Letters & Polemics (CSEL) 3 part 75/87

and that He will send out from among them saved ones into divers nations and into far-off islands, which have not heard His name nor seen His glory; and that they shall declare His glory among the nations, and shall bring the brethren of those to whom He was speaking — that is, in the faith the brethren of the elect Israelites under God the Father; and that they shall bring out of all nations a gift to the Lord on beasts of burden and in carriages (which beasts and carriages are well understood to be the divine helps through ministries of every kind, whether angelic or human) into the holy city Jerusalem, which is now diffused through the lands in the holy faithful. For where men are divinely helped, there they believe, and where they believe, there they come.

Moreover, the Lord likened them, as it were by a similitude, to the children of Israel offering Him their sacrifices with psalms in His house, which the Church now everywhere does: and He promised that from these same He would take to Himself priests and Levites; which we no less see being done now. For not from the race of flesh and blood, as was the first order according to the order of Aaron, but, as was fitting in the new Testament, where according to the order of Melchizedek Christ is the High Priest, we now see priests and Levites chosen according to each one's merit, which divine grace shall have conferred upon him; men who are to be esteemed not by that name, which the unworthy often obtain, but by that holiness which is not common to good and bad. These things when he had said concerning that

mercy of God which is now imparted to the Church, evident and most well known to us, he then promised also the ends to which men shall come through the last judgment, when the separation of the good and the bad has been made, saying through the prophet, or rather the prophet himself speaking of the Lord: 'For as the new heaven and the new earth shall remain before me, saith the Lord, so shall your seed stand and your name, and there shall be month out of month and sabbath out of sabbath. All flesh shall come into my sight to worship in Jerusalem, saith the Lord; and they shall go forth and see the members of the men who have transgressed against me. Their worm shall not die, and their fire shall not be quenched; and they shall be a spectacle to all flesh.'

With this the prophet ended his book, at the point where the age shall be ended. Some, indeed, have rendered it not 'the members of the men,' but 'the corpses of the men,' signifying by 'corpses' the evident penalty of bodies; although a corpse is not usually called anything but lifeless flesh, whereas those bodies shall be ensouled — otherwise they could feel no torments — unless perhaps, because they shall be the bodies of the dead, that is, of those who fall into the second death, on that account they may not absurdly be called even 'corpses.' Hence too is that which by the same prophet was said, and which I quoted above: 'But the land of the ungodly shall fall.' And who does not see that 'corpses' (cadavera) are named from 'falling' (cadendo)? But that those translators put 'of men' (virorum) for what is 'of human beings' (hominum) is manifest.

For no one will say that transgressing women shall not be in that punishment; but from the more excellent sex — especially that from which woman was made — both sexes are comprehended. But, what most pertains to the matter, since both in the case of the good it is said: 'All flesh shall come,' because that people shall consist of every kind of human beings (for not all human beings shall be there, since in the punishments there shall be more) — but, as I had begun to say, since both in the good 'flesh' and in the bad 'members' or 'corpses' are named: assuredly, after the resurrection of the flesh, whose faith is wholly confirmed by these terms for things, it is declared that there shall be that judgment by which the good and the bad shall be separated within their bounds. CHAPTER XXII.

What manner of going forth of the saints there shall be to behold the punishments of the wicked. But in what manner shall the good go forth to behold the punishments of the wicked? Are they about, by a motion of the body, to leave those blessed seats and proceed to the places of punishment, that they may behold the torments of the wicked by bodily presence? Far from it; but they shall go forth by knowledge. For by this word it was signified that those who shall be tormented are to be outside. Wherefore the Lord also calls those places 'outer darkness,' to which is contrary that entering of which it is said to the good servant: 'Enter into the joy of thy Lord'; lest the wicked be thought to enter there, that they may be known, but rather that the good go forth, as it were, to them by the knowledge whereby they shall know them, because they shall know that which is outside.

For those who shall be in the punishments shall not know what is being done within in the joy of the Lord; but those who shall be in that joy shall know what is being done without in those outer darknesses. Therefore it was said: 'They shall go forth,' because even those who shall be outside them shall surely not be hidden from them. For if the prophets were able to know these things, not yet done, through this — that there was God, however little there was, in their mortal minds — how shall the immortal saints then not know things already done, when God shall be all in all? There shall stand, then, in that blessedness of the saints, the seed unto the name; the seed, namely, of which John says: 'And His seed remaineth in him'; and the name, of which it was said by this same Isaiah:

'I will give them an eternal name.' There shall be for them month out of month and sabbath out of sabbath, as it were moon out of moon and rest out of rest, both of which they themselves shall be when they pass from these old and temporal shadows into those new and everlasting lights. But in the punishments of the wicked, both the inextinguishable fire and the most lively worm have been expounded by various people in various ways. For some have referred both to the body, some both to the soul; others, properly the fire to the body, figuratively the worm to the soul — which seems the more credible. But now there is no time to dispute concerning this difference. For we have undertaken to fill this volume concerning the last judgment, by which there shall be made the separation of the good and the bad;

but concerning the rewards and punishments themselves we must discourse more carefully elsewhere. CHAPTER XXIII. What Daniel prophesied concerning the persecution of Antichrist, and the judgment of God, and the kingdom of the saints. Daniel prophesies of this last judgment in such wise as to foretell that Antichrist also shall first come, and to carry on his narrative to the eternal kingdom of the saints. For when in a prophetic vision he had seen four beasts signifying four kingdoms, and that fourth one overcome by a certain king who is recognized as Antichrist, and after these things the eternal kingdom of the Son of man, who is understood to be Christ: 'My spirit,' he says, 'shuddered, I Daniel, in my frame, and the visions of my head troubled me.'

'And I drew near,' he says, 'to one of those who stood by, and sought from him the truth concerning all these things, and he told me the truth.' Then, what he heard from him of whom he inquired concerning all these things, as that one expounded it to him, he speaks thus: 'These four great beasts are four kingdoms which shall arise on the earth, which shall be taken away, and the saints of the Most High shall receive the kingdom and shall possess it unto the age and unto the age of ages.'

'And I inquired,' he says, 'diligently concerning the fourth beast, which was different from every beast, exceedingly terrible — its teeth of iron and its claws of bronze, devouring and crushing and trampling the rest with its feet —, and concerning its ten horns which were on its head, and concerning the other, which came up and shook off three of the former; that horn in which were eyes and a mouth speaking great things, and its aspect greater than the rest. I beheld, and that horn made war with the saints and prevailed against them, until the Ancient of days came, and gave the kingdom to the saints of the Most High; and the time arrived, and the saints obtained the kingdom.' These things Daniel said that he inquired about. Then, subjoining at once what he heard:

'And he said' — that is, he of whom he had inquired answered and said: 'The fourth beast shall be a fourth kingdom on the earth, which shall prevail over all kingdoms; and it shall devour all the earth, and trample it and cut it down. And its ten horns are ten kings who shall arise; and after them shall arise another, who shall surpass in evils all who were before him; and he shall humble three kings, and shall speak words against the Most High, and shall wear down the saints of the Most High, and shall purpose to change times and the law: and it shall be given into his hand until a time and times and half a time. And the judgment shall sit, and they shall remove his dominion, to abolish and destroy it unto the end;

and the kingdom and the power and the greatness of the kings who are under all heaven was given to the saints of the Most High. And His kingdom is an everlasting kingdom; and all dominions shall serve and obey Him.' Thus far, he says, is the end of the matter. 'I Daniel; my thoughts much troubled me, and my form was changed upon me, and I kept the word in my heart.' Those four kingdoms certain men have expounded as those of the Assyrians, the Persians, the Macedonians, and the Romans. But how fittingly they did this, let those who desire to know it read the book of the presbyter Jerome on Daniel, composed learnedly and diligently enough.

Yet that Antichrist's most savage kingdom against the Church, though it must be endured for a short span of time, until by God's last judgment the saints receive the everlasting kingdom — of this whoever reads these things even while half asleep is not permitted to doubt. For that 'a time and times and half a time' is one year and two and a half, and on this account three years and a half, becomes clear also from the number of days afterwards added, and is sometimes declared in the Scriptures by the number of months as well. For 'times' (tempora) seem here to be said indefinitely in the Latin tongue; but they are said by the dual number, which the Latins do not have. And as the Greeks, so also the Hebrews are said to have this. Thus, then, 'times' was said, as if there were said 'two times.'

I confess indeed that I fear, lest in the ten kings, whom Antichrist seems about to find as ten men, we be perchance deceived, and so he come unlooked-for, there not existing so many kings in the Roman world. What if by this number ten the whole multitude of kings is signified, after whom he is to come? — just as by the thousand, the hundred, the seven a whole multitude is for the most part signified, and by other and yet other numbers which it is now not necessary to recall. In another place the same Daniel says: 'And there shall be a time of tribulation, such as has not been since a nation was born upon the earth until that time. And in that time thy people shall all be saved, whoever shall be found written in the book.'

'And many of those who sleep in the mound of the earth shall rise up: these unto life eternal, and these unto reproach and unto eternal confusion. And the understanding shall shine like the brightness of the firmament, and of the just many like the stars for ever and yet more.' This passage is most like that evangelical sentence concerning the resurrection, at least of the bodies of the dead. For those who were there said to be 'in the tombs,' the same here are 'sleeping in the mound of the earth,' or, as others have translated, 'in the dust of the earth'; and as it was there said 'they shall come forth,' so here 'they shall rise up'; as there 'those who have done good things, unto the resurrection of life; but those who have done evil, unto the resurrection of judgment':

so also in this place: these unto life eternal, and these unto reproach and unto eternal confusion. But let it not be thought a discrepancy that, whereas there it is set down 'all who are in the tombs,' here the prophet says not 'all,' but 'many of those who sleep in the mound of the earth.' For Scripture sometimes puts 'many' for 'all.' On which account it was also said to Abraham: 'A father of many nations have I set thee,' to whom nevertheless in another place He says: 'In thy seed shall all nations be blessed.' And concerning such a resurrection it is said also to this same prophet Daniel a little later: 'And do thou come and rest; for there are yet days until the fulfilment of the consummation, and thou shalt rest and rise up in thy lot at the end of the days.' CHAPTER XXIV.

What things concerning the end of this world and the last judgment of God are prophesied in the Psalms of David. Many things concerning the last judgment are said in the Psalms, but most of them in passing and briefly. Yet this which is most plainly said there concerning the end of this world I will by no means pass over in silence: 'In the beginning thou didst found the earth, O Lord, and the heavens are the works of thy hands. They shall perish, but thou remainest; and all shall grow old like a garment, and like a covering thou shalt change them, and they shall be changed: but thou art the selfsame, and thy years shall not fail.'

What is it that Porphyry, while he praises the piety of the Hebrews, by which the great and true God, terrible even to the deities themselves, is worshipped by them, on this account charges the Christians with the greatest folly — even out of the oracles of his own gods — because they say that this world is to perish? Behold, in the writings of the Hebrews' piety it is said to God, whom, as so great a philosopher confesses, even the deities themselves dread: 'The heavens are the works of thy hands; they shall perish.' Surely, when the heavens shall perish, shall not the world, whose upper and safer part those same heavens are, also perish? If this sentence displeases Jupiter, by whose oracle, as this philosopher writes, of weightier authority as it were, the credulity of the Christians is blamed:

why does he not in like manner blame the wisdom of the Hebrews as folly, in whose most pious books it is found? Furthermore, if in that wisdom which pleases Porphyry so much that he proclaims it even with the voices of his own gods, it is read that the heavens are to perish: why is this deceit so utterly empty, that in the faith of the Christians, whether among other things or before other things, they should detest this — that in it the world is believed to be about to perish, which world surely the heavens cannot perish unless it perishes? And in the sacred writings indeed which are properly ours, not common to us and the Hebrews — that is, in the evangelic and apostolic books — it is read: 'The fashion of this world passeth away'; it is read: 'The world passeth away'; it is read: 'Heaven and earth shall pass away.' But I think

that 'passeth away,' 'passes,' 'shall pass away' are said somewhat more gently than 'they shall perish.' In the epistle also of the apostle Peter, where the world which then was, flooded with water, is said to have perished, it is clear enough both what part of the world is signified by the whole, and in what sense it is said to have perished, and which heavens are stored up to be reserved for fire unto the day of judgment and of the perdition of ungodly men; and in that which a little later he says: 'The day of the Lord shall come as a thief, in which the heavens shall pass away with great violence, and the elements being on fire shall be dissolved, and the earth and the works that are in it shall be burned up'; and then he subjoined: 'Seeing that all these things shall perish, what manner of persons ought ye to be?' — those heavens can be understood as about to perish

which he said were stored up to be reserved for fire, and 'the elements' are to be taken as about to burn, which subsist stormy and turbulent in this lowest part of the world, in which he said those same heavens were stored up, while those upper ones remain safe and in their integrity, in whose firmament the stars are set. For even that which is written, that the stars shall fall from heaven — besides that it can much more probably be understood otherwise as well — rather shows that those heavens are to remain, if indeed the stars are to fall from thence; since either the expression is figurative, which is the more credible, or it shall come to pass in this lowest heaven, more marvellously surely than it now does. Whence too that Virgilian star, drawing a torch, ran with much light, and hid itself in the Idaean wood.

But this which I have cited from the psalm seems to leave none of the heavens which it has not said is to perish. For where it is said: 'The heavens are the works of thy hands; they shall perish,' just as none of them is separated from being the work of God, so none of them is separated from perdition. For they will not deign — out of the saying of Peter the apostle, whom they vehemently hate — to defend the piety of the Hebrews, approved by the oracles of their own gods, so that at least, lest the whole world be believed to be about to perish, a part should thus be taken from the whole in that which is said: 'They shall perish,' as though only the lowest heavens were to perish, just as in that apostolic epistle a part is taken from the whole when the world is said to have perished by the flood, although only its lowest part with its own heavens perished.

But because this, as I said, they will not deign to do, lest they either approve the sense of the apostle Peter, or concede to the final conflagration as much as we say the flood availed — they who contend that the whole human race cannot perish by any waters or any flames: it remains that they say that their gods praised the Hebrew wisdom for this reason, because they had not read this psalm. In the forty-ninth Psalm also it is understood to be said concerning the last judgment of God: 'God shall come manifest, our God, and shall not keep silence. A fire shall burn in His sight, and round about Him a mighty tempest. He shall call the heaven above and the earth, to discern His people. Gather unto Him His just ones, who arrange His testament over sacrifices.'

This we understand of our Lord Jesus Christ, whom we hope will come from heaven to judge the living and the dead. For He will come manifest to judge the just and the unjust justly, who first came hidden, to be judged unjustly by the unjust. He, I say, will come manifest and will not keep silence: that is, in the voice of a judge He will appear plainly, who, when He first came hidden, kept silence before His judge, when, as a sheep, He was led to the slaughter, and as a lamb was without voice before the one who shears it, even as we read it foretold of Him through Isaiah, and behold it fulfilled in the Gospel. But concerning the fire and the tempest, when we were treating of some such matter in the prophecy of Isaiah, we have already said how these things are to be understood.

But as to what is said, 'He shall call to the heaven above': since the holy and just are rightly called heaven, this assuredly is what the Apostle says, 'We shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet Christ in the air.' For according to the surface of the letter, how is the heaven called above, as though it could be anywhere but above? But what is added, 'And the earth, to discern His people,' if only 'He shall call' be understood, that is, 'He shall call also the earth,' and 'above' be not supplied, this seems to have the following meaning according to right faith: that by heaven are understood those who shall judge with Him, and by earth those who shall be judged; so that 'He shall call the heaven above' we are not here to understand as 'He shall catch up into the air,' but 'He shall raise to the seats of judgment.'

It can also be understood thus, 'He shall call the heaven above'—'He shall call the angels in the high and lofty places, with whom He shall descend to execute judgment'; 'and He shall call the earth,' that is, the men on earth who are certainly to be judged. But if both are to be supplied, when it is said 'and the earth,' namely 'and He shall call,' and 'above,' so that the sense is this: 'He shall call the heaven above, and the earth He shall call above,' I think nothing better can be understood than all who shall be caught up to meet Christ in the air, but called heaven on account of their souls, earth on account of their bodies. And 'to discern His people'—what else is this than by judgment to separate the good from the evil, as sheep from goats? Then the discourse is turned to the angels: 'Gather to Him His just ones';

for assuredly so great a work is to be accomplished through angelic ministry. But if we ask which just ones the angels are to gather to Him, it says: 'Those who set in order His covenant upon sacrifices.' This is the whole life of the just: to set in order the covenant of God upon sacrifices. For either works of mercy are above sacrifices, that is, to be preferred to sacrifices, according to the saying of God, 'I will have mercy rather than sacrifice'; or, if 'upon sacrifices' is understood to be said for 'in sacrifices,' as it is said that something is done 'upon the earth' which is certainly done in the earth—then assuredly the very works of mercy are the sacrifices by which God is pleased, as I remember I discussed in the tenth book of this work;

in which works the just set in order the covenant of God, because they do these things on account of the promises contained in His new covenant. Wherefore, His just ones being gathered to Him and set at His right hand, in that last judgment Christ shall surely say: 'Come, ye blessed of My Father, possess the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry, and ye gave Me to eat,' and the rest which are there set forth concerning the good works of the good and their everlasting rewards through the final sentence of the Judge. CHAPTER 25. On the prophecy of Malachi, in which the last judgment of God is declared, and it is said that a cleansing of certain ones is to be accomplished by purifying punishments.

The prophet Malachiel or Malachi, who was also called an angel, and who is by some believed to be Ezra the priest, whose other writings have been received into the canon (for Jerome says that this is the opinion of the Hebrews about him), prophesies the last judgment, saying: 'Behold, He cometh, saith the Lord Almighty; and who shall endure the day of His coming, or who shall be able to bear it, that he may look upon Him? For He entereth in like the fire of the refiner and like the herb of the fullers; and He shall sit refining and purifying like silver and like gold, and He shall purify the sons of Levi, and shall pour them out like gold and silver;'

and they shall be to the Lord offering sacrifices in righteousness, and the sacrifice of Judah and of Jerusalem shall please the Lord, as in the days of old and as in former years. And I will come near to you in judgment, and I will be a swift witness against the workers of evil and against the adulterers, and against those who swear by My name falsely, and who defraud the hired servant of his wages, and oppress widows by force, and strike the fatherless, and pervert the judgment of the stranger, and who fear Me not, saith the Lord Almighty; for I am the Lord your God, and I change not. From these things which have been said, it seems to appear more evidently that in that judgment there are to be certain purifying punishments of certain persons. For where it is said:

Who shall endure the day of His coming, or who shall be able to bear it, that he may look upon Him? For He entereth in like the fire of the refiner and like the herb of the fullers; and He shall sit refining and purifying like silver and like gold, and He shall purify the sons of Levi, and shall pour them out like gold and silver'—what else is to be understood? Isaiah too says something of the kind: 'The Lord shall wash away the filth of the sons and daughters of Zion, and shall purge the blood from the midst of them by the spirit of judgment and by the spirit of burning.'

Unless perhaps it must be said that they are thus cleansed from their filth and in some way refined when the evil are separated from them by penal judgment, so that the separation and condemnation of those is the purgation of these, because henceforth they shall live without admixture of such persons. But when He says, 'And He shall purify the sons of Levi, and shall pour them out like gold and silver; and they shall be to the Lord offering sacrifices in righteousness, and the sacrifice of Judah and of Jerusalem shall please the Lord'—He certainly shows that those very ones who shall be purified are thereafter to please the Lord in sacrifices of righteousness, and thereby they themselves are to be cleansed from their own unrighteousness, in which they displeased the Lord. Moreover, in full and perfect righteousness, when they shall have been cleansed, they themselves shall be the victims.

For what do such persons offer more acceptable to God than themselves? But this question concerning purgatorial punishments, that it may be treated more diligently, must be deferred to another time. But we ought to understand by the sons of Levi and Judah and Jerusalem itself the very Church of God, gathered not only from the Hebrews but also from the other nations; nor such as it now is, where, if we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us; but such as it then shall be, like a threshing-floor purged by winnowing, so by the last judgment purified, those also being cleansed by fire to whom such cleansing is necessary, so that there shall be none at all who offers sacrifice for his own sins.

For all who thus offer are assuredly in sins, for the remission of which they offer, that, when they have offered and it has been accepted by God, then they may be remitted. CHAPTER 26. On the sacrifices which the saints shall offer to God, sacrifices that will so please as they pleased in the days of old and in former years. But God, wishing to show that His city shall not then be in this custom, said that the sons of Levi would offer sacrifices in righteousness; therefore not in sin, and consequently not for sin. Whence it can be understood in what He added when He went on to say: 'And the sacrifice of Judah and of Jerusalem shall please the Lord,'

'as in the days of old and as in former years'—that the Jews vainly promise themselves the past times of their sacrifices according to the law of the Old Testament. For then they offered victims not in righteousness, but in sins, since they offered chiefly and primarily for sins, to such a degree that the priest himself, whom we ought certainly to believe to have been more righteous than the rest, was wont by the command of God to offer first for his own sins, and then for the people's. Wherefore it behooves us to expound how that is to be taken which was said, 'As in the days of old and as in former years.' For perhaps it commemorates that time when the first human beings were in paradise.

For then, pure and whole, free from all the filth and stain of sin, they offered themselves to God as the cleanest of victims; but from the time when, by reason of the transgression committed, they were thence cast out and human nature in them was condemned, except the one Mediator and, after the laver of regeneration, whatever little ones still are, no one is clean from filth, as it is written, not even the infant whose life is of one day upon the earth. But if it be answered that those too may be said deservedly to offer sacrifices in righteousness who offer in faith (for the just lives by faith; although he deceives himself if he says he has no sin, and therefore let him not say so, since he lives by faith):