worldly prosperity, while they themselves either possess it in a smaller degree or miss it altogether, they are troubled with the thought that they are serving God without reason, and so they readily fall away from the faith.
27. "But as to the man who has in view that everlasting blessedness and perpetual rest which is promised as the lot destined for the saints after this life, and who desires to become a Christian, in order that he may not pass into eternal fire with the devil, but enter into the eternal kingdom together with Christ,1 such an one is truly a Christian; (and he will be) on his guard in every temp- tation, so that he may neither be corrupted by prosperity nor be utterly broken in spirit by adversity, but remain at once modest and temperate when the good things of earth abound with him, and brave and patient when tribulations overtake him. A person of this character will also advance in attainments until he comes to that disposition of mind which will make him love God more than he fears hell; so that even were God to say to him, 'Avail yourself of carnal pleasures for ever, and sin as much as you are able, and you shall neither die nor be sent into hell, but you will only not be with me,' he would be terribly dismayed, and would altogether abstain from sinning, not now (simply) with the purpose of not falling into that of which he was wont to be afraid, but with the wish not to offend Him whom he so greatly loves: in whom alone also there is the rest, which eye hath not seen, neither hath ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man (to conceive), — the rest which God hath pre- pared for them that love Him.2 28. " Now, on the subject of this rest Scripture is significant, and refrains not [o speak, when it tells us how at the beginning of the world, and at the time when God made heaven and earth and all things which are in them, He worked during six days, and rested on the seventh day.3 For it was in the power of the Almighty to make all things even in one moment of time. For He had not labored in the view that He might enjoy (a needful) rest, since indeed "He spake, and they were made; He commanded, and they were created;"4 but that He might signify how, after six ages of this world, in a seventh age, as on the seventh day, He will rest in His saints; inasmuch as these same saints shall rest also in Him after all the good works in which they have served Him, — which He Him- self, indeed, works in them, who calls them, and instructs them, and puts away the offenses that are past, and justifies the man who previously 1 Cf. Matt. xxv. 34, 41. 3 Gen. ii. 1-3.
302 THE WORKS OF ST. AUGUSTIN.
[Chap, XVIII.
was ungodly. For as, when by His gift they work that which is good, He is Himself rightly said to work (that in them), so, when they rest in Him, He is rightly said to rest Himself. For, as regards Himself, He seeks no cessation, because He feels no labor. Moreover He made all things by His Word; and His Word is Christ Himself, in whom the angels and all those purest spirits of heaven rest in holy silence. Man, however, in that he fell by sin, has lost the rest which he possessed in His divinity, and receives it again (now) in His humanity; and for this purpose He became man, and was born of a woman, at the seasonable time at which He Himself knew it behoved it so to be fulfilled. And from the flesh assuredly He could not sustain any contamination, being Himself rather destined to purify the flesh. Of His future coming the ancient saints, in the revelation of the Spirit, had knowledge, and prophesied. And thus were they saved by believing that He was to come, even as we are saved by believing that He has come. Hence ought we to love God who has so loved us as to have sent His only Son, in order that He might endue Himself with the lowliness ' of our mortality, and die both at the hands of sinners and on behalf of sinners. For even in times of old, and in the opening ages, the depth of this mystery ceases not to be prefig- ured and prophetically announced.
CHAP. 1 8. OF WHAT IS TO BE BELIEVED ON THE SUBJECT OF THE CREATION OF MAN AND OTHER OBJECTS.
29. "Whereas, then, the omnipotent God, who is also good and just and merciful, who made all things, — whether they be great or small, whether they be highest or lowest, whether they be things which are seen, such as are the heavens and the earth and the sea, and in the heavens, in particular, the sun and the moon and other luminaries, and in the earth and the sea, again, trees and shrubs and animals each after their kind, and all bodies celestial or terrestrial alike, or whether they be things which are not seen, such as are those spirits whereby bodies are animated and endowed with life, — made also man after His own image, in order that, as He Him- self, in virtue of His omnipotence, presides over universal creation, so man, in virtue of that intelligence of his by which he comes to know even his Creator and worships Him, might preside over all the living creatures of earth: Whereas, too, he made the woman to 1 Htimanitate, = humanity, also occurs instead of humili- tate.
be an helpmeet for him: not for carnal con- cupiscence,— since, indeed, they had not cor- ruptible bodies at that period, before the pun- ishment of sin invaded them in the form of mortality, — but for this purpose, that the man might at once have glory of the woman in so far as he went before her to God, and present in himself an example to her for imi- tation in holiness and piety, even as he him- self was to be the glory of God in so far as he followed his wisdom: 30. " Therefore did he place them in a cer- tain locality of perpetual blessedness, which the Scripture designates Paradise: and he gave them a commandment, on condition of not violating which they were to continue for ever in that blessedness of immortality; while, on the other hand, if they transgressed it, they were to sustain -the penalties of mortal- ity. Now God knew beforehand that they would trangress it. Nevertheless, in that He is the author and maker of everything good, He chose rather to make them, as He also made the beasts, in order that He might re- plenish the earth with the good things proper to earth. And certainly man, even sinful man, is better than a beast. And the com- mandment, which they were not to keep, He yet preferred to give them, in order that they might be without excuse when He should begin to vindicate Himself against them. For whatever man may have done, he finds God worthy to be praised in all His doings: if he shall have acted rightly, he finds Him worthy to be praised for the righteousness of His rewards: if he shall have sinned, he finds Him worthy to be praised for the righteous- ness of His punishments: if he shall have confessed his sins and returned to an upright life," he finds Him worthy to be praised for the mercy of His pardoning favors. Why, then, should God not make man, although He foreknew that he would sin, when He might crown him if he stood, and set him right if he fell, and help him if he rose, Himself being always and everywhere glorious in goodness, righteousness, and clemency? Above all, why should He not do so, since He also foreknew this, namely, that from the race of that mortality there would spring saints, who should not seek their own, but give glory to their Creator; and who, obtain- ing deliverance from every corruption by wor- shipping Him, should be counted worthy to live for ever, and to live in blessedness with the holy angels? For He who gave freedom of will to men, in order that they might wor- ship God not of slavish necessity but with in- genuous inclination, gave it also to the angels; and hence neither did the angel, who, in com- Chap. XIX.] ON THE CATECHISING OF THE UNINSTRUCTED.
303 pany with other spirits who were his satellites, forsook in pride the obedience of God and became the devil, do any hurt to God, but to himself. For God knoweth how to dispose of souls l that leave Him, and out of their righteous misery to furnish the inferior sec- tions of His creatures with the most appro- priate and befitting laws of His wonderful dispensation. Consequently, neither did the devil in any manner harm God, whether in falling himself, or in seducing man to death; nor did man himself in any degree impair the truth, or power, or blessedness 2 of His Maker, in that, when his partner was seduced by the devil, he of his own deliberate inclination consented unto her in the doing of that which God had forbidden. For by the most right- eous laws of God all were condemned, God Himself being glorious in the equity of retri- bution, while they were shamed through the degradation of punishment: to the end that man, when he turned away from his Creator, should be overcome by the devil and made his subject, and that the devil might be set before man as an enemy to be conquered, when he turned again to his Creator; so that whosoever should consent unto the devil even to the end, might go with him into eternal punishments; whereas those who should humble themselves to God, and by His grace overcome the devil, might be counted worthy of eternal rewards.
CHAP. 19. OF THE CO-EXISTENCE OF GOOD AND EVIL IN THE CHURCH, AND THEIR FINAL SEPARATION.
31. " Neither ought we to be moved by the consideration that many consent unto the devil, and few follow God; for the grain, too, in comparison with the chaff, has greatly the defect in number. But even as the husband- man knows what to do with the mighty heap of chaff, so the multitude of sinners is nothing to God, who knows what to do with them, so as not to let the administration of His kingdom be disordered and dishonored in any part. Nor is the devil to be supposed to have proved victorious for the mere reason of his drawing away with him more than the few by whom he may be overcome. In this way there are two communities — one of the ungodly, and another of the holy — which are carried down from the beginning of the human race even to the end of the world, which are at present commingled in respect of bodies, but sepa- rated in respect of wills, and which, more- over, are destined to be separated also in 1 Rather "spirits." See the correction made in the Retrac- tations, ii. 14, as given above in the Introductory Notice.
2 The beatitatem is omitted by several mss.
respect of bodily presence in the day of judg- ment. For all men who love pride and tem- poral power with vain elation and pomp of arrogance, and all spirits who set their affec- tions on such things and seek their own glory in the subjection of men, are bound fast to- gether in one association; nay, even although they frequently fight against each other on account of these things, they are nevertheless precipitated by the like weight of lust into the same abyss, and are united with each other by similarity of manners and merits. And, again, all men and all spirits who humbly seek the glory of God and not their own, and who follow Him in piety, belong to one fel- lowship. And, notwithstanding this, God is most merciful and patient with ungodly men, and offers them a place for penitence and amendment.
32. " For with respect also to the fact that He destroyed all men in the flood, with the exception of one righteous man together with his house, whom He willed to be saved in the ark, He knew indeed that they would not amend themselves; yet, nevertheless, as the building of the ark went on for the space of a hundred years, the wrath of God which was to come upon them was certainly preached to them:3 and if they only would have turned to God, He would have spared them, as at a later period He spared the city of Nineveh when it repented, after He had announced to it, by means of a prophet, the destruction that was about to overtake it.4 Thus, more- over, God acts, granting a space for repentance even to those who He knows will persist in wickedness, in order that He may exercise and instruct our patience by His own exam- ple; whereby also we may know how greatly it befits us to bear with the evil in long-suff- ering, when we know not what manner of men they will prove hereafter, seeing that He, whose cognizance nothing that is yet to be es- capes, spares them and suffers them to live. Under the sacramental sign of the flood, how- ever, in which the righteous were rescued by the wood, there was also a fore-announcement of the Church which was to be, which Christ, its King and God, has raised on high, by the mystery of His cross, in safety from the sub- mersion of this world. Moreover, God was not ignorant of the fact that, even of those who had been saved in the ark, there would be born wicked men, who would cover the face of the earth a second time with iniquities. But, nevertheless, He both gave them a pat- tern of the future judgment, and fore-an- nounced the deliverance of the holy by the 3 Gen. vi. 7.
4 Jonah iii.
304 THE WORKS OF ST. AUGUSTIN.
Chap. XX.
mystery of the wood. For even after these things wickedness did not cease to sprout forth again through pride, and lusts, and illicit impieties, when men, forsaking their Creator, not only fell to the (standard of the) creature which God made, so as to worship instead of God that which God made, but even bowed their souls to the works of the hands of men and to the contrivances of craftsmen, wherein a more shameful triumph was to be won over them by the devil, and by those evil spirits who rejoice in finding themselves adored and reverenced in such false devices, while they feed I their own errors with the errors of men. 33. " But in truth there were not wanting in those times righteous men also of the kind to seek God piously and to overcome the pride of the devil, citizens of that holy com- munity, who were made whole by the humili- ation of Christ, which was then only destined to enter, but was revealed to them by the Spirit. From among these, Abraham, a pious and faithful servant of God, was chosen, in order that to him might be shown the sacra- ment -of the Son of God, so that thus, in virtue of the imitation of his faith, all the faithful of all nations might be called his children in the future. Of him was born a people, by whom the one true God who made heaven and earth should be worshipped when all other nations did service to idols and evil spirits. In that people, plainly, the future Church was much more evidently prefigured. For in it there was a carnal multitude that worshipped God with a view to visible bene- fits. But in it there were also a few who thought of the future rest, and looked long- ingly for the heavenly fatherland, to whom through prophecy was revealed the coming humiliation of God in the person of our King and Lord Jesus Christ, in order that they might be made whole of all pride and arro- gance through that faith. And with respect to these saints who in point of time had pre- cedence of the birch of the Lord, not only their speech, but also their life, and their marriages, and their children, and their do- ings, constituted a prophecy of this time, at which the Church is being gathered together out of all nations through faith in the passion of Christ. By the instrumentality of those holy patriarchs and prophets this carnal people of Israel, who at a later period were also called Jews, had ministered unto them at once those visible benefits which they eag- erly desired of the Lord in a carnal manner, and those chastisements, in the form of bod- ily punishments, which were intended to ter- 1 Instead of ftascunt the reading miscent^ =mix, is also found.
rify them for the time, as was befitting for their obstinacy. And in all these, neverthe- less, there were also spiritual mysteries signi- fied, such as were meant to bear upon Christ and the Church; of which Church those saints also were members, although they ex- isted in this life previous to the birth of Christ, the Lord, according to the flesh. For this same Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, the Word of the Father, equal and co- eternal with the Father, by whom all things were made, was Himself also made man for our sakes, in order that of the whole Church, as of His whole body, He might be the Head. But just as when the whole man is in the pro- cess of being born, although he may put the hand forth first in the act of birth, yet is that hand joined and compacted together with the whole body under the head, even as also among these same patriarchs some were born2 with the hand put forth first as a sign of this very thing: so all the saints who lived upon the earth previous to the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ, although they were born ante- cedently, were nevertheless united under the Head with that universal body of which He is the Head.
chap. 20. — of Israel's bondage in EGYPTr THEIR DELIVERANCE, AND THEIR PASSAGE THROUGH THE RED SEA.
34. " That people, then, having been brought down into Egypt, were in bondage to the harshest of kings; and, taught by the most oppressive labors, they sought their de- liverer in God; and there was sent to them one belonging to the people themselves, Moses, the holy servant of God, who, in the might of God, terrified the impious nation of the Egyptians in those days by great mira- cles, and led forth the people of God out of that land through the Red Sea, where the water parted and opened up a way for them as they crossed it, whereas, when the Egyp- tians pressed on in pursuit, the waves returned to their channel and overwhelmed them, so that they perished. Thus, then, just as the earth through the agency of the flood was cleansed by the waters from the wickedness of the sinners, who in those times were de- stroyed in that inundation, while the right- eous escaped by means of the wood; so the people of God, when they went forth from Egypt, found a way through the waters by which their enemies were devoured. Nor was the sacrament of the wood wanting there. For Moses smote with his rod, in order that that miracle might be effected. Both these 2 Gen. xxv. 26, xxxviii. 27-30.
Chap. XXI.]
ON THE CATECHISING OF THE UNINSTRUCTED.
305 are signs of holy baptism, by which the faith- ful pass into the new life, while their sins are done away with like enemies, and perish. But more clearly was the passion of Christ prefigured in the case of that people, when they were commanded to slay and eat the lamb, and to mark their door-posts with its blood, and to celebrate this rite every year, and to designate it the Lord's passover. For surely prophecy speaks with the utmost plain- ness of the Lord Jesus Christ, when it says that "He was led as a lamb to the slaughter."1 And with the sign of His pas- sion and cross, thou art this day to be marked on thy forehead, as on the door-post, and all Christians are marked with the same.
35. "Thereafter this people was conducted through the wilderness for forty years. They also received the law written by the finger of God, under which name the Holy Spirit is signified, as it is declared with the utmost plainness in the Gospel. For God is not de- fined 2 by the form of a body, neither are members and fingers to be thought of as ex- istent in Him in the way in which we see them in ourselves. But, inasmuch as it is through the Holy Spirit that God's gifts are divided to His saints, in order that, although they vary in their capacities, they may never- theless not lapse from the concord of charity, and inasmuch as it is especially in the fingers that there appears a certain kind of division, while nevertheless there is no separation from unity, this may be the explanation of the phrase. But whether this may be the case, or whatever other reason may be assigned for the Holy Spirit being called the finger of God, we ought not at any rate to think of the form of a human body when we hear this expression used. The people in question, then, received the law written by the finger of God, and that in good sooth on tables of stone, to signify the hardness of their heart in that they were not to fulfill the law. For, as they eagerly sought from the Lord gifts meant for the uses of the body, they were held by carnal fear rather than by spiritual charity. But nothing fulfills the law save charity. Consequently, they were burdened with many visible sacraments, to the intent that they should feel the pressure of the yoke of bondage in the observances of meats, and in the sacrifices of animals, and in other rites innumerable; which things, at the same time, were signs of spiritual matters relating to the Lord Jesus Christ and to the Church; which, furthermore, at that time were both under- stood by a few holy men to the effect of 1 Isa. liii. 7.
2 Or = circumscribed, dcfinitus.
yielding the fruit of salvation, and observed by them in accordance with the fitness of the time, while by the multitude of carnal men they were observed only and not understood.
36. "In this manner, then, through many varied signs of things to come, which it would be tedious to enumerate in complete detail, and which we now see in their fulfillment in the Church, that people were brought to the land of promise, in which they were to reign in a temporal and carnal way in accordance with their own longings: which earthly king- dom, nevertheless, sustained the image of a spiritual kingdom. There Jerusalem was founded, that most celebrated city of God, which, while in bondage, served as a sign of the free city, which is called the heavenly Jerusalem3 which latter term is a Hebrew word, and signifies by interpretation the ' vis- ion of peace.' The citizens thereof are all sanctified men, who have been, who are, and who are yet to be; and all sanctified spirits, even as many as are obedient to God with pious devotion in the exalted regions of heaven, and imitate not the impious pride of the devil and his angels. The King of this city is the Lord Jesus Christ, the Word of God, by whom the highest angels are gov- erned, and at the same time the Word that took unto Himself human nature,4 in order that by Him men also might be governed, who, in His fellowship, shall reign all together in eternal peace. In the service of prefigur-