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
Again he says of Him, "Behold I will send mine angel, and He will look
out the way before my face: and the Lord, whom ye seek, shall suddenly
come into His temple, even the Angel of the testament, whom ye desire.
Behold, He cometh, saith the Lord Almighty, and who shall abide the day
of His entry, or who shall stand at His appearing?"[568] In this place
he has foretold both the first and second advent of Christ: the first,
to wit, of which he says, "And He shall come suddenly into His temple;"
that is, into His flesh, of which He said in the Gospel, "Destroy this
temple, and in three days I will raise it up again."[569] And of the
second advent he says, "Behold, He cometh, saith the Lord Almighty,
and who shall abide the day of His entry, or who shall stand at His
appearing?" But what he says, "The Lord whom ye seek, and the Angel of
the testament whom ye desire," just means that even the Jews, according
to the Scriptures which they read, shall seek and desire Christ. But
many of them did not acknowledge that He whom they sought and desired
had come, being blinded in their hearts, which were preoccupied with
their own merits. Now what he here calls the testament, either above,
where he says, "My testament had been with Him," or here, where he has
called Him the Angel of the testament, we ought, beyond a doubt, to
take to be the new testament, in which the things promised are eternal,
and not the old, in which they are only temporal. Yet many who are weak
are troubled when they see the wicked abound in such temporal things,
because they value them greatly, and serve the true God to be rewarded
with them. On this account, to distinguish the eternal blessedness of
the new testament, which shall be given only to the good, from the
earthly felicity of the old, which for the most part is given to the
bad as well, the same prophet says, "Ye have made your words burdensome
to me: yet ye have said, In what have we spoken ill of Thee? Ye have
said, Foolish is every one who serves God; and what profit is it that
we have kept His observances, and that we have walked as suppliants
before the face of the Lord Almighty? And now we call the aliens
blessed; yea, all that do wicked things are built up again; yea, they
are opposed to God and are saved. They that feared the Lord uttered
these reproaches every one to his neighbour: and the Lord hearkened and
heard; and He wrote a book of remembrance before Him, for them that
fear the Lord and that revere His name."[570] By that book is meant the
New Testament. Finally, let us hear what follows: "And they shall be an
acquisition for me, saith the Lord Almighty, in the day which I make;
and I will choose them as a man chooseth his son that serveth him. And
ye shall return, and shall discern between the just and the unjust, and
between him that serveth God and him that serveth Him not. For, behold,
the day cometh burning as an oven, and it shall burn them up; and all
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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