that each man should either be subjugated or subjugate in war—that some were endowed with kingdoms, and some made subject to those who reign. But among the very many kingdoms of the earth, into which the society of earthly interest or desire is divided (which we call by the universal name the city of this world), we discern two kingdoms that have come forth far more illustrious than the rest: first that of the Assyrians, then that of the Romans, ordered and distinguished from each other as in times, so also in places. For just as the former was earlier, this latter was later;

in like manner the former arose in the East, the latter in the West; and finally, at the end of the one, the beginning of the other immediately followed. The other kingdoms and other kings I would call, as it were, appendages of these. Ninus, then, was already the second king of the Assyrians, who had succeeded his father Belus, the first king of that kingdom, when Abraham was born in the land of the Chaldeans. There was also at that time a quite small kingdom of the Sicyonians, from which that man most learned in every field, Marcus Varro, writing of the nation of the Roman people, began as from ancient time. For from these kings of the Sicyonians he passed to the Athenians, from them to the Latins, thence to the Romans. But before the founding of Rome these things are recorded as very slight in comparison with the kingdom of the Assyrians;

although even Sallust the Roman historian acknowledges that the Athenians flourished most greatly in Greece—yet more in fame than in the thing itself. For speaking of them, he says: 'The deeds of the Athenians, as I judge, were sufficiently great and magnificent; yet somewhat less than they are reported by fame. But because there arose there great talents of writers, throughout the world the deeds of the Athenians are celebrated as the greatest. Thus the valor of those who did them is held to be as great as illustrious talents were able to extol it in words.' There accrues to this city no small glory also from letters and philosophers, because there above all such studies flourished.

For as far as concerns empire, none was greater in the earliest times than that of the Assyrians, nor so widely and broadly extended; since King Ninus, the son of Belus, is reported to have subdued all Asia—which is said to be a third of the whole world by number of its parts, but is found to be the half by magnitude—as far as the borders of Libya. Over the Indians alone, in the regions of the East, he did not rule; yet, upon his death, his wife Semiramis attacked them in war. Thus it came about that whatever peoples or kings there were in those lands obeyed the kingdom and authority of the Assyrians and carried out whatever was commanded. Abraham, therefore, was born in that kingdom among the Chaldeans in the times of Ninus.

But since Greek affairs are much better known to us than Assyrian, and since those who have searched out the nation of the Roman people in the antiquity of its origin have traced down the sequence of times through the Greeks to the Latins and then to the Romans (who are themselves also Latins): for this reason we ought, where there is need, to mention the Assyrian kings, that it may appear in what manner Babylon, as a first Rome, ran its course together with the pilgrim city of God in this world; but those matters which, for the sake of comparing the two cities—namely the earthly and the heavenly—it behooves us to insert into this work, we ought rather to take from the Greeks and Latins, where Rome itself is, as it were, a second Babylon.

When, then, Abraham was born, the second kings were, among the Assyrians Ninus, among the Sicyonians Europs; but the first there had been Belus, here Aegialeus. But when Abraham had gone out of Babylon, God promised him that from him there should be a great nation, and in his seed the blessing of all nations. The Assyrians had a fourth king, the Sicyonians a fifth; for among the former reigned the son of Ninus after his mother Semiramis: who is reported to have been slain by him, having dared, as a mother, to defile her son by incestuous union. Some think that she founded Babylon, which indeed she could have restored. But when or in what manner it was founded, we have said in the sixteenth book.

Furthermore, the son of Ninus and Semiramis, who succeeded his mother in the kingdom, some call himself also Ninus, but some call Ninyas by a name derived from his father. The kingdom of the Sicyonians then was held by Telxion. In whose reign there were there such mild and joyful times, that when he died they worshiped him as a god by sacrificing and by celebrating games, which they say were first instituted for him. CHAPTER III. Under what kings reigning among the Assyrians and Sicyonians Isaac, of the promise, was born when Abraham was a hundred years old, or to Isaac himself at sixty Esau and Jacob, twins, were brought forth by Rebecca. In his times also Isaac was born of the promise of God, to his father Abraham, a hundred years old, a son of Sarah his wife, who, being barren and now an old woman, had lost hope of offspring.

Then too the Assyrians had a fifth king, Arius. But to Isaac himself at sixty were born twins, Esau and Jacob, whom Rebecca his wife bore to him, their grandfather Abraham still living and passing the hundred and sixtieth year of his age, who, having completed a hundred and seventy-five, died, when there reigned among the Assyrians that older Xerxes, who was also called Baleus, and among the Sicyonians Thuriacus, whom some write as Thurimachus, the seventh kings. But the kingdom of the Argives arose together with the grandsons of Abraham, where Inachus first reigned. Indeed—a thing not to be passed over—Varro reports that the Sicyonians were accustomed to sacrifice also at the sepulcher of their seventh king Thuriacus.

Furthermore, when the eighth kings were reigning—Armamitres of the Assyrians, Leucippus of the Sicyonians, and Inachus the first of the Argives—God spoke to Isaac, and to him also He promised those same two things which He had promised to his father: namely, to his seed the land of Canaan, and in his seed the blessing of all nations. These same things were promised also to his son, Abraham's grandson, who was first called Jacob, afterward Israel, when now Belochus reigned as the ninth king of Assyria and Phoroneus, son of Inachus, as the second over the Argives, Leucippus still remaining among the Sicyonians. In these times Greece, under Phoroneus the Argive king, was made somewhat more illustrious by certain institutions of laws and judgments.

Nevertheless Phegous, the younger brother of this Phoroneus, when he had died, had a temple set up at his sepulcher, in which he might be worshiped as a god and oxen be sacrificed to him. I believe they thought him worthy of so great an honor for this reason: that in his portion of the kingdom (for the father had distributed the regions to them both, in which they might reign during his lifetime) he had set up shrines for the worship of the gods, and had taught that the seasons should be observed by months and years, and how far each of them should be measured and reckoned. Marveling at these things as new in him, men still rude, upon his death either supposed or chose to make him a god. For Io also is reported to have been the daughter of Inachus, who afterward, called Isis, was worshiped as a great goddess in Egypt;

although others write that she came from Ethiopia into Egypt as a queen, and that because she ruled widely and justly and instituted for them many useful things and letters, this divine honor was paid to her, after she died there; and so great an honor, that whoever should say she had been a human being became guilty of a capital crime. CHAPTER IV. Of the times of Jacob and his son Joseph.

When the tenth king of the Assyrians, Baleus, and the ninth of the Sicyonians, Messapus—who is also handed down by some as Cephisos (if indeed one man had two names, and they did not rather suppose one to be another man under the other name, who placed the other name in their writings)—were reigning, while Apis was the third king of the Argives, Isaac died at the age of a hundred and eighty, and left his twins, a hundred and twenty years old; of whom the younger, Jacob, pertaining to the city of God of which we write—the elder being assuredly rejected—had twelve sons, of whom the one who was called Joseph his brothers had sold to merchants passing over into Egypt, their grandfather Isaac still living.

Now Joseph stood before Pharaoh, when from the lowliness which he had endured he was exalted, being thirty years old; since, having divinely interpreted the king's dreams, he foretold that seven years of plenty would come, whose overflowing abundance seven other barren years following were to consume; and for this the king had set him over Egypt, freed from prison, into which the integrity of his chastity had cast him—which, stoutly preserving, he did not consent to the foul deed against a mistress who loved wickedly and a master ready wickedly to believe her who lied; fleeing from the hands of her who drew him on, with his garment even left behind.

But in the second year of the seven barren years, Jacob came into Egypt with all his own to his son, being a hundred and thirty years old, as he himself replied to the king who asked him, when Joseph was thirty-nine—namely, the thirty which he was when he was honored by the king, with seven of plenty and two of famine added. CHAPTER V. Of Apis, king of the Argives, whom the Egyptians, naming him Serapis, worshiped with divine honor. In these times Apis, king of the Argives, conveyed by ships into Egypt, when he had died there, was made Serapis, the greatest of all the gods of the Egyptians. But of this name—why he was called not Apis even after death, but Serapis—Varro gave a most easy explanation.