Works (City of God, On the Trinity, etc.) 36 part 2/3

and so he is prepared for either outcome, that as far as in him lies he may choose the one and avoid the other; and if that which he avoids befalls him, he therefore bears it willingly, because what he willed could not come to pass. He endures, then, lest he be crushed, but he would be unwilling to be pressed. How then does he live as he wishes? Is it because he is willingly brave to bear those things, when inflicted, which he would be unwilling to have inflicted? Therefore he wills that which he can, precisely because he cannot have what he wills. This is the whole—whether to be laughed at or rather to be pitied—blessedness of proud mortals who boast that they live as they wish because they willingly and patiently bear those things which they do not wish to befall them. For this, they say, is what Terence wisely said: 'Since that which you wish cannot come to pass, wish that which you can.' Who denies that this is aptly said?

But it is counsel given to a wretched man, lest he become more wretched. To the blessed man, however—such as all wish themselves to be—it is not rightly nor truly said, 'That which you wish cannot come to pass.' For if he is blessed, whatever he wishes can come to pass, because he does not wish what cannot come to pass. But this life is not the life of this mortality, nor shall it be until immortality also shall be. And if this could in no way be given to man, blessedness too would be sought in vain, because without immortality it cannot be. [VIII 11] Since therefore all men wish to be blessed, if they wish the truth, they assuredly wish also to be immortal; for otherwise they cannot be blessed. And indeed, when questioned about immortality just as about blessedness, all answer that they wish it.

But such blessedness as may rather be called such than truly be—that is what is sought in this life; nay rather, it is feigned, so long as immortality is despaired of, without which true blessedness cannot be. For he indeed lives blessedly—as we have already said above and sufficiently established by proof—who lives as he wishes and wishes nothing evilly. Now no one evilly wishes immortality, if human nature is capable of it by God's gift; and if it is not capable of it, then neither is it capable of blessedness. For in order that a man may live blessedly, it is necessary that he live. And if life itself deserts one who is dying, how can the blessed life remain with him? But when it deserts him, without doubt it deserts him either unwilling, or willing, or neither.

If unwilling, how is that a blessed life which is so in the will that it is not in the power? And since no one is blessed by willing something and not having it, how much less blessed is he who is deserted—not by honour, not by possession, not by any other thing, but by the blessed life itself against his will—when there shall be no life for him at all? Whence, even though no sense remains by which he may be wretched (for the blessed life departs precisely because the whole life departs), he is nonetheless wretched so long as he perceives it, because he knows that against his will there is being consumed that for the sake of which, and above all other things, he loves. A life therefore cannot both be blessed and desert one unwilling, because no one becomes blessed unwillingly; and by this, the more it makes him wretched by deserting him unwilling, seeing that if it were at hand to one unwilling it would make him wretched.

But if it deserts him willing, even so, how was that blessed which he who had it wished to perish? It remains, then, for them to say that neither is in the mind of the blessed—that is, that he is deserted by the blessed life, when through death the whole life deserts him—neither being unwilling nor willing, but that he stands prepared for both and with even heart. But neither is that a blessed life which is such that he whom it makes blessed is unworthy of its love. For how is that a blessed life which the blessed man does not love? Or how is that loved which is received with indifference, whether it flourish or perish? Unless perhaps the virtues, which we love only for the sake of blessedness, dare to persuade us not to love blessedness itself.

But if they do this, then we assuredly cease to love those very virtues, when we do not love that for the sake of which alone we loved them. Then, how will that opinion be true—so well examined, so tested, so refined, so certain—that all men wish to be blessed, if those who are already blessed neither wish nor do not wish to be blessed? Or if they do wish it, as truth cries out, as nature compels—nature into which the supremely good and immutably blessed Creator implanted this—if, I say, they wish to be blessed who are blessed, then assuredly they do not wish not to be blessed. But if they do not wish not to be blessed, then without doubt they do not wish that which they are, namely blessed, to be consumed and to perish. Nor can they be blessed except while living; therefore they do not wish to perish, that is, to cease living.

Immortal, therefore, do all wish to be, whosoever are truly blessed or desire to be blessed. But he does not live blessedly to whom that which he wishes is not present; in no way, therefore, can there be a truly blessed life unless it be everlasting. Whether human nature can attain this, which nevertheless it confesses to be desirable, is no small question. But if faith be present—that faith which is in those to whom Jesus gave power to become sons of God—there is no question. [IX] For by human argumentations, when they tried to find this out, scarcely a few, endowed with great genius, abounding in leisure, and instructed in the most subtle doctrines, were able to arrive at investigating the immortality of the soul alone. Yet even for this soul they did not find a stable, that is, a true blessed life.

For they said that the soul returns even after blessedness to the miseries of this life. And those of them who blushed at this opinion, and thought that the purified soul was to be placed in everlasting blessedness without a body, hold such views about the eternity of the world stretching backward that they themselves refute this very opinion of theirs about the soul—which it would be tedious to demonstrate here, but which in the twelfth book of The City of God has been sufficiently explained by us, as I judge. But this faith promises that the whole man, who assuredly consists of soul and body, shall be immortal, and on this account truly blessed—not by human argumentation, but by divine authority.

And therefore, when it had been said in the Gospel that Jesus gave power to become sons of God to those who received him, and when it had been briefly expounded what it is to have received him—by saying, 'to those who believe in his name'—and it had been added in what manner they became sons of God, namely, that they were born 'not of bloods, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God': lest that infirmity of men, which we see and bear about, should straightway despair of so great an excellence, there was at once annexed, 'And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us,' so that by the contrary that might be made persuasive which seemed incredible.

For if by nature the Son of God, for the sake of the sons of men, was by mercy made the son of man (for this is what 'the Word was made flesh and dwelt among men' means), how much more credible is it that by nature the sons of men should by the grace of God be made sons of God and dwell in God, in whom alone and from whom alone they can be blessed, being made partakers of his immortality—for the persuading of which the Son of God was made partaker of our mortality? [X 13] And so those who say:

'Was God then so lacking in another way by which to free men from the misery of this mortality, that he willed his only-begotten Son, co-eternal with himself, to become man by putting on a human soul and flesh, and, having been made mortal, to endure death?'—it is too little to refute them in such a way that we merely assert this way, by which God deigns to free us through the Mediator of God and men, the man Christ Jesus, to be good and befitting the divine dignity; but we must also show that no other possible way was lacking to God, to whose power all things are equally subject, but that no other way more suitable for healing our misery either was or ought to have been.

For what was so necessary for the raising up of our hope, and for freeing from despair of immortality the minds of mortals cast down by the very condition of mortality, as that it should be demonstrated to us how much God valued us and how much he loved us?

But what could be more manifest and more illustrious a sign of this thing than that the Son of God, immutably good, remaining in himself what he was, and receiving from us for us what he was not—without any detriment to his own nature deigning to enter into fellowship with ours—should first, without any evil desert of his own, bear our evils; and so, upon those who now believe how much God loves us, and upon those who now hope for what they had despaired of, should confer his gifts with an undue bounty, without any good deserts of ours—nay, with even our evil deserts going before? For even those things which are called our merits are his gifts. For that faith may work through love, 'the charity of God is poured abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.'

And it was then given, when Jesus was glorified by the resurrection; for then he promised that he would send him, and did send him, because then—as it is written of him and foretold beforehand—'He ascended on high, he led captivity captive, he gave gifts to men.' These gifts are our merits, by which we attain to the supreme good of immortal blessedness. 'But God,' says the Apostle, 'commends his charity toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more now, being justified in his blood, shall we be saved from wrath through him.' He adds further and says: 'For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, shall we be saved in his life.'

Those whom he first called sinners, he afterward called enemies of God; and those whom he first called justified in the blood of Jesus Christ, he afterward called reconciled through the death of the Son of God; and those whom he first called saved from wrath through him, he afterward called saved in his life. Not, therefore, before this grace were we sinners in any sort of way, but we were in such sins that we were enemies of God. And a little earlier the same Apostle called us sinners and enemies of God by two names repeatedly—one, as it were, most gentle, the other plainly most terrible—saying: 'For if Christ, while we were yet weak, according to the time died for the ungodly.' Those whom he called weak, the same he named ungodly. Weakness seems something slight, but it is sometimes such that it is named ungodliness.

Yet unless it were a weakness, it would not need the physician, who in Hebrew is Jesus, in Greek Sōtēr, and in our speech Saviour. This word the Latin tongue did not have before, but it could have it, just as it was able when it willed. Now this preceding sentence of the Apostle, where he says, 'While we were yet weak, according to the time he died for the ungodly,' coheres with these two following ones, in one of which he said 'sinners,' in the other 'enemies of God,' as though he had assigned to each single term its single counterpart—'sinners' to 'weak,' and 'enemies of God' referring to 'ungodly.' [XI 15] But what is 'justified in his blood'? What, I ask, is the power of this blood, that in it believers are justified? And what is 'reconciled through the death of his Son'?

Was it truly so, that when God the Father was angry with us, he saw the death of his Son on our behalf and was appeased toward us? Was then his Son already so appeased toward us that he even deigned to die for us, while the Father was still so angry that, unless the Son died for us, he would not be appeased? And what is it that in another place the same Teacher of the nations says: 'What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not spare his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how has he not also with him freely given us all things?' Would the Father, unless already appeased, deliver up his own Son for us, not sparing him? Does not this seem to be a sentence, as it were, contrary to that other?

In the one, the Son dies for us, and the Father is reconciled to us through his death; in the other, as though the Father first loved us, he himself for our sake does not spare the Son, he himself delivers him up to death for us. But I see that even beforehand the Father loved us—not only before the Son died for us, but before he founded the world—the Apostle himself bearing witness, who says: 'As he chose us in him before the foundation of the world.' Nor was the Son, when the Father did not spare him for us, as it were unwillingly delivered up, since of him too it is said: 'Who loved me and delivered himself up for me.' Therefore all things together—both the Father and the Son and the Spirit of both—work equally and harmoniously.

Nevertheless, we have been justified in the blood of Christ and reconciled to God through the death of his Son; and how this was brought about I will, as far as I am able, here also explain as far as shall seem sufficient. [XII 16] By a certain justice of God the human race was delivered into the power of the devil, the sin of the first man passing over originally into all who are born by the intercourse of both sexes, and the debt of our first parents binding all their posterity. This delivering-over was first signified in Genesis, where, when it had been said to the serpent, 'Earth shalt thou eat,' it was said to the man, 'Earth thou art, and into earth shalt thou go.' By 'into earth shalt thou go,' the death of the body was foretold, because he would not have experienced even this if he had remained upright as he was made;

but when he said to the living man, 'Earth thou art,' he showed that the whole man had been changed for the worse. For 'Earth thou art' is of the same import as that other saying: 'My spirit shall not remain in these men, because they are flesh.' Then, therefore, he showed him delivered over to the one to whom it had been said, 'Earth shalt thou eat.' But the Apostle proclaims this more openly where he says: 'And you, when you were dead in your offences and sins, in which you once walked according to the age of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of that spirit who now works in the sons of unbelief, among whom we all also once had our conversation in the desires of our flesh, doing the wills of the flesh and of the affections, and we were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest.'

The sons of unbelief are the unfaithful; and who is not this before he becomes faithful? Wherefore all men from their origin are under the prince of the power of the air, who works in the sons of unbelief. And what he said, 'from their origin,' is the same as what the Apostle says, 'by nature,' and that he too had been 'even as the rest'—by nature, that is, as it is depraved by sin, not as it was created upright from the beginning. But this manner in which man was delivered into the power of the devil ought not to be so understood as though God did this or commanded it to be done, but that he only permitted it, yet justly. For when he forsook the sinner, the author of sin at once invaded.

Nor indeed did God so forsake his creature that he did not show himself to it as God, creating and vivifying, and amid penal evils bestowing also many good things upon the evil; for he did not in his anger shut up his mercies. Nor did he release man from the law of his own power when he permitted him to be in the power of the devil, since not even the devil himself is estranged from the power of the Almighty, just as neither is he estranged from his goodness. For whence would even the malign angels subsist by whatever sort of life, except through him who gives life to all things? If, then, the committing of sins subjected man to the devil through the just wrath of God, assuredly the remission of sins, through the kindly reconciliation of God, rescues man from the devil. [XIII 17] But the devil was to be overcome, not by the power of God, but by his justice.

For what is more powerful than the Almighty, or what creature's power can be compared to the power of the Creator? But since the devil, by the vice of his own perversity, became a lover of power and a deserter and assailant of justice (for so also do men imitate him the more, the more, neglecting or even hating justice, they zealously pursue power and either rejoice in its attainment or are inflamed with the craving of it), it pleased God that, for the sake of rescuing man from the power of the devil, the devil should be conquered not by power but by justice; and thus also that men, imitating Christ, should seek to conquer the devil by justice, not by power. Not that power is to be shunned as though it were something evil, but that the order is to be preserved in which justice is prior.

For how great can the power of mortals be? Let mortals therefore hold fast to justice; power will be given to the immortals. Compared with which, the strength of those men, however great, who are called powerful on the earth, is found to be a laughable infirmity; and there a pit is dug for the sinner, in the very place where the wicked seem to have most power. But the just man sings and says: 'Blessed is the man whom thou shalt instruct, O Lord, and shalt teach him out of thy law, that thou mayest give him tranquillity from the days of evil, until a pit be dug for the sinner. For the Lord will not cast off his people, nor will he forsake his inheritance, until justice be turned into judgment, and they who possess it are all upright of heart.'

At this time, therefore, in which the power of the people of God is deferred, 'the Lord will not cast off his people, nor forsake his inheritance,' however bitter and unworthy the things which it humbly and weakly suffers, 'until justice'—which now the weakness of the pious possesses—'be turned into judgment,' that is, until it receive the power of judging, which is reserved for the just in the end, when power shall have followed, in its own order, the justice that goes before. For power joined to justice, or justice acceding to power, makes the judicial authority. Now justice pertains to a good will, whence it was said by the angels at the birth of Christ: 'Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men of good will.'

Power indeed ought to follow justice, not to go before it, and for that reason it is placed among the secondary goods, that is, among things prosperous; and 'secondary things' (secundae) are so called from 'following' (sequendo). For since, as we argued above, two things make a man blessed — to will well and to be able to do what one wills — that perversity ought not to exist which was noted in the same discussion, whereby, of the two things that make a man blessed, he should choose the being able to do what he wills and neglect the willing of what he ought, whereas he ought first to have a good will and only afterward great power. Furthermore, the good will must be purified from the vices; and if a man is overcome by these, he is overcome unto this, that he wills evil — and how then will his will still be good?

We ought therefore to desire that power be given us now, but against the vices — those vices which men are unwilling to be powerful in order to conquer, and are willing to be powerful in order to conquer other men. And to what end is this, save that, being truly conquered, they may falsely conquer, and be victors not in truth but only in men's opinion? Let a man will to be prudent, will to be brave, will to be temperate, will to be just; and that he may truly be able to attain these, let him plainly desire power, and seek to be powerful within his own self, and — in a wondrous way — against his own self, for his own self's sake. But as for the other things which he rightly wills and yet cannot attain, such as immortality and true and full felicity, let him not cease to desire them and let him patiently await them. [XIV 18] What, then, is the justice by which the devil was conquered? What, if not the justice of Jesus Christ? And how was he conquered?

Because, though the devil found in Him nothing worthy of death, he nevertheless slew Him. And it is surely just that the debtors whom he held should be set free — those who believe in the One whom, though owing no debt, the devil slew. This is what we mean when we say that we are justified in the blood of Christ. For thus was that innocent blood poured out for the remission of our sins. Hence He says in the Psalms that He is free among the dead; for He alone is dead who is free from the debt of death. Hence too He says in another Psalm: 'What I did not seize, then I was paying back,' meaning by 'seizure' sin, since it is a laying hold of what is against what is lawful. Hence also, through the mouth of His own flesh, as we read in the Gospel, He says:

'Behold, the prince of this world comes, and in Me he finds nothing' — that is, no sin — 'but that all may know,' He says, 'that I do the will of My Father, arise, let us go hence.' And from there He proceeds to His Passion, that He might pay on behalf of us debtors what He Himself did not owe. Would the devil have been conquered by that most equitable law if Christ had willed to deal with him by power and not by justice? But He set aside what He could do, that He might first do what He ought; and for this reason it was necessary that He be both man and God. For unless He were man, He could not have been slain; and unless He were also God, men would not have believed that He was unwilling to do what He could, but rather that He was unable to do what He willed; nor would we have thought that justice was preferred by Him over power, but rather that power was lacking to Him.

But now He suffered human things for us because He was man; yet if He had not willed it, He could also have not suffered even this, because He was also God. Therefore justice was rendered more pleasing in His humility, because so great was His power in His divinity that He could, had He so willed, have not endured that humility; and thus by One who died, yet was so powerful, justice was both commended to us who are mortal and powerless, and power was promised. For of these two, He accomplished the one by dying, the other by rising again. For what is more just than to advance even unto the death of the cross for justice's sake? And what is more powerful than to rise from the dead and to ascend into heaven with the very flesh in which He was slain?

Justice, then, first, and power afterward, conquered the devil: justice, indeed, because He had no sin and was most unjustly slain by him; but power, because being dead He came to life again, never afterward to die. Yet He would have conquered the devil by power even if He could not have been slain by him, although it is a matter of greater power to conquer death itself by rising than to avoid it by living. But there is another reason for which we are justified in the blood of Christ, when through the remission of sins we are rescued from the power of the devil; this belongs to the fact that the devil is conquered by Christ through justice, not through power. For it was from the weakness which He took upon Himself in mortal flesh, not from His immortal power, that Christ was crucified; yet of that weakness the Apostle says:

'The weakness of God is stronger than men.' [XV 19] It is therefore not difficult to see that the devil was conquered when He who was slain by him rose again. But this is greater, and deeper for the understanding: to see the devil conquered at the very moment when he seemed to himself to have conquered — that is, when Christ was slain. For then that blood, since it was the blood of Him who had no sin at all, was poured out for the remission of our sins; so that, because the devil justly held those whom he bound as guilty of sin under the condition of death, he should justly release them through Him whom, though guilty of no sin, he unjustly afflicted with the penalty of death.

By this justice was the strong one conquered, and by this bond was he bound, so that his vessels might be snatched away — those vessels which had been with him and his angels, vessels of wrath, and which were now turned into vessels of mercy. For these very words of the Lord Jesus Christ Himself, spoken from heaven to Paul when he was first called, the Apostle Paul relates. For among the other things which he heard, he says that this too was said to him: 'For to this end have I appeared to you, that I may appoint you a minister and a witness of the things which you see of Me, and of those in which I will appear to you; delivering you from the people and from the nations, to whom I now send you, to open the eyes of the blind, that they may be turned from darkness and from the power of Satan unto God, that they may receive remission of sins and a portion among the saints, and faith which is in Me.'

Hence the same Apostle, exhorting believers to give thanks to God the Father, says: 'Who has rescued us from the power of darkness and has transferred us into the kingdom of the Son of His love, in whom we have redemption unto the remission of sins.'

In this redemption the blood of Christ was given as a kind of price for us; and having received it, the devil was not enriched but bound, so that we might be loosed from his snares, and that he might drag none of those whom Christ, free from all debt, redeemed by shedding His own blood that was not owed — none, I say, entangled in the nets of his sins — down to the destruction of the second and everlasting death; but that they should die only insofar as they belong to the grace of Christ, being foreknown and predestined and elected before the foundation of the world, inasmuch as Christ Himself died for them, in the death of the flesh only, not of the spirit. [XVI 20] For although the death of the flesh itself came originally from the sin of the first man, nevertheless the good use of it has made the most glorious martyrs.

And therefore not only death itself, but all the evils of this present age — the sorrows and toils of men — although they come from the deserts of sins, and especially from original sin (whence this very life has been bound with the bond of death), nevertheless, even when sins are remitted, they had to remain, so that man might contend for the truth with them, and so that the virtue of the faithful might be exercised by them; that the new man, through the new covenant, amid the evils of this age, might be prepared for the new age — wisely bearing the misery which this condemned life has deserved, and prudently rejoicing because it will come to an end, but faithfully and patiently awaiting that blessedness which the future, liberated life will possess without end.

For the devil, cast out from his dominion and from the hearts of the faithful — in whose damnation and unbelief he too, though condemned, was reigning — is permitted to oppose only insofar as it is expedient for them under the condition of this mortality, of which He knows the measure. Of this the sacred Scriptures resound through the apostolic mouth: 'God is faithful, who will not permit you to be tempted above that which you are able, but will make also with the temptation a way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.' And these evils, which the faithful piously endure, are of profit either for the correcting of sins, or for the exercising and proving of justice, or for the demonstrating of this life's misery, that the other life, where blessedness will be true and perpetual, may be more ardently desired and more earnestly sought.

But these things are ordered concerning those of whom the Apostle says: 'We know that to those who love God all things work together for good, to those who are called according to His purpose. For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren. And those whom He predestined, them He also called; and those whom He called, them He also justified; and those whom He justified, them He also glorified.' Of these predestined ones, none perishes with the devil; none will remain unto death under the power of the devil. Then there follows what I have already recalled above: 'What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who is against us?'