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| Of the Eternal Felicity of the City of God, and of the Perpetual Sabbath.
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Chapter 30.—Of the Eternal
Felicity of the City of God, and of the Perpetual
Sabbath.
How great shall be that felicity,
which shall be tainted with no evil, which shall lack no good, and
which shall afford leisure for the praises of God, who shall be all
in all! For I know not what other employment there can be where
no lassitude shall slacken activity, nor any want stimulate to
labor. I am admonished also by the sacred song, in which I read
or hear the words, “Blessed are they that dwell in Thy house, O
Lord; they will be still praising Thee.”1690
All the members
and organs
of the incorruptible body, which now we see to be suited to various
necessary uses, shall contribute to the praises of God; for in that
life necessity shall have no place, but full, certain, secure,
everlasting felicity. For all those parts1691
of the bodily harmony, which are
distributed through the whole body, within and without, and of
which I have just been saying that they at present elude our
observation, shall then be discerned; and, along with the other
great and marvellous discoveries which shall then kindle rational
minds in praise of the great Artificer, there shall be the
enjoyment of a beauty which appeals to the reason. What power of
movement such bodies shall possess, I have not the audacity rashly
to define, as I have not the ability to conceive. Nevertheless I
will say that in any case, both in motion and at rest, they shall
be, as in their appearance, seemly; for into that state nothing
which is unseemly shall be admitted. One thing is certain, the
body shall forthwith be wherever the spirit wills, and the spirit
shall will nothing which is unbecoming either to the spirit or to
the body. True honor shall be there, for it shall be denied to
none who is worthy, nor yielded to any unworthy; neither shall any
unworthy person so much as sue for it, for none but the worthy
shall be there. True peace shall be there, where no one shall
suffer opposition either from himself or any other. God Himself,
who is the Author of virtue, shall there be its reward; for, as
there is nothing greater or better, He has promised Himself. What
else was meant by His word through the prophet, “I will be your
God, and ye shall be my people,”1692
than, I shall be their
satisfaction, I shall be all that men honorably desire,—life, and
health, and nourishment, and plenty, and glory, and honor, and
peace, and all good things? This, too, is the right
interpretation of the saying of the apostle, “That God may be all
in all.”1693
He shall
be the end of our desires who shall be seen without end, loved
without cloy, praised without weariness. This outgoing of
affection, this employment, shall certainly be, like eternal life
itself, common to all.
But who can conceive, not to say
describe, what degrees of honor and glory shall be awarded to the
various degrees of merit? Yet it cannot be doubted that there
shall be degrees. And in that blessed city there shall be this
great blessing, that no inferior shall envy any superior, as now
the archangels are not envied by the angels, because no one will
wish to be what he has not received, though bound in strictest
concord with him who has received; as in the body the finger does
not seek to be the eye, though both members are harmoniously
included in the complete structure of the body. And thus, along
with his gift, greater or less, each shall receive this further
gift of contentment to desire no more than he has.
Neither are we to suppose that
because sin shall have no power to delight them, free will must be
withdrawn. It will, on the contrary, be all the more truly free,
because set free from delight in sinning to take unfailing delight
in not sinning. For the first freedom of will which man received
when he was created upright consisted in an ability not to sin, but
also in an ability to sin; whereas this last freedom of will shall
be superior, inasmuch as it shall not be able to sin. This,
indeed, shall not be a natural ability, but the gift of God. For
it is one thing to be God, another thing to be a partaker of God.
God by nature cannot sin, but the partaker of God receives this
inability from God. And in this divine gift there was to be
observed this gradation, that man should first receive a free will
by which he was able not to sin, and at last a free will by which
he was not able to sin,—the former being adapted to the acquiring
of merit, the latter to the enjoying of the reward.1694
But the
nature thus constituted, having sinned when it had the ability to
do so, it is by a more abundant grace that it is delivered so as to
reach that freedom in which it cannot sin. For as the first
immortality which Adam lost by sinning consisted in his being able
not to die, while the last shall consist in his not being able to
die; so the first free will consisted in his being able not to sin,
the last in his not being able to sin. And thus piety and justice
shall be as indefeasible as happiness. For certainly by sinning
we lost both piety and happiness; but when we lost happiness, we
did not lose the love of it. Are we to say that God Himself is
not free because He cannot sin? In that city, then, there shall
be free will, one in all the citizens, and indivisible in each,
delivered from all ill, filled with all good, enjoying indefeasibly
the delights of eternal joys, oblivious of sins, oblivious of
sufferings, and yet not so oblivious of its deliverance as to be
ungrateful to its Deliverer.
The soul, then, shall have an
intellectual remembrance of its past ills; but, so far as regards
sensible experience, they shall be quite forgotten. For a
skillful physician knows, indeed, professionally almost all
diseases; but
experimentally he is ignorant
of a great number which he himself has never suffered from. As,
therefore, there are two ways of knowing evil things,—one by
mental insight, the other by sensible experience, for it is one
thing to understand all vices by the wisdom of a cultivated mind,
another to understand them by the foolishness of an abandoned
life,—so also there are two ways of forgetting evils. For a
well-instructed and learned man forgets them one way, and he who
has experimentally suffered from them forgets them another,—the
former by neglecting what he has learned, the latter by escaping
what he has suffered. And in this latter way the saints shall
forget their past ills, for they shall have so thoroughly escaped
them all, that they shall be quite blotted out of their
experience. But their intellectual knowledge, which shall be
great, shall keep them acquainted not only with their own past
woes, but with the eternal sufferings of the lost. For if they
were not to know that they had been miserable, how could they, as
the Psalmist says, for ever sing the mercies of God? Certainly
that city shall have no greater joy than the celebration of the
grace of Christ, who redeemed us by His blood. There shall be
accomplished the words of the psalm, “Be still, and know that I
am God.”1695
There
shall be the great Sabbath which has no evening, which God
celebrated among His first works, as it is written, “And God
rested on the seventh day from all His works which He had made.
And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it; because that in
it He had rested from all His work which God began to make.”1696
For we
shall ourselves be the seventh day, when we shall be filled and
replenished with God’s blessing and sanctification. There shall
we be still, and know that He is God; that He is that which we
ourselves aspired to be when we fell away from Him, and listened to
the voice of the seducer, “Ye shall be as gods,”1697
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.”1698
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.”1699
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.”1700
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.1701
| 1701 [On Augustin’s view of the
millennium and the first resurrection, see Bk. xx.
6–10.—P.S.] | 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. E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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