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
But the families which do not live by faith seek their peace in the
earthly advantages of this life; while the families which live by
faith look for those eternal blessings which are promised, and use
as pilgrims such advantages of time and of earth as do not fascinate
and divert them from God, but rather aid them to endure with greater
ease, and to keep down the number of those burdens of the corruptible
body which weigh upon the soul. Thus the things necessary for this
mortal life are used by both kinds of men and families alike, but
each has its own peculiar and widely different aim in using them.
The earthly city, which does not live by faith, seeks an earthly
peace, and the end it proposes, in the well-ordered concord of civic
obedience and rule, is the combination of men's wills to attain
the things which are helpful to this life. The heavenly city, or
rather the part of it which sojourns on earth and lives by faith,
makes use of this peace only because it must, until this mortal
condition which necessitates it shall pass away. Consequently, so
long as it lives like a captive and a stranger in the earthly city,
though it has already received the promise of redemption, and the
gift of the Spirit as the earnest of it, it makes no scruple to
obey the laws of the earthly city, whereby the things necessary for
the maintenance of this mortal life are administered; and thus, as
this life is common to both cities, so there is a harmony between
them in regard to what belongs to it. But, as the earthly city has
had some philosophers whose doctrine is condemned by the divine
teaching, and who, being deceived either by their own conjectures
or by demons, supposed that many gods must be invited to take an
interest in human affairs, and assigned to each a separate function
and a separate department,--to one the body, to another the soul;
and in the body itself, to one the head, to another the neck, and
each of the other members to one of the gods; and in like manner, in
the soul, to one god the natural capacity was assigned, to another
education, to another anger, to another lust; and so the various
affairs of life were assigned,--cattle to one, corn to another, wine
to another, oil to another, the woods to another, money to another,
navigation to another, wars and victories to another, marriages to
another, births and fecundity to another, and other things to other
gods: and as the celestial city, on the other hand, knew that one
God only was to be worshipped, and that to Him alone was due that
service which the Greeks call λατρεία, and which can be given only to
a god, it has come to pass that the two cities could not have common
laws of religion, and that the heavenly city has been compelled in
this matter to dissent, and to become obnoxious to those who think
differently, and to stand the brunt of their anger and hatred and
persecutions, except in so far as the minds of their enemies have
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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