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
accompanied by glory and honour in an endless life made fit for the
enjoyment of God and of one another in God; but that he who used the
present blessings badly should both lose them and should not receive
the others.
14. _Of the order and law which obtain in heaven and earth, whereby
it comes to pass that human society is served by those who rule
it._
The whole use, then, of things temporal has a reference to this
result of earthly peace in the earthly community, while in the city
of God it is connected with eternal peace. And therefore, if we
were irrational animals, we should desire nothing beyond the proper
arrangement of the parts of the body and the satisfaction of the
appetites,--nothing, therefore, but bodily comfort and abundance
of pleasures, that the peace of the body might contribute to the
peace of the soul. For if bodily peace be awanting, a bar is put
to the peace even of the irrational soul, since it cannot obtain
the gratification of its appetites. And these two together help out
the mutual peace of soul and body, the peace of harmonious life and
health. For as animals, by shunning pain, show that they love bodily
peace, and, by pursuing pleasure to gratify their appetites, show
that they love peace of soul, so their shrinking from death is a
sufficient indication of their intense love of that peace which binds
soul and body in close alliance. But, as man has a rational soul,
he subordinates all this which he has in common with the beasts to
the peace of his rational soul, that his intellect may have free
play and may regulate his actions, and that he may thus enjoy the
well-ordered harmony of knowledge and action which constitutes, as
we have said, the peace of the rational soul. And for this purpose
he must desire to be neither molested by pain, nor disturbed by
desire, nor extinguished by death, that he may arrive at some useful
knowledge by which he may regulate his life and manners. But, owing
to the liability of the human mind to fall into mistakes, this very
pursuit of knowledge may be a snare to him unless he has a divine
Master, whom he may obey without misgiving, and who may at the same
time give him such help as to preserve his own freedom. And because,
so long as he is in this mortal body, he is a stranger to God, he
walks by faith, not by sight; and he therefore refers all peace,
bodily or spiritual or both, to that peace which mortal man has with
the immortal God, so that he exhibits the well-ordered obedience
of faith to eternal law. But as this divine Master inculcates two
precepts,--the love of God and the love of our neighbour,--and as
in these precepts a man finds three things he has to love,--God,
himself, and his neighbour,--and that he who loves God loves himself
thereby, it follows that he must endeavour to get his neighbour to
love God, since he is ordered to love his neighbour as himself. He
ought to make this endeavour in behalf of his wife, his children,
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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