The City of God, Volume IIAugustine, of Hippo, Saint
ReligionChristian
The City of God, Volume II
Augustine, of Hippo, Saint
Apologetics -- Early works to 1800; Kingdom of God -- Early works to 1800
About His resurrection also the oracles of the Psalms are by no
means silent. For what else is it that is sung in His person in the
3d Psalm, "I laid me down and took a sleep, [and] I awaked, for
the Lord shall sustain me?"[460] Is there perchance any one so
stupid as to believe that the prophet chose to point it out to us as
something great that He had slept and risen up, unless that sleep
had been death, and that awaking the resurrection, which behoved to
be thus prophesied concerning Christ? For in the 41st Psalm also it
is shown much more clearly, where in the person of the Mediator, in
the usual way, things are narrated as if past which were prophesied
as yet to come, since these things which were yet to come were in
the predestination and foreknowledge of God as if they were done,
because they were certain. He says, "Mine enemies speak evil of me;
When shall he die, and his name perish? And if he came in to see
me, his heart spake vain things: he gathered iniquity to himself.
He went out of doors, and uttered it all at once. Against me all
mine enemies whisper together: against me do they devise evil. They
have planned an unjust thing against me. Shall not he that sleeps
also rise again?"[461] These words are certainly so set down here
that he may be understood to say nothing else than if he said, Shall
not He that died recover life again? The previous words clearly
show that His enemies have meditated and planned His death, and
that this was executed by him who came in to see, and went out to
betray. But to whom does not Judas here occur, who, from being His
disciple, became His betrayer? Therefore because they were about to
do what they had plotted,--that is, were about to kill Him,--he,
to show them that with useless malice they were about to kill Him
who should rise again, so adds this verse, as if he said, What vain
thing are you doing? What will be your crime will be my sleep. "Shall
not He that sleeps also rise again?" And yet he indicates in the
following verses that they should not commit so great an impiety with
impunity, saying, "Yea, the man of my peace in whom I trusted, who
ate my bread, hath enlarged the heel over me;"[462] that is, hath
trampled me under foot. "But Thou," he saith, "O Lord, be merciful
unto me, and raise me up, that I may requite them."[463] Who can
now deny this who sees the Jews, after the passion and resurrection
of Christ, utterly rooted up from their abodes by warlike slaughter
and destruction? For, being slain by them, He has risen again, and
has requited them meanwhile by temporary discipline, save that for
those who are not corrected He keeps it in store for the time when He
shall judge the quick and the dead.[464] For the Lord Jesus Himself,
in pointing out that very man to the apostles as His betrayer,
quoted this very verse of this psalm, and said it was fulfilled in
Himself: "He that ate my bread enlarged the heel over me." But what
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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