[I] Concerning the felicity of paradise, or concerning paradise itself, and concerning the life of the first men there, and their sin and punishment, many have thought many things, said many things, committed many things to writing. We too, according to the holy Scriptures, have spoken of these matters in the preceding books, either what we read in them or what we could understand from them in accordance with their authority. But if these things be inquired into more minutely, they give rise to manifold and multiform disputations, which would have to be woven into more volumes than this work and time demand—time which we do not have so amply that it should behove us to linger over all the questions that the idle and scrupulous can raise, being readier to ask than more capable of understanding.
Yet I judge that we have already done enough regarding the great and most difficult questions about the beginning of the world, or of the soul, or of the human race itself, which we distribute into two kinds: one of those who live according to man, the other of those who live according to God; which also we mystically call two cities, that is, two societies of men, of which one is that which is predestined to reign eternally with God, the other to undergo eternal punishment with the devil. But this is their end, of which we must speak hereafter.
But now, since enough has been said concerning their origin, whether in the angels, whose number is unknown to us, or in the two first men, it now seems to me that I must undertake the course of their development, from the time when those two began to beget, until men shall cease to beget. For this whole time or age, in which the dying give place and the being born succeed, is the course of these two cities of which we treat. There was born, then, first Cain, of those two parents of the human race, belonging to the city of men; afterwards Abel, belonging to the city of God.
For as in one man, as the Apostle says, we experience that not first that which is spiritual, but that which is animal, and afterwards the spiritual (whence each one, since he arises from a condemned stock, must first be, from Adam, evil and carnal; but if, by being reborn in Christ, he shall have advanced, he will afterwards be good and spiritual): so in the whole human race, when those two cities first began by being born and dying to run their course, first was born a citizen of this world, but afterwards a stranger in the world belonging to the city of God, predestined by grace, elected by grace, by grace a stranger below, by grace a citizen above.
For as far as pertains to himself, he arises from the same mass which originally is wholly condemned; but God, as a potter (for the Apostle introduces this comparison not impudently but prudently), from the same mass made one vessel unto honour, another unto dishonour. But first was made the vessel unto dishonour, and afterwards the other unto honour; because even in that same one man, as I have already said, first is the reprobate, whence we must begin and where we need not remain, but afterwards the approved, to which advancing we come and where arriving we remain. Accordingly, not indeed every man who is evil will become good, yet no one will be good who was not evil;
but the more quickly anyone is changed for the better, the more speedily does he cause to be named in himself that which he lays hold of, and covers the former name with the later. It is written, then, of Cain that he founded a city; but Abel, as a stranger, founded none. For the city of the saints is above, though it here brings forth citizens, in whom it sojourns until the time of its kingdom shall come, when it will gather together all who rise again in their bodies, when to them shall be given the promised kingdom, where with their Prince, the King of ages, they shall reign without any end of time.
[II] A certain shadow, indeed, of this city, and a prophetic image serving rather to signify than to present it, appeared on earth at the time when it was fitting that it should be foreshown; and it too was called the holy city by reason of the signifying image, not of the expressed truth as it is to be. Concerning this serving image, and concerning that free city which it signifies, the Apostle thus speaks to the Galatians: 'Tell me, you who wish to be under the law, have you not heard the law? For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one of the bondwoman and one of the free. But he who was of the bondwoman was born according to the flesh; but he who was of the free, by promise; which things are an allegory.'
'For these are the two testaments; the one indeed from Mount Sinai, bringing forth unto bondage, which is Hagar. For Sinai is a mountain in Arabia, which is joined to that which is now Jerusalem, and is in bondage with her children. But that Jerusalem which is above is free, which is the mother of us all. For it is written: Rejoice, thou barren that bearest not; break forth and cry, thou that travailest not; for many are the children of the desolate, more than of her that hath a husband. Now we, brethren, as Isaac was, are the children of promise. But as then he that was born according to the flesh persecuted him that was born according to the spirit, even so it is now. But what saith the Scripture? Cast out the bondwoman and her son;'
'for the son of the bondwoman shall not be heir with the son of the free. Now we, brethren, are not children of the bondwoman, but of the free, by which liberty Christ has set us free.' This form of understanding, descending from apostolic authority, opens to us the way in which we ought to receive the Scriptures of the two testaments, the old and the new. For a certain part of the earthly city was made an image of the heavenly city, not signifying itself but another, and therefore serving. For it was instituted not for its own sake, but to signify another; and, being prefigured by a preceding signification, it was itself also prefiguring. For Hagar, the handmaid of Sarah, and her son were a certain image of this image;
and because the shadows were to pass away when the light came, therefore the free Sarah—who signified the free city, to whose signifying in yet another way even that shadow was serving—said: 'Cast out the bondwoman and her son; for the son of the bondwoman shall not be heir with my son Isaac,' which the Apostle renders: 'with the son of the free.' We find, therefore, in the earthly city two forms: one demonstrating its own presence, the other by its presence serving to signify the heavenly city. Now the citizens of the earthly city are brought forth by nature vitiated by sin, but the citizens of the heavenly city by grace freeing nature from sin; whence the former are called vessels of wrath, the latter vessels of mercy.
This was signified also in the two sons of Abraham: that the one, Ishmael, was born according to the flesh of the bondwoman who was called Hagar; but the other, Isaac, was born of Sarah the free according to promise. Both indeed were of the seed of Abraham; but the one was begotten by a custom demonstrating nature, while the other was given by a promise signifying grace: there human usage is shown, here a divine benefit is commended. [III] For Sarah was barren, and in despair of offspring, desiring to have at least from her handmaid what she perceived she could not from herself, gave her to her husband to be impregnated, by whom she had wished to bear and could not. And so, even thus, she exacted the debt from her husband, using her own right in another's womb.
Ishmael was born, then, as men are born, by the mingling of both sexes, according to the accustomed law of nature. Therefore it was said: 'According to the flesh'; not that these are not benefits of God, or that God does not work them, whose creative Wisdom, as it is written, reaches mightily from end to end, and disposes all things sweetly; but where it was to be signified that a gift of God, undue to men, would be bestowed freely by grace, it was fitting that a son be given in such a way as was not owed to the courses of nature.
For nature now denies children to such a coupling of male and female as could be between Abraham and Sarah at that age, especially with the woman's barrenness besides, who could not bear even then, when it was not age that was lacking to fecundity, but fecundity that was lacking to her age. Since, then, the fruit of posterity was not owed to a nature so affected, it signifies that the nature of the human race, vitiated by sin and thereby justly condemned, deserved nothing of true felicity in the time to come.
Rightly, therefore, does Isaac, born by promise, signify the children of grace, the citizens of the free city, the partakers of eternal peace, where there is no love of one's own and in some sense private will, but a love rejoicing in the common and unchangeable good, and making of many one heart—that is, the perfectly concordant obedience of charity. [IV] The earthly city, moreover, which will not be everlasting (for it will no longer be a city when it has been condemned to the utmost punishment), has here its good, in whose fellowship it rejoices, such as joy can be from such things.
And because it is not such a good as to cause no straits to its lovers, therefore this city is for the most part divided against itself by litigating, warring, and fighting, and by seeking victories that are either death-dealing or at least mortal. For from whatever part of itself it has risen up in war against another part of itself, it seeks to be victor over the nations, though it is captive to vices; and if indeed, when it has conquered, it is more proudly exalted, that victory too is death-dealing; but if, considering its condition and the common lots of men, it is more anxious over the adversities that can befall than puffed up over the prosperities that have come, then that victory is merely mortal. For it will not always be able to dominate by remaining over those whom it could subjugate by conquering.
Yet it is not rightly said that the things this city desires are not goods, since even it, in its own human kind, is the better for them. For it desires a certain earthly peace for the sake of the lowest things; and to this it longs to attain by warring, since, if it shall have conquered and there be none to resist, there will be peace, which the parties opposing one another did not have, and which, striving in unhappy want for those things they could not have together, they lacked. This peace toilsome wars seek; this a victory reckoned glorious obtains. And when they conquer who were fighting in a juster cause, who doubts that the victory is to be rejoiced over and that a desirable peace has ensued? These are goods, and without doubt they are gifts of God.
But if, neglecting the better things which pertain to the supernal city, where there will be victory in eternal and supreme peace secure, these goods are so desired that they are believed to be either the only goods, or are loved more than those which are believed to be better: then misery must needs follow, and that which was already present be increased. [V] The first founder, then, of the earthly city was a fratricide; for, overcome by envy, he slew his own brother, a citizen of the eternal city sojourning on this earth.
Whence it is not to be wondered at that, so long afterwards, in the founding of that city which was to be the head of this earthly city of which we speak, and to reign over so many nations, there answered to this first example, and, as the Greeks call it, archetype, a certain image of its own kind. For there too, as a certain poet recorded that very crime of theirs: 'The first walls were wet with a brother's blood.' For thus was Rome founded, when Roman history testifies that Remus was slain by his brother Romulus; save that both these were citizens of the earthly city. Both sought glory from the founding of the Roman commonwealth; but both could not have as much of it as if there were but one.
For he who wished to glory in domination would surely have dominated less, if his power had been diminished by a living partner. In order, then, that one man might have the whole domination, his fellow was removed, and by that crime he grew worse — the very thing that would have been less and better through innocence. But these brothers, Cain and Abel, did not both have between themselves a like desire for earthly things; nor did the one envy the other on the ground that his own dominion would become narrower — the one who slew the other — if both were to rule (for Abel indeed sought no domination in that city which was being founded by his brother). Rather it was that diabolical envy with which the wicked envy the good, for no other cause than that the one are good and the other wicked.
For in no way is the possession of goodness made less by the coming or the abiding of a partner; nay rather, the possession of goodness is a good which is possessed the more widely, the more harmoniously an undivided charity of the associates possesses it. In short, he shall not have this possession who is unwilling to have it in common, and he shall find it the more ample the more he is able there to love his partner. That, therefore, which arose between Remus and Romulus showed in what manner the earthly city is divided against itself; but that which was between Cain and Abel demonstrated the enmities between the two cities themselves, of God and of men. The wicked, then, fight among themselves; likewise the wicked and the good fight among themselves; but the good and the good, if they are perfect, cannot fight among themselves.
But those who are progressing and not yet perfect can so fight, that any good man fights against another in that same part in which he fights also against his very self; for in one man the flesh lusts against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh. The spiritual desire, therefore, of one man can fight against the carnal desire of another, or the carnal desire of one against the spiritual of another, just as the good and the wicked fight among themselves; or indeed the carnal desires themselves of two good men, not yet, to be sure, perfect, fight among themselves, just as the wicked and the wicked fight among themselves, until the health of those who are being cured is brought through to final victory.
For this languor — that is, that disobedience of which we treated in the fourteenth book — is the punishment of the first disobedience, and therefore is not nature but a fault; on account of which it is said to the good who are progressing and living by faith in this pilgrimage: 'Bear ye one another's burdens, and so shall ye fulfil the law of Christ'; and again elsewhere it is said: 'Rebuke the unquiet, comfort the fainthearted, support the weak, be patient toward all men; see that none render to any evil for evil'; and again in another place: 'If a man be overtaken in any fault, ye who are spiritual instruct such a one in the spirit of meekness, considering thyself, lest thou also be tempted'; and elsewhere:
'Let not the sun go down upon your wrath'; and in the Gospel: 'If thy brother shall sin against thee, rebuke him between thee and him alone.' Likewise concerning the sins by which the offence of many is guarded against, the Apostle says: 'Them that sin before all, reprove, that the rest also may have fear.' For this reason too many things are enjoined concerning the granting of pardon to one another, and great care is enjoined for the keeping of peace, without which no one shall be able to see God; whence that terror, when the servant of ten thousand talents is commanded to repay the debts that had been remitted to him, because he had not remitted the debt of a hundred pence to his fellow-servant. And when this similitude had been set forth, the Lord Jesus added and said:
'So also shall my heavenly Father do unto you, if ye from your hearts forgive not every one his brother.' In this manner are the citizens of the city of God, sojourning as pilgrims on this earth and sighing after the peace of the heavenly fatherland, made whole. But the Holy Spirit works within, that the medicine which is applied from without may avail. Otherwise, even if God Himself, using a creature subject to Him, should address the human senses in some human form — whether these bodily senses, or those most like to them which we have in dreams — yet unless He rule and move the mind by inward grace, all the preaching of the truth profits a man nothing.
But God does this, distinguishing the vessels of mercy from the vessels of wrath, by a dispensation which He Himself knows — a dispensation deeply hidden, yet nonetheless just. For when, by His help, in wondrous and secret ways, the sin which dwells in our members — which is now rather the penalty of sin — does not (as the Apostle enjoins) reign in our mortal body to obey its desires, nor do we present our members as, so to speak, weapons of iniquity unto it, then it is turned toward the mind, which, under God's rule, does not consent to it for evil and which rules over it; and the mind shall now hold it more tranquilly, and afterward, when health has been made perfect and immortality received, man shall reign in eternal peace without any sin.
But this very thing which, as we were able, we have expounded — when God had spoken to Cain in that manner in which, through a subject creature, He was wont to speak to the first men in a fitting form as if their companion — what did it profit him? Did he not, even after the word of the divine admonition, carry out the crime conceived in the slaying of his brother? For when God had distinguished the sacrifices of the two, regarding the one and disregarding the other — which it must not be doubted could be recognized by some visible attesting sign — and had done this because the works of the one were evil, but those of his brother good, Cain was exceedingly saddened and his countenance fell. For thus is it written: 'And the Lord said to Cain: Why art thou become sad, and why has thy countenance fallen?'
'If thou offerest rightly, but dividest not rightly, hast thou not sinned? Be still; for unto thee shall be its turning, and thou shalt rule over it.' In this admonition or warning which God uttered to Cain, that indeed which was said — 'If thou offerest rightly, but dividest not rightly, hast thou not sinned?' — because it is not clear why or whence it was said, its obscurity has brought forth many meanings, since each expositor of the divine Scriptures attempts to expound it according to the rule of faith. Rightly indeed is a sacrifice offered, when it is offered to the true God, to whom alone sacrifice is to be made.
But it is not rightly divided when there is not a right discernment either of the places or the times or the very things which are offered, or of him who offers and to whom it is offered, or of those to whom what has been offered is distributed for eating — so that here we may understand 'division' as 'discernment': whether when it is offered where it ought not, or what ought not to be offered there but elsewhere; or when it is offered when it ought not, or what ought not to be offered then but at another time; or when that is offered which ought never and nowhere at all to have been offered; or when a man keeps for himself the choicer things of the same kind than are those which he offers to God; or when a profane person, or anyone whom it is not lawful, is made a partaker of that thing which has been offered. But in which of these things Cain displeased God cannot easily be found out.
But since the apostle John, when he was speaking of these brothers, says: 'Not as Cain, who was of the wicked one and slew his brother; and for what cause did he slay him? Because his own works were wicked, but his brother's righteous' — it is given us to understand that God did not therefore regard his gift because in this very thing he divided wickedly, giving to God something of his own, but to himself giving his very self. This is what all do who, following not God's will but their own — that is, living not with an upright but a perverse heart — nevertheless offer a gift to God, by which they think Him to be bought off, so that He may aid them not in healing their depraved desires, but in glutting them.
And this is proper to the earthly city: to worship God or gods, by whose help it may reign in victories and earthly peace — not from a charity of taking counsel for others, but from a desire of dominating. For the good use the world in order that they may enjoy God; but the wicked, on the contrary, wish to use God in order that they may enjoy the world — those, that is, who at least already believe that He exists or cares for human affairs. For there are far worse who do not even believe this. Cain, therefore, having learned that God had regarded his brother's sacrifice and not his own, ought, being changed, to have imitated his good brother, not, being lifted up, to have emulated him in envy. But he was saddened and his countenance fell. This sin God chiefly reproves — sadness at another's goodness, and that of a brother.
For, reproving this, He questioned him, saying: 'Why art thou saddened, and why has thy countenance fallen?' For because he envied his brother, God saw it and reproved this. For to men, from whom another's heart is hidden, it might be doubtful and altogether uncertain whether that sadness grieved over his own malice — in which he had learned that he had displeased God — or over his brother's goodness, which had pleased God when He looked upon his sacrifice.
But God, rendering the reason why He was unwilling to accept his offering — that Cain might rather deservedly displease himself than that his brother should undeservedly displease him, since he was unjust by not dividing rightly, that is, by not living rightly, and unworthy that his offering should be approved — showed how much more unjust he was in that he hated his righteous brother without cause. Yet not dismissing him without a holy, just, and good command, He said: 'Be still; for unto thee shall be its turning, and thou shalt rule over it.' Over his brother, forsooth? God forbid. Over what, then, but over sin? For He had said, 'Thou hast sinned,' and then next added, 'Be still; for unto thee shall be its turning, and thou shalt rule over it.'
It can indeed be so understood, that the turning of sin ought to be toward the man himself, so that he may know that he ought to attribute to none other than himself what he sins. For this is the wholesome medicine of penitence and the not incongruous petition for pardon; so that where He says, 'For unto thee shall be its turning,' one should supply not 'it shall be' but 'let it be' — of one commanding, that is, not merely of one predicting. For then shall each one rule over sin, if he does not set it up before himself by defending it, but subjects it by repenting; otherwise he shall also serve it as it dominates, if he lends patronage to it when it befalls him. But that sin may be understood as the very carnal concupiscence, of which the Apostle says:
'The flesh lusts against the spirit' — among the fruits of which flesh he mentions envy also, by which indeed Cain was goaded and inflamed to his brother's destruction — then 'it shall be' is well supplied; that is: 'For unto thee shall be its turning, and thou shalt rule over it.' For when that carnal part itself is stirred, which the Apostle calls sin, where he says: 'It is not I that work it, but sin that dwells in me' (which part of the soul even the philosophers say is faulty — not that it ought to draw the mind, but that the mind ought to command it and, by reason, to restrain it from unlawful works) — when, therefore, it has been stirred to commit something wrongly, if one be still and obey the Apostle who says:
'Neither present ye your members as weapons of iniquity unto sin,' it is turned, tamed and conquered, toward the mind, so that reason, with it made subject, may rule. This God commanded to him who was inflamed with the torches of envy against his brother and desired that the one whom he ought to have imitated should be taken away. 'Be still,' He says — restrain thy hand from the crime; let not sin reign in thy mortal body to obey its desires, neither present thy members as weapons of iniquity unto sin. 'For unto thee shall be its turning,' while it is not aided by being relaxed, but is bridled by being kept still; 'and thou shalt rule over it,' so that, when it is not permitted to work outwardly, it may grow accustomed, under the power of the ruling and benevolent mind, not to be moved even inwardly.
Something of the like sort was said in the same divine book concerning the woman also, when after their sin, God questioning and judging, they received the sentences of condemnation — the devil in the serpent, and she and her husband in themselves. For when He had said to her also: 'Multiplying I will multiply thy sorrows and thy groaning, and in sorrows thou shalt bring forth children,' He then added: 'And thy turning shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.' What was said to Cain concerning sin, or concerning the faulty concupiscence of the flesh, this in that place is said concerning the sinful woman; where it is to be understood that the husband, in ruling his wife, ought to be like a mind ruling the flesh. On account of which the Apostle says: 'He who loves his wife loves himself;'
'for no one ever hated his own flesh.' For these things are to be healed as our own, not to be condemned as another's. But that command of God, Cain received as a transgressor. For, the fault of envy prevailing, he lay in wait for his brother and slew him. Such was the founder of the earthly city. And in what manner he also signified the Jews, by whom Christ was slain — the Shepherd of the flock of men, whom the shepherd of the flock of sheep, Abel, prefigured — since the matter is in a prophetic allegory, I now forbear to say; and I recall that I said certain things on this point against Faustus the Manichaean.
But now the history seems to me to need defending, lest the Scripture be thought incredible which says that a city was built by one man at that time when there appear to have been not more than four, or rather three, men after brother had slain brother: on the earth, that is, the first man, the father of all, and Cain himself, and his son Enoch, from whose name the city itself was called. But those whom this troubles too little consider that the writer of this sacred history was not obliged to name all the men who could then have existed, but only those whom the plan of the work undertaken required.
For the purpose of that writer, through whom the Holy Spirit was doing this, was to arrive, through the successions of certain generations propagated from one man, at Abraham, and thereafter from his seed at the people of God, in whom, distinguished from the other nations, there might be prefigured and foretold all things which were foreseen in the Spirit as about to come concerning the city whose kingdom shall be eternal, and concerning its King and also its Founder, Christ; and this in such a way that neither should the other society of men be passed over in silence — which we call the earthly city — so far as was sufficient for its mention, that the city of God might grow the more illustrious also by comparison with its adversary.
When, therefore, the divine Scripture, where it also records the number of years which those men lived, thus concludes, saying of him of whom it was speaking: 'And he begot sons and daughters, and all the days of this or that man which he lived were so many years, and he died' — surely, because it does not name those same sons and daughters, ought we not therefore to understand that, through so many years as they then lived in the first age of this world, very many men could be born, by whose gatherings even very many cities could be founded?