because, namely, philosophy had taught him something great—that he should not be superstitious in the world—but on account of the laws of the citizens and the customs of men he did not indeed act as a stage-player feigning in the theatre, but imitated one in the temple; and this the more damnably, because those things which he did falsely he so did that the people supposed him to do them truly; whereas the stage-player would rather delight by playing than deceive by cheating. [XI] Here, among the other superstitions of the civil theology, he censures also the sacraments of the Jews, and especially the Sabbaths, affirming that they do uselessly, in that by those single days interposed every seventh they lose nearly a seventh part of their life in idleness, and are harmed by not doing many things pressing in their time.
Yet the Christians, already then most hostile to the Jews, he did not dare to mention on either side, lest he should either praise them against the ancient custom of his country, or censure them perhaps against his own will. When he was speaking of those Jews, he said: "Meanwhile the custom of that most wicked nation has so prevailed that it is now received throughout all lands; the conquered have given laws to the conquerors." Saying these things he marveled, and, ignorant of what was being divinely wrought, he plainly subjoined a sentence by which he signified what he thought concerning the reason of their sacraments. For he said: "They, however, know the causes of their rite;
the greater part of the people does that which it knows not why it does." But concerning the sacraments of the Jews—why, or to what extent, they were instituted by divine authority, and afterward, at the time when it was fitting, were removed by the same authority from the people of God, to whom the mystery of eternal life has been revealed—we have spoken both elsewhere, especially when we were arguing against the Manichees, and it must be treated in a more opportune place in this work.
[XII] Now, on account of the three theologies which the Greeks call mythical, physical, and political, and which in Latin may be called fabulous, natural, and civil: since neither from the fabulous—which even the worshippers of many false gods have themselves most freely censured—nor from the civil, of which the fabulous is convicted of being a part, and to which this civil is found most like or even worse, is eternal life to be hoped for; if to anyone the things said in this volume are not enough, let him add also those things which in the earlier books, and especially in the fourth, were disputed at great length concerning God the giver of felicity. For to whom, if not to felicity alone, ought men to be consecrated on account of eternal life, if felicity were a goddess? But since it is not a goddess but a gift of God:
to what god, if not to the giver of felicity, are we to be consecrated—we who with pious charity love that eternal life in which there is true and full felicity? Now that none of these gods, who are worshipped with such great baseness and, unless they are so worshipped, are much more basely angered—and on this account confess themselves to be most unclean spirits—is a giver of felicity, I think that from what has been said no one ought to doubt. Further, he who does not give felicity, how could he give eternal life? For we call that life eternal in which there is felicity without end. For if the soul lives in eternal punishments, by which the unclean spirits themselves also shall be tormented, that is rather eternal death than life. For there is no greater and worse death than where death does not die.
But because the nature of the soul, by that whereby it was created immortal, cannot be without some kind of life, its supreme death is estrangement from the life of God in the eternity of punishment. Eternal life, therefore—that is, life happy without any end—he alone gives who gives true felicity. Since those gods whom this civil theology worships have been convicted of being unable to give it: not only on account of these temporal and earthly things, which we showed in the preceding five books, but much more on account of the eternal life which is to come after death, which in this one book we have treated with even their own cooperation, they are not to be worshipped.
But since the force of a torpid custom has its roots too deep, if to anyone I seem to have discussed too little concerning this civil theology's being spat out and shunned, let him direct his attention to another volume, which, with God's help, is to be joined to this one.