The City of God

and so abandoned God, who would have made us as gods, not by deserting Him, but by participating in Him. For without Him what have we accomplished, save to perish in His anger? But when we are restored by Him, and perfected with greater grace, we shall have eternal leisure to see that He is God, for we shall be full of Him when He shall be all in all. For even our good works, when they are understood to be rather His than ours, are imputed to us that we may enjoy this Sabbath rest. For if we attribute them to ourselves, they shall be servile; for it is said of the Sabbath, “Ye shall do no servile work in it.”1689 Wherefore also it is said by Ezekiel the prophet, “And I gave them my Sabbaths to be a sign between me and them, that they might know that I am the Lord who sanctify them.”1690 This knowledge shall be perfected when we shall be perfectly at rest, and shall perfectly know that He is God.

This Sabbath shall appear still more clearly if we count the ages as days, in accordance with the periods of time defined in Scripture, for that period will be found to be the seventh. The first age, as the first day, extends from Adam to the deluge; the second from the deluge to Abraham, equalling the first, not in length of time, but in the number of generations, there being ten in each. From Abraham to the advent of Christ there are, as the evangelist Matthew calculates, three periods, in each of which are fourteen generations⁠—one period from Abraham to David, a second from David to the captivity, a third from the captivity to the birth of Christ in the flesh. There are thus five ages in all. The sixth is now passing, and cannot be measured by any number of generations, as it has been said, “It is not for you to know the times, which the Father hath put in His own power.”1691 After this period God shall rest as on the seventh day, when He shall give us (who shall be the seventh day) rest in Himself. But there is not now space to treat of these ages; suffice it to say that the seventh shall be our Sabbath, which shall be brought to a close, not by an evening, but by the Lord’s day, as an eighth and eternal day, consecrated by the resurrection of Christ, and prefiguring the eternal repose not only of the spirit, but also of the body. There we shall rest and see, see and love, love and praise. This is what shall be in the end without end. For what other end do we propose to ourselves than to attain to the kingdom of which there is no end?

I think I have now, by God’s help, discharged my obligation in writing this large work. Let those who think I have said too little, or those who think I have said too much, forgive me; and let those who think I have said just enough join me in giving thanks to God. Amen.

Endnotes

1. AD 410. ↩

2. Retractationes, II. 43. ↩

3. Letters 132⁠–⁠8. ↩

4. See some admirable remarks on this subject in the useful work of Beugnot, Histoire de la Destruction du Paganisme, II. 83 et seq. ↩

5. As Waterland (IV. 760) does call it, adding that it is “his most learned, most correct, and most elaborate work.” ↩

6. For proof, see the Benedictine Preface. ↩

7. “Hitherto the Apologies had been framed to meet particular exigencies: they were either brief and pregnant statements of the Christian doctrines; refutations of prevalent calumnies; invectives against the follies and crimes of Paganism; or confutations of anti-Christian works like those of Celsus, Porphyry, or Julian, closely following their course of argument, and rarely expanding into general and comprehensive views of the great conflict.”

   —⁠Milman, History of Christianity, III. ch. 10.

   We are not acquainted with any more complete preface to the City of God than is contained in the two or three pages which Milman has devoted to this subject. ↩

8. See the interesting remarks of Lactantius, Institutiones Divinae VII. 25. ↩

9. “Haeret vox et singultus intercipiunt verba dictantis. Capitur urbs quae totum cepit orbem.”

   —⁠Jerome, IV. 783

   ↩

10. See below, Book IV. ch. 7. ↩

11. This is well brought out by Merivale, Conversion of the Roman Empire, p. 145, etc. ↩

12. Ozanam, History of Civilisation in the Fifth Century (Eng. trans.), II. 160. ↩

13. Abstracts of the work at greater or less length are given by Dupin, Bindemann, Böhringer, Poujoulat, Ozanam, and others. ↩

14. His words are: “Plus on examine la Cité de Dieu, plus on reste convaincu que cet ouvrage dût exercea tres-peu d’influence sur l’esprit des païens” (II. 122); and this though he thinks one cannot but be struck with the grandeur of the ideas it contains. ↩

15. History of Ecclesiastical Writers, I. 406. ↩

16. Huetiana, p. 24. ↩

17. Flottes, Etudes sur S. Augustin (Paris, 1861), pp. 154⁠–⁠6, one of the most accurate and interesting even of French monographs on theological writers. ↩

18. These editions will be found detailed in the second volume of Schoenemann’s Bibliotheca Patrum. ↩

19. His words (in Ep. VI.) are quite worth quoting: “Cura rogo te, ut excudantur