Works (City of God, On the Trinity, etc.) 43 part 3/5

But now even that which, before I promised it, I did not owe, you perhaps demand as now due: that I should not be loath to unfold some example of a discourse, as though I were catechizing someone, and to set it before your view. Before I do this, I want you to consider that the intention of one dictating is one thing, when a future reader is thought of; and another that of one speaking, when a present hearer is attended to: and within this itself, one thing that of one admonishing in secret, while no other who may judge concerning us is at hand; another that of one teaching something openly, when the hearing of those who think differently stands around: and in this kind, one thing when one man is taught, while the rest listen as though judging or attesting the things known to them;

another when all in common await what we may bring forth to them: and again within this itself, one thing when we sit down as though privately, so that a conversation may be woven together; another when a silent people, in suspense, gaze upon one who is about to speak from a higher place. And it makes much difference, even when we speak thus, whether few be present or many; learned or unlearned, or of both kinds mixed; townsmen or rustics, or these and those together, or a people tempered from every kind of men.

For it cannot be but that they affect the one who is to speak and discourse in one way and another, and that the discourse which is uttered bears, as it were, a certain countenance of the disposition of the mind from which it is uttered, and, according to that same diversity, affects the hearers diversely, since they too diversely affect one another by their very presence. But since we are now treating of the instructing of the unlearned, I bear witness to you from my own self, that I am moved in one way and another, when I see before me one to be catechized who is educated, or dull, a citizen, a foreigner, rich, poor, a private person, one held in honour, one set in some office, a man of this or that nation, of this or that age or sex, coming from this or that sect, from this or that common error:

and according to the diversity of my emotion the discourse itself both proceeds and advances and is concluded. And because, though the same charity is owed to all, the same medicine is not to be applied to all: charity itself likewise travails with some, while it is made weak with others (Gal. 4:19; 1 Cor. 9:22); it seeks to edify some, it trembles to offend others; toward some it inclines itself, toward others it raises itself; to some gentle, to others severe, an enemy to none, a mother to all. And he who has not experienced by the same charity what I say, when he sees us — because some faculty granted to us gives delight — become praiseworthily known in the mouth of the multitude, thinks us blessed on that account: but may God, into whose sight enters the groaning of the fettered (Ps. 79:11; Ps. 25:18),

see our humility and our labour, and remit all our sins. Wherefore, if anything in us has pleased you, so that you sought to hear from us some observance of your discourse, you would learn it better by living and hearing us while we do these things, than by reading while we dictate these things. XVI. 24. But nevertheless let us suppose that someone has come to us who wishes to be a Christian, and indeed of the class of the uneducated, yet not of the rustics but of the townsfolk, such as at Carthage you must needs meet with in numbers: and that, being asked whether it is for some advantage of the present life, or for the rest which is hoped for after this life, that he desires to be a Christian, he has answered, for the future rest:

such a one perhaps would be instructed by us with this address. Thanks be to God, brother; I heartily congratulate you, and rejoice over you, that in such great and so perilous tempests of this world you have thought upon some true and certain security. For even in this life men seek rest and security with great labours, but by depraved desires they do not find them. For they wish to rest in unquiet and impermanent things; and because these are withdrawn by time and pass away, they agitate them with fears and griefs, and do not permit them to be at peace. For whether a man wishes to rest in riches, he is made proud rather than secure.

Or do we not see how many have suddenly lost them, how many too have perished on account of them, either when they desire to have them, or when, being oppressed, they are taken away by those more covetous? And if they even remained with a man throughout his whole life, and did not desert their lover, he himself would desert them by his death. For how great is the life of man, even if he grows old? Or when men wish old age for themselves, what else do they wish but a long infirmity? So too the honours of this world, what are they but conceit and emptiness and the peril of ruin? For thus says Holy Scripture: 'All flesh is grass, and the glory of man as the flower of grass. The grass has withered, the flower has fallen: but the word of the Lord abides forever' (Isa. 40:6–7; 1 Pet. 1:24–25).

Therefore whoever desires true rest and true felicity ought to lift up his hope from mortal and transitory things, and to place it in the word of the Lord, so that, cleaving to that which abides forever, he too may abide with it forever. 25. There are also men who neither seek to be rich, nor are ambitious to attain the vain pomps of honours, but wish to rejoice and rest in taverns and in fornications, and in theatres and spectacles of frivolity, which in the great cities they have for nothing. But so too these men either consume their poverty through luxury, and afterward from want break forth into thefts and burglaries, and sometimes even into robberies, and are suddenly filled with many and great fears;

and those who a little before were singing in the tavern now dream of the wailings of prison. But by their zeal for spectacles they become like demons, inciting men by their shouts to cut one another down, and to have contentious combats between themselves, though they have not injured each other, while they desire to please an insane people: whom, if they perceive them to be at concord, they then hate and persecute, and cry out that they should be beaten with cudgels as though they were collusive players, and they compel even the judge, who is the avenger of iniquities, to commit this iniquity;

but if they have come to know that these exercise horrible enmities against one another — whether they be those who are called 'sintae', or actors and stage-players, or charioteers, or hunters, whom, wretched as they are, men set to contend and fight not only man with man but even men with beasts — the greater the discord in which they perceive them to rage against one another, the more they love and delight in it, and favour the incited, and incite those they favour, the spectators themselves raging more madly against one another, each on behalf of another, than those whose madness the mad provoke, but in their madness desire to watch. How then can a mind hold the health of peace, which is fed on discords and combats? For as is the food that is taken, such is the health that follows.

Finally, although mad joys are not joys at all, yet whatever they may be, and however much one is delighted by the boasting of riches, the swelling of honours, the gulf of taverns, the wars of theatres, the filth of fornications, and the itch of the baths, one little fever takes all these things away; and while men are still living it withdraws from them the whole of their false happiness. There remains a conscience empty and wounded, destined to feel God as its judge, whom it refused to have as its guardian; and destined to find him a harsh Lord, whom it scorned to seek and love as a sweet Father. But you, because you seek the true rest which after this life is promised to Christians,

even here, amid the most bitter troubles of this life, you shall taste it as sweet and delightful, if you love the precepts of him who promised it. For you shall quickly perceive that the fruits of righteousness are sweeter than those of iniquity, and that a man rejoices more truly and more pleasantly over a good conscience amid troubles than over a bad one amid delights; because you have not come to be joined to the Church of God in order to seek from it some temporal advantage. XVII. 26. For there are those who wish to be Christians for this reason: either that they may gain favour with men from whom they expect temporal benefits, or because they do not wish to offend those whom they fear. But such are reprobate; and though the Church bears with them for a time, as the threshing-floor endures the chaff until the time of winnowing;

if they do not correct themselves and begin to be Christians for the sake of the future everlasting rest, in the end they shall be separated. Nor let them flatter themselves that they can be in the threshing-floor together with the wheat of God; for they shall not be in the barn with it, but are appointed for the fire that is their due. There are also others, of better hope indeed, yet nonetheless of no less peril, who now fear God, and do not mock the Christian name, nor enter the Church of God with a feigned heart, but who look for happiness in this present life, that they may be more fortunate in earthly things than those who do not worship God:

and therefore, when they see certain wicked and impious men flourishing and excelling in this worldly prosperity, while they themselves either have less of these things or lose them, they are disturbed, as though they worshipped God without cause, and they easily fall away from the faith. 27. But he who, for the sake of everlasting blessedness and perpetual rest, which after this life is promised to be granted to the saints, wills to become a Christian, so that he may not go into eternal fire with the devil, but may enter into the eternal kingdom with Christ — he is truly himself a Christian; cautious in every temptation, lest he be corrupted by prosperous things, and lest he be broken by adverse ones, moderate and temperate in the abundance of earthly goods, and brave and patient in tribulations.

And by making progress he will come to such a disposition of soul that he loves God more than he fears hell; so that even if God should say to him, 'Enjoy carnal delights forever, and sin as much as you can, and you shall not die, nor be cast into hell, but only you shall not be with me' — he would shudder and utterly refuse to sin, no longer that he might not fall into what he feared, but that he might not offend him whom he so loves: in whom alone is that rest which eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor has it entered into the heart of man, which God has prepared for those who love him. 28.

Concerning this rest Scripture signifies, and is not silent, that from the beginning of the world, from the time when God made heaven and earth and all that is in them, he wrought for six days, and on the seventh day he rested. For the Almighty could have made all things even in one moment of time. He had not laboured, that he should rest, when 'He spoke and they were made; he commanded, and they were created'; but he did so in order to signify that after the six ages of this world, in the seventh age, as on the seventh day, he is to rest in his saints: for they themselves shall rest in him after all the good works in which they have served him, which he himself works in them — he who calls, and commands, and remits past sins, and justifies him who before was ungodly.

But just as, when they by his gift work well, he himself is rightly said to work: so when they rest in him, he himself is rightly said to rest. For as regards himself, he seeks no repose, because he feels no toil. He made all things through his Word: and his Word is Christ himself, in whom the angels and all the most pure heavenly spirits rest in holy silence. But man, having fallen through sin, lost the rest which he had in his divinity, and receives it back in his humanity; and therefore at the fitting time, which he himself knew ought to come, he was made man and born of a woman. For he could not be defiled by flesh, being rather about to cleanse the flesh himself.

The ancient saints, by the revelation of the Spirit, knew that he was to come, and prophesied it: and so they were saved by believing that he would come, just as we are saved by believing that he has come: that we might love God, who so loved us that he sent his only Son, who, clothed in the humility of our mortality, both from sinners and for sinners should die. For long ago, from the very beginning of the ages, the depth of this mystery has not ceased to be prefigured and foretold. XVIII. 29. Since God is almighty, and good and just and merciful, who made all good things, whether great or small, whether highest or lowest;

whether things that are seen, such as heaven and earth and sea, and in heaven the sun and moon and the other stars, and on earth and sea the trees and shrubs and animals each of its own nature, and all bodies whether celestial or terrestrial; or things that are not seen, such as the spirits by which bodies are quickened and made to live: he made man also in his own image; that as he himself by his omnipotence presides over the whole creation, so man by his intelligence, by which he also knows and worships his Creator, might preside over all earthly animals. He made for him also a helper, the woman:

not for carnal concupiscence, seeing that they did not then have corruptible bodies, before mortality, the penalty of sin, invaded them; but that the man too might have glory from the woman, when he should go before her to God, and offer himself to her for imitation in holiness and piety; just as he himself should be the glory of God, when he should follow his wisdom. 30. And so he established them in a certain place of perpetual blessedness, which Scripture calls paradise; and he gave them a commandment, that if they did not transgress it, they should remain forever in that blessedness of immortality: but if they should transgress it, they should pay the penalties of mortality. But God foreknew that they would transgress:

but nevertheless, because he is the founder and maker of every good, he rather made them, seeing that he made even the beasts, in order to fill the earth with earthly goods. And surely a man, even a sinful one, is better than a beast. And the commandment which they were not going to keep he gave rather that they might be without excuse, when he should begin to take vengeance on them. For whatever a man may do, he finds God praiseworthy in his deeds: if he acts rightly, he finds him praiseworthy through the justice of rewards: if he sins, he finds him praiseworthy through the justice of punishments: if, having confessed his sins, he returns to living rightly, he finds him praiseworthy through the mercy of pardons.

Why then should God not make man, although he foreknew that he would sin, since he would both crown him standing, and set in order him falling, and help him rising, being himself always and everywhere glorious in goodness, justice, and clemency? Especially since he foreknew this also, that from the offspring of his mortality there would be saints who would seek glory not for themselves but give it to their Creator, and, being freed from all corruption by worshipping him, would deserve to live forever with the holy angels and to live blessedly? For he who gave to men free will, that they might worship God not by servile necessity but by a freeborn will, gave it also to the angels:

and therefore not even the angel who, together with the other spirits, his satellites, by pride forsook obedience to God and became the devil, did any harm to God, but to himself. For God knows how to set in order the souls that forsake him, and out of their just misery to adorn the lower parts of his creation with the most fitting and congruous laws of an admirable dispensation. And so neither did the devil do any harm to God, whether he himself fell, or seduced man to death: nor did man himself in any way diminish the truth or the power or the blessedness of his Creator, because he consented by his own will to his wife, who had been seduced by the devil to that which God had forbidden.

For by the most just laws of God all were condemned, God being glorious through the equity of vengeance, and they themselves being ignominious through the shamefulness of punishment: so that man, turned away from his creator, being conquered should be subjected to the devil, and the devil should be set before man, converted to his Creator, as one to be conquered; so that whoever should consent to the devil unto the end should go with him into eternal punishments; but whoever should humble himself to God, and by his grace conquer the devil, should merit eternal rewards. XIX. 31. Nor ought this to move us — that many consent to the devil, and few follow God — because even the wheat, in comparison with the chaff, has a far smaller number.

But as the farmer knows what to do with the huge heap of chaff, so to God the multitude of sinners is nothing, for he knows what to do with them, so that the administration of his kingdom may in no part be disturbed or defiled. Nor is the devil therefore to be thought to have conquered, because he has drawn to himself the more numerous, by whom he is conquered by the few. And so two cities, one of the wicked, the other of the saints, are carried on from the beginning of the human race even to the end of the age, now mingled in body but separated in wills, but on the day of judgment to be separated even in body.

For all men who love pride and temporal domination with empty conceit and the pomp of arrogance, and all the spirits who love such things and seek their own glory in the subjection of men, are bound together in one single society; and though they often fight against one another for these things, yet by an equal weight of covetousness they are hurled headlong into the same abyss, and are joined to one another by a likeness of morals and of merits. And again, all men and all spirits who humbly seek the glory of God, not their own, and who follow after it with piety, belong to one society. And yet God, most merciful, is patient even toward impious men, and grants them a place for repentance and correction. 32.

For as to the fact that he destroyed all by the flood, except one righteous man with his household, whom he willed to be preserved in the ark, he knew indeed that they would not correct themselves: nevertheless, while the ark was being built over a hundred years, the wrath of God to come upon them was surely being proclaimed to them: and if they had turned to God, he would have spared them; just as he afterward spared the city of Nineveh when it did penance, though he had foretold to it, through the prophet, its coming destruction. But this God does, even for those whom he knows will persevere in malice, granting a space for repenting, that he may exercise our patience and instruct it by his own example;

that by it we may know how far we ought tolerantly to bear with the wicked, since we do not know what sort they will afterward become, when he spares and permits them to live, from whom nothing of things to come is hidden. Yet in the sacrament of the flood, by which the righteous were delivered through the wood, there was also foretold the future Church, which its King and God, Christ, has raised up above the submersion of this world by the mystery of his cross. For God was not ignorant that even from those who had been preserved in the ark, evil men would be born, who would again fill the face of the earth with iniquities: but nevertheless he both gave an example of the future judgment, and foretold by the mystery of the wood the deliverance of the saints.

For even after these things, malice did not cease to sprout up again through pride and lusts and unlawful impieties, when men, having forsaken their Creator, not only fell away to the creature which God had made, so as to worship in place of God what God had made; but even bent their souls to the works of men's hands and to the craftsmanship of artificers, wherein the devil and the demons might more shamefully triumph over them; who rejoice to be adored and venerated in such figments, while they feed their own errors with human errors. 33.

Yet even then there was assuredly no lack of righteous men who sought God piously, and conquered the pride of the devil — citizens of that holy city, whom the coming humility of their King Christ, revealed through the Spirit, healed. From among these Abraham was chosen, the pious and faithful servant of God, to whom the mystery of the Son of God should be shown, so that, on account of the imitation of his faith, all the faithful of all nations might be called his sons. From him was born a people, by whom the one true God should be worshipped, who made heaven and earth: while the other nations served idols and demons. In that people plainly the future Church was much more evidently prefigured. For there was there a carnal multitude, which worshipped God on account of visible benefits.

But there were there also a few who thought upon the future rest and sought the heavenly fatherland, to whom, by prophecy, was revealed the future humility of God, our King and Lord Jesus Christ, so that by that faith they might be healed of all pride and swelling. Of these saints, who preceded in time the nativity of the Lord, not only the speech, but also the life and marriages and children and deeds were a prophecy of this present time, in which through faith in the passion of Christ the Church is gathered from the nations.

Through those holy Patriarchs and Prophets, to the carnal people of Israel, who afterward were also called Jews, there were both administered visible benefits, which they carnally desired from the Lord, and the restraints of bodily punishments, by which for the time they were terrified, as befitted their hardness. And yet in all these things spiritual mysteries were signified, which pertained to Christ and the Church: of which Church even those saints were members, although they lived in this life before Christ the Lord was born according to the flesh.

For the only-begotten Son of God himself, the Word of the Father, equal and coeternal with the Father, through whom all things were made, was made man for our sake, that he might be the head of the whole Church as of the whole body. But just as a whole man, while he is being born, even if he puts forth a hand first in being born, yet is joined and knit under the head to the whole body — even as some among the Patriarchs themselves were born with a hand put forth first, as a sign of this very thing — so all the saints who were on earth before the nativity of our Lord Jesus Christ, though they were born before, yet cohered under the head with the whole body, whose head he is. XX. 34.

That people, therefore, having been carried down into Egypt, served a most harsh king; and, being schooled by the most grievous labours, sought God as a deliverer: and there was sent to them one from among that people, the holy servant of God, Moses, who, in the power of God, terrifying then the impious nation of the Egyptians with great miracles, led out from there the people of God through the Red Sea; where the water, parting, offered a way to those crossing over: but the Egyptians, when they pursued them, were drowned and destroyed by the waves returning upon them. Thus, just as through the flood the earth was purged by the waters from the wickedness of the sinners who were then destroyed in that inundation, and the righteous escaped through the wood: so the people of God, going out of Egypt, found a way through the waters, by which their enemies were consumed.

Nor was the sacrament of the wood lacking there. For Moses struck with a rod, that that miracle might come to pass. Each is a sign of holy Baptism, through which the faithful pass into a new life, while their sins are indeed blotted out and die, as enemies. But more openly was the passion of Christ prefigured in that people, when they were commanded to slay a lamb and eat it, and with its blood to mark their doorposts, and to celebrate this every year, and to call it the Pasch of the Lord. For most manifestly the prophecy says concerning the Lord Jesus Christ, that 'like a sheep he was led to the slaughter.' With the sign of whose passion and cross you are today to be marked on the forehead as on a doorpost, and all Christians are so marked. 35.

Thence that people was led through the desert for forty years: it received also the law written by the finger of God, by which name the Holy Spirit is signified, as is most manifestly declared in the Gospel. For God is not defined by a bodily form, nor are members and fingers to be conceived in him in the way that we see in ourselves:

but because through the Holy Spirit the gifts of God are distributed to the saints, so that, though they can do diverse things, they nevertheless do not depart from the concord of charity — while in the fingers especially there appears a certain division, yet not a cutting off from unity — whether for this reason, or for whatever other cause, the Holy Spirit was called the finger of God; yet when we hear this, the form of a human body is not to be conceived. That people therefore received the law written by the finger of God on tablets of stone indeed, to signify the hardness of their heart, in that they were not going to fulfil the law. For desiring bodily gifts from the Lord, they were held rather by carnal fear than by spiritual charity: but no one fulfils the law except charity.

Therefore they were burdened with many visible sacraments, that they might be pressed under a servile yoke, in the observances of foods and in the sacrifices of animals, and in countless other things: which nevertheless were signs of spiritual things pertaining to the Lord Jesus Christ and to the Church; which then were both understood by a few saints unto the fruit of salvation, and were observed for the fitness of the time, but by the multitude of the carnal were only observed, not understood. 36.

Through many and various signs, therefore, of things to come — which it would be tedious to recount all, and which we now see being fulfilled in the Church — that people was led to the land of promise, where they might reign temporally and carnally according to the measure of their desire; which earthly kingdom nevertheless bore the image of the spiritual kingdom. There Jerusalem was founded, the most renowned city of God, serving as a sign of the free city, which is called the heavenly Jerusalem — which is a Hebrew word, and is interpreted 'vision of peace.' Whose citizens are all the sanctified men who have been, and who are, and who are to be;