The City of God quotes

“Show pity to the humbled soul, And crush the sons of pride.”

And therefore, as the plan of this work we have undertaken requires, and as occasion offers, we must speak also of the earthly city, which, though it be mistress of the nations, is itself ruled by its lust of rule.

Of the adversaries of the name of Christ, whom the barbarians for Christ’s sake spared when they stormed the city.

Neither did Troy perish because it lost Minerva. For what had Minerva herself first lost, that she should perish? Her guards perhaps? No doubt; just her guards. For as soon as they were slain, she could be stolen.

It was not, in fact, the men who were preserved by the image, but the image by the men.

How, then, was she invoked to defend the city and the citizens, she who could not defend her own defenders?

Her guards perhaps? No doubt; just her guards. For as soon as they were slain, she could be stolen. It was not, in fact, the men who were preserved by the image, but the image by the men.

How, then, was she invoked to defend the city and the citizens, she who could not defend her own defenders?

That the Romans did not show their usual sagacity when they trusted that they would be benefited by the gods who had been unable to defend Troy.

For he asked of what sort they were; and when they reported to him that there were not only many large images, but some of them armed,

“Oh,” says he, “let us leave with the Tarentines their angry gods.”

Seeing, then, that the writers of Roman history could not pass in silence, neither the weeping of the one general nor the laughing of the other, neither the chaste pity of the one nor the facetious moderation of the other, on what occasion would it …

that into them many were led by their relenting enemies to be set at liberty, and that from them none were led into slavery by merciless foes.

Whoever does not see that this is to be attributed to the name of Christ, and to the Christian temper, is blind; whoever sees this, and gives no praise, is ungrateful; whoever hinders anyone from praising it, is mad.

Far be it from any prudent man to impute this clemency to the barbarians.

To the divine providence it has seemed good to prepare in the world to come for the righteous good things, which the unrighteous shall not enjoy; and for the wicked evil things, by which the good shall not be tormented.

But as for the good things of this life, and its ills, God has willed that these should be common to both; that we might not too eagerly covet the things which wicked men are seen equally to enjoy, nor shrink with an unseemly fear from the ills which even good men often suffer.

There is, too, a very great difference in the purpose served both by those events which we call adverse and those called prosperous. For the good man is neither uplifted with the good things of time, nor broken by its ills;

and such a service would make us not godly, but greedy rather, and covetous. Wherefore, though good and bad men suffer alike, we must not suppose that there is no difference between the men themselves, because there is no difference in what they both suffer.

For even in the likeness of the sufferings, there remains an unlikeness in the sufferers; and though exposed to the same anguish, virtue and vice are not the same thing.

For as the same fire causes gold to glow brightly, and chaff to smoke; and under the same flail the straw is beaten small, while the grain is cleansed;

For even in the likeness of the sufferings, there remains an unlikeness in the sufferers; and though exposed to the same anguish, virtue and vice are not the same thing.

For as the same fire causes gold to glow brightly, and chaff to smoke; and under the same flail the straw is beaten small, while the grain is cleansed; and as the lees are not mixed with the oil, though squeezed out of the vat by the same pressure, so the same violence of affliction proves, purges, clarifies the good, but damns, ruins, exterminates the wicked.

And thus it is that in the same affliction the wicked detest God and blaspheme, while the good pray and praise. So material a difference does it make, not what ills are suffered, but what kind of man suffers them.

And thus it is that in the same affliction the wicked detest God and blaspheme, while the good pray and praise.

So material a difference does it make, not what ills are suffered, but what kind of man suffers them.

For, stirred up with the same movement, mud exhales a horrible stench, and ointment emits a fragrant odour.

And thus it is that in the same affliction the wicked detest God and blaspheme, while the good pray and praise. So material a difference does it make, not what ills are suffered, but what kind of man suffers them.

For, stirred up with the same movement, mud exhales a horrible stench, and ointment emits a fragrant odour.

Of the reasons for administering correction to bad and good together.

But some good and Christian men have been put to the torture, that they might be forced to deliver up their goods to the enemy.

They could indeed neither deliver nor lose that good which made themselves good.

If, however, they preferred torture to the surrender of the mammon of iniquity, then I say they were not good men.

… they might be taught to love Him rather who enriches with eternal felicity all who suffer for Him, and not silver and gold, for which it was pitiable to suffer, whether they preserved it by telling a lie, or lost it by telling the truth.

For under these tortures no one lost Christ by confessing Him, no one preserved wealth save by denying its existence.

So that possibly the torture which taught them that they should set their affections on a possession they could not lose, was more useful than those possessions which, without any useful fruit at all, disquieted and tormented their anxious owners.

Again, they say that the long famine laid many a Christian low. But this, too, the faithful turned to good uses by a pious endurance of it.

For those whom famine killed outright it rescued from the ills of this life, as a kindly disease would have done; and those who were only hunger-bitten were taught to live more sparingly, and inured to longer fasts.

Of the end of this life, whether it is material that it be long delayed.

But, it is added, many Christians were slaughtered, and were put to death in a hideous variety of cruel ways. Well, if this be hard to bear, it is assuredly the common lot of all who are born into this life.

Of this at least I am certain, that no one has ever died who was not destined to die sometime.

Now the end of life puts the longest life on a par with the shortest. For of two things which have alike ceased to be, the one is not better, the other worse—the one greater, the other less.

Well, if this be hard to bear, it is assuredly the common lot of all who are born into this life. Of this at least I am certain, that no one has ever died who was not destined to die sometime.

Now the end of life puts the longest life on a par with the shortest.

For of two things which have alike ceased to be, the one is not better, the other worse—the one greater, the other less.

To the eyes of men this appears a harsh and doleful lot, yet “precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints.”

Wherefore all these last offices and ceremonies that concern the dead, the careful funeral arrangements, and the equipment of the tomb, and the pomp of obsequies, are rather the solace of the living than the comfort of the dead.

If a costly burial does any good to a wicked man, a squalid burial, or none at all, may harm the godly. His crowd of domestics furnished the purple-clad Dives with a funeral gorgeous in the eye of man;

and often whole armies have fought and fallen for their earthly country without caring to inquire whether they would be left exposed on the field of battle, or become the food of wild beasts. Of this noble disregard of sepulture poetry has well said:

“He who has no tomb has the sky for his vault.”

How much less ought they to insult over the unburied bodies of Christians, to whom it has been promised that the flesh itself shall be restored, and the body formed anew, all the members of it being gathered not only from the earth, but from …

… ring, or anything he wore, be precious to his children, in proportion to the love they bore him, with how much more reason ought we to care for the bodies of those we love, which they wore far more closely and intimately than any clothing!

For the body is not an extraneous ornament or aid, but a part of man’s very nature.

And therefore to the righteous of ancient times the last offices were piously rendered, and sepulchres provided for them, and obsequies celebrated;

But if they say that M. Regulus, even while a prisoner and enduring these bodily torments, might yet enjoy the blessedness of a virtuous soul, then let them recognise that true virtue by which a city also may be blessed.

For the blessedness of a community and of an individual flow from the same source; for a community is nothing else than a harmonious collection of individuals.

So that I am not concerned meantime to discuss what kind of virtue Regulus possessed: enough, that by his very noble example they are forced to own that the gods are to be worshipped not for the sake of bodily comforts or external advantages;

for he preferred to lose all such things rather than offend the gods by whom he had sworn.

But what can we make of men who glory in having such a citizen, but dread having a city like him?

If they do not dread this, then let them acknowledge that some such calamity as befell Regulus may also befall a community, though they be worshipping their gods as diligently as he; and let them no longer throw the blame of their misfortunes on Christianity.

But is there a fear that even another’s lust may pollute the violated?

It will not pollute, if it be another’s: if it pollute, it is not another’s, but is shared also by the polluted.

But since purity is a virtue of the soul, and has for its companion virtue the fortitude which will rather endure all ills than consent to evil;

Then, heartsick, and unable to bear the shame, she put an end to her life. What shall we call her? An adulteress, or chaste? There is no question which she was. Not more happily than truly did a declaimer say of this sad occurrence:

“Here was a marvel: there were two, and only one committed adultery.”

Most forcibly and truly spoken.

But this case of Lucretia is in such a dilemma, that if you extenuate the homicide, you confirm the adultery: if you acquit her of adultery, you make the charge of homicide heavier; and there is no way out of the dilemma, when one asks,

If she was adulterous, why praise her? if chaste, why slay her?

Nevertheless, for our purpose of refuting those who are unable to comprehend what true sanctity is, and who therefore insult over our outraged Christian women, it is enough that in the instance of this noble Roman matron it was said in her praise, “There were …

So, too, the apostle, when speaking of the seeds of such things as these, says, “That which thou sowest is not quickened except it die”; and in the Psalm it is said, “He killed their vines with hail.”

Must we therefore reckon it a breaking of this commandment, “Thou shalt not kill,” to pull a flower?

Are we thus insanely to countenance the foolish error of the Manichaeans?

However, if you look at the matter more closely, you will scarcely call it greatness of soul, which prompts a man to kill himself rather than bear up against some hardships of fortune, or sins in which he is not implicated.

Is it not rather proof of a feeble mind, to be unable to bear either the pains of bodily servitude or the foolish opinion of the vulgar?

And is not that to be pronounced the greater mind, which rather faces than flees the ills of life, and which, in comparison of the light and purity of conscience, holds in small esteem the judgment of men, and specially of the vulgar, which is …

Again, it is said many have killed themselves to prevent an enemy doing so.

But we are not inquiring whether it has been done, but whether it ought to have been done.

Sound judgment is to be preferred even to examples, and indeed examples harmonize with the voice of reason; but not all examples, but those only which are distinguished by their piety, and are proportionately worthy of imitation.

And thus he is punished for doing without orders the very thing he is punished for neglecting to do when he has been ordered.

If the commands of a general make so great a difference, shall the commands of God make none?

He, then, who knows it is unlawful to kill himself, may nevertheless do so if he is ordered by Him whose commands we may not neglect. Only let him be very sure that the divine command has been signified.

It was such a calamity as this that Scipio, your chief pontiff, your best man in the judgment of the whole senate, feared when he refused to agree to the destruction of Carthage, Rome’s rival; and opposed Cato, who advised its destruction.

He feared security, that enemy of weak minds, and he perceived that a wholesome fear would be a fit guardian for the citizens.

And he was not mistaken: the event proved how wisely he had spoken. For when Carthage was destroyed, and the Roman republic delivered from its great cause of anxiety, a crowd of disastrous evils forthwith resulted from the prosperous condition of things.

The gods were not so moral as their pontiff. But give me now your attention, if your mind, inebriated by its deep potations of error, can take in any sober truth.

The gods enjoined that games be exhibited in their honour to stay a physical pestilence; their pontiff prohibited the theatre from being constructed, to prevent a moral pestilence.

If, then, there remains in you sufficient mental enlightenment to prefer the soul to the body, choose whom you will worship.

That the overthrow of Rome has not corrected the vices of the Romans.

Oh infatuated men, what is this blindness, or rather madness, which possesses you?

How is it that while, as we hear, even the eastern nations are bewailing your ruin, and while powerful states in the most remote parts of the earth are mourning your fall as a public calamity, ye yourselves should be crowding to the theatres, should …

but the injuries you suffer, you impute to Christianity. Depraved by good fortune, and not chastened by adversity, what you desire in the restoration of a peaceful and secure state, is not the tranquillity of the commonwealth, but the impunity of your own vicious luxury.

Scipio wished you to be hard pressed by an enemy, that you might not abandon yourselves to luxurious manners; but so abandoned are you, that not even when crushed by the enemy is your luxury repressed.

You have missed the profit of your calamity; you have been made most wretched, and have remained most profligate.

Scipio wished you to be hard pressed by an enemy, that you might not abandon yourselves to luxurious manners; but so abandoned are you, that not even when crushed by the enemy is your luxury repressed.

You have missed the profit of your calamity; you have been made most wretched, and have remained most profligate.

Of God’s clemency in moderating the ruin of the city.

this was his reason for desiring that you might still have an enemy to fear, seeing as he did how easily prosperity would corrupt and destroy you.

He did not consider that republic flourishing whose walls stand, but whose morals are in ruins.

But the seductions of evil-minded devils had more influence with you than the precautions of prudent men. Hence the injuries you do, you will not permit to be imputed to you; but the injuries you suffer, you impute to Christianity.

But we have the less reason to despair of the reclamation even of such persons, if among our most declared enemies there are now some, unknown to themselves, who are destined to become our friends.

In truth, these two cities are entangled together in this world, and intermixed until the last judgment effect their separation.

I now proceed to speak, as God shall help me, of the rise, progress, and end of these two cities;

In truth, Rome, which was founded and increased by the labours of these ancient heroes, was more shamefully ruined by their descendants, while its walls were still standing, than it is now by the razing of them.

For in this ruin there fell stones and timbers; but in the ruin those profligates effected, there fell, not the mural, but the moral bulwarks and ornaments of the city, and their hearts burned with passions more destructive than the flames which consumed their houses.

Thus I brought my first book to a close. And now I go on to speak of those calamities which that city itself, or its subject provinces, have suffered since its foundation;

And the crowds that were gathered from all quarters by curiosity, offended modesty must, I should suppose, have scattered in the confusion of shame.

If these are sacred rites, what is sacrilege? If this is purification, what is pollution?

This festivity was called the Tables, as if a banquet were being given at which unclean devils might find suitable refreshment.

and let the rich abuse the poor as their dependants, to minister to their pride. Let the people applaud not those who protect their interests, but those who provide them with pleasure.

Let no severe duty be commanded, no impurity forbidden.

Let kings estimate their prosperity, not by the righteousness, but by the servility of their subjects. Let the provinces stand loyal to the kings, not as moral guides, but as lords of their possessions and purveyors of their pleasures;

And of the citizens what shall I say? Morality has perished through poverty of great men; a poverty for which we must not only assign a reason, but for the guilt of which we must answer as criminals charged with a capital crime.

For it is through our vices, and not by any mishap, that we retain only the name of a republic, and have long since lost the reality.

”

And yet where was this host of divinities, when, long before the corruption of the primitive morality, Rome was taken and burnt by the Gauls?

Perhaps they were present, but asleep?

For at that time the whole city fell into the hands of the enemy, with the single exception of the Capitoline hill; and this too would have been taken, had not—the watchful geese aroused the sleeping gods!

and Catiline, the worst of men, reduced to poverty and defeated in the war his own guilt had aroused, lived and perished miserably.

Real and secure felicity is the peculiar possession of those who worship that God by whom alone it can be conferred.

It is thus apparent, that when the republic was being destroyed by profligate manners, its gods did nothing to hinder its destruction by the direction or correction of its manners, but rather accelerated its destruction by increasing the demoralization and corruption that already existed.

But these truly woeful and deplorable calamities the gods gave him no previous hint of, neither by entrails, augury, dream, nor prediction.

For they feared his amendment more than his defeat.

Yea, they took good care that this glorious conqueror of his own fellow-citizens should be conquered and led captive by his own infamous vices, and should thus be the more submissive slave of the demons themselves.

This rather covet, this distinguish from that foul vanity and crafty malice of the devils. If there is in your nature any eminent virtue, only by true piety is it purged and perfected, while by impiety it is wrecked and punished.

Choose now what you will pursue, that your praise may be not in yourself, but in the true God, in whom is no error.

For of popular glory you have had your share; but by the secret providence of God, the true religion was not offered to your choice. Awake, it is now day;

Well done, in that thou hast spontaneously banished from the number of your citizens all actors and players.

Awake more fully: the majesty of God cannot be propitiated by that which defiles the dignity of man.

How, then, can you believe that gods who take pleasure in such lewd plays, belong to the number of the holy powers of heaven, when the men by whom these plays are acted are by yourselves refused admission into the number of Roman citizens even …

… believe that gods who take pleasure in such lewd plays, belong to the number of the holy powers of heaven, when the men by whom these plays are acted are by yourselves refused admission into the number of Roman citizens even of the lowest grade?

Incomparably more glorious than Rome, is that heavenly city in which for victory you have truth; for dignity, holiness; for peace, felicity; for life, eternity.

Much less does it admit into its society such gods, if thou dost blush to admit into thine such men. Wherefore, if thou wouldst attain to the blessed city, shun the society of devils.

For evil men account those things alone evil which do not make men evil; neither do they blush to praise good things, and yet to remain evil among the good things they praise.

It grieves them more to own a bad house than a bad life, as if it were man’s greatest good to have everything good but himself.

But not even such evils as were alone dreaded by the heathen were warded off by their gods, even when they were most unrestrictedly worshipped.

Priam, some answer, paid the penalty of the perjury of his father Laomedon. Then it is true that Laomedon hired Apollo and Neptune as his workmen. For the story goes that he promised them wages, and then broke his bargain.

I wonder that famous diviner Apollo toiled at so huge a work, and never suspected Laomedon was going to cheat him of his pay.

And Neptune too, his uncle, brother of Jupiter, king of the sea, it really was not seemly that he should be ignorant of what was to happen.

Gods, then, so great as Apollo and Neptune, in ignorance of the cheat that was to defraud them of their wages, built the walls of Troy for nothing but thanks and thankless people.

There may be some doubt whether it is not a worse crime to believe such persons to be gods, than to cheat such gods.

Even Homer himself did not give full credence to the story; for while he represents Neptune, indeed, as hostile to the Trojans, he introduces Apollo as their champion, though the story implies that both were offended by that fraud.

Is it because in the one case Menelaus was aggrieved, while in the other Vulcan connived at the crime?

For the gods, I fancy, are so little jealous of their wives, that they make no scruple of sharing them with men.

But perhaps I may be suspected of turning the myths into ridicule, and not handling so weighty a subject with sufficient gravity. Well, then, let us say that Aeneas is not the son of Venus. I am willing to I admit it;

Neither, as others again plead in their defence, was it indignation at the adultery of Paris that caused them to withdraw their protection from Troy.

For their habit is to be instigators and instructors in vice, not its avengers.

“The city of Rome,” says Sallust, “was first built and inhabited, as I have heard, by the Trojans, who, flying their country, under the conduct of Aeneas, wandered about without making any settlement.”

How, then, did the image of Minerva remain standing? Besides, if they were at Rome when Fimbria destroyed Troy, perhaps they were at Troy when Rome itself was taken and set on fire by the Gauls.

But as they are very acute in hearing, and very swift in their movements, they came quickly at the cackling of the goose to defend at least the Capitol, though to defend the rest of the city they were too long in being warned.

Whether it is credible that the peace during the reign of Numa was brought about by the gods.

Do they reply that the Roman empire could never have been so widely extended, nor so glorious, save by constant and unintermitting wars? A fit argument, truly!

Why must a kingdom be distracted in order to be great?

In this little world of man’s body, is it not better to have a moderate stature, and health with it, than to attain the huge dimensions of a giant by unnatural torments, and when you attain it to find no rest, but to be pained …

and she, when she saw her brother wearing the spoils of her betrothed, burst into tears, and was slain by her own brother in his anger.

To me, this one girl seems to have been more humane than the whole Roman people.

I cannot think her to blame for lamenting the man to whom already she had plighted her troth, or, as perhaps she was doing, for grieving that her brother should have slain him to whom he had promised his sister.

Why allege to me the mere names and words of “glory” and “victory?”

Tear off the disguise of wild delusion, and look at the naked deeds: weigh them naked, judge them naked.

Let the charge be brought against Alba, as Troy was charged with adultery. There is no such charge, none like it found: the war was kindled only in order that there

Away, then, with these deceitful masks, these deluding whitewashes, that things may be truthfully seen and scrutinized. Let no man tell me that this and the other was a “great” man, because he fought and conquered so-and-so.

Gladiators fight and conquer, and this barbarism has its meed of praise; but I think it were better to take the consequences of any sloth, than to seek the glory won by such arms.

And if two gladiators entered the arena to fight, one being father, the other his son, who would endure such a spectacle? who would not be revolted by it? How, then, could that be a glorious war which a daughter-state waged against its mother?

In the dialogue Hortensius, too, while speaking of the regular eclipses of the sun, he says that they “produce the same darkness as covered the death of Romulus, which happened during an eclipse of the sun.”

Here you see he does not at all shrink from speaking of his “death,” for Cicero was more of a reasoner than an eulogist.

The other kings of Rome, too, with the exception of Numa Pompilius and Ancus Marcius, who died natural deaths, what horrible ends they had! Tullus Hostilius, the conqueror and destroyer of Alba, was, as I said, himself and all his house consumed by lightning.

where he grew old in his wife’s company, and at last terminated his days in a much more desirable fashion than his father-in-law, who had perished by the hand of his son-in-law; his own daughter abetting, if report be true.

And this Tarquin the Romans called, not the Cruel, nor the Infamous, but the Proud; their own pride perhaps resenting his tyrannical airs.

So little did they make of his murdering their best king, his own father-in-law, that they elected him their own king. I wonder if it was not even more criminal in them to reward so bountifully so great a criminal.

And while such disastrous wars were being waged, a terrible disease broke out among the women. For the pregnant women died before delivery.

And Aesculapius, I fancy, excused himself in this matter on the ground that he professed to be arch-physician, not midwife.

Cattle, too, similarly perished; so that it was believed that the whole race of animals was destined to become extinct.

Then what shall I say of that memorable winter in which the weather was so incredibly severe, that in the Forum frightfully deep snow lay for forty days together, and the Tiber was frozen?

Had such things happened in our time, what accusations we should have heard from our enemies!

And that other great pestilence, which raged so long and carried off so many; what shall I say of it?

but we need not say with what loss of life, and with what ruin to the republic.” For of this vengeance, which was more destructive than if the crimes which it punished had been committed with impunity, Lucan says: “

The cure was excessive, and too closely resembled the disease.

The guilty perished, but when none but the guilty survived: and then private hatred and anger, unbridled by law, were allowed free indulgence.”

These things were done in peace when the war was over, not that victory might be more speedily obtained, but that, after being obtained, it might not be thought lightly of.

Peace vied with war in cruelty, and surpassed it: for while war overthrew armed hosts, peace slew the defenceless.

War gave liberty to him who was attacked, to strike if he could; peace granted to the survivors not life, but an unresisting death.

Peace vied with war in cruelty, and surpassed it: for while war overthrew armed hosts, peace slew the defenceless.

War gave liberty to him who was attacked, to strike if he could; peace granted to the survivors not life, but an unresisting death.

A comparison of the disasters which Rome experienced during the Gothic and Gallic invasions, with those occasioned by the authors of the civil wars.

But the dominion of bad men is hurtful chiefly to themselves who rule, for they destroy their own souls by greater licence in wickedness; while those who are put under them in service are not hurt except by their own iniquity.

For to the just all the evils imposed on them by unjust rulers are not the punishment of crime, but the test of virtue.

Therefore the good man, although he is a slave, is free; but the bad man, even if he reigns, is a slave, and that not of one man, but, what is far more grievous, of as many masters as he has vices;

while those who are put under them in service are not hurt except by their own iniquity. For to the just all the evils imposed on them by unjust rulers are not the punishment of crime, but the test of virtue.

Therefore the good man, although he is a slave, is free; but the bad man, even if he reigns, is a slave, and that not of one man, but, what is far more grievous, of as many masters as he has vices;

of which vices when the divine Scripture treats, it says, “For of whom any man is overcome, to the same he is also the bondslave.”

How like kingdoms without justice are to robberies.

Justice being taken away, then, what are kingdoms but great robberies? For what are robberies themselves, but little kingdoms?

The band itself is made up of men; it is ruled by the authority of a prince, it is knit together by the pact of the confederacy; the booty is divided by the law agreed on.

Or will they deny that they were divinely aided because they did not last long?

As if, indeed, the life of any man whatever lasted long.

In that case, too, the gods aid no one to reign, since all individuals quickly die;

for, as those write who have treated of chronological history, this kingdom endured for twelve hundred and forty years from the first year in which Ninus began to reign, until it was transferred to the Medes.

But to make war on your neighbours, and thence to proceed to others, and through mere lust of dominion to crush and subdue people who do you no harm, what else is this to be called than great robbery?

Whether earthly kingdoms in their rise and fall have been either aided or deserted by the help of the gods.

When could Nodotus give help in battle, who had nothing to do even with the sheath of the ear, but only with the knots of the joints?

Everyone sets a porter at the door of his house, and because he is a man, he is quite sufficient; but these people have set three gods, Forculus to the doors, Cardea to the hinge, Limentinus to the threshold.

Thus Forculus could not at the same time take care also of the hinge and the threshold.

Everyone sets a porter at the door of his house, and because he is a man, he is quite sufficient; but these people have set three gods, Forculus to the doors, Cardea to the hinge, Limentinus to the threshold.

Thus Forculus could not at the same time take care also of the hinge and the threshold.

Whether the great extent and long duration of the Roman empire should be ascribed to Jove, whom his worshippers believe to be the chief god.

But because it would be worse that the injurious should rule over those who are more righteous, therefore even that is not unsuitably called felicity.

But beyond doubt it is greater felicity to have a good neighbour at peace, than to conquer a bad one by making war.

Your wishes are bad, when you desire that one whom you hate or fear should be in such a condition that you can conquer him.

But beyond doubt it is greater felicity to have a good neighbour at peace, than to conquer a bad one by making war.

Your wishes are bad, when you desire that one whom you hate or fear should be in such a condition that you can conquer him.

If, therefore, by carrying on wars that were just, not impious or unrighteous, the Romans could have acquired so great an empire, ought they not to worship as a goddess even the injustice of foreigners?

For it is not so difficult for malignant demons to deceive, and they ought the rather to advert to their wits and wiles, because it is that goddess who comes by haphazard who has spoken, and not she who comes to reward merit.

For Fortuna was loquacious, and Felicitas mute

; and for what other reason but that men might not care to live rightly, having made Fortuna their friend, who could make them fortunate without any good desert?

… to give it, and that hurtful multitude of false gods must be abandoned which the vain multitude of foolish men follows after, making gods to itself of the gifts of God, and offending Himself whose gifts they are by the stubbornness of a proud will.

For he cannot be free from infelicity who worships Felicity as a goddess, and forsakes God, the giver of felicity; just as he cannot be free from hunger who licks a painted loaf of bread, and does not buy it of the man who has a real one.

The reasons by which the pagans attempt to defend their worshipping among the gods the divine gifts themselves.

for he does not think they are false. He thinks it expedient, therefore, that states should be deceived in matters of religion; which Varro himself does not hesitate even to say in his books about things divine.

Excellent religion! to which the weak, who requires to be delivered, may flee for succour; and when he seeks for the truth by which he may be delivered, it is believed to be expedient for him that he be deceived.

And, truly, in these same books, Scaevola is not silent as to his reason for rejecting the poetic sort of gods—to wit, “because they so disfigure the gods that they could not bear comparison even with good men, when they make one to commit theft, …

Hence, said he, come whatever dissimilitudes may be remarked in the habits and fortunes of twins.

This argument is more fragile than the vessels which are fashioned by the rotation of that wheel.

For if there is so much significance in the heavens which cannot be comprehended by observation of the constellations, that, in the case of twins, an inheritance may fall to the one and not to the other, why, in the case of others who are …

For He is called omnipotent on account of His doing what He wills, not on account of His suffering what He wills not; for if that should befall Him, He would by no means be omnipotent.

Wherefore, He cannot do some things for the very reason that He is omnipotent.

So also, when we say that it is necessary that, when we will, we will by free choice, in so saying we both affirm what is true beyond doubt, and do not still subject our wills thereby to a necessity which destroys liberty.

But we embrace both. We faithfully and sincerely confess both. The former, that we may believe well; the latter, that we may live well.

For he lives ill who does not believe well concerning God.

Wherefore, be it far from us, in order to maintain our freedom, to deny the prescience of Him by whose help we are or shall be free.

… of the Hebrews, they worshipped false gods, and sacrificed victims, not to God, but to demons, have nevertheless this commendation bestowed on them by their historian, that they were “greedy of praise, prodigal of wealth, desirous of great glory, and content with a moderate fortune.”

Glory they most ardently loved: for it they wished to live, for it they did not hesitate to die.

Every other desire was repressed by the strength of their passion for that one thing. At length their country itself, because it seemed inglorious to serve, but glorious to rule and to command, they first earnestly desired to be free, and then to be mistress.

But the reward of the saints is far different, who even here endured reproaches for that city of God which is hateful to the lovers of this world.

That city is eternal. There none are born, for none die.

There is true and full felicity—not a goddess, but a gift of God. Thence we receive the pledge of faith, whilst on our pilgrimage we sigh for its beauty.

That city is eternal. There none are born, for none die. There is true and full felicity—not a goddess, but a gift of God. Thence we receive the pledge of faith, whilst on our pilgrimage we sigh for its beauty.

There rises not the sun on the good and the evil, but the Sun of Righteousness protects the good alone.

There no great industry shall be expended to enrich the public treasury by suffering privations at home, for there is the common treasury of truth.

Therefore he who desires glory presses on to obtain it either by the true way, or certainly by deceit and artifice, wishing to appear good when he is not.

Therefore to him who possesses virtues it is a great virtue to despise glory; for contempt of it is seen by God, but is not manifest to human judgment.

For whatever anyone does before the eyes of men in order to show himself to be a despiser of glory, if they suspect that he is doing it in order to get greater praise—that is, greater glory—he has no means of demonstrating to the perceptions …

… despiser of glory, if they suspect that he is doing it in order to get greater praise—that is, greater glory—he has no means of demonstrating to the perceptions of those who suspect him that the case is really otherwise than they suspect it to be.

But he who despises the judgment of praisers, despises also the rashness of suspectors.

Their salvation, indeed, he does not despise, if he is truly good;

… to take only a certain quantity even of the most favourite food, lest, through immoderate use, anything prove hurtful by disturbing the health of the body, and thus Pleasure, which the Epicureans make to consist chiefly in the health of the body, be grievously offended.

Thus the virtues, with the whole dignity of their glory, will be the slaves of Pleasure, as of some imperious and disreputable woman.

There is nothing, say our philosophers, more disgraceful and monstrous than this picture, and which the eyes of good men can less endure. And they say the truth.

for the god Terminus yielded to necessity, though he had not yielded to Jupiter.

Manifestly these things are ruled and governed by the one God according as He pleases; and if His motives are hid, are they therefore unjust?

The durations and issues of war depend on the will of God.

Such persons I would advise not to desire what cannot be of any advantage to them; for it is very easy for a man to seem to himself to have answered arguments, when he has only been unwilling to be silent.

For what is more loquacious than vanity?

And though it be able, if it like, to shout more loudly than the truth, it is not, for all that, more powerful than the truth.

for it is very easy for a man to seem to himself to have answered arguments, when he has only been unwilling to be silent. For what is more loquacious than vanity?

And though it be able, if it like, to shout more loudly than the truth, it is not, for all that, more powerful than the truth.

But let men consider diligently all the things that we have said, and if, perchance, judging without party spirit, they shall clearly perceive that they are such things as may rather be shaken than torn up by their most impudent garrulity, and, as it were, …

What more monstrous than this absurdity? Will not these Lymphs—for they are wont to be very easily made laugh—laughing loudly (if they do not attempt to deceive like demons), answer the suppliant, “

O man, dost thou think that we have life (vitam) in our power, who thou hearest have not even the vine (vitem)?

” It is therefore most impudent folly to seek and hope for eternal life from such gods as are asserted so to preside over the separate minute concernments of this most sorrowful and short life, and whatever is useful for supporting and propping it, as …

What can the most excellent human talent do here? What can human learning, though manifold, avail thee in this perplexity?

Thou desirest to worship the natural gods; thou art compelled to worship the civil.

Thou hast found some of the gods to be fabulous, on whom thou vomitest forth very freely what thou thinkest, and, whether thou willest or not, thou wettest therewith even the civil gods.

Wherefore there is more reason to thank the stage-actors, who have spared the eyes of men, and have not laid bare by theatrical exhibition all the things which are hid by the walls of the temples.

What good is to be thought of their sacred rites which are concealed in darkness, when those which are brought forth into the light are so detestable?

And certainly they themselves have seen what they transact in secret through the agency of mutilated and effeminate men. Yet they have not been able to conceal those same men miserably and vilely enervated and corrupted.

“One,” he says, “castrates himself, another cuts his arms. Where will they find room for the fear of these gods when angry, who use such means of gaining their favour when propitious?

But gods who wish to be worshipped in this fashion should be worshipped in none.

So great is the frenzy of the mind when perturbed and driven from its seat, that the gods are propitiated by men in a manner in which not even men of the greatest ferocity and fable-renowned cruelty vent their rage.

So great is the frenzy of the mind when perturbed and driven from its seat, that the gods are propitiated by men in a manner in which not even men of the greatest ferocity and fable-renowned cruelty vent their rage.

Tyrants have lacerated the limbs of some; they never ordered anyone to lacerate his own.

For the gratification of royal lust, some have been castrated; but no one ever, by the command of his lord, laid violent hands on himself to emasculate himself. They kill themselves in the temples. They supplicate with their wounds and with their blood.

and yet that grief and that joy which are elicited thereby from those who have lost nothing and found nothing are real;—having, I say, so spoken of this, he says, “Still there is a fixed time for this frenzy.

It is tolerable to go mad once in the year.

Go into the Capitol. One is suggesting divine commands to a god; another is telling the hours to Jupiter; one is a lictor; another is an anointer, who with the mere movement of his arms imitates one anointing.

… the laws of cities and the customs of men, to be an actor, not on the stage, but in the temples—conduct the more to be condemned, that those things which he was deceitfully acting he so acted that the people thought he was acting sincerely.

But a stage-actor would rather delight people by acting plays than take them in by false pretences.

What Seneca thought concerning the Jews.

For we mean by eternal life that life where there is endless happiness. For if the soul live in eternal punishments, by which also those unclean spirits shall be tormented, that is rather eternal death than eternal life.

For there is no greater or worse death than when death never dies.

But because the soul from its very nature, being created immortal, cannot be without some kind of life, its utmost death is alienation from the life of God in an eternity of punishment.

In respect to which matter I do not say what Tertullian said, perhaps more wittily than truly,

“If gods are selected like onions, certainly the rest are rejected as bad.”

I do not say this, for I see that even from among the select, some are selected for some greater and more excellent office:

For that most eloquent man Sallust also may perhaps have the gods themselves in view when he says:

“But, in truth, fortune rules in everything; it renders all things famous or obscure, according to caprice rather than according to truth.”

For they cannot discover a reason why Venus should have been made famous, whilst Virtus has been made obscure, when the divinity of both of them has been solemnly recognised by them, and their merits are not to be compared.

Fortune herself ought to occupy the place of preeminence among the select gods, since over them also she has such preeminent power.

Or must we suppose that the reason why she is not among the select is simply this, that even Fortune herself has had an adverse fortune?

She was adverse, then, to herself, since, whilst ennobling others, she herself has remained obscure.

Do they not own that all things which they say begin in this world also come to an end in this world?

What folly it is, to give him only half power in work, when in his image they give him two faces!

Would it not be a far more elegant way of interpreting the two-faced image, to say that Janus and Terminus are the same, and that the one face has reference to beginnings, the other to ends?

and from the gaping mouth, they say, there is a way out in the direction of the teeth, and a way in in the direction of the gullet.

See what the world has been brought to on account of a Greek or a poetical word for our palate!

Let this god be worshipped only on account of saliva, which has two open doorways under the heavens of the palate—one through which part of it may be spitten out, the other through which part of it may be swallowed down.

but whatever be the abundance of that, they are not able but to want. And we properly call God Himself rich; not, however, in money, but in omnipotence. Therefore they who have abundance of money are called rich, but inwardly needy if they are greedy.

So also, those who have no money are called poor, but inwardly rich if they are wise.

What, then, ought the wise man to think of this theology, in which the king of the gods receives the name of that thing “which no wise man has desired?”

But it would be a far different thing if he had been called Riches.

For riches are one thing, money another.

For we call rich the wise, the just, the good, who have either no money or very little. For they are more truly rich in possessing virtue, since by it, even as respects things necessary for the body, they are content with what they have.

But, lo! Saturn, if he is the son of Coelus, is the son of Jupiter. For they affirm times without number, and that emphatically, that the heavens are Jupiter.

Thus those things which come not of the truth, do very often, without being impelled by anyone, themselves overthrow one another.

He says that Saturn was called Κρόνος, which in the Greek tongue signifies a space of time, because, without that, seed cannot be productive. These and many other things are said concerning Saturn, and they are all referred to seed.

And thus,” says he, “they not at all absurdly identify other goddesses with the earth.” If, then, it is one goddess (though, if the truth were consulted, it is not even that), why do they nevertheless separate it into many?

Let there be many names of one goddess, and let there not be as many goddesses as there are names.

But the authority of the erring ancients weighs heavily on Varro, and compels him, after having expressed this opinion, to show signs of uneasiness;

But it is possible, he says, that the same thing may both be one, and yet have in it a plurality of things.

I grant that there are many things in one man; are there therefore in him many men?

In like manner, in one goddess there are many things; are there therefore also many goddesses? But let them divide, unite, multiply, reduplicate, and implicate as they like.

These effeminates, no later than yesterday, were going through the streets and places of Carthage with anointed hair, whitened faces, relaxed bodies, and feminine gait, exacting from the people the means of maintaining their ignominious lives. Nothing has been said concerning them.

Interpretation failed, reason blushed, speech was silent.

The Great Mother has surpassed all her sons, not in greatness of deity, but of crime. To this monster not even the monstrosity of Janus is to be compared. His deformity was only in his image;

To what purpose, then, is it that this most learned and most acute man Varro attempts, as it were, with subtle disputation, to reduce and refer all these gods to heaven and earth? He cannot do it.

They go out of his hands like water; they shrink back; they slip down and fall.

For when about to speak of the females, that is, the goddesses, he says, “Since, as I observed in the first book concerning places, heaven and earth are the two origins of the gods, on which account they are called celestials and terrestrials, and as …

… there is continually the noise of the mad and abominable revelry of effeminates and mutilated men, and men who cut themselves, and indulge in frantic gesticulations—how is it, then, that Janus is called the head of the gods, and Tellus the head of the goddesses?

In the one case error does not make one head, and in the other frenzy does not make a sane one.

Why do they vainly attempt to refer these to the world? Even if they could do so, no pious person worships the world for the true God. Nevertheless, plain truth makes it evident that they are not able even to do this.

Now Numa is said to have married the nymph Egeria, because (as Varro explains it in the forementioned book) he carried forth water wherewith to perform his hydromancy.

Thus facts are wont to be converted into fables through false colourings.

It was by that hydromancy, then, that that overcurious Roman king learned both the sacred rites which were to be written in the books of the priests, and also the causes of those rites—which latter, however, he was unwilling that anyone besides himself should know.

The Italic school had for its founder Pythagoras of Samos, to whom also the term “philosophy” is said to owe its origin. For whereas formerly those who seemed to excel others by the laudable manner in which they regulated their lives were called sages,

Pythagoras, on being asked what he professed, replied that he was a philosopher, that is, a student or lover of wisdom; for it seemed to him to be the height of arrogance to profess oneself a sage.

The founder of the Ionic school, again, was Thales of Miletus, one of those seven who were styled the “seven sages,” of whom six were distinguished by the kind of life they lived, and by certain maxims which they gave forth for the proper conduct …

They have not been staggered by the great changeableness of the soul—an attribute which it would be impious to ascribe to the divine nature—but they say it is the body which changes the soul, for in itself it is unchangeable.

As well might they say, “Flesh is wounded by some body, for in itself it is invulnerable.”

In a word, that which is unchangeable can be changed by nothing, so that that which can be changed by the body cannot properly be said to be immutable.

And hence is developed the whole plan and connection of their learning and teaching.

I often wonder, with respect to this, how they can say that none are beautiful but the wise; for by what bodily sense have they perceived that beauty, by what eyes of the flesh have they seen wisdom’s comeliness of form?

Those, however, whom we justly rank before all others, have distinguished those things which are conceived by the mind from those which are perceived by the senses, neither taking away from the senses anything to which they are competent, nor attributing to them anything beyond …

Who can equal in strength the lion or the elephant? Who can equal in length of life the serpents, which are affirmed to put off old age along with their skin, and to return to youth again?

But as we are better than all these by the possession of reason and understanding, so we ought also to be better than the demons by living good and virtuous lives.

For divine providence gave to them bodies of a better quality than ours, that that in which we excel them might in this way be commended to us as deserving to be far more cared for than the body, and that we should learn to …

Lastly, the true religion commands us to put away all disquietude of heart, and agitation of mind, and also all commotions and tempests of the soul, which Apuleius asserts to be continually swelling and surging in the souls of demons.

Why, therefore, except through foolishness and miserable error, shouldst thou humble thyself to worship a being to whom thou desirest to be unlike in thy life?

And why shouldst thou pay religious homage to him whom thou art unwilling to imitate, when it is the highest duty of religion to imitate Him whom thou worshippest?

Why, therefore, except through foolishness and miserable error, shouldst thou humble thyself to worship a being to whom thou desirest to be unlike in thy life?

And why shouldst thou pay religious homage to him whom thou art unwilling to imitate, when it is the highest duty of religion to imitate Him whom thou worshippest?

What kind of religion that is which teaches that men ought to employ the advocacy of demons in order to be recommended to the favour of the good gods.

and if so, what, pray, is that cause, what is that so great necessity? Because, say they, no god has intercourse with man.

Most admirable holiness of God, which has no intercourse with a supplicating man, and yet has intercourse with an arrogant demon!

which has no intercourse with a penitent man, and yet has intercourse with a deceiving demon! which has no intercourse with a man fleeing for refuge to the divine nature, and yet has intercourse with a demon feigning divinity!

… can sooner happen that man, who has received an honourable position, may, through lack of understanding, become comparable to the beasts, than that the works of man may become preferable to the work of God, made in His own image, that is, to man himself.

Wherefore deservedly is man left to fall away from Him who made him, when he prefers to himself that which he himself has made.

For these vain, deceitful, pernicious, sacrilegious things did the Egyptian Hermes sorrow, because he knew that the time was coming when they should be removed. But his sorrow was as impudently expressed as his knowledge was imprudently obtained;

… for is that the memorials of our martyrs were to succeed to their temples and shrines, in order, forsooth, that they may have grounds for thinking that gods were worshipped by the pagans in temples, but that dead men are worshipped by us in sepulchres.

For with such blindness do impious men, as it were, stumble over mountains, and will not see the things which strike their own eyes

, that they do not attend to the fact that in all the literature of the pagans there are not found any, or scarcely any gods, who have not been men, to whom, when dead, divine honours have been paid.

Far better, and more humane, and more consonant with pious sentiments, are the words of Cicero in praise of Caesar, when he says, “Among your virtues none is more admirable and agreeable than your compassion.”

And what is compassion but a fellow-feeling for another’s misery, which prompts us to help him if we can?

And this emotion is obedient to reason, when compassion is shown without violating right, as when the poor are relieved, or the penitent forgiven.

It subjects the mind itself to God, that He may rule and aid it, and the passions, again, to the mind, to moderate and bridle them, and turn them to righteous uses.

In our ethics, we do not so much inquire whether a pious soul is angry, as why he is angry; not whether he is sad, but what is the cause of his sadness; not whether he fears, but what he fears.

For I am not aware that any right thinking person would find fault with anger at a wrongdoer which seeks his amendment, or with sadness which intends relief to the suffering, or with fear lest one in danger be destroyed.

The Stoics, indeed, are accustomed to condemn compassion.

But how much more honourable had it been in that Stoic we have been telling of, had he been disturbed by compassion prompting him to relieve a fellow-creature, than to be disturbed by the fear of shipwreck!

Far better, and more humane, and more consonant with pious sentiments, are the words of Cicero in praise of Caesar, when he says, “Among your virtues none is more admirable and agreeable than your compassion.”

He says, indeed, that the souls of men are demons, and that men become Lares if they are good, Lemures or Larvae if they are bad, and Manes if it is uncertain whether they deserve well or ill.

Who does not see at a glance that this is a mere whirlpool sucking men to moral destruction?

For, however wicked men have been, if they suppose they shall become Larvae or divine Manes, they will become the worse the more love they have for inflicting injury;

Therefore, when He chose to be in the form of a servant, and lower than the angels, that He might be our Mediator, He remained higher than the angels, in the form of God—

Himself at once the way of life on earth and life itself in heaven.

Whether it is reasonable in the Platonists to determine that the celestial gods decline contact with earthly things and intercourse with men, who therefore require the intercession of the demons.

… Himself, in order that, having passed through mortality, He might of mortals make immortals (showing His power to do this in His own resurrection), and from being miserable to raise them to the blessed company from the number of whom He had Himself never departed.

There is, then, a wicked mediator, who separates friends, and a good Mediator, who reconciles enemies.

And those who separate are numerous, because the multitude of the blessed are blessed only by their participation in the one God;

The devils themselves knew this manifestation of God so well, that they said to the Lord, though clothed with the infirmity of flesh, “What have we to do with Thee, Jesus of Nazareth? Art Thou come to destroy us before the time?”

From these words, it is clear that they had great knowledge, and no charity.

They feared His power to punish, and did not love His righteousness. He made known to them so much as He pleased, and He was pleased to make known so much as was needful.

… that God alone can confer happiness either on angels or men, but that it yet remains a question whether those spirits whom they direct us to worship, that we may obtain happiness, wish sacrifice to be offered to themselves, or to the one God only.

It is the decided opinion of all who use their brains, that all men desire to be happy.

But who are happy, or how they become so, these are questions about which the weakness of human understanding stirs endless and angry controversies, in which philosophers have wasted their strength and expended their leisure.

Being attached to Him, or rather let me say, re-attached—for we had detached ourselves and lost hold of Him—being, I say, re-attached to Him, we tend towards Him by love, that we may rest in Him, and find our blessedness by attaining that end.

For our good, about which philosophers have so keenly contended, is nothing else than to be united to God.

It is, if I may say so, by spiritually embracing Him that the intellectual soul is filled and impregnated with true virtues. We are enjoined to love this good with all our heart, with all our soul, with all our strength.

for Thou needest not my goodness.” We must believe, then, that God has no need, not only of cattle, or any other earthly and material thing, but even of man’s righteousness, and that whatever right worship is paid to God profits not Him, but man.

For no man would say he did a benefit to a fountain by drinking, or to the light by seeing.

And the fact that the ancient church offered animal sacrifices, which the people of God nowadays reads of without imitating, proves nothing else than this, that those sacrifices signified the things which we do for the purpose of drawing near to God, and inducing our …

… ancient church offered animal sacrifices, which the people of God nowadays reads of without imitating, proves nothing else than this, that those sacrifices signified the things which we do for the purpose of drawing near to God, and inducing our neighbour to do the same.

A sacrifice, therefore, is the visible sacrament or sacred sign of an invisible sacrifice.

Hence that penitent in the psalm, or it may be the Psalmist himself, entreating God to be merciful to his sins, says, “If Thou desiredst sacrifice, I would give it: Thou delightest not in whole burnt-offerings. The sacrifice of God is a broken heart:

Of the true and perfect sacrifice.

Thus a true sacrifice is every work which is done that we may be united to God in holy fellowship, and which has a reference to that supreme good and end in which alone we can be truly blessed.

And therefore even the mercy we show to men, if it is not shown for God’s sake, is not a sacrifice. For, though made or offered by man, sacrifice is a divine thing, as those who called it sacrifice meant to indicate.

For, as we have many members in one body, and all members have not the same office, so we, being many, are one body in Christ, and everyone members one of another, having gifts differing according to the grace that is given to us.”

This is the sacrifice of Christians: we, being many, are one body in Christ.

And this also is the sacrifice which the Church continually celebrates in the sacrament of the altar, known to the faithful, in which she teaches that she herself is offered in the offering she makes to God.

And therefore even the mercy we show to men, if it is not shown for God’s sake, is not a sacrifice. For, though made or offered by man, sacrifice is a divine thing, as those who called it sacrifice meant to indicate.

Thus man himself, consecrated in the name of God, and vowed to God, is a sacrifice in so far as he dies to the world that he may live to God.

For this is a part of that mercy which each man shows to himself; as it is written, “Have mercy on thy soul by pleasing God.”

Is there found a god who listens to the envious man, and frightens the gods from doing good? and is there not found a god who listens to the well-disposed man, and removes the fear of the gods that they may do him good?

O excellent theurgy! O admirable purification of the soul!

—a theurgy in which the violence of an impure envy has more influence than the entreaty of purity and holiness. Rather let us abominate and avoid the deceit of such wicked spirits, and listen to sound doctrine.

… into the souls of men and delude their senses, both in sleep and waking, he describes not as things of which he is himself convinced, but only with so much suspicion and doubt as to cause him to speak of them as commonly received opinions.

We should sympathize with this great philosopher in the difficulty he experienced in acquainting himself with and confidently assailing the whole fraternity of devils, which any Christian old woman would unhesitatingly describe and most unreservedly detest.

Perhaps, however, he shrank from offending Anebo, to whom he was writing, himself the most eminent patron of these mysteries, or the others who marvelled at these magical feats as divine works, and closely allied to the worship of the gods.

Although, therefore, the standing miracle of this visible world is little thought of, because always before us, yet, when we arouse ourselves to contemplate it, it is a greater miracle than the rarest and most unheard-of marvels.

For man himself is a greater miracle than any miracle done through his instrumentality.

Therefore God, who made the visible heaven and earth, does not disdain to work visible miracles in heaven or earth, that He may thereby awaken the soul which is immersed in things visible to worship Himself, the Invisible.

But the place and time of these miracles are dependent on His unchangeable will, in which things future are ordered as if already they were accomplished.

For He moves things temporal without Himself moving in time.

He does not in one way know things that are to be, and, in another, things that have been; neither does He listen to those who pray otherwise than as He sees those that will pray.

but the incarnation of the unchangeable Son of God, whereby we are saved, and are enabled to reach the things we believe, or in part understand, this is what you refuse to recognise.

You see in a fashion, although at a distance, although with filmy eye, the country in which we should abide; but the way to it you know not.

Yet you believe in grace, for you say it is granted to few to reach God by virtue of intelligence. For you do not say, “Few have thought fit or have wished,” but, “It has been granted to few,”—distinctly acknowledging God’s grace, not man’s sufficiency.

Why is it that you refuse to be Christians, on the ground that you hold opinions which, in fact, you yourselves demolish?

Is it not because Christ came in lowliness, and ye are proud?

The precise nature of the resurrection bodies of the saints may sometimes occasion discussion among those who are best read in the Christian Scriptures;

But the proud scorn to take God for their Master, because “the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us.”

So that, with these miserable creatures, it is not enough that they are sick, but they boast of their sickness, and are ashamed of the medicine which could heal them.

And, doing so, they secure not elevation, but a more disastrous fall.

Now the only way that is infallibly secured against all mistakes, is when the very same person is at once God and man,

God our end, man our way.

Of the authority of the canonical Scriptures composed by the Divine Spirit.

That the world is neither without beginning, nor yet created by a new decree of God, by which He afterwards willed what He had not before willed.

Of all visible things, the world is the greatest; of all invisible, the greatest is God.

But, that the world is, we see; that God is, we believe. That God made the world, we can believe from no one more safely than from God Himself. But where have we heard Him?

Of all visible things, the world is the greatest; of all invisible, the greatest is God.

But, that the world is, we see; that God is, we believe.

That God made the world, we can believe from no one more safely than from God Himself. But where have we heard Him? Nowhere more distinctly than in the Holy Scriptures, where His prophet said, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”

and in another place, “For ye are all the children of the light, and the children of the day; we are not of the night, nor of darkness.” Yet in some respects we may appropriately speak of a morning and evening of this day also.

For the knowledge of the creature is, in comparison of the knowledge of the Creator, but a twilight;

and so it dawns and breaks into morning when the creature is drawn to the praise and love of the Creator; and night never falls when the Creator is not forsaken through love of the creature.

from whom if an angel turn away, he becomes impure, as are all those who are called unclean spirits, and are no longer light in the Lord, but darkness in themselves, being deprived of the participation of Light eternal.

For evil has no positive nature; but the loss of good has received the name “evil.”

Of the simple and unchangeable Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, one God, in whom substance and quality are identical.

For God made nothing unwittingly; not even a human workman can be said to do so. But if He knew all that He made, He made only those things which He had known.

Whence flows a very striking but true conclusion, that this world could not be known to us unless it existed, but could not have existed unless it had been known to God.

Whether the angels that fell partook of the blessedness which the holy angels have always enjoyed from the time of their creation.

And so strong is this preference, that, had we the power, we would abolish the latter from nature altogether, whether in ignorance of the place they hold in nature, or, though we know it, sacrificing them to our own convenience.

Who, e.g., would not rather have bread in his house than mice, gold than fleas?

But there is little to wonder at in this, seeing that even when valued by men themselves (whose nature is certainly of the highest dignity), more is often given for a horse than for a slave, for a jewel than for a maid.

And the sinful will, though it violated the order of its own nature, did not on that account escape the laws of God, who justly orders all things for good.

For as the beauty of a picture is increased by well-managed shadows, so, to the eye that has skill to discern it, the universe is beautified even by sinners, though, considered by themselves, their deformity is a sad blemish.

In the second place, Origen, and all who think with him, ought to have seen that if it were the true opinion that the world was created in order that souls might, for their sins, be accommodated with bodies in which they should be shut …

For if we inquire whence it is, God created it; or whence its wisdom, God illumined it; or whence its blessedness, God is its bliss. It has its form by subsisting in Him; its enlightenment by contemplating Him; its joy by abiding in Him.

It is; it sees; it loves. In God’s eternity is its life; in God’s truth its light; in God’s goodness its joy.

Of the division of philosophy into three parts.

In respect of these truths, I am not at all afraid of the arguments of the Academicians, who say, What if you are deceived? For if I am deceived, I am.

For he who is not, cannot be deceived; and if I am deceived, by this same token I am.

And since I am if I am deceived, how am I deceived in believing that I am? for it is certain that I am if I am deceived.

… be very far removed from Him—being neither co-eternal, nor, to say all in a word, consubstantial with Him—is yet nearer to Him in nature than any other of His works, and is destined to be yet restored, that it may bear a still closer resemblance.

For we both are, and know that we are, and delight in our being, and our knowledge of it.

Moreover, in these three things no true-seeming illusion disturbs us;

If we were stones, or waves, or wind, or flame, or anything of that kind, we should want, indeed, both sensation and life, yet should possess a kind of attraction towards our own proper position and natural order.

For the specific gravity of bodies is, as it were, their love, whether they are carried downwards by their weight, or upwards by their levity.

For the body is borne by its gravity, as the spirit by love, whithersoever it is borne.

yet in ourselves beholding His image, let us, like that younger son of the gospel, come to ourselves, and arise and return to Him from whom by our sin we had departed.

There our being will have no death, our knowledge no error, our love no mishap.

But now, though we are assured of our possession of these three things, not on the testimony of others, but by our own consciousness of their presence, and because we see them with our own most truthful interior vision, yet, as we cannot of ourselves …

For who can find words to tell its uses throughout the whole world? We must not listen, then, to those who praise the light of fire but find fault with its heat, judging it not by its nature, but by their convenience or discomfort.

For they wish to see, but not to be burnt.

But they forget that this very light which is so pleasant to them, disagrees with and hurts weak eyes; and in that heat which is disagreeable to them, some animals find the most suitable conditions of a healthy life.

… some perish to make way for others that are born in their room, and the less succumb to the greater, and the things that are overcome are transformed into the quality of those that have the mastery, this is the appointed order of things transitory.

Of this order the beauty does not strike us, because by our mortal frailty we are so involved in a part of it, that we cannot perceive the whole, in which these fragments that offend us are harmonized with the most accurate fitness and beauty.

And therefore, where we are not so well able to perceive the wisdom of the Creator, we are very properly enjoined to believe it, lest in the vanity of human rashness we presume to find any fault with the work of so great an Artificer.

That we ought not to expect to find any efficient cause of the evil will.

Let no one, therefore, look for an efficient cause of the evil will; for it is not efficient, but deficient, as the will itself is not an effecting of something, but a defect.

For defection from that which supremely is, to that which has less of being—this is to begin to have an evil will.

… is to say, are not towards things that are naturally and in themselves evil, but the defection of the will is evil, because it is contrary to the order of nature, and an abandonment of that which has supreme being for that which has less.

For avarice is not a fault inherent in gold, but in the man who inordinately loves gold, to the detriment of justice, which ought to be held in incomparably higher regard than gold.

Neither is luxury the fault of lovely and charming objects, but of the heart that inordinately loves sensual pleasures, to the neglect of temperance, which attaches us to objects more lovely in their spirituality, and more delectable by their incorruptibility.

And if the same things be not thus repeated in cycles, then they cannot by any science or prescience be comprehended in their endless diversity.

Even though reason could not refute, faith would smile at these argumentations, with which the godless endeavour to turn our simple piety from the right way, that we may walk with them “in a circle.”

But by the help of the Lord our God, even reason, and that readily enough, shatters these revolving circles which conjecture frames.

… from us in the world to come, then the time of misery which is to be at last exchanged for a state of blessedness, is spent by the soul more happily than its time of happiness, which is to end in a return to misery.

And thus our expectation of unhappiness is happy, but of happiness unhappy.

And therefore, as we here suffer present ills, and hereafter fear ills that are imminent, it were truer to say that we shall always be miserable, than that we can sometime be happy.

Among the terrestrial animals man was made by Him in His own image, and, for the reason I have given, was made one individual, though he was not left solitary.

For there is nothing so social by nature, so unsocial by its corruption, as this race.

And human nature has nothing more appropriate, either for the prevention of discord, or for the healing of it, where it exists, than the remembrance of that first parent of us all, whom God was pleased to create alone, that all men might be derived …

now it is said, “If ye decline death, ye transgress the commandment.” That which was formerly set as an object of terror, that men might not sin, is now to be undergone if we would not sin.

Thus, by the unutterable mercy of God, even the very punishment of wickedness has become the armour of virtue, and the penalty of the sinner becomes the reward of the righteous.

For then death was incurred by sinning, now righteousness is fulfilled by dying. In the case of the holy martyrs it is so; for to them the persecutor proposes the alternative, apostasy or death.

Thus, by the unutterable mercy of God, even the very punishment of wickedness has become the armour of virtue, and the penalty of the sinner becomes the reward of the righteous.

For then death was incurred by sinning, now righteousness is fulfilled by dying.

In the case of the holy martyrs it is so; for to them the persecutor proposes the alternative, apostasy or death. For the righteous prefer by believing to suffer what the first transgressors suffered by not believing.

For the righteous prefer by believing to suffer what the first transgressors suffered by not believing. For unless they had sinned, they would not have died; but the martyrs sin if they do not die.

The one died because they sinned, the others do not sin because they die.

By the guilt of the first, punishment was incurred; by the punishment of the second, guilt is prevented.

Of the life of mortals, which is rather to be called death than life.

For no sooner do we begin to live in this dying body, than we begin to move ceaselessly towards death.

For in the whole course of this life (if life we must call it) its mutability tends towards death.

For no sooner do we begin to live in this dying body, than we begin to move ceaselessly towards death. For in the whole course of this life (if life we must call it) its mutability tends towards death.

Certainly there is no one who is not nearer it this year than last year, and tomorrow than today, and today than yesterday, and a short while hence than now, and now than a short while ago.

For whatever time we live is deducted from our whole term of life, and that which remains is daily becoming less and less;

But while the equal moments are impartially snatched from both, the one has a nearer and the other a more remote goal to reach with this their equal speed.

It is one thing to make a longer journey, and another to walk more slowly.

He, therefore, who spends longer time on his way to death does not proceed at a more leisurely pace, but goes over more ground.

for this state is after death, not in death. On the other hand, if there is no death before or after, what do we mean when we say “after death,” or “before death?” This is a foolish way of speaking if there is no death.

And would that we had lived so well in Paradise that in very truth there were now no death!

But not only does it now exist, but so grievous a thing is it, that no skill is sufficient either to explain or to escape it.

And there, in striking contrast to our present conditions, men will not be before or after death, but always in death; and thus never living, never dead, but endlessly dying.

And never can a man be more disastrously in death than when death itself shall be deathless.

What death God intended, when He threatened our first parents with death if they should disobey His commandment.

… being sundered, and things that are composed from being dissolved, and can ordain that the souls once allotted to their bodies should never abandon them, but enjoy along with them immortality and everlasting bliss, why may He not also effect that terrestrial bodies die not?

Is God powerless to do everything that is special to the Christian’s creed, but powerful to effect everything the Platonists desire?

The philosophers, forsooth, have been admitted to a knowledge of the divine purposes and power which has been denied to the prophets!

Is God powerless to do everything that is special to the Christian’s creed, but powerful to effect everything the Platonists desire?

The philosophers, forsooth, have been admitted to a knowledge of the divine purposes and power which has been denied to the prophets!

The truth is, that the Spirit of God taught His prophets so much of His will as He thought fit to reveal, but the philosophers, in their efforts to discover it, were deceived by human conjecture.

but they tasted the tree of life, that death might not steal upon them from any quarter, and that they might not, spent with age, decay.

Other fruits were, so to speak, their nourishment, but this their sacrament.

So that the tree of life would seem to have been in the terrestrial Paradise what the wisdom of God is in the spiritual, of which it is written, “She is a tree of life to them that lay hold upon her.”

What it is to live according to man, and what to live according to God.

When, therefore, man lives according to man, not according to God, he is like the devil.

Because not even an angel might live according to an angel, but only according to God, if he was to abide in the truth, and speak God’s truth and not his own lie.

and not to live as he was made to live, that is a lie. For he certainly desires to be blessed even by not living so that he may be blessed. And what is a lie if this desire be not?

Wherefore it is not without meaning said that all sin is a lie.

For no sin is committed save by that desire or will by which we desire that it be well with us, and shrink from it being ill with us.

And if anyone demands an instance of amor being used in a bad sense (for we have already shown its use in a good sense), let him read the words, “For men shall be lovers (amantes) of their own selves, lovers (amatores) of money.”

The right will is, therefore, well-directed love, and the wrong will is ill-directed love.

Love, then, yearning to have what is loved, is desire; and having and enjoying it, is joy; fleeing what is opposed to it, it is fear; and feeling what is opposed to it, when it has befallen it, it is sadness.

“If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.” When there shall be no sin in a man, then there shall be this ἀπάθεια.

At present it is enough if we live without crime; and he who thinks he lives without sin puts aside not sin, but pardon.

And if that is to be called apathy, where the mind is the subject of no emotion, then who would not consider this insensibility to be worse than all vices?

And thus sometimes we weep in spite of ourselves, being carried beyond ourselves, not indeed by culpable desire, but by praiseworthy charity.

In us, therefore, these affections arise from human infirmity; but it was not so with the Lord Jesus, for even His infirmity was the consequence of His power.

But so long as we wear the infirmity of this life, we are rather worse men than better if we have none of these emotions at all. For the apostle vituperated and abominated some who, as he said, were “without natural affection.”

And if some, with a vanity monstrous in proportion to its rarity, have become enamoured of themselves because they can be stimulated and excited by no emotion, moved or bent by no affection, such persons rather lose all humanity than obtain true tranquillity.

For a thing is not necessarily right because it is inflexible, nor healthy because it is insensible.

Whether it is to be believed that our first parents in Paradise, before they sinned, were free from all perturbation.

And evil is removed, not by removing any nature, or part of a nature, which had been introduced by the evil, but by healing and correcting that which had been vitiated and depraved.

The will, therefore, is then truly free, when it is not the slave of vices and sins.

Such was it given us by God; and this being lost by its own fault, can only be restored by Him who was able at first to give it.

but he speaks thus, because the woman accepted as true what the serpent told her, but the man could not bear to be severed from his only companion, even though this involved a partnership in sin.

He was not on this account less culpable, but sinned with his eyes open.

And so the apostle does not say, “He did not sin,” but “He was not deceived.” For he shows that he sinned when he says, “By one man sin entered into the world,” and immediately after more distinctly, “In the likeness of Adam’s transgression.”

For it is good to have the heart lifted up, yet not to one’s self, for this is proud, but to the Lord, for this is obedient, and can be the act only of the humble.

There is, therefore, something in humility which, strangely enough, exalts the heart, and something in pride which debases it.

This seems, indeed, to be contradictory, that loftiness should debase and lowliness exalt. But pious humility enables us to submit to what is above us; and nothing is more exalted above us than God; and therefore humility, by making us subject to God, exalts us.

for the evil act had never been done had not an evil will preceded it. And what is the origin of our evil will but pride? For “pride is the beginning of sin.”

And what is pride but the craving for undue exaltation?

And this is undue exaltation, when the soul abandons Him to whom it ought to cleave as its end, and becomes a kind of end to itself. This happens when it becomes its own satisfaction.

And I make bold to say that it is useful for the proud to fall into an open and indisputable transgression, and so displease themselves, as already, by pleasing themselves, they had fallen.

For Peter was in a healthier condition when he wept and was dissatisfied with himself, than when he boldly presumed and satisfied himself.

And this is averred by the sacred Psalmist when he says, “Fill their faces with shame, that they may seek Thy name, O Lord”;

For created gods are gods not by virtue of what is in themselves, but by a participation of the true God.

By craving to be more, man becomes less; and by aspiring to be self-sufficing, he fell away from Him who truly suffices him.

Accordingly, this wicked desire which prompts man to please himself as if he were himself light, and which thus turns him away from that light by which, had he followed it, he would himself have become light—this wicked desire, I say, already secretly existed in …

and the man said, “The woman whom Thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat.”

Here there is no word of begging pardon, no word of entreaty for healing.

For though they do not, like Cain, deny that they have perpetrated the deed, yet their pride seeks to refer its wickedness to another—the woman’s pride to the serpent, the man’s to the woman.

… him to whom by sinning he had yielded himself, doomed in spite of himself to die in body as he had willingly become dead in spirit, condemned even to eternal death (had not the grace of God delivered him) because he had forsaken eternal life.

Whoever thinks such punishment either excessive or unjust shows his inability to measure the great iniquity of sinning where sin might so easily have been avoided.

For as Abraham’s obedience is with justice pronounced to be great, because the thing commanded, to kill his son, was very difficult, so in Paradise the disobedience was the greater, because the difficulty of that which was commanded was imperceptible.

In short, to say all in a word, what but disobedience was the punishment of disobedience in that sin?

For what else is man’s misery but his own disobedience to himself, so that in consequence of his not being willing to do what he could do, he now wills to do what he cannot?

For though he could not do all things in Paradise before he sinned, yet he wished to do only what he could do, and therefore he could do all things he wished.

And therefore also the tree itself which they were forbidden to touch was called the tree of the knowledge of good and evil from this circumstance, that if they ate of it it would impart to them this knowledge.

For the discomfort of sickness reveals the pleasure of health.

“They knew,” therefore, “that they were naked,”—naked of that grace which prevented them from being ashamed of bodily nakedness while the law of sin offered no resistance to their mind.

Is it not for this purpose that wives are married with such ceremony? And yet, when this well-understood act is gone about for the procreation of children, not even the children themselves, who may already have been born to them, are suffered to be witnesses.

This right action seeks the light, in so far as it seeks to be known, but yet dreads being seen.

And why so, if not because that which is by nature fitting and decent is so done as to be accompanied with a shame-begetting penalty of sin?

Even where provision is made for this lust, secrecy also is provided; and while lust found it easy to remove the prohibitions of law, shamelessness found it impossible to lay aside the veil of retirement.

For even shameless men call this shameful; and though they love the pleasure, dare not display it.

What! does not even conjugal intercourse, sanctioned as it is by law for the propagation of children, legitimate and honourable though it be, does it not seek retirement from every eye?

But the organs of generation are so subjected to the rule of lust, that they have no motion but what it communicates. It is this we are ashamed of; it is this which blushingly hides from the eyes of onlookers.

And rather will a man endure a crowd of witnesses when he is unjustly venting his anger on someone, than the eye of one man when he innocently copulates with his wife.

Of the foolish beastliness of the Cynics.

… though it is related that Diogenes once dared to put his opinion in practice, under the impression that his sect would be all the more famous if his egregious shamelessness were deeply graven in the memory of mankind, yet this example was not afterwards followed.

Shame had more influence with them, to make them blush before men, than error to make them affect a resemblance to dogs.

And possibly, even in the case of Diogenes, and those who did imitate him, there was but an appearance and pretence of copulation, and not the reality. Even at this day there are still Cynic philosophers to be seen;

… many remarkable movements and moods beyond the ordinary course of nature, what reason is there for doubting that, before man was involved by his sin in this weak and corruptible condition, his members might have served his will for the propagation of offspring without lust?

Man has been given over to himself because he abandoned God, while he sought to be self-satisfying; and disobeying God, he could not obey even himself.

Hence it is that he is involved in the obvious misery of being unable to live as he wishes. For if he lived as he wished, he would think himself blessed; but he could not be so if he lived wickedly.

For this nature demands; and nature is not fully and perfectly blessed till it attains what it seeks. But what man is at present able to live as he wishes, when it is not in his power so much as to live?

He wishes to live, he is compelled to die.

How, then, does he live as he wishes who does not live as long as he wishes? or if he wishes to die, how can he live as he wishes, since he does not wish even to live?

Of the nature of the two cities, the earthly and the heavenly.

Accordingly, two cities have been formed by two loves: the earthly by the love of self, even to the contempt of God; the heavenly by the love of God, even to the contempt of self.

The former, in a word, glories in itself, the latter in the Lord. For the one seeks glory from men; but the greatest glory of the other is God, the witness of conscience. The one lifts up its head in its own glory;

Accordingly, two cities have been formed by two loves: the earthly by the love of self, even to the contempt of God; the heavenly by the love of God, even to the contempt of self.

The former, in a word, glories in itself, the latter in the Lord.

For the one seeks glory from men; but the greatest glory of the other is God, the witness of conscience. The one lifts up its head in its own glory;

And were we to enter into a more detailed investigation of these matters, an endless number of endless questions would arise, which would involve us in a larger work than the present occasion admits.

We cannot be expected to find room for replying to every question that may be started by unoccupied and captious men, who are ever more ready to ask questions than capable of understanding the answer.

Yet I trust we have already done justice to these great and difficult questions regarding the beginning of the world, or of the soul, or of the human race itself.

… own dominion would be curtailed—for Abel was not solicitous to rule in that city which his brother built—he was moved by that diabolical, envious hatred with which the evil regard the good, for no other reason than because they are good while themselves are evil.

For the possession of goodness is by no means diminished by being shared with a partner either permanent or temporarily assumed; on the contrary, the possession of goodness is increased in proportion to the concord and charity of each of those who share it.

In short, he who is unwilling to share this possession cannot have it; and he who is most willing to admit others to a share of it will have the greatest abundance to himself.

For the possession of goodness is by no means diminished by being shared with a partner either permanent or temporarily assumed; on the contrary, the possession of goodness is increased in proportion to the concord and charity of each of those who share it.

In short, he who is unwilling to share this possession cannot have it; and he who is most willing to admit others to a share of it will have the greatest abundance to himself.

The quarrel, then, between Romulus and Remus shows how the earthly city is divided against itself; that which fell out between Cain and Abel illustrated the hatred that subsists between the two cities, that of God and that of men.

And this is the characteristic of the earthly city, that it worships God or gods who may aid it in reigning victoriously and peacefully on earth not through love of doing good, but through lust of rule.

The good use the world that they may enjoy God: the wicked, on the contrary, that they may enjoy the world would fain use God

—those of them, at least, who have attained to the belief that He is and takes an interest in human affairs. For they who have not yet attained even to this belief are still at a much lower level.

so that, when it is said, “To thee its turning,” we must not supply “shall be,” but we must read, “To thee let its turning be,” understanding it as a command, not as a prediction.

For then shall a man rule over his sin when he does not prefer it to himself and defend it, but subjects it by repentance; otherwise he that becomes protector of it shall surely become its prisoner.

But if we understand this sin to be that carnal concupiscence of which the apostle says, “The flesh lusteth against the spirit,” among the fruits of which lust he names envy, by which assuredly Cain was stung and excited to destroy his brother, then we …

and though it was quite allowable in the earliest ages of the human race to marry one’s sister, it is now abhorred as a thing which no circumstances could justify.

For custom has very great power either to attract or to shock human feeling.

And in this matter, while it restrains concupiscence within due bounds, the man who neglects and disobeys it is justly branded as abominable.

For custom has very great power either to attract or to shock human feeling. And in this matter, while it restrains concupiscence within due bounds, the man who neglects and disobeys it is justly branded as abominable.

For if it is iniquitous to plough beyond our own boundaries through the greed of gain, is it not much more iniquitous to transgress the recognised boundaries of morals through sexual lust?

And with regard to marriage in the next degree of consanguinity, marriage between cousins, we have observed that in our own time the customary morality has prevented this from being frequent, though the law allows it.

for they live according to man, not according to God. And the Indian gymnosophists, who are said to philosophize in the solitudes of India in a state of nudity, are its citizens; and they abstain from marriage.

For continence is not a good thing, except when it is practised in the faith of the highest good, that is, God.

Yet no one is found to have practised it before the deluge;

And thus beauty, which is indeed God’s handiwork, but only a temporal, carnal, and lower kind of good, is not fitly loved in preference to God, the eternal, spiritual, and unchangeable good.

When the miser prefers his gold to justice, it is through no fault of the gold, but of the man; and so with every created thing.

For though it be good, it may be loved with an evil as well as with a good love: it is loved rightly when it is loved ordinately; evilly, when inordinately.

… but having belonged to the earthly city and society of the earthly, they had been of corrupt manners from the first, and were loved for their bodily beauty by the sons of God, or the citizens of the other city which sojourns in this world.

Beauty is indeed a good gift of God; but that the good may not think it a great good, God dispenses it even to the wicked.

And thus, when the good that is great and proper to the good was abandoned by the sons of God, they fell to a paltry good which is not peculiar to the good, but common to the good and the evil;

Of the anger of God, which does not inflame His mind, nor disturb His unchangeable tranquillity.

The anger of God is not a disturbing emotion of His mind, but a judgment by which punishment is inflicted upon sin.

His thought and reconsideration also are the unchangeable reason which changes things; for He does not, like man, repent of anything He has done, because in all matters His decision is as inflexible as His prescience is certain.

What wonder is it, therefore, if that wise and just man was instructed by God what would suit each, so that without flesh he prepared and stored provision fit for every species?

And what is there which hunger would not make animals eat?

Or what could not be made sweet and wholesome by God, who, with a divine facility, might have enabled them to do without food at all, had it not been requisite to the completeness of so great a mystery that they should be fed?

How did they expect to raise this lofty mass against God, when they had built it above all the mountains and the clouds of the earth’s atmosphere? What injury could any spiritual or material elevation do to God?

The safe and true way to heaven is made by humility, which lifts up the heart to the Lord, not against Him

; as this giant is said to have been a “hunter against the Lord.” This has been misunderstood by some through the ambiguity of the Greek word, and they have translated it, not “against the Lord,” but “before the Lord”;

He and his people, therefore, erected this tower against the Lord, and so gave expression to their impious pride; and justly was their wicked intention punished by God, even though it was unsuccessful. But what was the nature of the punishment?

As the tongue is the instrument of domination, in it pride was punished; so that man, who would not understand God when He issued His commands, should be misunderstood when he himself gave orders.

Thus was that conspiracy disbanded, for each man retired from those he could not understand, and associated with those whose speech was intelligible;

For God, the Creator of all, knows where and when each thing ought to be, or to have been created, because He sees the similarities and diversities which can contribute to the beauty of the whole.

But he who cannot see the whole is offended by the deformity of the part, because he is blind to that which balances it, and to which it belongs.

We know that men are born with more than four fingers on their hands or toes on their feet: this is a smaller matter;

for we be brethren. Behold, is not the whole land before thee? Separate thyself from me: if thou wilt go to the left hand, I will go to the right; or if thou wilt go to the right hand, I will go to the left.”

From this, perhaps, has arisen a pacific custom among men, that when there is any partition of earthly things, the greater should make the division, the less the choice.

Of the third promise of God, by which He assured the land of Canaan to Abraham and his seed in perpetuity.

For it is not to be believed that all of them can be seen.

For the more keenly one observes them, the more does he see.

So that it is to be supposed some remain concealed from the keenest observers, to say nothing of those stars which are said to rise and set in another part of the world most remote from us.

And what else does the eighth day mean than Christ, who rose again when the week was completed, that is, after the Sabbath? The very names of the parents are changed: all things proclaim newness, and the new covenant is shadowed forth in the old.

For what does the term old covenant imply but the concealing of the new? And what does the term new covenant imply but the revealing of the old?

The laughter of Abraham is the exultation of one who rejoices, not the scornful laughter of one who mistrusts. And those words of his in his heart, “Shall a son be born to me that am an hundred years old?

all things proclaim newness, and the new covenant is shadowed forth in the old. For what does the term old covenant imply but the concealing of the new? And what does the term new covenant imply but the revealing of the old?

The laughter of Abraham is the exultation of one who rejoices, not the scornful laughter of one who mistrusts.

And those words of his in his heart, “Shall a son be born to me that am an hundred years old? and shall Sarah, that is ninety years old, bear?” are not the words of doubt, but of wonder.

But that they were angels the Scripture testifies, not only in this book of Genesis, in which these transactions are related, but also in the Epistle to the Hebrews, where in praising hospitality it is said, “

For thereby some have entertained angels unawares.

” By these three men, then, when a son Isaac was again promised to Abraham by Sarah, such a divine oracle was also given that it was said, “Abraham shall become a great and numerous nation, and all the nations of the earth shall be …

From this, then, the boy got his name. For when Isaac was born and called by that name, Sarah showed that her laughter was not that of scornful reproach, but that of joyful praise; for she said, “

God hath made me to laugh, so that everyone who hears will laugh with me.

” Then in a little while the bond maid was cast out of the house with her son;

Among other things, of which it would take too long time to mention the whole, Abraham was tempted about the offering up of his well-beloved son Isaac, to prove his pious obedience, and so make it known to the world, not to God.

Now every temptation is not blameworthy; it may even be praiseworthy, because it furnishes probation.

And, for the most part, the human mind cannot attain to self-knowledge otherwise than by making trial of its powers through temptation, by some kind of experimental and not merely verbal self-interrogation;

The primacy of the elder was transferred to the younger by a bargain and agreement between them, when the elder immoderately lusted after the lentils the younger had prepared for food, and for that price sold his birthright to him, confirming it with an oath.

We learn from this that a person is to be blamed, not for the kind of food he eats, but for immoderate greed.

Isaac grew old, and old age deprived him of his eyesight.

Who would not rather have expected the curse of an angry man here, if these things had been done in an earthly manner, and not by inspiration from above?

O things done, yet done prophetically; on the earth, yet celestially; by men, yet divinely!

If everything that is fertile of so great mysteries should be examined carefully, many volumes would be filled; but the moderate compass fixed for this work compels us to hasten to other things.

for I will not leave thee, until I have done all which I have spoken to thee of. And Jacob awoke out of his sleep, and said, Surely the Lord is in this place, and I knew it not. And he was afraid, and said,

How dreadful is this place! this is none other but the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.

And Jacob arose, and took the stone that he had put under his head there, and set it up for a memorial, and poured oil upon the top of it. And Jacob called the name of that place the house of God.” This is prophetic.

and for that reason the first language was then learned, that is, the Hebrew. For man begins to speak in childhood, the age succeeding infancy, which is so termed because then he cannot speak.

And that first age is quite drowned in oblivion, just as the first age of the human race was blotted out by the flood; for who is there that can remember his infancy?

Wherefore in this progress of the city of God, as the previous book contained that first age, so this one ought to contain the second and third ages, in which third age, as was shown by the heifer of three years old, the she-goat of …

They that were full of bread are diminished; and the hungry have passed beyond the earth: for the barren hath born seven; and she that hath many children is waxed feeble.

The Lord killeth and maketh alive: He bringeth down to hell, and bringeth up again.

The Lord maketh poor and maketh rich: He bringeth low and lifteth up.

but let him that glorieth glory in this—to understand and know the Lord, and to do judgment and justice in the midst of the earth.”

He in no small measure understands and knows the Lord who understands and knows that even this, that he can understand and know the Lord, is given to him by the Lord.

“For what hast thou,” saith the apostle, “that thou hast not received? But if thou hast received it, why dost thou glory as if thou hadst not received it?” That is, as if thou hadst of thine own self whereof thou mightest glory.

But whence do they receive this, except from Him of whom it is here immediately said, “Giving the vow to him that voweth?” Otherwise they would be of those mighty ones whose bow is weakened. “Giving,” she saith, “the vow to him that voweth.”

For no one could vow anything acceptable to God, unless he received from Him that which he might vow.

There follows, “And He hath blessed the years of the just,” to wit, that he may live forever with Him to whom it is said, “And Thy years shall have no end.” For there the years abide; but here they pass away, yea, they perish:

There follows, “And He hath blessed the years of the just,” to wit, that he may live forever with Him to whom it is said, “And Thy years shall have no end.”

For there the years abide; but here they pass away, yea, they perish: for before they come they are not, and when they shall have come they shall not be, because they bring their own end with them.

Now of these two, that is, “giving the vow to him that voweth,” and “He hath blessed the years of the just,” the one is what we do, the other what we receive.

Whether the truth of this promised peace can be ascribed to those times passed away under Solomon.

Whoever hopes for this so great good in this world, and in this earth, his wisdom is but folly.

Can anyone think it was fulfilled in the peace of Solomon’s reign? Scripture certainly commends that peace with excellent praise as a shadow of that which is to come.

Now David was a man skilled in songs, who dearly loved musical harmony, not with a vulgar delight, but with a believing disposition, and by it served his God, who is the true God, by the mystical representation of a great thing.

For the rational and well-ordered concord of diverse sounds in harmonious variety suggests the compact unity of the well-ordered city.

Then almost all his prophecy is in psalms, of which a hundred and fifty are contained in what we call the Book of Psalms, of which some will have it those only were made by David which are inscribed with his name.

… nature, is yet for the most part divided against itself, and the strongest oppress the others, because all follow after their own interests and lusts, while what is longed for either suffices for none, or not for all, because it is not the very thing.

For the vanquished succumb to the victorious, preferring any sort of peace and safety to freedom itself; so that they who chose to die rather than be slaves have been greatly wondered at.

For in almost all nations the very voice of nature somehow proclaims, that those who happen to be conquered should choose rather to be subject to their conquerors than to be killed by all kinds of warlike destruction.

Still, while they deny these things concerning them, they cannot clear them of all crime, because at their demand they exhibit plays in which the very things they wisely deny are basely done, and the gods are appeased by these false and base things.

Now, even although the play celebrates an unreal crime of the gods, yet to delight in the ascription of an unreal crime is a real one.

What fables were invented at the time when judges began to rule the Hebrews.

… is to be understood spiritually in this sense, that by going forward in the living God, by the steps of faith, which worketh by love, we must flee out of the city of this world, which is altogether a society of ungodly angels and men.

Yea, the greater we see the power of the demons to be in these depths, so much the more tenaciously must we cleave to the Mediator through whom we ascend from these lowest to the highest places.

For if we should say these things are not to be credited, there are not wanting even now some who would affirm that they had either heard on the best authority, or even themselves experienced, something of that kind.

… dogma and opinion, yet I may grant that there were some, or even very many of them, whose love of truth severed them from their teachers or fellow-disciples, that they might strive for what they thought was the truth, whether it was so or not.

But what can human misery do, or how or where can it reach forth, so as to attain blessedness, if divine authority does not lead it?

Finally, let our authors, among whom the canon of the sacred books is fixed and bounded, be far from disagreeing in any respect.

For He had said to them, “Fear ye not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul.”

And that they might not be frozen with fear, they burned with the fire of charity.

Finally, the gospel of Christ was preached in the whole world, not only by those who had seen and heard Him both before His passion and after His resurrection, but also after their death by their successors, amid the horrible persecutions, diverse torments and deaths …

… magic arts from Him, yet that, although He was innocent, His disciple was an enchanter, and chose that His name rather than his own should be worshipped through his magic arts, his great labours and perils, and at last even the shedding of his blood!

If Peter the enchanter made the world so love Christ, what did Christ the innocent do to make Peter so love Him?

Let them answer themselves then, and, if they can, let them understand that the world, for the sake of eternal life, was made to love Christ by that same supernal grace which made Peter also love Christ for the sake of the eternal life to …

Finally, what god was it—not ours, certainly, but one of their own—who was either enticed or compelled by so great wickedness to perform these things? For those verses say that Peter bound, not any demon, but a god to do these things.

Such a god have they who have not Christ.

Of the very foolish lie of the pagans, in feigning that the Christian religion was not to last beyond three hundred and sixty-five years.

and they are not ashamed to call the life that is beset with these evils happy.

O happy life, which seeks the aid of death to end it!

If it is happy, let the wise man remain in it; but if these ills drive him out of it, in what sense is it happy?

Or how can they say that these are not evils which conquer the virtue of fortitude, and force it not only to yield, but so to rave that it in one breath calls life happy and recommends it to be given up?

For who is so blind as not to see that if it were happy it would not be fled from?

And if they say we should flee from it on account of the infirmities that beset it, why then do they not lower their pride and acknowledge that it is miserable? Was it, I would ask, fortitude or weakness which prompted Cato to kill himself?

… order of nature, so that the soul is subjected to God, and the flesh to the soul, and consequently both soul and flesh to God—does not this virtue demonstrate that it is as yet rather labouring towards its end than resting in its finished work?

For the soul is so much the less subjected to God as it is less occupied with the thought of God; and the flesh is so much the less subjected to the spirit as it lusts more vehemently against the spirit.

So long, therefore, as we are beset by this weakness, this plague, this disease, how shall we dare to say that we are safe? and if not safe, then how can we be already enjoying our final beatitude?

What shall I say of torture applied to the accused himself?

He is tortured to discover whether he is guilty, so that, though innocent, he suffers most undoubted punishment for crime that is still doubtful, not because it is proved that he committed it, but because it is not ascertained that he did not commit it.

Thus the ignorance of the judge frequently involves an innocent person in suffering.

He is tortured to discover whether he is guilty, so that, though innocent, he suffers most undoubted punishment for crime that is still doubtful, not because it is proved that he committed it, but because it is not ascertained that he did not commit it.

Thus the ignorance of the judge frequently involves an innocent person in suffering.

And what is still more unendurable—a thing, indeed, to be bewailed, and, if that were possible, watered with fountains of tears—is this, that when the judge puts the accused to the question, that he may not unwittingly put an innocent man to death, the result …

and this wrongdoing, even though it gave rise to no war, would still be matter of grief to man because it is man’s wrongdoing. Let everyone, then, who thinks with pain on all these great evils, so horrible, so ruthless, acknowledge that this is misery.

And if anyone either endures or thinks of them without mental pain, this is a more miserable plight still, for he thinks himself happy because he has lost human feeling.

That the friendship of good men cannot be securely rested in, so long as the dangers of this life force us to be anxious.

That the friendship of good men cannot be securely rested in, so long as the dangers of this life force us to be anxious.

In our present wretched condition we frequently mistake a friend for an enemy, and an enemy for a friend.

And if we escape this pitiable blindness, is not the unfeigned confidence and mutual love of true and good friends our one solace in human society, filled as it is with misunderstandings and calamities?

We would, in fact, prefer to hear that they were dead, although we could not without anguish hear of even this. For if their life has solaced us with the charms of friendship, can it be that their death should affect us with no sadness?

He who will have none of this sadness must, if possible, have no friendly intercourse.

Let him interdict or extinguish friendly affection; let him burst with ruthless insensibility the bonds of every human relationship; or let him contrive so to use them that no sweetness shall distil into his spirit.

… which seems impossible unless the wicked live forever, it may therefore be advisable, in order that everyone may readily understand what we mean, to say that the end or supreme good of this city is either peace in eternal life, or eternal life in peace.

For peace is a good so great, that even in this earthly and mortal life there is no word we hear with such pleasure, nothing we desire with such zest, or find to be more thoroughly gratifying.

So that if we dwell for a little longer on this subject, we shall not, in my opinion, be wearisome to our readers, who will attend both for the sake of understanding what is the end of this city of which we speak, and for …

Whoever gives even moderate attention to human affairs and to our common nature, will recognise that if there is no man who does not wish to be joyful, neither is there anyone who does not wish to have peace.

For even they who make war desire nothing but victory⁠—desire, that is to say, to attain to peace with glory.

For what else is victory than the conquest of those who resist us? and when this is done there is peace.

It is therefore with the desire for peace that wars are waged, even by those who take pleasure in exercising their warlike nature in command and battle. And hence it is obvious that peace is the end sought for by war.

For every man seeks peace by waging war, but no man seeks war by making peace.

For even they who intentionally interrupt the peace in which they are living have no hatred of peace, but only wish it changed into a peace that suits them better.

They cohabit, beget, produce, suckle, and bring up their young, though very many of them are not gregarious, but solitary—not like sheep, deer, pigeons, starlings, bees, but such as lions, foxes, eagles, bats.

For what tigress does not gently purr over her cubs, and lay aside her ferocity to fondle them?

What kite, solitary as he is when circling over his prey, does not seek a mate, build a nest, hatch the eggs, bring up the young birds, and maintain with the mother of his family as peaceful a domestic alliance as he can?

… wicked men wage war to maintain the peace of their own circle, and wish that, if possible, all men belonged to them, that all men and things might serve but one head, and might, either through love or fear, yield themselves to peace with him!

It is thus that pride in its perversity apes God.

It abhors equality with other men under Him; but, instead of His rule, it seeks to impose a rule of its own upon its equals. It abhors, that is to say, the just peace of God, and loves its own unjust peace;

but, instead of His rule, it seeks to impose a rule of its own upon its equals. It abhors, that is to say, the just peace of God, and loves its own unjust peace; but it cannot help loving peace of one kind or other.

For there is no vice so clean contrary to nature that it obliterates even the faintest traces of nature.

He, then, who prefers what is right to what is wrong, and what is well-ordered to what is perverted, sees that the peace of unjust men is not worthy to be called peace in comparison with the peace of the just.

Civil peace is a similar concord among the citizens. The peace of the celestial city is the perfectly ordered and harmonious enjoyment of God, and of one another in God.

The peace of all things is the tranquillity of order.

Order is the distribution which allots things equal and unequal, each to its own place.

And thus there are many wicked masters who have religious men as their slaves, and who are yet themselves in bondage; “for of whom a man is overcome, of the same is he brought in bondage.”

And beyond question it is a happier thing to be the slave of a man than of a lust; for even this very lust of ruling, to mention no others, lays waste men’s hearts with the most ruthless dominion.

Moreover, when men are subjected to one another in a peaceful order, the lowly position does as much good to the servant as the proud position does harm to the master.

it is thus that God has created man. For “let them,” He says, “have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every creeping thing which creepeth on the earth.”

He did not intend that His rational creature, who was made in His image, should have dominion over anything but the irrational creation⁠—not man over man, but man over the beasts.

And hence the righteous men in primitive times were made shepherds of cattle rather than kings of men, God intending thus to teach us what the relative position of the creatures is, and what the desert of sin;

No man has a right to lead such a life of contemplation as to forget in his own ease the service due to his neighbour; nor has any man a right to be so immersed in active life as to neglect the contemplation of God.

The charm of leisure must not be indolent vacancy of mind, but the investigation or discovery of truth, that thus every man may make solid attainments without grudging that others do the same.

And, in active life, it is not the honours or power of this life we should covet, since all things under the sun are vanity, but we should aim at using our position and influence, if these have been honourably attained, for the welfare of …

It is a Greek word, and signifies that he who governs, superintends or takes care of those whom he governs: for ἐπί means “over,” and σκοπεῖν, “to see”; therefore ἐπισκοπεῖν means “to oversee.”

So that he who loves to govern rather than to do good is no bishop.

Accordingly no one is prohibited from the search after truth, for in this leisure may most laudably be spent;

… people, and, assuming another, say that a people is an assemblage of reasonable beings bound together by a common agreement as to the objects of their love, then, in order to discover the character of any people, we have only to observe what they love.

Yet whatever it loves, if only it is an assemblage of reasonable beings and not of beasts, and is bound together by an agreement as to the objects of love, it is reasonably called a people

; and it will be a superior people in proportion as it is bound together by higher interests, inferior in proportion as it is bound together by lower.

Wherefore, as the life of the flesh is the soul, so the blessed life of man is God, of whom the sacred writings of the Hebrews say, “Blessed is the people whose God is the Lord.”

Miserable, therefore, is the people which is alienated from God.

Yet even this people has a peace of its own which is not to be lightly esteemed, though, indeed, it shall not in the end enjoy it, because it makes no good use of it before the end.

That in the mingled web of human affairs God’s judgment is present, though it cannot be discerned.

In this present time we learn to bear with equanimity the ills to which even good men are subject, and to hold cheap the blessings which even the wicked enjoy.

And consequently, even in those conditions of life in which the justice of God is not apparent, His teaching is salutary. For we do not know by what judgment of God this good man is poor and that bad man rich;

For what does he mean by “For the mystery of iniquity doth already work: only he who now holdeth, let him hold until he be taken out of the way: and then shall the wicked be revealed?”

I frankly confess I do not know what he means.

I will nevertheless mention such conjectures as I have heard or read.

… to have been killed, and that he now lives in concealment in the vigour of that same age which he had reached when he was believed to have perished, and will live until he is revealed in his own time and restored to his kingdom.

But I wonder that men can be so audacious in their conjectures.

However, it is not absurd to believe that these words of the apostle, “Only he who now holdeth, let him hold until he be taken out of the way,” refer to the Roman empire, as if it were said, “Only he who now reigneth, let …

… the devil to do these things, the permission being by His own just judgment, though the doing of them is in pursuance of the devil’s unrighteous and malignant purpose, “that they all might be judged who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness.”

Therefore, being judged, they shall be seduced, and, being seduced, they shall be judged.

But, being judged, they shall be seduced by those secretly just and justly secret judgments of God, with which He has never ceased to judge since the first sin of the rational creatures;

What shall we see but all those things which now we see not, but believe in, and of which the idea we form, according to our feeble capacity, is incomparably less than the reality? “And ye shall see,” he says, “and your heart shall rejoice.”

Here ye believe, there ye shall see.

But because he said, “Your heart shall rejoice,” lest we should suppose that the blessings of that Jerusalem are only spiritual, he adds, “And your bones shall rise up like a herb,” alluding to the resurrection of the body, and as it were supplying an …

… live in that blaze of heat without pain, the element of fire being congenial to their nature, and causing it to thrive and not to suffer—just as if it were not more incredible that it should thrive than that it should suffer in such circumstances.

It is strange that anything should suffer in fire and yet live, but stranger that it should live in fire and not suffer.

If, then, the latter be believed, why not also the former?

For death will not be abolished, but will be eternal, since the soul will neither be able to enjoy God and live, nor to die and escape the pains of the body.

The first death drives the soul from the body against her will: the second death holds the soul in the body against her will.

The two have this in common, that the soul suffers against her will what her own body inflicts.

For they indeed have no acquaintance with any flesh but that which is mortal; and this is their whole argument, that what they have had no experience of they judge quite impossible.

For we cannot call it reasoning to make pain a presumption of death, while, in fact, it is rather a sign of life.

For though it be a question whether that which suffers can continue to live forever, yet it is certain that everything which suffers pain does live, and that pain can exist only in a living subject.

Now if this marvel had been told us of some Indian mineral which we had no opportunity of experimenting upon, we should either have forthwith pronounced it a falsehood, or certainly should have been greatly astonished.

But things that daily present themselves to our own observation we despise, not because they are really less marvellous, but because they are common

; so that even some products of India itself, remote as it is from ourselves, cease to excite our admiration as soon as we can admire them at our leisure.

The intervening silver was not affected at all, but precisely as the magnet was moved backwards and forwards below it, no matter how quickly, so was the iron attracted above.

I have related what I myself have witnessed; I have related what I was told by one whom I trust as I trust my own eyes.

Let me further say what I have read about this magnet. When a diamond is laid near it, it does not lift iron; or if it has already lifted it, as soon as the diamond approaches, it drops it. These stones come from India.

For their only ground of unbelief in the Scriptures is, that they contain incredible things, just such as I have been recounting. For, say they, reason cannot admit that flesh burn and remain unconsumed, suffer without dying.

Mighty reasoners, indeed, who are competent to give the reason of all the marvels that exist!

Let them then give us the reason of the few things we have cited, and which, if they did not know they existed, and were only assured by us they would at some future time occur, they would believe still less than that which they …

So great an author as Varro would certainly not have called this a portent had it not seemed to be contrary to nature. For we say that all portents are contrary to nature; but they are not so.

For how is that contrary to nature which happens by the will of God, since the will of so mighty a Creator is certainly the nature of each created thing?

A portent, therefore, happens not contrary to nature, but contrary to what we know as nature. But who can number the multitude of portents recorded in profane histories?

For we say that all portents are contrary to nature; but they are not so. For how is that contrary to nature which happens by the will of God, since the will of so mighty a Creator is certainly the nature of each created thing?

A portent, therefore, happens not contrary to nature, but contrary to what we know as nature.

But who can number the multitude of portents recorded in profane histories? Let us then at present fix our attention on this one only which concerns the matter in hand.

And who would not shrink from the alternative, and elect to die, if it were proposed to him either to suffer death or to be again an infant?

Our infancy, indeed, introducing us to this life not with laughter but with tears, seems unconsciously to predict the ills we are to encounter.

Zoroaster alone is said to have laughed when he was born, and that unnatural omen portended no good to him.

and this, though it be a miserable calamity, is better than the earlier stages of this life, which do not recognise that a war is to be maintained.

For better is it to contend with vices than without conflict to be subdued by them.

Better, I say, is war with the hope of peace everlasting than captivity without any thought of deliverance.

and this, though it be a miserable calamity, is better than the earlier stages of this life, which do not recognise that a war is to be maintained. For better is it to contend with vices than without conflict to be subdued by them.

Better, I say, is war with the hope of peace everlasting than captivity without any thought of deliverance.

We long, indeed, for the cessation of this war, and, kindled by the flame of divine love, we burn for entrance on that well-ordered peace in which whatever is inferior is forever subordinated to what is above it.

Or is perhaps the sentence of God, which is to be pronounced on wicked men and angels alike, to be true in the case of the angels, false in that of men?

Plainly it will be so if the conjectures of men are to weigh more than the word of God.

But because this is absurd, they who desire to be rid of eternal punishment ought to abstain from arguing against God, and rather, while yet there is opportunity, obey the divine commands.

… who said, “Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he shall not enter into the kingdom of God,” say also, “Except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven?”

Why do many through fear of the first saying run to baptism, while few through fear of the second seek to be justified?

As therefore it is not to his brother a man says, “Thou fool,” if when he says it he is indignant not at the brotherhood, but at the sin of the offender—for otherwise he were guilty of hell fire—so he who extends charity to a …

And indeed evil had never been, had not the mutable nature—mutable, though good, and created by the most high God and immutable Good, who created all things good—brought evil upon itself by sin.

And this its sin is itself proof that its nature was originally good.

For had it not been very good, though not equal to its Creator, the desertion of God as its light could not have been an evil to it.

And these nations, though they might not believe that Romulus was a god, at least said so, that they might not give offence to their sovereign state by refusing to give its founder that title which was given him by

Rome, which had adopted this belief, not by a love of error, but an error of love.

But though Christ is the founder of the heavenly and eternal city, yet it did not believe Him to be God because it was founded by Him, but rather it is founded by Him, in virtue of its belief.

But though Christ is the founder of the heavenly and eternal city, yet it did not believe Him to be God because it was founded by Him, but rather it is founded by Him, in virtue of its belief.

Rome, after it had been built and dedicated, worshipped its founder in a temple as a god; but this Jerusalem laid Christ, its God, as its foundation, that the building and dedication might proceed.

The former city loved its founder, and therefore believed him to be a god; the latter believed Christ to be God, and therefore loved Him.

Rome, after it had been built and dedicated, worshipped its founder in a temple as a god; but this Jerusalem laid Christ, its God, as its foundation, that the building and dedication might proceed.

The former city loved its founder, and therefore believed him to be a god; the latter believed Christ to be God, and therefore loved Him.

There was an antecedent cause for the love of the former city, and for its believing that even a false dignity attached to the object of its love;

The city of Christ, which, although as yet a stranger upon earth, had countless hosts of citizens, did not make war upon its godless persecutors for the sake of temporal security, but preferred to win eternal salvation by abstaining from war.

They were bound, imprisoned, beaten, tortured, burned, torn in pieces, massacred, and yet they multiplied.

It was not given to them to fight for their eternal salvation except by despising their temporal salvation for their Saviour’s sake.

They were bound, imprisoned, beaten, tortured, burned, torn in pieces, massacred, and yet they multiplied.

It was not given to them to fight for their eternal salvation except by despising their temporal salvation for their Saviour’s sake.

I am aware that Cicero, in the third book of his De Republica, if I mistake not, argues that a first-rate power will not engage in war except either for honour or for safety.

For these most trustworthy books of ours contain in one narrative both the miracles that were wrought and the creed which they were wrought to confirm.

The miracles were published that they might produce faith, and the faith which they produced brought them into greater prominence.

For they are read in congregations that they may be believed, and yet they would not be so read unless they were believed.

Why, they say, are those miracles, which you affirm were wrought formerly, wrought no longer? I might, indeed, reply that miracles were necessary before the world believed, in order that it might believe.

And whoever nowadays demands to see prodigies that he may believe, is himself a great prodigy, because he does not believe, though the whole world does.

But they make these objections for the sole purpose of insinuating that even those former miracles were never wrought. How, then, is it that everywhere Christ is celebrated with such firm belief in His resurrection and ascension?

Whether the others prayed, and had not their attention wholly diverted by this conduct, I do not know.

For myself, I could not pray at all. This only I briefly said in my heart: “O Lord, what prayers of Thy people dost Thou hear if Thou hearest not these?”

For it seemed to me that nothing could be added to this prayer, unless he expired in praying.

… when she told him what had happened, he is said to have replied, with religious politeness, though with a contemptuous tone, and an expression which made her fear he would utter some blasphemy against Christ, “I thought you would make some great discovery to me.”

She, shuddering at his indifference, quickly replied, “What great thing was it for Christ to heal a cancer, who raised one who had been four days dead?”

When, therefore, I had heard this, I was extremely indignant that so great a miracle, wrought in that well-known city, and on a person who was certainly not obscure, should not be divulged, and I considered that she should be spoken to, if not reprimanded …

They now rejoiced that she was like her brother, as before they had mourned that she remained unlike him; and as they had not yet uttered their prayers in her behalf, they perceived that their intention of doing so had been speedily heard.

They shouted God’s praises without words, but with such a noise that our ears could scarcely bear it.

What was there in the hearts of these exultant people but the faith of Christ, for which Stephen had shed his blood?

Why, then, can an animal of earth not live in the second element, that is, in water, while it can in the third?

Why, though it belongs to the earth, is it forthwith suffocated if it is forced to live in the second element next above earth, while it lives in the third, and cannot live out of it?

Is there a mistake here in the order of the elements, or is not the mistake rather in their reasonings, and not in the nature of things?

for each element is poised by its own weight so as to preserve its own place and rank.

Behold with what arguments human infirmity, possessed with vanity, contradicts the omnipotence of God!

What, then, do so many earthly bodies do in the air, since the air is the third element from the earth?

For there shall be no lust, which is now the cause of confusion. For before they sinned, the man and the woman were naked, and were not ashamed. From those bodies, then, vice shall be withdrawn, while nature shall be preserved.

And the sex of woman is not a vice, but nature.

It shall then indeed be superior to carnal intercourse and childbearing;

And consequently overgrown and emaciated persons need not fear that they shall be in heaven of such a figure as they would not be even in this world if they could help it.

For all bodily beauty consists in the proportion of the parts, together with a certain agreeableness of colour.

Where there is no proportion, the eye is offended, either because there is something awanting, or too small, or too large.

But if it had been blindness, that is to say, if they could see nothing, then they would not have asked for the gate by which they might enter the house, but for guides who might lead them away.

But the love we bear to the blessed martyrs causes us, I know not how, to desire to see in the heavenly kingdom the marks of the wounds which they received for the name of Christ, and possibly we shall see them.

For this will not be a deformity, but a mark of honour, and will add lustre to their appearance, and a spiritual, if not a bodily beauty.

learn with difficulty, and without difficulty remain ignorant? are diligent with difficulty, and without difficulty are indolent? Does not this show what vitiated nature inclines and tends to by its own weight, and what succour it needs if it is to be delivered?

Inactivity, sloth, laziness, negligence, are vices which shun labour, since labour, though useful, is itself a punishment.

But, besides the punishments of childhood, without which there would be no learning of what the parents wish—and the parents rarely wish anything useful to be taught—who can describe, who can conceive the number and severity of the punishments which afflict the human race—pains which …

Why all these punishments, save to overcome ignorance and bridle evil desires—these evils with which we come into the world?

For why is it that we remember with difficulty, and without difficulty forget? learn with difficulty, and without difficulty remain ignorant? are diligent with difficulty, and without difficulty are indolent?

Does not this show what vitiated nature inclines and tends to by its own weight, and what succour it needs if it is to be delivered? Inactivity, sloth, laziness, negligence, are vices which shun labour, since labour, though useful, is itself a punishment.