Let him therefore wait for that time which is necessarily made coextensive with the development of humanity. For even Abraham and the patriarchs, while they had the desire to see the promised good things, and ceased not to seek the heavenly country, as the apostle says, are yet even now in the condition of hoping for that grace, “God having provided some better thing for us,” according to the words of Paul, “that they without us should not be made perfect.”112 If they, then, bear the delay who by faith only and by hope saw the good things “afar off” and “embraced them,”113 as the apostle bears witness, placing their certainty of the enjoyment of the things for which they hoped in the fact that they “judged Him faithful Who has promised,”114 what ought most of us to do, who have not, it may be, a hold upon the better hope from the character of our lives? Even the prophet’s soul fainted with desire, and in his psalm he confesses this passionate love, saying that his “soul hath a desire and longing to be in the courts of the Lord,”115 even if he must needs be rejected116 to a place amongst the lowest, as it is a greater and more desirable thing to be last there than to be first among the ungodly tents of this life; nevertheless he was patient of the delay, deeming, indeed, the life there blessed, and accounting a brief participation in it more desirable than “thousands” of time—for he says, “one day in Thy courts is better than thousands”117—yet he did not repine at the necessary dispensation concerning existing things, and thought it sufficient bliss for man to have those good things even by way of hope; wherefore he says at the end of the Psalm, “O Lord of hosts, blessed is the man that hopeth in Thee.”118
Neither, then, should we be troubled at the brief delay of what we hope for, but give diligence that we may not be cast out from the object of our hopes; for just as though, if one were to tell some inexperienced person beforehand, “the gathering of the crops will take place in the season of summer, and the stores will be filled, and the table abundantly supplied with food at the time of plenty,” it would be a foolish man who should seek to hurry on the coming of the fruit-time, when he ought to be sowing seeds and preparing the crops for himself by diligent care; for the fruit-time will surely come, whether he wishes or not, at the appointed time; and it will be looked on differently by him who has secured for himself beforehand abundance of crops, and by him who is found by the fruit-time destitute of all preparation. Even so I think it is one’s duty, as the proclamation is clearly made to all that the time of change will come, not to trouble himself about times (for He said that “it is not for us to know the times and the seasons”),119 nor to pursue calculations by which he will be sure to sap the hope of the resurrection in the soul; but to make his confidence in the things expected as a prop to lean on, and to purchase for himself, by good conversation, the grace that is to come.
XXIII
That he who confesses the beginning of the world’s existence must necessarily also agree as to its end.120
But if someone, beholding the present course of the world, by which intervals of time are marked, going on in a certain order, should say that it is not possible that the predicted stoppage of these moving things should take place, such a man clearly also does not believe that in the beginning the heaven and the earth were made by God; for he who admits a beginning of motion surely does not doubt as to its also having an end; and he who does not allow its end, does not admit its beginning either; but as it is by believing that “we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God,” as the apostle says, “so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear,”121 we must use the same faith as to the word of God when He foretells the necessary stoppage of existing things.
The question of the “how” must, however, be put beyond the reach of our meddling; for even in the case mentioned it was “by faith” that we admitted that the thing seen was framed from things not yet apparent, omitting the search into things beyond our reach. And yet our reason suggests difficulties on many points, offering no small occasions for doubt as to the things which we believe.
For in that case too, argumentative men might by plausible reasoning upset our
