City of God 18.51–19.1

Chapter 51. That the catholic faith is strengthened even by the dissensions of heretics.

But the devil, seeing the temples of demons deserted and the human race running to the name of the liberating Mediator, stirred up heretics who, under the Christian name, would resist Christian teaching; as if they could be kept indifferently in the city of God without any correction, as the city of confusion indifferently kept philosophers who held different and contrary views among themselves. Those, then, who in the church of Christ hold anything diseased and depraved, if, when corrected so as to hold what is sound and right, they resist stubbornly and will not amend their pestilent and deadly doctrines, but persist in defending them, become heretics, and going out are reckoned among the enemies who exercise it. For even so they benefit, by their own evil, those true catholic members of Christ, since God uses even the wicked well, and all things work together for good for those who love him. For all the enemies of the church, whatever error blinds or malice depraves them, if they receive power to afflict it bodily, exercise its patience; if they oppose it only by thinking wrongly, they exercise its wisdom; and so that even enemies may be loved, they exercise its benevolence or even its beneficence, whether they are dealt with by persuasive teaching or by fearful discipline. And so the devil, the prince of the ungodly city, in stirring up his own vessels against the city of God that is a pilgrim in this world, is permitted to do it no harm. For it, without doubt, by divine providence, both consolation is provided in prosperity, so that it may not be broken by adversity, and exercise in adversity, so that it may not be corrupted by prosperity; and so each is tempered by the other, so that we recognize that the voice in the psalm arose from no other source: “According to the multitude of my sorrows in my heart, your consolations have gladdened my soul.” Hence also that saying of the apostle: “Rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation.”

For that too which the same teacher says, “All who wish to live piously in Christ suffer persecution,” must be thought to be lacking at no time. For even when those who are outside do not rage and there seems to be tranquillity, and truly is, and it brings very much consolation, especially to the weak, yet there are not lacking, indeed there are many within, who torment the hearts of those who live piously by their abandoned morals; since through them the Christian and catholic name is blasphemed; and the dearer that name is to those who wish to live piously in Christ, the more they grieve that through the wicked who are placed within it comes about that it is loved less than the minds of the pious desire. The heretics themselves too, when it is considered that they have the Christian name and sacraments and Scriptures and profession, cause great grief in the hearts of the pious; because many who wish to be Christians are compelled to hesitate because of their dissensions, and many slanderers find in them too material for blaspheming the Christian name, because they too are in some fashion called Christians. By these and such like depraved morals and errors of men those who wish to live piously in Christ suffer persecution, even when no one attacks or harasses their bodies. For they suffer this persecution not in their bodies but in their hearts. Hence that voice: “According to the multitude of my sorrows in my heart”; for he does not say “in my body.” But again, since the unchangeable divine promises are considered, and what the apostle says, “The Lord knows those who are his” (for of those whom he foreknew and predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son none can perish), therefore there follows in that psalm: “Your consolations have gladdened my soul.” And the very grief that arises in the hearts of the pious, whom the morals of bad or false Christians persecute, profits those who grieve, since it comes down from love, by which they do not wish them to perish nor to hinder the salvation of others. Finally, great consolations come also from their correction, which flood the souls of the pious with as great joy as the sorrows with which they tormented them by their perdition. So in this world, in these evil days, not only from the time of the bodily presence of Christ and his apostles, but from Abel himself, the first righteous man, whom his ungodly brother killed, and thenceforth until the end of this world, the church runs its pilgrim course between the persecutions of the world and the consolations of God.

Chapter 52. Whether it is to be believed, as some think, that, the ten persecutions that have taken place being completed, none remains except the eleventh, which is to take place in the very time of Antichrist.

Accordingly, I do not think it should be rashly said or believed either, as has seemed or seems to some, that the church will not suffer more persecutions until the time of Antichrist than it has already suffered, that is, ten, so that the eleventh and last will be from Antichrist. For they reckon the first as that made by Nero, the second by Domitian, the third by Trajan, the fourth by Antoninus, the fifth by Severus, the sixth by Maximinus, the seventh by Decius, the eighth by Valerian, the ninth by Aurelian, the tenth by Diocletian and Maximian. For they think that the plagues of the Egyptians, since there were ten before the people of God began to go out from there, are to be referred to this meaning, so that the last persecution of Antichrist may seem like the eleventh plague, by which the Egyptians, while they pursued the Hebrews as enemies, perished in the Red Sea, while the people of God passed over on dry ground. But I do not think that these persecutions were prophetically signified by that event in Egypt; although by those who think so the single items seem to be compared with the single items exquisitely and ingeniously, not by the prophetic spirit but by the conjecture of the human mind, which sometimes arrives at the truth and sometimes is deceived.

For what will those who hold this say of the persecution in which the Lord himself was crucified? In what number will they place it? But if they think the reckoning should be made with this one excepted, as though those are to be counted which pertain to the body, not that in which the Head himself was attacked and killed, what will they do about the one which, after Christ ascended into heaven, took place at Jerusalem, where the blessed Stephen was stoned, where James the brother of John was slain with the sword, where the apostle Peter was imprisoned to be killed and freed by an angel, where the brothers were put to flight and scattered from Jerusalem, where Saul, who afterwards was made the apostle Paul, laid waste the church, where he too, now preaching the faith which he had persecuted, suffered such things as he had done, whether through Judea or through other nations, wherever he most fervently preached Christ? Why, then, do they think they must begin from Nero, when the church reached the times of Nero growing amid most atrocious persecutions, of which it would be much too long to tell everything? But if they think that persecutions made by kings ought to be in the number, Herod was a king, who even after the Lord's ascension made a most grievous one. Then what do they answer about Julian too, whom they do not count among the ten? Did he not persecute the church, who forbade Christians to teach or learn the liberal letters? Under him Valentinian the elder, who was the third emperor after him, stood forth as a confessor of the Christian faith and was deprived of his military rank; to pass over what he had begun to do at Antioch, had he not been struck with horror at the freedom and cheerfulness of one most faithful and steadfast young man, who, when many had been seized to be tortured, was tortured first for a whole day and sang psalms amid the hooks and torments, and had he not feared to be put to more shameful blushing in the case of the others. Lastly, in our own memory, did not Valens, the brother of the above-mentioned Valentinian, an Arian, lay waste the catholic church throughout the regions of the East with a great persecution? And what sort of thing is it not to consider that the church, bearing fruit and growing through the whole world, can suffer persecution from kings in some nations even when it does not suffer it in others? Unless perhaps it is not to be counted a persecution when the king of the Goths in Gothia itself persecuted the Christians with marvellous cruelty, when there were none there but catholics, very many of whom were crowned with martyrdom, as we have heard from certain brothers who had been boys there at the time and unhesitatingly remembered having seen these things? What of Persia just now? Did not persecution so rage against the Christians there (if indeed it has now subsided) that some, fleeing from there, came even to Roman towns?

Thinking of these and suchlike things, it does not seem to me that the number of persecutions by which the church must be exercised is to be defined. But again, to affirm that there will be some from kings besides that last one, about which no Christian is in doubt, is no less rash. And so we leave this open, neither building up nor pulling down either side of this question, but only calling men back from the bold presumption of affirming either of them.

Chapter 53. On the time of the last persecution, which has been revealed to no man.

That last persecution, indeed, which is to come from Antichrist, Jesus himself will extinguish by his presence. For so it is written, that he will kill him with the breath of his mouth and destroy him by the brightness of his presence. Here people usually ask: “When will this be?” Altogether untimely. For if it profited us to know this, by whom would it better have been told than by God himself, the Master, when his disciples asked him? For they were not silent about it with him, but asked him when he was present, saying: “Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?” And he said: “It is not for you to know the times which the Father has put in his own power.” They had certainly not asked about the hour or the day or the year, but about the time, when they received this answer. In vain, then, do we try to count and define the years that remain to this world, since we hear from the mouth of the Truth that it is not for us to know this; which years, nevertheless, some have said could be completed as four hundred, others five hundred, others even a thousand, from the Lord's ascension to his last coming. How each of them builds up his opinion it would be long to show and not necessary. For they use human conjectures; nothing certain is brought forward by them from the authority of canonical Scripture. But he unclenches the fingers of all who calculate about this, and bids them be still, who says: “It is not for you to know the times which the Father has put in his own power.”

But because this is a saying of the gospel, it is no wonder that it did not restrain the worshippers of many false gods from inventing that it had been determined by the responses of the demons, whom they worship as gods, how long the Christian religion would last. For when they saw that it could not be consumed even by so many and so great persecutions, but rather had taken wonderful increase from them, they devised some Greek verses or other, as though poured out by a divine oracle to someone consulting it, in which they make Christ indeed innocent of the crime of this, as it were, sacrilege, but add that Peter worked sorceries so that the name of Christ should be worshipped for three hundred and sixty-five years, and then, when that number of years was completed, should come to an end without delay. O hearts of learned men! O lettered minds, worthy to believe these things about Christ, you who will not believe in Christ: that his disciple Peter did not learn magic arts from him, but, though he was innocent, was yet his sorcerer, and preferred that Christ's name rather than his own should be worshipped, by his magic arts, by his great labours and dangers, and finally even by the shedding of his blood! If Peter the sorcerer brought it about that the world should so love Christ, what did the innocent Christ do that Peter should so love him? Let them answer themselves, then, and, if they can, understand that it was by that heavenly grace that the world came to love Christ for the sake of eternal life, by which grace it came about too that Peter loved Christ both for the sake of the eternal life to be received from him and to the point of suffering temporal death for him. Then who are these gods, who can foretell these things but cannot avert them, so succumbing to one sorcerer and one magic crime, by which, as they say, a boy one year old was killed and torn apart and buried with an abominable rite, that they allowed a sect hostile to them to grow strong for so long a time, to overcome the horrible cruelties of so many and such great persecutions not by resisting but by suffering, and to come to the overthrow of their images, temples, rites, and oracles? Who, finally, is the god, not ours certainly, but theirs, who was either enticed or impelled by so great a crime to grant these things? For those verses say that Peter determined these things by magic art not with some demon but with a god. Such a god they have who do not have Christ.

Chapter 54. On the very foolish lie of the pagans, by which they invented that the Christian religion would not last beyond three hundred and sixty-five years.

I would collect these and many things of this kind if that year had not yet passed which the invented divination promised and deluded vanity believed. But since, some years ago, three hundred and sixty-five years were completed from the time when the worship of the name of Christ was established through his presence in the flesh and through the apostles, what else do we seek by which this falsehood may be refuted? For even if we do not place the beginning of this in the birth of Christ, since as an infant and a boy he had no disciples, yet when he began to have them, then without doubt the Christian teaching and religion became known through his bodily presence, that is, after he was baptized in the river Jordan by the ministry of John. For on this account that prophecy had gone before concerning him: “He shall rule from sea to sea and from the river to the ends of the earth.” But since, before he had suffered and risen from the dead, faith had not yet been defined for all (for it was defined in the resurrection of Christ; for so the apostle Paul speaks to the Athenians, saying: “Now he announces to men that all everywhere should repent, because he has appointed a day to judge the world in equity by the man by whom he defined faith for all, raising him from the dead”), we better take our beginning from there in solving this question; especially because then too the Holy Spirit was given, as it was fitting that he should be given after the resurrection of Christ, in that city from which the second law, that is, the new testament, was to begin. For the first was from Mount Sinai through Moses, which is called the old testament. But of this one, which was to be given through Christ, it was foretold: “Out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.” Hence he himself also said that repentance must be preached in his name through all nations, but nevertheless beginning from Jerusalem. There, then, the worship of this name began, that men should believe in Jesus Christ, who had been crucified and had risen again. There this faith glowed with such remarkable beginnings that some thousands of men, turned to the name of Christ with wonderful eagerness, sold their goods to be distributed to the needy, and with a holy purpose and most ardent love came to voluntary poverty, and prepared themselves, amid the raging and bloodthirsty Jews, to contend for the truth even to death, not with armed power but with a more powerful patience. If this was done by no magic arts, why do they hesitate to believe that it could have been done through the whole world by the same divine power by which this was done? But if, so that at Jerusalem so great a multitude of men, who had either seized him and fixed him to the cross or mocked him when fixed there, might be kindled to the worship of the name of Christ, Peter had already done that sorcery, then we must reckon from that very year when the three hundred and sixty-five years were completed.

Christ, then, died in the consulship of the two Gemini, on the eighth day before the Kalends of April. He rose on the third day, as the apostles proved even with their own senses. Then after forty days he ascended into heaven; after ten days, that is, on the fiftieth day after his resurrection, he sent the Holy Spirit. Then three thousand men believed when the apostles preached him. Then, therefore, the worship of that name began, as we believe and the truth holds, by the efficacy of the Holy Spirit; but, as impious vanity invented or supposed, by the magic arts of Peter. A little later too, when a wonderful sign had been done, when at the word of that same Peter a certain beggar, lame from his mother's womb, so that he was carried by others and set at the gate of the temple to beg alms, leaped up healed in the name of Jesus Christ, five thousand men believed; and thereafter the church grew by additions of believers one after another. And from this the very day is gathered from which that year took its beginning, namely when the Holy Spirit was sent, that is, about the Ides of May. Counting the consuls, then, three hundred and sixty-five years are found to have been completed at the same Ides in the consulship of Honorius and Eutychianus. Further, in the following year, in the consulship of Mallius Theodorus, when according to that oracle of demons or fiction of men there ought to have been no Christian religion at all, what perhaps took place in other parts of the world there was no need to search out; meanwhile, what we know: in the most famous and eminent city of Carthage in Africa, Gaudentius and Jovius, officers of the emperor Honorius, on the fourteenth day before the Kalends of April overthrew the temples of the false gods and broke the images. From that time until now, for almost thirty years, who does not see how much the worship of the name of Christ has grown, especially after many of those became Christians who had been held back from the faith by that divination as though it were true, and saw it, when that same number of years was completed, to be empty and ridiculous?

We, then, who are and are called Christians, do not believe in Peter, but in him in whom Peter believed; built up by Peter's words about Christ, not poisoned by his spells; not deceived by his sorceries but helped by his good deeds. That Christ who was Peter's master in the teaching that leads to eternal life is himself our master too.

But let us at last conclude this book, having discussed up to this point and shown as far as seemed sufficient what is the mortal course of the two cities, the heavenly and the earthly, mingled from the beginning to the end; of which the one that is earthly has made for itself, from wherever it pleased, or even from men, false gods whom it might serve by sacrificing; but the one that is heavenly, being a pilgrim on earth, does not make false gods, but is itself made by the true God, and is itself his true sacrifice. Yet both alike either use temporal goods or are alike afflicted with temporal evils, with different faith, different hope, different love, until they are separated at the last judgment and each receives its own end, of which there is no end; of the ends of both of which we must next discuss.

Chapter 1. That Varro perceived that in the question of the ends of goods and evils, which philosophical discussion has aired, there could be two hundred and eighty-eight sects.

Since I see that I must next discuss the due ends of both cities, the earthly, that is, and the heavenly, I must first set out, as far as the plan of bringing this work to a close allows, the arguments by which mortals have striven to make happiness for themselves in the unhappiness of this life; so that it may become clear how far our hope, which God has given us, and the thing itself, that is, true happiness, which he will give, differ from their vain pursuits, not only by divine authority but also by the use of reason, such as we can use for the sake of unbelievers. For the philosophers have disputed much and in many ways among themselves about the ends of goods and evils; turning this question over with the greatest attention, they have tried to find what makes a man happy. For that is the end of our good for the sake of which other things are to be sought, while it is sought for its own sake; and that is the end of evil for the sake of which other things are to be avoided, while it is avoided for its own sake. By the end of good, then, we now mean not that by which it is consumed so that it ceases to be, but that by which it is perfected so that it is full; and by the end of evil, not that by which it ceases to be, but that to which it leads by doing harm. These ends, then, are the supreme good and the supreme evil. In finding these, and in attaining the supreme good and avoiding the supreme evil in this life, those who professed the pursuit of wisdom in the vanity of this world have laboured much, as I said; yet, though they erred in various ways, the boundary set by nature did not allow them to stray so far from the road of truth that they did not place the ends of goods and evils some in the mind, some in the body, and some in both.

From this threefold division, as it were, of the general classes of sects, Marcus Varro, in his book On Philosophy, examining diligently and subtly, observed so great a variety of doctrines that by applying certain distinctions he very easily arrived at two hundred and eighty-eight sects, not such as already existed, but such as could exist. To show this briefly, I must begin from what he himself observed and set down in the book mentioned: that there are four things which men seek as it were naturally, without a teacher, without any aid of instruction, without the effort or art of living which is called virtue and which is without doubt learned: either pleasure, by which the sense of the body is pleasantly moved; or repose, by which it comes about that one suffers no bodily discomfort; or both, which Epicurus nevertheless calls by the one name of pleasure; or, comprehensively, the primary things of nature, among which are these and others, either in the body, such as the soundness of the members and its health and safety, or in the mind, such as the endowments, small or great, found in men's natural abilities. These four, then, namely pleasure, repose, both, and the primary things of nature, are in us in such a way that either virtue, which instruction later implants, is to be sought for their sake, or they for the sake of virtue, or both for their own sake; and so from this twelve sects arise; for by this reasoning each is tripled. When I have shown this in one, it will not be difficult to find it in the others.

When, then, bodily pleasure is either subordinated, or preferred, or joined to the virtue of the mind, it is varied into a threefold diversity of sects. It is subordinated to virtue when it is taken up for the use of virtue. For it belongs to the duty of virtue both to live for one's country and to beget children for one's country, neither of which can be done without bodily pleasure; for without it neither is food and drink taken in order to live, nor is there intercourse in order that offspring may be propagated. But when it is preferred to virtue, it is sought for its own sake, and virtue is believed to be taken up for its sake, that is, so that virtue does nothing except to obtain or preserve bodily pleasure; which is indeed a hideous life, since there virtue serves pleasure as its mistress, though in no way should this be called virtue; and yet even this horrible baseness has had certain philosophers as its patrons and defenders. Again, pleasure is joined to virtue when neither of them is sought for the sake of the other, but both for their own sake. Therefore, as pleasure, either subordinated or preferred or joined to virtue, makes three sects, so repose, so both, so the primary things of nature are found to make three others each. For according to the variety of human opinions they are sometimes subordinated to virtue, sometimes preferred, sometimes joined; and so the number of twelve sects is reached.

But this number too is doubled by applying one distinction, namely that of social life; for whoever follows any of these twelve sects surely does it either for his own sake only or also for the sake of a companion, for whom he ought to wish what he wishes for himself. Hence there are twelve of those who think each one should be held for their own sake only, and another twelve of those who decide that one should philosophize in this way or that not only for their own sake but also for the sake of others, whose good they seek as their own. These twenty-four sects are again doubled by adding a distinction from the New Academics, and become forty-eight. For each of those twenty-four sects one man can hold and defend as certain, as the Stoics defended that man's good, by which he would be happy, consisted only in virtue of the mind; another as uncertain, as the New Academics defended what seemed to them, though not certain, yet probable. Twenty-four, then, arise through those who think they should be followed as certain, because of their truth, and another twenty-four through those who think the same should be followed, though uncertain, because of their probability. Again, since each of these forty-eight sects can be followed by one man in the dress of the other philosophers, and likewise by another in the dress of the Cynics, by this distinction too they are doubled and become ninety-six. Then, since men can maintain and follow each of them either loving a life of leisure, like those who wished and were able to devote themselves only to the pursuits of learning, or a life of business, like those who, though they philosophized, were nevertheless fully occupied with administering the state and governing human affairs, or a life tempered from both kinds, like those who gave the alternating times of their life partly to learned leisure, partly to necessary business: because of these distinctions this number of sects can also be tripled and brought to two hundred and eighty-eight.

These things from Varro's book I have set down as briefly and clearly as I could, explaining his opinions in my own words. But how, having refuted the rest, he chooses one, which he will have to be that of the Old Academics (whom, founded by Plato down to Polemo, who was the fourth after him to hold his school, which was called the Academy, he wishes to be seen to have had certain doctrines, and for this reason distinguishes them from the New Academics, to whom all things are uncertain, a kind of philosophy that began with Arcesilaus, the successor of Polemo), and how he thinks that this sect, that of the Old Academics, is free from all error as from doubt, it would be long to show in every point; yet the matter must not be omitted entirely.

First, then, he removes all those distinctions which multiplied the number of sects; he thinks they should be removed because the end of good is not in them. For he does not think that any sect of philosophy should be so called which does not differ from the others by having different ends of goods and evils. Since there is no reason for a man to philosophize except that he may be happy, and what makes him happy is itself the end of good, there is no reason for philosophizing except the end of good; wherefore that which pursues no end of good is not to be called a sect of philosophy. When, then, it is asked about social life, whether the wise man should hold to it, so as to will and care for the supreme good, by which a man becomes happy, for his friend as for himself, or whether he does whatever he does only for the sake of his own happiness, the question is not about the supreme good itself, but about taking or not taking a companion into participation in this good, not for his own sake but for the sake of the companion, so that he may rejoice in his good as he rejoices in his own. Likewise, when it is asked about the New Academics, to whom all things are uncertain, whether the things about which we must philosophize are to be held so, or whether, as other philosophers held, we ought to hold them certain, the question is not what is to be pursued as the end of good, but whether one should or should not doubt the truth of the good itself which seems to be pursued; that is, to put it more plainly, whether it is to be pursued in such a way that he who pursues it says it is true, or in such a way that he who pursues it says it seems to him to be true, even if perhaps it is false, while both nevertheless pursue one and the same good. In that distinction too which is drawn from the dress and habits of the Cynics, the question is not what the end of good is, but whether he who pursues the true good, whatever seems to him to be true and to be pursued, should live in that dress and habit. In fact there were those who, while they followed different final goods, some virtue, others pleasure, nevertheless kept the same dress and habit, from which they were called Cynics. So whatever it is by which the Cynic philosophers are distinguished from the rest was certainly of no value for choosing and holding the good by which they would become happy. For if it made any difference to this, surely the same dress would compel them to follow the same end, and a different dress would not allow them to follow the same end.