Preface

I am here endeavouring most diligently to uproot and extirpate depraved and ancient opinions which the long-continued error of the human race has implanted deeply and tenaciously in the dark places of the soul; for these opinions are hostile to the truth of godliness. In performing this task, my own small ability is aided by the co-operation of the grace of the true God. Those whose intellects are nimbler and superior, for whom the previous books are sufficient – indeed, more than sufficient – must bear with me patiently and equably for the sake of others, and not deem superfluous what they now feel is not necessary for themselves. For we are here proclaiming a matter of the very first importance: namely, that the true and truly holy Divinity, even though He furnishes us with the help necessary for the frail life that we live now, should nonetheless be sought and worshipped not for the transitory vapour of this mortal life, but for the sake of the blessed life to come, which is nothing less than eternal.

Whether, since it is clear that deity is not to be found in the civil theology, we are to believe that it is to be found among the select gods

This Divinity, or, as we may call it, Deity (for this is a word which our Christian authors do not hesitate to use in order to render more accurately the Greek word theotes) – this Divinity or Deity does not exist in the civil theology as described by Marcus Varro in sixteen books.

Of the age of the prophets

We have learned that, in keeping with the promises made to him by God, it was from the seed of Abraham that the Israelite nation took its origin according to the flesh, while all nations take their origin from him according to faith; and the progress of the City of God through the ages will show how these promises are being fulfilled. Since, therefore, the previous book dealt with the period down to the end of David's reign, we shall now touch on other events which followed that reign, in so far as seems sufficient for the work that we have undertaken.

We come now, therefore, to the period extending from when the holy Samuel began to prophesy, down to the time when the people of Israel were led away captive into Babylon, and then to the point, seventy years later, when, after the return of the Israelites, the house of God was restored according to the prophecy of the holy Jeremiah. The whole of this time is the age of the prophets. We can, of course, without impropriety give the name of prophet to Noah himself, in whose days the whole earth was destroyed by the Flood; and to others also, both before and after him, down to the time when there began to be kings among the people of God.

That all men would have been plunged into an everlasting second death by the sin of the first man, had not God's grace redeemed many

As I have already said in the preceding books, God chose to create the human race from one single man. His purpose in doing this was not only that the human race should be united in fellowship by a natural likeness, but also that men should be bound together by kinship in the unity of concord, linked by the bond of peace. And the individual members of this race would not have been subject to death, had not the first two – one of whom was created from no one, and the other from him – merited it by their disobedience. So great was the sin of those two that human nature was changed by it for the worse; and so bondage to sin and the necessity of death were transmitted to their posterity.

Now the sway of the kingdom of death over men was so complete that all would have been driven headlong, as their due punishment, into that second death to which there is no end, had not some of them been redeemed by the unmerited grace of God. Thus it is that, though there are a great many nations throughout the world, living according to different rites and customs, and distinguished by many different forms of language, arms and dress, there nonetheless exist only two orders, as we may call them, of human society; and, following our Scriptures, we may rightly speak of these as two cities.

Of those adversities which are the only kind of evils that the wicked fear, yet which the world always suffered while it worshipped the gods

Enough has now been said, I suppose, of those moral and spiritual evils which are especially to be shunned, to show that the false gods of the Romans did nothing to help the people who worshipped them to avoid oppression by the weight of such ills. On the contrary, they caused them to be oppressed by them in ever greater measure. Now, I see, I must speak of the only kind of evils which our adversaries are unwilling to endure: that is, famine, disease, war, pillage, captivity, slaughter and the similar things which we have already mentioned in the first book. For evil men regard as evils only those things which do not make men evil. They do not blush to praise good things yet to remain evil themselves even among the good things that they praise. It vexes them more to have a bad house than a bad life, as if the greatest good for a man were to have everything good but himself.

Even when the Romans worshipped them freely, however, their gods did not prevent the occurrence of those material ills which are all that they dread. For at various times and in different places before the advent of our Redeemer, the human race was consumed by innumerable and, in not a few cases, incredible disasters.

Of the limit which must be set to necessary refutation

With the weakness of understanding common to all mankind, men everywhere presume to resist the clear evidence of truth. If they were to submit that weakness to wholesome doctrine as to a medicine, it would, with divine aid, be healed by the intercession of faith and godliness. Then, men of right understanding would have no need to confute each and every error of vain opinion by engaging in lengthy discussion. They would need merely to express their understanding in words of sufficient clarity. As it is, however, the souls of the foolish suffer ever more severely, and ever more abominably, from this malady. Thus, even after the debt of truth has been paid as fully as one man can to another, they still defend their own unreasonable beliefs as though they were the very stuff of truth. They do this either because they are too blind to discern what is plain, or because they are entirely obstinate in their resolve not to accept even what they do discern. Often, therefore, there arises a need to speak at great length even of matters which are already clear. It is as though we were presenting them not for the inspection of men who will look at them, but as it were for an examination by touch by men whose eyes are closed.

Of the events down to the time of the Saviour, as discussed in the previous seventeen books

I promised that, with the help of God's grace, I would first refute the enemies of the City of God, who favour their own gods above Christ, the founder of that City, and cruelly envy the Christians with a hatred pernicious above all to themselves; and this I did in the first ten books. Next, I undertook to write of the origin, progress and proper ends of the two cities, one of which, the City of God, dwells in the other, the city of this world, as far as the race of men is concerned, but as a pilgrim. But the promise to which I have just referred was threefold; and in the four books following the tenth I gave a digest of the origin of both these cities. Then, in one book, which was the fifteenth of this work, I dealt with their progress from the first man down to the Flood; and, next, our narrative pursued the course of the two cities down to the time of Abraham. It seems, however, that, from father Abraham down to the time of the kings of Israel, where we brought the sixteenth book to an end, and from then down to the coming of the Saviour in the flesh, which we reached at the end of the seventeenth book, my pen has dealt only with the City of God.

That, according to Varro, the various opinions concerning the Supreme Good might give rise to 288 different philosophical sects

I see that I must next discuss the proper ends of these two cities, the earthly and the Heavenly. First, then, let me expound, as fully as the plan of this work permits, the arguments advanced by mortals in their efforts to create happiness for themselves in the midst of the unhappiness of this life. I shall do this in order to make clear the difference between their vain beliefs and the hope which God gives us: a hope which will be fulfilled in the true blessedness which He will bestow upon us. And I shall do it not only by calling upon divine authority, but also, for the sake of unbelievers, by making as much use of reason as possible.

Now the philosophers have devised a great multitude of different arguments concerning the supreme ends of good and evil. They have devoted the greatest possible attention to this question in the attempt to discover what makes a man happy. For our Final Good is that for the sake of which other things are to be desired, while it is itself to be desired for its own sake; and the Final Evil is that for which other things are to be avoided, while it is itself to be avoided on its own account.

Preface

It seems to me, then, that, in the five preceding books, I have now argued sufficiently against those who believe that many false gods are to be worshipped for the sake of this mortal life and earthly things. They believe that they are to be worshipped by means of that ritual and service which the Greeks call latreia, and which is due only to the one true God. But Christian truth has shown these gods to be either useless images or unclean spirits and malignant demons: created beings, at any rate, and not the Creator.

But who does not know that neither these five books, nor any other number whatsoever, can be enough to overcome the great stupidity and obstinacy of our adversaries? For it is esteemed the glory of vanity to concede nothing to the force of truth even when he who is dominated by so gross a fault perishes thereby. The disease remains unconquered despite all the industry of the physician, for the patient himself is incurable. There are, however, some who understand and carefully ponder what they read without any – or at least without any great and excessive degree – of the obstinacy of long-held error. These will be more ready to judge that I have done more than was required in the five books now completed than to think that I have discussed the question less thoroughly than necessity demanded.

That the Platonists themselves assert that only the one God can confer blessedness, whether upon angels or men. We must, however, ask whether the spirits who they believe are to be worshipped for the sake of such blessedness require sacrifices to be offered only to the one God or to themselves also

It is the settled opinion of anyone who is in any way capable of using reason that all men wish to be blessed. But whenever men in their weakness ask who is blessed or what makes them so, they raise a great host of controversies upon which the philosophers have exhausted their efforts and spent their leisure. It would take too long, and it is not here necessary, to review such controversies. For the reader will recall what we said in the eighth book, when choosing those philosophers with whom we might discuss the blessed life which is to come after death. There, we asked whether this is to be achieved by paying divine honours to the one true God Who is the Maker of all gods, or by worshipping many. The reader will not expect us to repeat the same arguments here; and, if he has forgotten them, he can in any case read them again in order to refresh his memory.

God is always judging; but it is reasonable to confine our attention in this book to His last judgment

As far as He will grant me power to do so, I shall now speak of the day of God's final judgment and affirm it against the ungodly and the unbelieving. I must begin by laying down, as the foundation of the building, as it were, the evidence of Divine Scripture. Those who do not wish to believe such evidence endeavour to overturn it by means of a false and fallacious process of human hair-splitting. They either contend that what is put forward as evidence from the Holy Scriptures has some other meaning, or they simply deny that it is divinely inspired. But I believe that no mortal man who understands these statements as they were uttered and believes that they were spoken by the supreme and true God through the agency of holy souls will fail to yield and consent to them, whether he openly acknowledges this or not; although it may be, of course, that he is ashamed or afraid to do so because of some fault. It may even be, indeed, that, with a perversity closely allied to madness, he strives with all his might to defend what he knows or believes to be false against what he knows or believes to be true.

St Augustine

Augustine was born at Thagaste in the Roman province of Africa on 13 November 354, to parents of senatorial rank. His mother, Monica, was a Christian; his father Patricius was not, although he was received into the Church shortly before his death. Augustine was brought up as a Christian catechumen; as was commonly the case in the fourth century, however, he was not baptised as a child. His childhood seems to have been full of unhappy experiences, especially in regard to his education; but he writes of his mother with great affection, and is grieved by the memory of the pain which his youthful lapses caused her. In 370, he went to Carthage to study rhetoric. There, he lost touch with Christianity and acquired a mistress, who bore him a son called Adeodatus. As everyone knows, he regards himself as having lived a deplorable life as a young man, although he does not seem to have done much that we should now regard as very shocking. He read Cicero's dialogue called Hortensius (now lost), an exhortation to philosophy which fired his enthusiasm for learning; he was attracted successively to Manichaeism, Scepticism and Neoplatonism; he greatly admired the Enneads of Plotinus. Having taught for some years at Thagaste, Carthage and Rome, he accepted a position as municipal professor of rhetoric at Milan in 384. At Milan, he came under the influence of St Ambrose the bishop, and two Christian friends, Simplicianus and Pontitianus.

That both good and bad angels have only one nature

Having in the foregoing book seen how the two cities began among the angels, we must now speak of the creation of man, and show how the cities took their rise so far as regards the race of rational mortals. Before we do this, however, I see that I must first make certain remarks concerning the angels, by way of demonstrating, as far as I can, that it is not improper or inconsistent to speak of a society consisting of both men and angels. For we may properly speak not of four cities or societies – that is, two of angels and two more of men – but rather of two in all, one composed of the good angels and men together, and the other of the wicked.

It is not permissible for us to doubt that the contrasting appetites of the good and bad angels have arisen not from a difference in their nature and origin – for God, the good Author and Creator of all substances, created them both – but from a difference in their wills and desires. For some remained constant in cleaving to that which was the common good of them all: that is, to God Himself, and His eternity, truth and love. Others, however, delighting in their own power, and supposing that they could be their own good, fell from that higher and blessed good which was common to them all and embraced a private good of their own.

Of the next part of this work, in which we begin to demonstrate the origin and end of the two cities, that is, the heavenly and the earthly

The City of God of which we speak is that to which the Scriptures bear witness: the Scriptures which, excelling all the writings of all the nations in their divine authority, have brought under their sway every kind of human genius, not by a chance motion of the soul, but clearly by the supreme disposition of providence. For it is there written: ‘Glorious things are spoken of thee, O city of God.’ And in another psalm we read: ‘Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised in the city of our God, in the mountain of His holiness, increasing the joy of the whole earth.’ And a little later in the same psalm: ‘As we have heard, so have we seen in the city of the Lord of hosts, in the city of our God. God has established it for ever.’ And again in another: ‘There is a river the streams whereof shall make glad the city of our God, the holy place of the tabernacles of the Most High. God is in the midst of her, she shall not be moved.’ From these testimonies – and there are others of the same kind, but it would take too long to mention them all – we have learned that there is a city of God, whose citizens we long to be because of the love with which its Founder has inspired us.