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
we must still inquire when the three hundred and sixty-five years
must be completed, counting from that year. Now Christ died when the
Gemini were consuls, on the eighth day before the kalends of April.
He rose the third day, as the apostles have proved by the evidence of
their own senses. Then forty days after, He ascended into heaven. Ten
days after, that is, on the fiftieth after His resurrection, He sent
the Holy Spirit; then three thousand men believed when the apostles
preached Him. Then, therefore, arose the worship of that name, as
we believe, and according to the real truth, by the efficacy of the
Holy Spirit, but, as impious vanity has feigned or thought, by the
magic arts of Peter. A little afterward, too, on a wonderful sign
being wrought, when at Peter's own word a certain beggar, so lame
from his mother's womb that he was carried by others and laid down at
the gate of the temple, where he begged alms, was made whole in the
name of Jesus Christ, and leaped up, five thousand men believed, and
thenceforth the Church grew by sundry accessions of believers. Thus
we gather the very day with which that year began, namely, that on
which the Holy Spirit was sent, that is, during the ides of May. And,
on counting the consuls, the three hundred and sixty-five years are
found completed on the same ides in the consulate of Honorius and
Eutychianus. Now, in the following year, in the consulate of Mallius
Theodorus, when, according to that oracle of the demons or figment
of men, there ought already to have been no Christian religion,
it was not necessary to inquire what perchance was done in other
parts of the earth. But, as we know, in the most noted and eminent
city Carthage, in Africa, Gaudentius and Jovius, officers of the
Emperor Honorius, on the fourteenth day before the kalends of April,
overthrew the temples and broke the images of the false gods. And
from that time to the present, during almost thirty years, who does
not see how much the worship of the name of Christ has increased,
especially after many of those became Christians who had been kept
back from the faith by thinking that divination true, but saw when
that same number of years was completed that it was empty and
ridiculous? We, therefore, who are called and _are_ Christians, do
not believe in Peter, but in Him whom Peter believed,--being edified
by Peter's sermons about Christ, not poisoned by his incantations;
and not deceived by his enchantments, but aided by his good deeds.
Christ Himself, who was Peter's Master in the doctrine which leads to
eternal life, is our Master too.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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