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Translator’s Preface.
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“Rome
having been stormed and sacked by the Goths under Alaric their
king,4
the worshippers
of false gods, or pagans, as we commonly call them, made an attempt
to attribute this calamity to the Christian religion, and began to
blaspheme the true God with even more than their wonted bitterness
and acerbity. It was this which kindled my zeal for the house of
God, and prompted me to undertake the defence of the city of God
against the charges and misrepresentations of its assailants.
This work was in my hands for several years, owing to the
interruptions occasioned by many other affairs which had a prior
claim on my attention, and which I could not defer. However, this
great undertaking was at last completed in twenty-two books. Of
these, the first five refute those who fancy that the polytheistic
worship is necessary in order to secure worldly prosperity, and
that all these overwhelming calamities have befallen us in
consequence of its prohibition. In the following five books I
address myself to those who admit that such calamities have at all
times attended, and will at all times attend, the human race, and
that they constantly recur in forms more or less disastrous,
varying only in the scenes, occasions, and persons on whom they
light, but, while admitting this, maintain that the worship of the
gods is advantageous for the life to come. In these ten books,
then, I refute these two opinions, which are as groundless as they
are antagonistic to the Christian religion.
“But that no one might have
occasion to say, that though I had refuted the tenets of other men,
I had omitted to establish my own, I devote to this object the
second part of this work, which comprises twelve books, although I
have not scrupled, as occasion offered, either to advance my own
opinions in the first ten books, or to demolish the arguments of my
opponents in the last twelve. Of these twelve books, the first
four contain an account of the origin of these two cities—the
city of God, and the city of the world. The second four treat of
their history or progress; the third and last four, of their
deserved destinies. And so, though all these twenty-two books
refer to both cities, yet I have named them after the better city,
and called them The City of God.”
Such is the account given by
Augustin himself5
of the occasion
and plan of this his greatest work. But in addition to this
explicit information, we learn from the correspondence6
of Augustin, that it was due to the
importunity of his friend Marcellinus that this defence of
Christianity extended beyond the limits of a few letters. Shortly
before the fall of Rome, Marcellinus had been sent to Africa by the
Emperor Honorius to arrange a settlement of the differences between
the Donatists and the Catholics. This brought him into contact
not only with Augustin, but with Volusian, the proconsul of Africa,
and a man of rare intelligence and candor. Finding that Volusian,
though as yet a pagan, took an interest in the Christian religion,
Marcellinus set his heart on converting him to the true faith.
The details of the subsequent significant intercourse between the
learned and courtly bishop and the two imperial statesmen, are
unfortunately almost entirely lost to us; but the impression
conveyed by the extant correspondence is, that Marcellinus was the
means of bringing his two friends into communication with one
another. The first overture was on Augustin’s part, in the
shape of a simple and manly request that Volusian would carefully
peruse the Scriptures, accompanied by a frank offer to do his best
to solve any difficulties that might arise from such a course of
inquiry. Volusian accordingly enters into correspondence with
Augustin; and in order to illustrate the kind of difficulties
experienced by men in his position, he gives some graphic notes of
a conversation in which he had recently taken part at a gathering
of some of his friends. The difficulty to which most weight is
attached in this letter, is the apparent impossibility of believing
in the Incarnation. But a letter which Marcellinus immediately
despatched to Augustin, urging him to reply to Volusian at large,
brought the intelligence that the difficulties and objections to
Christianity were thus limited merely out of a courteous regard to
the preciousness of the bishop’s time, and the vast number of his
engagements. This letter, in short, brought out the important
fact, that a removal of speculative doubts would not suffice for
the conversion of such men as Volusian, whose life was one with the
life of the empire. Their difficulties were rather political,
historical, and social. They could not see how the reception of
the Christian rule of life was compat
ible with
the interests of Rome as the mistress of the world.7
| 7
See some admirable remarks on this subject in the
useful work of Beugnot, Histoire de la Destruction du
Paganisme, ii. 83 et sqq. | And thus Augustin was led to take a
more distinct and wider view of the whole relation which
Christianity bore to the old state of things,—moral, political,
philosophical, and religious,—and was gradually drawn on to
undertake the elaborate work now presented to the English reader,
and which may more appropriately than any other of his writings be
called his masterpiece8
| 8
As Waterland (iv. 760) does call it, adding that
it is “his most learned, most correct, and most elaborate
work.” | or
life-work. It was begun the very year of Marcellinus’ death,
a.d. 413, and was issued in detached
portions from time to time, until its completion in the year 426.
It thus occupied the maturest years of Augustin’s life—from his
fifty-ninth to his seventy-second year.9
| 9
For proof, see the Benedictine Preface. |
From this brief sketch, it will be
seen that though the accompanying work is essentially an Apology,
the Apologetic of Augustin can be no mere rehabilitation of the
somewhat threadbare, if not effete, arguments of Justin and
Tertullian.10
| 10
“Hitherto the Apologies had been framed to meet
particular exigencies: they were either brief and pregnant
statements of the Christian doctrines; refutations of prevalent
calumnies; invectives against the follies and crimes of Paganism;
or confutations of anti-Christian works like those of Celsus,
Porphyry, or Julian, closely following their course of argument,
and rarely expanding into general and comprehensive views of the
great conflict.”—Milman, History of
Christianity, iii. c. 10. We are not acquainted with any more
complete preface to the City of God than is contained in the
two or three pages which Milman has devoted to this
subject. | In fact, as
Augustin considered what was required of him,—to expound the
Christian faith, and justify it to enlightened men: to
distinguish it from, and show its superiority to, all those forms
of truth, philosophical or popular, which were then striving for
the mastery, or at least for standing-room; to set before the
world’s eye a vision of glory that might win the regard even of
men who were dazzled by the fascinating splendor of a world-wide
empire,—he recognized that a task was laid before him to which
even his powers might prove unequal,—a task certainly which would
afford ample scope for his learning, dialectic, philosophical grasp
and acumen, eloquence, and faculty of exposition.
But it is the occasion of this
great Apology which invests it at once with grandeur and
vitality. After more than eleven hundred years of steady and
triumphant progress, Rome had been taken and sacked. It is
difficult for us to appreciate, impossible to overestimate, the
shock which was thus communicated from centre to circumference of
the whole known world. It was generally believed, not only by the
heathen, but also by many of the most liberal-minded of the
Christians, that the destruction of Rome would be the prelude to
the destruction of the world.11
| 11
See the interesting remarks of Lactantius,
Instit. vii. 25. | Even Jerome, who might have been
supposed to be embittered against the proud mistress of the world
by her inhospitality to himself, cannot conceal his profound
emotion on hearing of her fall. “A terrible rumor,” he says,
“reaches me from the West telling of Rome besieged, bought for
gold, besieged again, life and property perishing together. My
voice falters, sobs stifle the words I dictate; for she is a
captive, that city which enthralled the world.”12
| 12
“Hæret vox et singultus
intercipiunt verba dictantis. Capitur urbs quætotum cepit
orbem.”—Jerome, iv. 783. | Augustin is
never so theatrical as Jerome in the expression of his feeling, but
he is equally explicit in lamenting the fall of Rome as a great
calamity: and while he does not scruple to ascribe her recent
disgrace to the profligate manners, the effeminacy, and the pride
of her citizens, he is not without hope that, by a return to the
simple, hardy, and honorable mode of life which characterized the
early Romans, she may still be restored to much of her former
prosperity.13
But as
Augustin contemplates the ruins of Rome’s greatness, and feels in
common with all the world at this crisis, the instability of the
strongest governments, the insufficiency of the most authoritative
statesmanship, there hovers over these ruins the splendid vision of
the city of God “coming down out of heaven, adorned as a bride
for her husband.” The old social system is crumbling away on
all sides, but in its place he seems to see a pure Christendom
arising. He sees that human history and human destiny are not
wholly identified with the history of any earthly power—not
though it be as cosmopolitan as the empire of Rome.14
| 14
This is well brought out by Merivale,
Conversion of the Roman Empire, p. 145, etc. | He directs the attention of men to
the fact that there is another kingdom on earth,—a city which
hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God. He teaches men
to take profounder views of history, and shows them how from the
first the city of God, or community of God’s people, has lived
alongside of the kingdoms of this world and their glory, and has
been silently increasing, “crescit occulto velut arbor
ævo.” He demonstrates that the superior morality, the true
doctrine, the heavenly origin of this city, ensure it success; and
over against this, he depicts the silly or contradictory
theorizings of the pagan philosophers, and the unhinged morals of
the people, and puts it to all candid men to say, whether in the
presence of so manifestly sufficient a cause for Rome’s downfall,
there is room for imputing it to the spread of Christianity. He
traces the antagonism of these two grand communities of rational
creatures back to their first divergence in the fall of the angels,
and down to the consummation of all things in the last judgment and
eternal destination of the good end evil. In other words, the
city of God is “the first real effort to produce a philosophy of
history,”15
| 15
Ozanam, History of Civilisation in the Fifth
Century (Eng. trans.), ii. 160. | to exhibit
historical events in connection with their true causes, and in
their real sequence. This plan of the work is not only a great
conception, but it is accompanied with many practical advantages;
the chief of which is, that
it admits, and even requires,
a full treatment of those doctrines of our faith that are more
directly historical,—the doctrines of creation, the fall, the
incarnation, the connection between the Old and New Testaments, and
the doctrine of “the last things.”16
| 16
Abstracts of the work at greater or less length
are given by Dupin, Bindemann, Böhringer, Poujoulat, Ozanam, and
others. |
The effect produced by this great
work it is impossible to determine with accuracy. Beugnot, with
an absoluteness which we should condemn as presumption in any less
competent authority, declares that its effect can only have been
very slight.17
| 17
His words are: “Plus on examine la Cité de Dieu, plus on reste
convaincu que cet ouvrage dût exercea tres-peu d’influence sur
l’esprit des paiens” (ii. 122.);
and this though he thinks one cannot but be struck with the
grandeur of the ideas it contains. | Probably its
effect would be silent and slow; telling first upon cultivated
minds, and only indirectly upon the people. Certainly its effect
must have been weakened by the interrupted manner of its
publication. It is an easier task to estimate its intrinsic
value. But on this also patristic and literary authorities widely
differ. Dupin admits that it is very pleasant reading, owing to
the surprising variety of matters which are introduced to
illustrate and forward the argument, but censures the author for
discussing very useless questions, and for adducing reasons which
could satisfy no one who was not already convinced.18
| 18
History of Ecclesiastical Writers, i.
406. | Huet also speaks of the book as
“un amas confus
d’excellents materiaux; c’est de l’or en barre et en
lingots.”19
L’Abbé Flottes censures these
opinions as unjust, and cites with approbation the unqualified
eulogy of Pressensé.20
| 20
Flottes, Etudes sur S. Augustin (Paris,
1861), pp. 154–6, one of the most accurate and interesting even
of French monographs on theological writers. | But probably the popularity of the
book is its best justification. This popularity may be measured
by the circumstance that, between the year 1467 and the end of the
fifteenth century, no fewer than twenty editions were called for,
that is to say, a fresh edition every eighteen months.21
| 21
These editions will be found detailed in the
second volume of Schoenemann’s Bibliotheca Pat. | And in the interesting series of
letters that passed between Ludovicus Vives and Erasmus, who had
engaged him to write a commentary on the City of God for his
edition of Augustin’s works, we find Vives pleading for a
separate edition of this work, on the plea that, of all the
writings of Augustin, it was almost the only one read by patristic
students, and might therefore naturally be expected to have a much
wider circulation.22
| 22
His words (in Ep. vi.) are quite worth quoting:
“Cura rogo te, ut excudantur aliquot centena exemplarium
istius operis a reliquo Augustini corpore separata; nam multi erunt
studiosi qui Augustinum totum emere vel nollent, vel non poterunt,
quia non egebunt, seu quia tantum pecuniænon
habebunt. Scio enim fere a deditis studiis istis elegantioribus
præter hoc Augustini opus nullum fere aliud legi ejusdem
autoris.” |
If it were asked to what this
popularity is due, we should be disposed to attribute it mainly to
the great variety of ideas, opinions, and facts that are here
brought before the reader’s mind. Its importance as a
contribution to the history of opinion cannot be overrated. We
find in it not only indications or explicit enouncement of the
author’s own views upon almost every important topic which
occupied his thoughts, but also a compendious exhibition of the
ideas which most powerfully influenced the life at that age. It
thus becomes, as Poujoulat says, “comme l’encyclopédie du cinquième
siècle.” All that is valuable,
together with much indeed that is not so, in the religion and
philosophy of the classical nations of antiquity, is reviewed.
And on some branches of these subjects it has, in the judgment of
one well qualified to judge, “preserved more than the whole
surviving Latin literature.” It is true we are sometimes
wearied by the too elaborate refutation of opinions which to a
modern mind seem self-evident absurdities; but if these opinions
were actually prevalent in the fifth century, the historical
inquirer will not quarrel with the form in which his information is
conveyed, nor will commit the absurdity of attributing to Augustin
the foolishness of these opinions, but rather the credit of
exploding them. That Augustin is a well-informed and impartial
critic, is evinced by the courteousness and candor which he
uniformly displays to his opponents, by the respect he won from the
heathen themselves, and by his own early life. The most rigorous
criticism has found him at fault regarding matters of fact only in
some very rare instances, which can be easily accounted for. His
learning would not indeed stand comparison with what is accounted
such in our day: his life was too busy, and too devoted to the
poor and to the spiritually necessitous, to admit of any
extraordinary acquisition. He had access to no literature but the
Latin; or at least he had only sufficient Greek to enable him to
refer to Greek authors on points of importance, and not enough to
enable him to read their writings with ease and pleasure.23
| 23
The fullest and fairest discussion of the very
simple yet never settled question of Augustin’s learning will be
found in Nourrisson’s Philosophie de S. Augustin, ii.
92–100. [Comp. the first vol. of this Nicene Library, p.
9.—P.S.] | But he had a profound knowledge of
his own time, and a familiar acquaintance not only with the Latin
poets, but with many other authors, some of whose writings are now
lost to us, save the fragments preserved through his
quotations.
But the interest attaching to the
City of God is not merely historical. It is the
earnestness and ability with which he develops his own
philosophical and theological views which gradually fascinate the
reader, and make him see why the world has set this among the few
greatest books of all time. The fundamental lines of the
Augustinian theology are here laid down in a comprehensive and
interesting form. Never was thought so abstract expressed in
language so popular. He handles metaphysical problems with the
unembarrassed ease of
Plato, with all Cicero’s
accuracy and acuteness, and more than Cicero’s profundity. He
is never more at home than when exposing the incompetency of
Neoplatonism, or demonstrating the harmony of Christian doctrine
and true philosophy. And though there are in the City of
God, as in all ancient books, things that seem to us childish
and barren, there are also the most surprising anticipations of
modern speculation. There is an earnest grappling with those
problems which are continually re-opened because they underlie
man’s relation to God and the spiritual world,—the problems
which are not peculiar to any one century. As we read these
animated discussions,
“The fourteen centuries fall
away
Between us and the Afric
saint,
And at his side we urge,
to-day,
The immemorial quest and old
complaint.
No outward sign to us is
given,
From sea or earth comes no
reply;
Hushed as the warm Numidian
heaven,
He vainly questioned bends our
frozen sky.”
It is true, the style of the book
is not all that could be desired: there are passages which can
possess an interest only to the antiquarian; there are others with
nothing to redeem them but the glow of their eloquence; there are
many repetitions; there is an occasional use of arguments
“plus ingenieux que
solides,” as M. Saisset says.
Augustin’s great admirer, Erasmus, does not scruple to call him a
writer “obscuræ, subtilitatis et parum amœnæ
prolixitatis;24
| 24
Erasmi Epistolœ xx. 2. | but “the toil
of penetrating the apparent obscurities will be rewarded by finding
a real wealth of insight and enlightenment.” Some who have read
the opening chapters of the City of God, may have considered
it would be a waste of time to proceed; but no one, we are
persuaded, ever regretted reading it all. The book has its
faults; but it effectually introduces us to the most influential of
theologians, and the greatest popular teacher; to a genius that
cannot nod for many lines together; to a reasoner whose dialectic
is more formidable, more keen and sifting, than that of Socrates or
Aquinas; to a saint whose ardent and genuine devotional feeling
bursts up through the severest argumentation; to a man whose
kindliness and wit, universal sympathies and breadth of
intelligence, lend piquancy and vitality to the most abstract
dissertation.
The propriety of publishing a
translation of so choice a specimen of ancient literature needs no
defence. As Poujoulat very sensibly remarks, there are not a
great many men now-a-days who will read a work in Latin of
twenty-two books. Perhaps there are fewer still who ought to do
so. With our busy neighbors in France, this work has been a prime
favorite for 400 years. There may be said to be eight independent
translations of it into the French tongue, though some of these are
in part merely revisions. One of these translations has
gone through as many as four editions. The most recent is that
which forms part of the Nisard series; but the best, so far as we
have seen, is that of the accomplished Professor of Philosophy in
the College of France, Emile Saisset. This translation is indeed
all that can be desired: here and there an omission occurs, and
about one or two renderings a difference of opinion may exist; but
the exceeding felicity and spirit of the whole show it to have been
a labor of love, the fond homage of a disciple proud of his
master. The preface of M. Saisset is one of the most valuable
contributions ever made to the understanding of Augustin’s
philosophy.25
| 25
A large part of it has been translated in
Saisset’s Pantheism (Clark, Edinburgh). |
Of English translations there has
been an unaccountable poverty. Only one exists,26
| 26
By J. H., published in 1610, and again in 1620,
with Vives’ commentary. | and this so exceptionally bad, so
unlike the racy translations of the seventeenth century in general,
so inaccurate, and so frequently unintelligible, that it is not
impossible it may have done something towards giving the English
public a distaste for the book itself. That the present
translation also might be improved, we know; that many men were
fitter for the task, on the score of scholarship, we are very
sensible; but that any one would have executed it with intenser
affection and veneration for the author, we are not prepared to
admit. A few notes have been added where it appeared to be
necessary. Some are original, some from the Benedictine Augustin,
and the rest from the elaborate commentary of Vives.27
| 27
As the letters of Vives are not in every library,
we give his comico-pathetic account of the result of his
Augustinian labors on his health: “Ex quo Augustinum
perfeci, nunquam valui ex sententia; proximâ vero hebdomade et
hac, fracto corpore cuncto, et nervis lassitudine quadam et
debilitate dejectis, in caput decem turres incumbere mihi videntur
incidendo pondere, ac mole intolerabili; isti sunt fructus
studiorum, et merces pulcherrimi laboris; quid labor et benefacta
juvant?” |
Marcus
Dods.
Glasgow,
1871.
[On the back of the title pages to
vols. I. and II. of the Edinburgh edition, Dr. Dods indicates his
associates in the work of translation and annotation as
follows:
“Books IV., XVII. and XVIII. have
been translated by the Rev. George Wilson,
Glenluce; Books V., VI., VII. and VIII. by the Rev. J. J. Smith.”] E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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