[329] Ps. xviii. 45. [330] Augustine here follows the Septuagint, which at Gen. xlvi. 20 adds these names to those of Manasseh and Ephraim, and at ver. 27 gives the whole number as seventy-five. [331] Gen. l. 22, 23. [332] Gen. l. 23. [333] Gen. xlvi. 8. [334] Gen. xlix. 8-12. [335] John x. 18. [336] John ii. 19. [337] John xix. 30. [338] Gen. xlix. 12. [339] 1 Pet. ii. 2; 1 Cor. iii. 2. [340] Gen. xxv. 23. [341] Gen. xlviii. 19. [342] _Infans_, from _in_, not, and _fari_, to speak. BOOK SEVENTEENTH. ARGUMENT. IN THIS BOOK THE HISTORY OF THE CITY OF GOD IS TRACED DURING THE PERIOD OF THE KINGS AND PROPHETS FROM SAMUEL TO DAVID, EVEN TO CHRIST; AND THE PROPHECIES WHICH ARE RECORDED IN THE BOOK OF KINGS, PSALMS, AND THOSE OF SOLOMON, ARE INTERPRETED OF CHRIST AND THE CHURCH. 1. _Of the prophetic age._ By the favour of God we have treated distinctly of His promises made to Abraham, that both the nation of Israel according to the flesh, and all nations according to faith, should be his seed, and the City of God, proceeding according to the order of time, will point[343] out how they were fulfilled. Having therefore in the previous book come down to the reign of David, we shall now treat of what remains, so far as may seem sufficient for the object of this work, beginning at the same reign. Now, from the time when holy Samuel began to prophesy, and ever onward until the people of Israel was led captive into Babylonia, and until, according to the prophecy of holy Jeremiah, on Israel's return thence after seventy years, the house of God was built anew, this whole period is the prophetic age. For although both the patriarch Noah himself, in whose days the whole earth was destroyed by the flood, and others before and after him down to this time when there began to be kings over the people of God, may not undeservedly be styled prophets, on account of certain things pertaining to the city of God and the kingdom of heaven, which they either predicted or in any way signified should come to pass, and especially since we read that some of them, as Abraham and Moses, were expressly so styled, yet those are most and chiefly called the days of the prophets from the time when Samuel began to prophesy, who at God's command first anointed Saul to be king, and, on his rejection, David himself, whom others of his issue should succeed as long as it was fitting they should do so. If, therefore, I wished to rehearse all that the prophets have predicted concerning Christ, while the city of God, with its members dying and being born in constant succession, ran its course through those times, this work would extend beyond all bounds. First, because the Scripture itself, even when, in treating in order of the kings and of their deeds and the events of their reigns, it seems to be occupied in narrating as