On Catechizing the Uninstructed 16–21

But still, let us suppose that someone has come to us who wishes to be a Christian, of the class of the uneducated, yet not of country people but of city people, such as you must meet many of at Carthage; and that, asked also whether he desires to be a Christian for some advantage in the present life or for the rest that is hoped for after this life, he has answered: for the future rest. He might perhaps be instructed by us with an address like this. “Thanks be to God, brother: I congratulate you warmly and rejoice over you, that amid such great and dangerous storms of this world you have thought about some true and certain security. For even in this life people seek rest and security with great labours, but because of wrong desires they do not find it. For they want to rest in things that are restless and do not last; and because these are taken away by time and pass away, they toss them with fears and griefs and do not let them be at peace. For if a man wishes to rest in riches, he is made proud rather than secure. Do we not see how many have suddenly lost them, and many have even perished because of them, either while desiring to have them or when they are taken from them, crushed by those more greedy? And even if they stayed with a man for his whole life and did not desert their lover, he himself would desert them by his death. For how long is a man's life, even if he grows old? Or when people wish themselves old age, what else do they wish for but a long infirmity? So too the honours of this world: what are they but conceit and emptiness and the danger of ruin? For so the holy Scripture says: All flesh is grass, and the glory of man as the flower of grass. The grass has withered, the flower has fallen; but the word of the Lord abides for ever. Therefore one who desires true rest and true happiness ought to take his hope away from mortal and passing things and place it in the word of the Lord; so that, clinging to what abides for ever, he too may abide with it for ever. There are also people who neither seek to be rich nor strive to attain the empty pomp of honours, but want to rejoice and rest in taverns and in sexual immorality, and in the theatres and the trifling shows which they have free of charge in great cities. But in this way they too either waste their poverty through luxury, and afterwards from want leap into thefts and burglaries, and sometimes even into highway robbery, and are suddenly filled with many great fears; and those who a little before were singing in the tavern now dream of the lamentations of prison. Through their passion for the shows they become like demons, inciting men by their shouts to cut one another down, and to have quarrelsome contests with one another though they have done each other no harm, while they long to please a mad people; and if the spectators notice that they are in agreement, then they hate and persecute them, and shout that they should be beaten with clubs as cheats in collusion, and force even the judge, the avenger of wrongdoing, to do this wrong; but if they learn that they are practising horrible enmities against one another, whether they are those who are called sintae, or stage actors and musicians, or charioteers, or beast fighters, wretched people whom they set in contest and combat not only man against man but even man against beasts, then the greater the discord with which they perceive them raging against one another, the more they love and delight in them, and they favour them when roused and rouse them by favouring, the spectators themselves raging against one another, one for one side and one for the other, more than those whose madness they madly provoke and madly desire to watch. How then can a mind keep the health of peace that feeds on discords and contests? For as the food that is taken, so the health that follows. Finally, although mad joys are not joys, yet whatever they are, and however much the boasting of riches may delight, and the swelling of honours, and the gulf of the taverns, and the battles of the theatres, and the uncleanness of sexual immorality, and the itch of the baths, one little fever takes all these away, and while people are still alive withdraws their whole false happiness: there remains an empty and wounded conscience, which will find God a judge, whom it would not have as a guardian, and will find a harsh Lord, whom it scorned to seek and love as a sweet Father. But you, because you seek the true rest that is promised to Christians after this life, will taste it even here, sweet and pleasant amid the most bitter troubles of this life, if you love the commandments of him who promised it. For you will soon feel that the fruits of righteousness are sweeter than those of iniquity, and that a man rejoices more truly and pleasantly in a good conscience amid troubles than in a bad one amid delights; for you have not come to be joined to the Church of God in order to seek some temporal advantage from it.

For there are those who want to be Christians in order either to win the favour of people from whom they expect temporal advantages, or because they do not want to offend those whom they fear. But these are reprobate; and though the Church bears them for a time, as the threshing floor bears the chaff until the time of winnowing, if they do not correct themselves and begin to be Christians for the sake of the future everlasting rest, they will be separated at the end. And let them not flatter themselves that they can be on the threshing floor with the grain of God; for they will not be with it in the barn, but are destined for the fire they deserve. There are also others, of a better hope indeed but in no less danger, who already fear God and do not mock the Christian name, nor enter the Church of God with a pretending heart, but expect happiness in this life, that they may be happier in earthly things than those who do not worship God; and so, when they see some wicked and ungodly people strong and outstanding in the prosperity of this world, while they themselves either have less of it or lose it, they are disturbed, as though they worshipped God for nothing, and they easily fall away from the faith. But one who wishes to become a Christian for the sake of the everlasting blessedness and perpetual rest promised to the saints after this life, so as not to go into the eternal fire with the devil but to enter the eternal kingdom with Christ, he is truly a Christian: on guard in every temptation, so as not to be corrupted by prosperity nor broken by adversity, modest and temperate in an abundance of earthly goods, and brave and patient in tribulations. Such a person, by advancing, will also come to such a mind that he loves God more than he fears hell; so that even if God said to him, ‘Enjoy everlasting fleshly delights, and sin as much as you can, and you will neither die nor be sent to hell; only you will not be with me,’ he would shudder and would not sin at all, no longer so as not to fall into what he feared, but so as not to offend him whom he so loves: in whom alone is rest, which eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor has it gone up into the heart of man, which God has prepared for those who love him. Of this rest Scripture gives a sign, and does not keep silent, that from the beginning of the world, when God made heaven and earth and all that is in them, he worked for six days and on the seventh day rested. For the Almighty could have made all things even in one moment of time. He had not laboured so as to rest, since he spoke and they were made; he commanded and they were created; but in order to signify that after six ages of this world, in the seventh age, as on the seventh day, he will rest in his saints; because they will rest in him after all the good works in which they have served him, which he himself works in them, who calls and commands and forgives past sins and justifies one who before was ungodly. And just as, when they work well by his gift, it is rightly said that he works, so when they rest in him, it is rightly said that he rests. For as far as he himself is concerned, he seeks no pause, because he feels no labour. He made all things through his Word; and his Word is Christ himself, in whom the angels and all the most pure heavenly spirits rest in holy silence. But man, fallen by sin, lost the rest he had in his divinity, and receives it again in his humanity; and so at the fitting time, when he knew it ought to happen, he became man and was born of a woman. For he could not be defiled by the flesh, he who was rather to cleanse the flesh. The saints of old knew by the revelation of the Spirit that he would come, and prophesied it, and so they were saved by believing that he would come, as we are saved by believing that he has come: so that we might love God, who so loved us that he sent his only Son, who, clothed in the lowliness of our mortality, died both at the hands of sinners and for sinners. For already, from of old, from the beginning of the ages, the depth of this mystery has not ceased to be prefigured and foretold.

For God almighty, good and just and merciful, who made all things good, whether great or small, whether highest or lowest; whether those that are seen, such as heaven and earth and sea, and in heaven the sun and moon and the other stars, and on earth and in the sea trees and shrubs and animals each of its own nature, and all bodies whether heavenly or earthly; or those that are not seen, such as the spirits by which bodies are quickened and given life: he also made man in his own image; so that, as he himself by his almighty power is over the whole creation, so man by his understanding, by which he also knows and worships his Creator, might be over all earthly animals. He also made woman as a helper for him: not for fleshly lust, since they did not then have corruptible bodies, before mortality invaded them as the penalty of sin; but so that the man might also have glory from the woman, when he went before her to God and offered himself to her to be imitated in holiness and piety, just as he himself would be the glory of God when he followed his wisdom. And so he set them in a certain place of perpetual blessedness, which Scripture calls paradise; and he gave them a commandment, that if they did not transgress it, they would remain for ever in that blessedness of immortality; but if they transgressed it, they would pay the penalties of mortality. Now God foreknew that they would transgress; but still, because he is the founder and maker of every good, he chose rather to make them, since he made the beasts too, to fill the earth with earthly goods. And certainly a man, even a sinner, is better than a beast. And he chose rather to give the commandment which they were not going to keep, so that they would be without excuse when he began to punish them. For whatever a man does, he finds God worthy of praise in his own deeds: if he acts rightly, he finds him praiseworthy through the justice of rewards; if he sins, he finds him praiseworthy through the justice of punishments; if he confesses his sins and returns to living rightly, he finds him praiseworthy through the mercy of pardon. Why then should God not make man, although he foreknew that he would sin, since he would crown him when he stood, set him in order when he fell, and help him when he rose, being himself always and everywhere glorious in goodness, justice, and mercy? Above all, since he also foreknew that from the offspring of his mortality there would be saints who would seek glory not for themselves but would give it to their Creator, and, by worshipping him, freed from all corruption, would be found worthy to live for ever, and live blessedly, with the holy angels? For he who gave men free choice, so that they might worship God not by servile necessity but by free will, gave it also to the angels. And so the angel who, with other spirits his followers, abandoned obedience to God through pride and became the devil, did no harm to God, but to himself; for God knows how to set in order the souls that abandon him, and from their just misery to adorn the lower parts of his creation by the most fitting and suitable laws of his wonderful governance. So the devil did no harm to God, either by falling himself or by seducing man to death; nor did man himself in any way lessen the truth or power or blessedness of his Creator, because he consented by his own will to his wife, who had been seduced by the devil, to do what God had forbidden. For by the most just laws of God all were condemned, God being glorious by the equity of his punishment, they being disgraced by the shamefulness of their penalty: so that man, turned away from his Creator, was conquered and made subject to the devil, and the devil was set before man, once turned back to his Creator, to be conquered; so that all who consented to the devil to the end would go with him into eternal punishment, while all who humbled themselves before God and by his grace conquered the devil would merit eternal rewards.

Nor ought this to trouble us, that many consent to the devil and few follow God; for the grain too, compared with the chaff, is far fewer in number. But as the farmer knows what to do with a huge heap of chaff, so the multitude of sinners is nothing to God, who knows what to do with them, so that the governance of his kingdom is in no way disturbed or disgraced. Nor is the devil to be thought to have won because he drew more with him, with whom he would be conquered by a few. And so two cities, one of the wicked and the other of the saints, run from the beginning of the human race to the end of the world, now mingled in body but separated in will, and on the day of judgment to be separated in body as well. For all people who love pride and temporal domination with empty conceit and the pomp of arrogance, and all spirits who love such things and seek their own glory in the subjection of men, are bound together in one society; and even if they often fight against one another over these things, yet by an equal weight of desire they are hurled into the same depth, and are joined to one another by likeness of conduct and deserts. And again, all people and all spirits who humbly seek the glory of God, not their own, and follow him with piety, belong to one society. And yet God is most merciful, and is patient even toward ungodly people, and offers them room for repentance and correction. For when he destroyed all by the flood, except one righteous man with his family, whom he willed to be saved in the ark, he knew indeed that they would not correct themselves; yet while the ark was being built for a hundred years, the wrath of God that was to come upon them was certainly preached to them; and if they had turned to God, he would have spared them, as he afterwards spared the city of Nineveh when it repented, after he had foretold its coming destruction through the prophet. And God does this, giving time for repentance even to those whom he knows will persevere in wickedness, in order to exercise our patience and shape it by his example; so that we may know how patiently we ought to bear with the wicked, since we do not know what they will be later, when he spares them and lets them live from whom nothing in the future is hidden. Yet by the sacrament of the flood, in which the righteous were set free through wood, the future Church was also foretold, which its King and God, Christ, has lifted up from the drowning of this world by the mystery of his cross. For God was not unaware that from those who had been saved in the ark there would be born wicked people who would again fill the face of the earth with iniquities; but still he both gave an example of the future judgment and foretold the deliverance of the saints by the mystery of the wood. For after this, too, wickedness did not cease to sprout again through pride and lusts and unlawful impieties, when people, having abandoned their Creator, not only sank to the creature which God made, so as to worship in place of God what God made, but even bowed their souls to the works of men's hands and the crafts of artisans, where the devil and the demons might triumph over them more shamefully; for they rejoice to be adored and venerated in such images, while they feed their own errors on human errors. Yet even then there were not lacking righteous people who sought God devoutly and overcame the pride of the devil, citizens of that holy city, whom the future humility of their King Christ, revealed through the Spirit, healed. From among these, Abraham, a devout and faithful servant of God, was chosen, to whom the sacrament of the Son of God was to be shown, so that, through the imitation of his faith, all the faithful of all nations might be called his children. From him was born a people by whom the one true God, who made heaven and earth, was worshipped, while the other nations served idols and demons. In that people, plainly, the future Church was figured much more evidently. For there was in it a carnal multitude who worshipped God for the sake of visible benefits. But there were also in it a few who thought of the future rest and sought the heavenly homeland, to whom the future humility of God, our King and Lord Jesus Christ, was revealed by prophecy, so that by that faith they might be healed of all pride and swelling. Of these saints who preceded the Lord's birth in time, not only the speech but also the life, and marriages, and children, and deeds were a prophecy of this time, in which the Church is gathered from the nations through faith in the passion of Christ. Through those holy patriarchs and prophets there were given to the carnal people of Israel, who were later also called Jews, both the visible benefits which they carnally desired from the Lord, and the restraints of bodily punishments by which they were to be frightened for a time, as befitted their hardness. And yet in all these things spiritual mysteries were signified, which pertained to Christ and the Church; of which Church those saints too were members, although they lived in this life before Christ the Lord was born according to the flesh. For the only-begotten Son of God himself, the Word of the Father, equal and coeternal with the Father, through whom all things were made, became man for our sake, so that he might be the head of the whole Church as of a whole body. But as a whole man, when he is born, even if he puts out a hand first in being born, is yet joined and knit together with the whole body under the head, as indeed some among the patriarchs themselves were born with a hand put out first as a sign of this very thing: so all the saints who were on earth before the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ, although they were born before, still cleaved under the head to the whole body of which he is the head.

That people, then, carried down into Egypt, served a most harsh king; and, schooled by the heaviest labours, they sought God as their deliverer; and one of that people was sent to them, Moses, the holy servant of God, who by the power of God, terrifying the then ungodly nation of the Egyptians with great miracles, led the people of God out from there through the Red Sea; where the water parted and gave a way to those crossing; but the Egyptians, when they pursued them, were drowned and destroyed as the waves returned upon themselves. So, just as through the flood the earth was cleansed by waters from the wickedness of the sinners, who were then destroyed in that inundation, and the righteous escaped through wood: so the people of God, going out of Egypt, found a way through the waters by which their enemies were consumed. Nor was the sacrament of wood lacking there. For Moses struck with a rod so that that miracle might take place. Both are a sign of holy baptism, through which the faithful pass into new life, while their sins, like enemies, are blotted out and die. But the passion of Christ was figured more openly in that people, when they were commanded to kill and eat a sheep, and to mark their doorposts with its blood, and to celebrate this every year and call it the Lord's Passover. For prophecy says most plainly of the Lord Jesus Christ that he was led like a sheep to be sacrificed. With the sign of his passion and cross you are to be marked today on your forehead as on a doorpost, and all Christians are marked with it. From there that people was led through the desert for forty years; it also received the law written by the finger of God, by which name the Holy Spirit is signified, as is most plainly declared in the Gospel. For God is not bounded by a bodily form, nor are limbs and fingers to be thought of in him as we see them in ourselves; but because the gifts of God are divided to the saints through the Holy Spirit, so that, though they have different powers, they still do not depart from the concord of love, and in the fingers there especially appears a certain division, yet no cutting off from unity; whether for this reason or for any other, the Holy Spirit has been called the finger of God, yet when we hear this, the form of a human body is not to be thought of. That people, then, received the law written by the finger of God, on tablets of stone indeed, to signify the hardness of their heart, because they were not going to fulfil the law. For, desiring bodily gifts from the Lord, they were held more by carnal fear than by spiritual love; but nothing fulfils the law except love. Therefore they were burdened with many visible sacraments, so as to be pressed by a servile yoke, in observances of foods and in sacrifices of animals and in countless other things: which were nonetheless signs of spiritual things pertaining to the Lord Jesus Christ and to the Church; which at that time were both understood by a few saints for the fruit of salvation and observed by them as befitted the time, but by the multitude of carnal people were only observed, not understood. So, through many and various signs of things to come, which it would take long to recount, and which we now see fulfilled in the Church, that people was led to the land of promise, where it was to reign temporally and carnally according to the measure of its desire; yet that earthly kingdom bore the image of a spiritual kingdom. There Jerusalem was founded, the most famous city of God, serving as a sign of the free city which is called the heavenly Jerusalem; this is a Hebrew word and is interpreted “vision of peace.” Its citizens are all sanctified people who have been, who are, and who will be; and all sanctified spirits, even all those in the high regions of heaven who obey God with devout dedication and do not imitate the ungodly pride of the devil and his angels. The King of this city is the Lord Jesus Christ, the Word of God by whom the highest angels are ruled, and the Word taking on man so that men too might be ruled by him, who will all reign together with him in eternal peace. As a prefiguration of this King, in that earthly kingdom of the people of Israel King David stood out most of all, from whose seed according to the flesh our truest King, the Lord Jesus Christ, was to come, who is God over all, blessed for ever. Many things were done in that land of promise as a figure of the coming Christ and the Church, which you will be able to learn little by little in the holy Books.

After some generations, however, he showed another type, pertaining most of all to the matter in hand. For that city was taken captive, and a great part of it was carried off into Babylonia. And as Jerusalem signifies the city and society of the saints, so Babylonia signifies the city and society of the wicked, since it is said to be interpreted “confusion.” Of these two cities, running mingled through the changes of times from the beginning of the human race to the end of the world, and to be separated at the last judgment, we have already spoken a little earlier. That captivity of the city of Jerusalem, then, and that people led into Babylonia, is commanded by the Lord through Jeremiah, the prophet of that time, to go into servitude. And there arose kings of Babylonia, under whom they served, who, moved by their presence through certain miracles, came to know and worship, and commanded to be worshipped, the one true God, who founded the whole creation. They were commanded also to pray for those by whom they were held captive, and to hope for peace in their peace, to beget children, build houses, and plant gardens and vineyards. And after seventy years deliverance from that captivity was promised them. All this signified figuratively that the Church of Christ in all his saints, who are citizens of the heavenly Jerusalem, would be in servitude under the kings of this world. For apostolic teaching also says that every soul should be subject to the higher powers, and that all things should be rendered to all: tribute to whom tribute, tax to whom tax; and the other things which, without harm to the worship of our God, we render to the rulers of human government; since the Lord himself, to give us an example of this sound teaching, did not disdain to pay tribute for the head of the man with which he was clothed. Christian slaves, too, and good believers are commanded to serve their temporal masters with even temper and faithfully: whom they will judge, if they find them wicked to the end; or with whom they will reign as equals, if those too have been converted to the true God. Yet all are commanded to serve human and earthly powers, until, after the predetermined time which the seventy years signify, the Church is set free like Jerusalem from the confusion of this world as from the captivity of Babylon. Through the occasion of this captivity, the earthly kings themselves, having abandoned the idols for whose sake they persecuted Christians, have come to know and now worship the one true God and Christ the Lord; for these kings the apostle Paul commands prayer to be made, even when they were persecuting the Church. For he says this: I urge, then, first of all, that supplications, adorations, intercessions, thanksgivings be made for kings, for all people, and for all who are in high position, that we may lead a secure and quiet life with all piety and love. And so through them peace has been given to the Church, though temporal, a temporal tranquillity for building houses spiritually and planting gardens and vineyards. For see, we are now building and planting you by this discourse. And this is being done throughout the whole world with the peace of Christian kings, as the same apostle says: You are God's field, God's building. And after the seventy years which Jeremiah had prophesied in a mystical sense, to prefigure the end of the times, yet so that the figure itself might be completed, the rebuilding of the temple of God in Jerusalem took place; but because the whole was done figuratively, no firm peace and freedom was restored to the Jews. So afterward they were conquered by the Romans and made tributaries. Indeed, from the time when they received the land of promise and began to have kings, lest they should think that what was promised to them, Christ the deliverer, had been fulfilled in any of their kings, Christ was prophesied more openly through many prophecies; not only by David himself in the book of Psalms, but also by the other great and holy prophets, down to the time of the captivity in Babylon; and in the captivity itself there were prophets who prophesied the coming Lord Jesus Christ as the deliverer of all. And after the temple was restored when the seventy years had passed, the Jews suffered such oppressions and calamities from the kings of the nations that they might understand that the deliverer had not yet come, whom they did not understand as one who would deliver spiritually, but longed for him for the sake of a carnal deliverance.