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ST. AUGUSTIN'S CITY OF GOD

Book 18

Argument—Augustin traces the parallel courses of the earthly and heavenly cities from the time
of Abraham to the end of the world; and alludes to the oracles regarding Christ, both those uttered
by the Sibyls, and those of the sacred prophets who wrote after the foundation of Rome, Hosea,
Amos, Isaiah, Micah, and their successors.
Chapter 1.—Of Those Things Down to the Times of the Saviour Which Have Been Discussed in
the Seventeen Books.
I Promised to write of the rise, progress, and appointed end of the two cities, one of which is
God’s, the other this world’s, in which, so far as mankind is concerned, the former is now a stranger.
But first of all I undertook, so far as His grace should enable me, to refute the enemies of the city
of God, who prefer their gods to Christ its founder, and fiercely hate Christians with the most deadly
malice. And this I have done in the first ten books. Then, as regards my threefold promise which
I have just mentioned, I have treated distinctly, in the four books which follow the tenth, of the rise
of both cities. After that, I have proceeded from the first man down to the flood in one book, which
is the fifteenth of this work; and from that again down to Abraham our work has followed both in
chronological order. From the patriarch Abraham down to the time of the Israelite kings, at which
we close our sixteenth book, and thence down to the advent of Christ Himself in the flesh, to which
period the seventeenth book reaches, the city of God appears from my way of writing to have run
its course alone; whereas it did not run its course alone in this age, for both cities, in their course
amid mankind, certainly experienced chequered times together just as from the beginning. But I
did this in order that, first of all, from the time when the promises of God began to be more clear,
down to the virgin birth of Him in whom those things promised from the first were to be fulfilled,
the course of that city which is God’s might be made more distinctly apparent, without interpolation
of foreign matter from the history of the other city, although down to the revelation of the new
covenant it ran its course, not in light, but in shadow. Now, therefore, I think fit to do what I passed
by, and show, so far as seems necessary, how that other city ran its course from the times of
Abraham, so that attentive readers may compare the two.
Chapter 2.—Of the Kings and Times of the Earthly City Which Were Synchronous with the Times
of the Saints, Reckoning from the Rise of Abraham.
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The society of mortals spread abroad through the earth everywhere, and in the most diverse
places, although bound together by a certain fellowship of our common nature, is yet for the most
part divided against itself, and the strongest oppress the others, because all follow after their own
interests and lusts, while what is longed for either suffices for none, or not for all, because it is not
the very thing. For the vanquished succumb to the victorious, preferring any sort of peace and
safety to freedom itself; so that they who chose to die rather than be slaves have been greatly
wondered at. For in almost all nations the very voice of nature somehow proclaims, that those who
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happen to be conquered should choose rather to be subject to their conquerors than to be killed by
all kinds of warlike destruction. This does not take place without the providence of God, in whose
power it lies that any one either subdues or is subdued in war; that some are endowed with kingdoms,
others made subject to kings. Now, among the very many kingdoms of the earth into which, by
earthly interest or lust, society is divided (which we call by the general name of the city of this
world), we see that two, settled and kept distinct from each other both in time and place, have grown
far more famous than the rest, first that of the Assyrians, then that of the Romans. First came the
one, then the other. The former arose in the east, and, immediately on its close, the latter in the
west. I may speak of other kingdoms and other kings as appendages of these.
Ninus, then, who succeeded his father Belus, the first king of Assyria, was already the second
king of that kingdom when Abraham was born in the land of the Chaldees. There was also at that
time a very small kingdom of Sicyon, with which, as from an ancient date, that most universally
learned man Marcus Varro begins, in writing of the Roman race. For from these kings of Sicyon
he passes to the Athenians, from them to the Latins, and from these to the Romans. Yet very little
is related about these kingdoms, before the foundation of Rome, in comparison with that of Assyria.
For although even Sallust, the Roman historian, admits that the Athenians were very famous in
Greece, yet he thinks they were greater in fame than in fact. For in speaking of them he says, “The
deeds of the Athenians, as I think, were very great and magnificent, but yet somewhat less than
reported by fame. But because writers of great genius arose among them, the deeds of the Athenians
were celebrated throughout the world as very great. Thus the virtue of those who did them was
held to be as great as men of transcendent genius could represent it to be by the power of laudatory
words.”1134 This city also derived no small glory from literature and philosophy, the study of which
chiefly flourished there. But as regards empire, none in the earliest times was greater than the
Assyrian, or so widely extended. For when Ninus the son of Belus was king, he is reported to have
subdued the whole of Asia, even to the boundaries of Libya, which as to number is called the third
part, but as to size is found to be the half of the whole world. The Indians in the eastern regions
were the only people over whom he did not reign; but after his death Semiramis his wife made war
on them. Thus it came to pass that all the people and kings in those countries were subject to the
kingdom and authority of the Assyrians, and did whatever they were commanded. Now Abraham
was born in that kingdom among the Chaldees, in the time of Ninus. But since Grecian affairs are
1134 Sallust, Bell. Cat. c. 8.
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much better known to us than Assyrian, and those who have diligently investigated the antiquity
of the Roman nation’s origin have followed the order of time through the Greeks to the Latins, and
from them to the Romans, who themselves are Latins, we ought on this account, where it is needful,
to mention the Assyrian kings, that it may appear how Babylon, like a first Rome, ran its course
along with the city of God, which is a stranger in this world. But the things proper for insertion in
this work in comparing the two cities, that is, the earthly and heavenly, ought to be taken mostly
from the Greek and Latin kingdoms, where Rome herself is like a second Babylon.
At Abraham’s birth, then, the second kings of Assyria and Sicyon respectively were Ninus and
Europs, the first having been Belus and Ægialeus. But when God promised Abraham, on his
departure from Babylonia, that he should become a great nation, and that in his seed all nations of
the earth should be blessed, the Assyrians had their seventh king, the Sicyons their fifth; for the
son of Ninus reigned among them after his mother Semiramis, who is said to have been put to death
by him for attempting to defile him by incestuously lying with him. Some think that she founded
Babylon, and indeed she may have founded it anew. But we have told, in the sixteenth book, when
or by whom it was founded. Now the son of Ninus and Semiramis, who succeeded his mother in
the kingdom, is also called Ninus by some, but by others Ninias, a patronymic word. Telexion then
held the kingdom of the Sicyons. In his reign times were quiet and joyful to such a degree, that
after his death they worshipped him as a god by offering sacrifices and by celebrating games, which
are said to have been first instituted on this occasion.
Chapter 3.—What Kings Reigned in Assyria and Sicyon When, According to the Promise, Isaac
Was Born to Abraham in His Hundredth Year, and When the Twins Esau and Jacob Were Born
of Rebecca to Isaac in His Sixtieth Year.
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In his times also, by the promise of God, Isaac, the son of Abraham, was born to his father
when he was a hundred years old, of Sarah his wife, who, being barren and old, had already lost
hope of issue. Aralius was then the fifth king of the Assyrians. To Isaac himself, in his sixtieth
year, were born twin-sons, Esau and Jacob, whom Rebecca his wife bore to him, their grandfather
Abraham, who died on completing a hundred and seventy years, being still alive, and reckoning
his hundred and sixtieth year.1135 At that time there reigned as the seventh kings,—among the
Assyrians, that more ancient Xerxes, who was also called Balæus; and among the Sicyons,
Thuriachus, or, as some write his name, Thurimachus. The kingdom of Argos, in which Inachus
reigned first, arose in the time of Abraham’s grandchildren. And I must not omit what Varro relates,
that the Sicyons were also wont to sacrifice at the tomb of their seventh king Thuriachus. In the
reign of Armamitres in Assyria and Leucippus in Sicyon as the eighth kings, and of Inachus as the
1135 In the Hebrew text, Gen. xxv. 7, a hundred and seventy-five years.
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first in Argos, God spoke to Isaac, and promised the same two things to him as to his
father,—namely, the land of Canaan to his seed, and the blessing of all nations in his seed. These
same things were promised to his son, Abraham’s grandson, who was at first called Jacob, afterwards
Israel, when Belocus was the ninth king of Assyria, and Phoroneus, the son of Inachus, reigned as
the second king of Argos, Leucippus still continuing king of Sicyon. In those times, under the
Argive king Phoroneus, Greece was made more famous by the institution of certain laws and judges.
On the death of Phoroneus, his younger brother Phegous built a temple at his tomb, in which he
was worshipped as God, and oxen were sacrificed to him. I believe they thought him worthy of so
great honor, because in his part of the kingdom (for their father had divided his territories between
them, in which they reigned during his life) he had founded chapels for the worship of the gods,
and had taught them to measure time, by months and years, and to that extent to keep count and
reckoning of events. Men still uncultivated, admiring him for these novelties, either fancied he
was, or resolved that he should be made, a god after his death. Io also is said to have been the
daughter of Inachus, who was afterwards called Isis, when she was worshipped in Egypt as a great
goddess; although others write that she came as a queen out of Ethiopia, and because she ruled
extensively and justly, and instituted for her subjects letters and many useful things, such divine
honor was given her there after she died, that if any one said she had been human, he was charged
with a capital crime.
Chapter 4.—Of the Times of Jacob and His Son Joseph.
In the reign of Balæus, the ninth king of Assyria, and Mesappus, the eighth of Sicyon, who is
said by some to have been also called Cephisos (if indeed the same man had both names, and those
who put the other name in their writings have not rather confounded him with another man), while
Apis was third king of Argos, Isaac died, a hundred and eighty years old, and left his twin-sons a
hundred and twenty years old. Jacob, the younger of these, belonged to the city of God about which
we write (the elder being wholly rejected), and had twelve sons, one of whom, called Joseph, was
sold by his brothers to merchants going down to Egypt, while his grandfather Isaac was still alive.
But when he was thirty years of age, Joseph stood before Pharaoh, being exalted out of the
humiliation he endured, because, in divinely interpreting the king’s dreams, he foretold that there
would be seven years of plenty, the very rich abundance of which would be consumed by seven
other years of famine that should follow. On this account the king made him ruler over Egypt,
liberating him from prison, into which he had been thrown for keeping his chastity intact; for he
bravely preserved it from his mistress, who wickedly loved him, and told lies to his weakly credulous
master, and did not consent to commit adultery with her, but fled from her, leaving his garment in
her hands when she laid hold of him. In the second of the seven years of famine Jacob came down
into Egypt to his son with all he had, being a hundred and thirty years old, as he himself said in
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answer to the king’s question. Joseph was then thirty-nine, if we add seven years of plenty and
two of famine to the thirty he reckoned when honored by the king.
Chapter 5.—Of Apis King of Argos, Whom the Egyptians Called Serapis, and Worshipped with
Divine Honors.
In these times Apis king of Argos crossed over into Egypt in ships, and, on dying there, was
made Serapis, the chief god of all the Egyptians. Now Varro gives this very ready reason why,
after his death, he was called, not Apis, but Serapis. The ark in which he was placed when dead,
which every one now calls a sarcophagus, was then called in Greek σορὸς, and they began to worship
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him when buried in it before his temple was built; and from Soros and Apis he was called first
[Sorosapis, or] Sorapis, and then Serapis, by changing a letter, as easily happens. It was decreed
regarding him also, that whoever should say he had been a man should be capitally punished. And
since in every temple where Isis and Serapis were worshipped there was also an image which, with
finger pressed on the lips, seemed to warn men to keep silence, Varro thinks this signifies that it
should be kept secret that they had been human. But that bull which, with wonderful folly, deluded
Egypt nourished with abundant delicacies in honor of him, was not called Serapis, but Apis, because
they worshipped him alive without a sarcophagus. On the death of that bull, when they sought and
found a calf of the same color,—that is, similarly marked with certain white spots,—they believed
it was something miraculous, and divinely provided for them. Yet it was no great thing for the
demons, in order to deceive them, to show to a cow when she was conceiving and pregnant the
image of such a bull, which she alone could see, and by it attract the breeding passion of the mother,
so that it might appear in a bodily shape in her young, just as Jacob so managed with the spotted
rods that the sheep and goats were born spotted. For what men can do with real colors and
substances, the demons can very easily do by showing unreal forms to breeding animals.
Chapter 6.—Who Were Kings of Argos, and of Assyria, When Jacob Died in Egypt.
Apis, then, who died in Egypt, was not the king of Egypt, but of Argos. He was succeeded by
his son Argus, from whose name the land was called Argos and the people Argives, for under the
earlier kings neither the place nor the nation as yet had this name. While he then reigned over
Argos, and Eratus over Sicyon, and Balæus still remained king of Assyria, Jacob died in Egypt a
hundred and forty-seven years old, after he had, when dying, blessed his sons and his grandsons
by Joseph, and prophesied most plainly of Christ, saying in the blessing of Judah, “A prince shall
not fail out of Judah, nor a leader from his thighs, until those things come which are laid up for
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him; and He is the expectation of the nations.”1136 In the reign of Argus, Greece began to use fruits,
and to have crops of corn in cultivated fields, the seed having been brought from other countries.
Argus also began to be accounted a god after his death, and was honored with a temple and
sacrifices. This honor was conferred in his reign, before being given to him, on a private individual
for being the first to yoke oxen in the plough. This was one Homogyrus, who was struck by
lightning.
Chapter 7.—Who Were Kings When Joseph Died in Egypt.
In the reign of Mamitus, the twelfth king of Assyria, and Plemnæus, the eleventh of Sicyon,
while Argus still reigned over the Argives, Joseph died in Egypt a hundred and ten years old. After
his death, the people of God, increasing wonderfully, remained in Egypt a hundred and forty-five
years, in tranquillity at first, until those who knew Joseph were dead. Afterward, through envy of
their increase, and the suspicion that they would at length gain their freedom, they were oppressed
with persecutions and the labors of intolerable servitude, amid which, however, they still grew,
being multiplied with God-given fertility. During this period the same kingdoms continued in
Assyria and Greece.
Chapter 8.—Who Were Kings When Moses Was Born, and What Gods Began to Be Worshipped
Then.
When Saphrus reigned as the fourteenth king of Assyria, and Orthopolis as the twelfth of Sicyon,
and Criasus as the fifth of Argos, Moses was born in Egypt, by whom the people of God were
liberated from the Egyptian slavery, in which they behoved to be thus tried that they might desire
the help of their Creator. Some have thought that Prometheus lived during the reign of the kings
now named. He is reported to have formed men out of clay, because he was esteemed the best
teacher of wisdom; yet it does not appear what wise men there were in his days. His brother Atlas
is said to have been a great astrologer; and this gave occasion for the fable that he held up the sky,
although the vulgar opinion about his holding up the sky appears rather to have been suggested by
a high mountain named after him. Indeed, from those times many other fabulous things began to
be invented in Greece; yet, down to Cecrops king of Athens, in whose reign that city received its
name, and in whose reign God brought His people out of Egypt by Moses, only a few dead heroes
are reported to have been deified according to the vain superstition of the Greeks. Among these
1136 Gen. xlix. 10.
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were Melantomice, the wife of king Criasus, and Phorbas their son, who succeeded his father as
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sixth king of the Argives, and Iasus, son of Triopas, their seventh king, and their ninth king,
Sthenelas, or Stheneleus, or Sthenelus,—for his name is given differently by different authors. In
those times also, Mercury, the grandson of Atlas by his daughter Maia, is said to have lived,
according to the common report in books. He was famous for his skill in many arts, and taught
them to men, for which they resolved to make him, and even believed that he deserved to be, a god
after death. Hercules is said to have been later, yet belonging to the same period; although some,
whom I think mistaken, assign him an earlier date than Mercury. But at whatever time they were
born, it is agreed among grave historians, who have committed these ancient things to writing, that
both were men, and that they merited divine honors from mortals because they conferred on them
many benefits to make this life more pleasant to them. Minerva was far more ancient than these;
for she is reported to have appeared in virgin age in the times of Ogyges at the lake called Triton,
from which she is also styled Tritonia, the inventress truly of many works, and the more readily
believed to be a goddess because her origin was so little known. For what is sung about her having
sprung from the head of Jupiter belongs to the region of poetry and fable, and not to that of history
and real fact. And historical writers are not agreed when Ogyges flourished, in whose time also a
great flood occurred,—not that greatest one from which no man escaped except those who could
get into the ark, for neither Greek nor Latin history knew of it, yet a greater flood than that which
happened afterward in Deucalion’s time. For Varro begins the book I have already mentioned at
this date, and does not propose to himself, as the starting-point from which he may arrive at Roman
affairs, anything more ancient than the flood of Ogyges, that is, which happened in the time of
Ogyges. Now our writers of chronicles—first Eusebius, and afterwards Jerome, who entirely follow
some earlier historians in this opinion—relate that the flood of Ogyges happened more than three
hundred years after, during the reign of Phoroneus, the second king of Argos. But whenever he
may have lived, Minerva was already worshipped as a goddess when Cecrops reigned in Athens,
in whose reign the city itself is reported to have been rebuilt or founded.
Chapter 9.—When the City of Athens Was Founded, and What Reason Varro Assigns for Its Name.
Athens certainly derived its name from Minerva, who in Greek is called ᾽Αθηνη, and Varro
points out the following reason why it was so called. When an olive-tree suddenly appeared there,
and water burst forth in another place, these prodigies moved the king to send to the Delphic Apollo
to inquire what they meant and what he should do. He answered that the olive signified Minerva,
the water Neptune, and that the citizens had it in their power to name their city as they chose, after
either of these two gods whose signs these were. On receiving this oracle, Cecrops convoked all
the citizens of either sex to give their vote, for it was then the custom in those parts for the women
also to take part in public deliberations. When the multitude was consulted, the men gave their
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votes for Neptune, the women for Minerva; and as the women had a majority of one, Minerva
conquered. Then Neptune, being enraged, laid waste the lands of the Athenians, by casting up the
waves of the sea; for the demons have no difficulty in scattering any waters more widely. The
same authority said, that to appease his wrath the women should be visited by the Athenians with
the three-fold punishment—that they should no longer have any vote; that none of their children
should be named after their mothers; and that no one should call them Athenians. Thus that city,
the mother and nurse of liberal doctrines, and of so many and so great philosophers, than whom
Greece had nothing more famous and noble, by the mockery of demons about the strife of their
gods, a male and female, and from the victory of the female one through the women, received the
name of Athens; and, on being damaged by the vanquished god, was compelled to punish the very
victory of the victress, fearing the waters of Neptune more than the arms of Minerva. For in the
women who were thus punished, Minerva, who had conquered, was conquered too, and could not
even help her voters so far that, although the right of voting was henceforth lost, and the mothers
could not give their names to the children, they might at least be allowed to be called Athenians,
and to merit the name of that goddess whom they had made victorious over a male god by giving
her their votes. What and how much could be said about this, if we had not to hasten to other things
in our discourse, is obvious.
Chapter 10.—What Varro Reports About the Term Areopagus, and About Deucalion’s Flood.
Marcus Varro, however, is not willing to credit lying fables against the gods, lest he should
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find something dishonoring to their majesty; and therefore he will not admit that the Areopagus,
the place where the Apostle Paul disputed with the Athenians, got this name because Mars, who
in Greek is called ἌΑρης, when he was charged with the crime of homicide, and was judged by
twelve gods in that field, was acquitted by the sentence of six; because it was the custom, when the
votes were equal, to acquit rather than condemn. Against this opinion, which is much most widely
published, he tries, from the notices of obscure books, to support another reason for this name, lest
the Athenians should be thought to have called it Areopagus from the words” Mars” and “field,”1137
as if it were the field of Mars, to the dishonor of the gods, forsooth, from whom he thinks lawsuits
and judgments far removed. And he asserts that this which is said about Mars is not less false than
what is said about the three goddesses, to wit, Juno, Minerva, and Venus, whose contest for the
palm of beauty, before Paris as judge, in order to obtain the golden apple, is not only related, but
is celebrated in songs and dances amid the applause of the theatres, in plays meant to please the
gods who take pleasure in these crimes of their own, whether real or fabled. Varro does not believe
these things, because they are incompatible with the nature of the gods and of morality; and yet,
1137 Ἀρης and πάγος.
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in giving not a fabulous but a historic reason for the name of Athens, he inserts in his books the
strife between Neptune and Minerva as to whose name should be given to that city, which was so
great that, when they contended by the display of prodigies, even Apollo dared not judge between
them when consulted; but, in order to end the strife of the gods, just as Jupiter sent the three
goddesses we have named to Paris, so he sent them to men, when Minerva won by the vote, and
yet was defeated by the punishment of her own voters, for she was unable to confer the title of
Athenians on the women who were her friends, although she could impose it on the men who were
her opponents. In these times, when Cranaos reigned at Athens as the successor of Cecrops, as
Varro writes, but, according to our Eusebius and Jerome, while Cecrops himself still remained, the
flood occurred which is called Deucalion’s, because it occurred chiefly in those parts of the earth
in which he reigned. But this flood did not at all reach Egypt or its vicinity.
Chapter 11.—When Moses Led the People Out of Egypt; And Who Were Kings When His Successor
Joshua the Son of Nun Died.
Moses led the people out of Egypt in the last time of Cecrops king of Athens, when Ascatades
reigned in Assyria, Marathus in Sicyon, Triopas in Argos; and having led forth the people, he gave
them at Mount Sinai the law he received from God, which is called the Old Testament, because it
has earthly promises, and because, through Jesus Christ, there was to be a New Testament, in which
the kingdom of heaven should be promised. For the same order behoved to be observed in this as
is observed in each man who prospers in God, according to the saying of the apostle, “That is not
first which is spiritual, but that which is natural,” since, as he says, and that truly, “The first man
of the earth, is earthly; the second man, from heaven, is heavenly.”1138 Now Moses ruled the people
for forty years in the wilderness, and died a hundred and twenty years old, after he had prophesied
of Christ by the types of carnal observances in the tabernacle, priesthood, and sacrifices, and many
other mystic ordinances. Joshua the son of Nun succeeded Moses, and settled in the land of promise
the people he had brought in, having by divine authority conquered the people by whom it was
formerly possessed. He also died, after ruling the people twenty-seven years after the death of
Moses, when Amyntas reigned in Assyria as the eighteenth king, Coracos as the sixteenth in Sicyon,
Danaos as the tenth in Argos, Ericthonius as the fourth in Athens.
1138 1 Cor. xv. 46, 47.
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Chapter 12.—Of the Rituals of False Gods Instituted by the Kings of Greece in the Period from
Israel’s Exodus from Egypt Down to the Death of Joshua the Son of Nun.
During this period, that is, from Israel’s exodus from Egypt down to the death of Joshua the
son of Nun, through whom that people received the land of promise, rituals were instituted to the
false gods by the kings of Greece, which, by stated celebration, recalled the memory of the flood,
and of men’s deliverance from it, and of that troublous life they then led in migrating to and fro
between the heights and the plains. For even the Luperci,1139 when they ascend and descend the
sacred path, are said to represent the men who sought the mountain summits because of the
inundation of water, and returned to the lowlands on its subsidence. In those times, Dionysus, who
was also called Father Liber, and was esteemed a god after death, is said to have shown the vine
to his host in Attica. Then the musical games were instituted for the Delphic Apollo, to appease
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his anger, through which they thought the regions of Greece were afflicted with barrenness, because
they had not defended his temple which Danaos burnt when he invaded those lands; for they were
warned by his oracle to institute these games. But king Ericthonius first instituted games to him
in Attica, and not to him only, but also to Minerva, in which games the olive was given as the prize
to the victors, because they relate that Minerva was the discoverer of that fruit, as Liber was of the
grape. In those years Europa is alleged to have been carried off by Xanthus king of Crete (to whom
we find some give another name), and to have borne him Rhadamanthus, Sarpedon, and Minos,
who are more commonly reported to have been the sons of Jupiter by the same woman. Now those
who worship such gods regard what we have said about Xanthus king of Crete as true history; but
this about Jupiter, which the poets sing, the theatres applaud, and the people celebrate, as empty
fable got up as a reason for games to appease the deities, even with the false ascription of crimes
to them. In those times Hercules was held in honor in Tyre, but that was not the same one as he
whom we spoke of above. In the more secret history there are said to have been several who were
called Father Liber and Hercules. This Hercules, whose great deeds are reckoned as twelve (not
including the slaughter of Antæus the African, because that affair pertains to another Hercules), is
declared in their books to have burned himself on Mount OEta, because he was not able, by that
strength with which he had subdued monsters, to endure the disease under which he languished.
At that time the king, or rather tyrant Busiris, who is alleged to have been the son of Neptune by
Libya the daughter of Epaphus, is said to have offered up his guests in sacrifice to the gods. Now
it must not be believed that Neptune committed this adultery, lest the gods should be criminated;
yet such things must be ascribed to them by the poets and in the theatres, that they may be pleased
with them. Vulcan and Minerva are said to have been the parents of Ericthonius king of Athens,
in whose last years Joshua the son of Nun is found to have died. But since they will have it that
Minerva is a virgin, they say that Vulcan, being disturbed in the struggle between them, poured out
1139 The priests who officiated at the Lupercalia.
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his seed into the earth, and on that account the man born of it received that name; for in the Greek
language ἔρις is “strife,” and χθὼν “earth,” of which two words Ericthonius is a compound. Yet
it must be admitted that the more learned disprove and disown such things concerning their gods,
and declare that this fabulous belief originated in the fact that in the temple at Athens, which Vulcan
and Minerva had in common, a boy who had been exposed was found wrapped up in the coils of
a dragon, which signified that he would become great, and, as his parents were unknown, he was
called the son of Vulcan and Minerva, because they had the temple in common. Yet that fable
accounts for the origin of his name better than this history. But what does it matter to us? Let the
one in books that speak the truth edify religious men, and the other in lying fables delight impure
demons. Yet these religious men worship them as gods. Still, while they deny these things
concerning them they cannot clear them of all crime, because at their demand they exhibit plays
in which the very things they wisely deny are basely done, and the gods are appeased by these false
and base things. Now, even although the play celebrates an unreal crime of the gods, yet to delight
in the ascription of an unreal crime is a real one.
Chapter 13.—What Fables Were Invented at the Time When Judges Began to Rule the Hebrews.
After the death of Joshua the son of Nun, the people of God had judges, in whose times they
were alternately humbled by afflictions on account of their sins, and consoled by prosperity through
the compassion of God. In those times were invented the fables about Triptolemus, who, at the
command of Ceres, borne by winged snakes, bestowed corn on the needy lands in flying over them;
about that beast the Minotaur, which was shut up in the Labyrinth, from which men who entered
its inextricable mazes could find no exit; about the Centaurs, whose form was a compound of horse
and man; about Cerberus, the three-headed dog of hell; about Phryxus and his sister Hellas, who
fled, borne by a winged ram; about the Gorgon, whose hair was composed of serpents, and who
turned those who looked on her into stone; about Bellerophon, who was carried by a winged horse
called Pegasus; about Amphion, who charmed and attracted the stones by the sweetness of his harp;
about the artificer Dædalus and his son Icarus, who flew on wings they had fitted on; about OEdipus,
who compelled a certain four-footed monster with a human face, called a sphynx, to destroy herself
by casting herself headlong, having solved the riddle she was wont to propose as insoluble; about
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Antæus, who was the son of the earth, for which reason, on falling on the earth, he was wont to
rise up stronger, whom Hercules slew; and perhaps there are others which I have forgotten. These
fables, easily found in histories containing a true account of events, bring us down to the Trojan
war, at which Marcus Varro has closed his second book about the race of the Roman people; and
they are so skillfully invented by men as to involve no scandal to the gods. But whoever have
pretended as to Jupiter’s rape of Ganymede, a very beautiful boy, that king Tantalus committed
the crime, and the fable ascribed it to Jupiter; or as to his impregnating Danäe as a golden shower,
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that it means that the woman’s virtue was corrupted by gold: whether these things were really done
or only fabled in those days, or were really done by others and falsely ascribed to Jupiter, it is
impossible to tell how much wickedness must have been taken for granted in men’s hearts that they
should be thought able to listen to such lies with patience. And yet they willingly accepted them,
when, indeed, the more devotedly they worshipped Jupiter, they ought the more severely to have
punished those who durst say such things of him. But they not only were not angry at those who
invented these things, but were afraid that the gods would be angry at them if they did not act such
fictions even in the theatres. In those times Latona bore Apollo, not him of whose oracle we have
spoken above as so often consulted, but him who is said, along with Hercules, to have fed the flocks
of king Admetus; yet he was so believed to be a god, that very many, indeed almost all, have
believed him to be the selfsame Apollo. Then also Father Liber made war in India, and led in his
army many women called Bacchæ, who were notable not so much for valor as for fury. Some,
indeed, write that this Liber was both conquered and bound and some that he was slain in Persia,
even telling where he was buried; and yet in his name, as that of a god, the unclean demons have
instituted the sacred, or rather the sacrilegious, Bacchanalia, of the outrageous vileness of which
the senate, after many years, became so much ashamed as to prohibit them in the city of Rome.
Men believed that in those times Perseus and his wife Andromeda were raised into heaven after
their death, so that they were not ashamed or afraid to mark out their images by constellations, and
call them by their names.
Chapter 14.—Of the Theological Poets.
During the same period of time arose the poets, who were also called theologues, because they
made hymns about the gods; yet about such gods as, although great men, were yet but men, or the
elements of this world which the true God made, or creatures who were ordained as principalities
and powers according to the will of the Creator and their own merit. And if, among much that was
vain and false, they sang anything of the one true God, yet, by worshipping Him along with others
who are not gods, and showing them the service that is due to Him alone, they did not serve Him
at all rightly; and even such poets as Orpheus, Musæus, and Linus, were unable to abstain from
dishonoring their gods by fables. But yet these theologues worshipped the gods, and were not
worshipped as gods, although the city of the ungodly is wont, I know not how, to set Orpheus over
the sacred, or rather sacrilegious, rites of hell. The wife of king Athamas, who was called Ino, and
her son Melicertes, perished by throwing themselves into the sea, and were, according to popular
belief, reckoned among the gods, like other men of the same times, [among whom were] Castor
and Pollux. The Greeks, indeed, called her who was the mother of Melicertes, Leucothea, the
Latins, Matuta; but both thought her a goddess.
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Chapter 15.—Of the Fall of the Kingdom of Argos, When Picus the Son of Saturn First Received
His Father’s Kingdom of Laurentum.
During those times the kingdom of Argos came to an end; being transferred to Mycene, from
which Agamemnon came, and the kingdom of Laurentum arose, of which Picus son of Saturn was
the first king, when the woman Deborah judged the Hebrews; but it was the Spirit of God who used
her as His agent, for she was also a prophetess, although her prophecy is so obscure that we could
not demonstrate, without a long discussion, that it was uttered concerning Christ. Now the Laurentes
already reigned in Italy, from whom the origin of the Roman people is quite evidently derived after
the Greeks; yet the kingdom of Assyria still lasted, in which Lampares was the twenty-third king
when Picus first began to reign at Laurentum. The worshippers of such gods may see what they
are to think of Saturn the father of Picus, who deny that he was a man; of whom some also have
written that he himself reigned in Italy before Picus his son; and Virgil in his well-known book
says,
“That race indocile, and through mountains high
Dispersed, he settled, and endowed with laws,
And named their country Latium, because
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Latent within their coasts he dwelt secure.
Tradition says the golden ages pure
Began when he was king.”1140
But they regard these as poetic fancies, and assert that the father of Picus was Sterces rather,
and relate that, being a most skillful husbandman, he discovered that the fields could be fertilized
by the dung of animals, which is called stercus from his name. Some say he was called Stercutius.
But for whatever reason they chose to call him Saturn, it is yet certain they made this Sterces or
Stercutius a god for his merit in agriculture; and they likewise received into the number of these
gods Picus his son, whom they affirm to have been a famous augur and warrior. Picus begot Faunus,
the second king of Laurentum; and he too is, or was, a god with them. These divine honors they
gave to dead men before the Trojan war.
Chapter 16.—Of Diomede, Who After the Destruction of Troy Was Placed Among the Gods, While
His Companions are Said to Have Been Changed into Birds.
Troy was overthrown, and its destruction was everywhere sung and made well known even to
boys; for it was signally published and spread abroad, both by its own greatness and by writers of
1140 Æneid, viii. 321.
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excellent style. And this was done in the reign of Latinus the son of Faunus, from whom the
kingdom began to be called Latium instead of Laurentum. The victorious Greeks, on leaving Troy
destroyed and returning to their own countries, were torn and crushed by divers and horrible
calamities. Yet even from among them they increased the number of their gods for they made
Diomede a god. They allege that his return home was prevented by a divinely imposed punishment,
and they prove, not by fabulous and poetic falsehood, but by historic attestation, that his companions
were turned into birds. Yet they think that, even although he was made a god, he could neither
restore them to the human form by his own power, nor yet obtain it from Jupiter his king, as a favor
granted to a new inhabitant of heaven. They also say that his temple is in the island of Diomedæa,
not far from Mount Garganus in Apulia, and that these birds fly round about this temple, and worship
in it with such wonderful obedience, that they fill their beaks with water and sprinkle it; and if
Greeks, or those born of the Greek race, come there, they are not only still, but fly to meet them;
but if they are foreigners, they fly up at their heads, and wound them with such severe strokes as
even to kill them. For they are said to be well enough armed for these combats with their hard and
large beaks.
Chapter 17.—What Varro Says of the Incredible Transformations of Men.
In support of this story, Varro relates others no less incredible about that most famous sorceress
Circe, who changed the companions of Ulysses into beasts, and about the Arcadians, who, by lot,
swam across a certain pool, and were turned into wolves there, and lived in the deserts of that region
with wild beasts like themselves. But if they never fed on human flesh for nine years, they were
restored to the human form on swimming back again through the same pool. Finally, he expressly
names one Demænetus, who, on tasting a boy offered up in sacrifice by the Arcadians to their god
Lycæus according to their custom, was changed into a wolf, and, being restored to his proper form
in the tenth year, trained himself as a pugilist, and was victorious at the Olympic games. And the
same historian thinks that the epithet Lycæus was applied in Arcadia to Pan and Jupiter for no other
reason than this metamorphosis of men into wolves, because it was thought it could not be wrought
except by a divine power. For a wolf is called in Greek λυκὸς, from which the name Lycæus
appears to be formed. He says also that the Roman Luperci were as it were sprung of the seed of
these mysteries.
Chapter 18.—What We Should Believe Concerning the Transformations Which Seem to Happen
to Men Through the Art of Demons.
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Perhaps our readers expect us to say something about this so great delusion wrought by the
demons; and what shall we say but that men must fly out of the midst of Babylon?1141 For this
prophetic precept is to be understood spiritually in this sense, that by going forward in the living
God, by the steps of faith, which worketh by love, we must flee out of the city of this world, which
is altogether a society of ungodly angels and men. Yea, the greater we see the power of the demons
to be in these depths, so much the more tenaciously must we cleave to the Mediator through whom
we ascend from these lowest to the highest places. For if we should say these things are not to be
credited, there are not wanting even now some who would affirm that they had either heard on the
best authority, or even themselves experienced, something of that kind. Indeed we ourselves, when
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in Italy, heard such things about a certain region there where landladies of inns, imbued with these
wicked arts, were said to be in the habit of giving to such travellers as they chose, or could manage,
something in a piece of cheese by which they were changed on the spot into beasts of burden, and
carried whatever was necessary, and were restored to their own form when the work was done.
Yet their mind did not become bestial, but remained rational and human, just as Apuleius, in the
books he wrote with the title of The Golden Ass, has told, or feigned, that it happened to his own
self that, on taking poison, he became an ass, while retaining his human mind.
These things are either false, or so extraordinary as to be with good reason disbelieved. But it
is to be most firmly believed that Almighty God can do whatever He pleases, whether in punishing
or favoring, and that the demons can accomplish nothing by their natural power (for their created
being is itself angelic, although made malign by their own fault), except what He may permit,
whose judgments are often hidden, but never unrighteous. And indeed the demons, if they really
do such things as these on which this discussion turns, do not create real substances, but only change
the appearance of things created by the true God so as to make them seem to be what they are not.
I cannot therefore believe that even the body, much less the mind, can really be changed into bestial
forms and lineaments by any reason, art, or power of the demons; but the phantasm of a man which
even in thought or dreams goes through innumerable changes may, when the man’s senses are laid
asleep or overpowered, be presented to the senses of others in a corporeal form, in some indescribable
way unknown to me, so that men’s bodies themselves may lie somewhere, alive, indeed, yet with
their senses locked up much more heavily and firmly than by sleep, while that phantasm, as it were
embodied in the shape of some animal, may appear to the senses of others, and may even seem to
the man himself to be changed, just as he may seem to himself in sleep to be so changed, and to
bear burdens; and these burdens, if they are real substances, are borne by the demons, that men
may be deceived by beholding at the same time the real substance of the burdens and the simulated
bodies of the beasts of burden. For a certain man called Præstantius used to tell that it had happened
to his father in his own house, that he took that poison in a piece of cheese, and lay in his bed as if
sleeping, yet could by no means be aroused. But he said that after a few days he as it were woke
up and related the things he had suffered as if they had been dreams, namely, that he had been made
1141 Isa. xlviii. 20.
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a sumpter horse, and, along with other beasts of burden, had carried provisions for the soldiers of
what is called the Rhoetian Legion, because it was sent to Rhoetia. And all this was found to have
taken place just as he told, yet it had seemed to him to be his own dream. And another man declared
that in his own house at night, before he slept, he saw a certain philosopher, whom he knew very
well, come to him and explain to him some things in the Platonic philosophy which he had previously
declined to explain when asked. And when he had asked this philosopher why he did in his house
what he had refused to do at home, he said, “I did not do it, but I dreamed I had done it.” And thus
what the one saw when sleeping was shown to the other when awake by a phantasmal image.
These things have not come to us from persons we might deem unworthy of credit, but from
informants we could not suppose to be deceiving us. Therefore what men say and have committed
to writing about the Arcadians being often changed into wolves by the Arcadian gods, or demons
rather, and what is told in song about Circe transforming the companions of Ulysses,1142 if they
were really done, may, in my opinion, have been done in the way I have said. As for Diomede’s
birds, since their race is alleged to have been perpetuated by constant propagation, I believe they
were not made through the metamorphosis of men, but were slyly substituted for them on their
removal, just as the hind was for Iphigenia, the daughter of king Agamemnon. For juggleries of
this kind could not be difficult for the demons if permitted by the judgment of God; and since that
virgin was afterwards, found alive it is easy to see that a hind had been slyly substituted for her.
But because the companions of Diomede were of a sudden nowhere to be seen, and afterwards
could nowhere be found, being destroyed by bad avenging angels, they were believed to have been
changed into those birds, which were secretly brought there from other places where such birds
were, and suddenly substituted for them by fraud. But that they bring water in their beaks and
sprinkle it on the temple of Diomede, and that they fawn on men of Greek race and persecute aliens,
is no wonderful thing to be done by the inward influence of the demons, whose interest it is to
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persuade men that Diomede was made a god, and thus to beguile them into worshipping many
false gods, to the great dishonor of the true God; and to serve dead men, who even in their lifetime
did not truly live, with temples, altars, sacrifices, and priests, all which, when of the right kind, are
due only to the one living and true God.
Chapter 19.—That Æneas Came into Italy When Abdon the Judge Ruled Over the Hebrews.
After the capture and destruction of Troy, Æneas, with twenty ships laden with the Trojan relics,
came into Italy, when Latinus reigned there, Menestheus in Athens, Polyphidos in Sicyon, and
Tautanos in Assyria, and Abdon was judge of the Hebrews. On the death of Latinus, Æneas reigned
three years, the same kings continuing in the above-named places, except that Pelasgus was now
1142 Virgil, Eclogue, viii. 70.
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king in Sicyon, and Samson was judge of the Hebrews, who is thought to be Hercules, because of
his wonderful strength. Now the Latins made Æneas one of their gods, because at his death he was
nowhere to be found. The Sabines also placed among the gods their first king, Sancus, [Sangus],
or Sanctus, as some call him. At that time Codrus king of Athens exposed himself incognito to be
slain by the Peloponnesian foes of that city, and so was slain. In this way, they say, he delivered
his country. For the Peloponnesians had received a response from the oracle, that they should
overcome the Athenians only on condition that they did not slay their king. Therefore he deceived
them by appearing in a poor man’s dress, and provoking them, by quarrelling, to murder him.
Whence Virgil says, “Or the quarrels of Codrus.”1143 And the Athenians worshipped this man as a
god with sacrificial honors. The fourth king of the Latins was Silvius the son of Æneas, not by
Creüsa, of whom Ascanius the third king was born, but by Lavinia the daughter of Latinus, and he
is said to have been his posthumous child. Oneus was the twenty-ninth king of Assyria, Melanthus
the sixteenth of the Athenians, and Eli the priest was judge of the Hebrews; and the kingdom of
Sicyon then came to an end, after lasting, it is said, for nine hundred and fifty-nine years.
Chapter 20.—Of the Succession of the Line of Kings Among the Israelites After the Times of the
Judges.
While these kings reigned in the places mentioned, the period of the judges being ended, the
kingdom of Israel next began with king Saul, when Samuel the prophet lived. At that date those
Latin kings began who were surnamed Silvii, having that surname, in addition to their proper name,
from their predecessor, that son of Æneas who was called Silvius; just as, long afterward, the
successors of Cæsar Augustus were surnamed Cæsars. Saul being rejected, so that none of his
issue should reign, on his death David succeeded him in the kingdom, after he had reigned forty
years. Then the Athenians ceased to have kings after the death of Codrus, and began to have a
magistracy to rule the republic. After David, who also reigned forty years, his son Solomon was
king of Israel, who built that most noble temple of God at Jerusalem. In his time Alba was built
among the Latins, from which thereafter the kings began to be styled kings not of the Latins, but
of the Albans, although in the same Latium. Solomon was succeeded by his son Rehoboam, under
whom that people was divided into two kingdoms, and its separate parts began to have separate
kings.
1143 Virgil, Eclogue, v. 11.
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Chapter 21.—Of the Kings of Latium, the First and Twelfth of Whom, Æneas and Aventinus, Were
Made Gods.
After Æneas, whom they deified, Latium had eleven kings, none of whom was deified. But
Aventinus, who was the twelfth after Æneas, having been laid low in war, and buried in that hill
still called by his name, was added to the number of such gods as they made for themselves. Some,
indeed, were unwilling to write that he was slain in battle, but said he was nowhere to be found,
and that it was not from his name, but from the alighting of birds, that hill was called Aventinus.1144
After this no god was made in Latium except Romulus the founder of Rome. But two kings are
found between these two, the first of whom I shall describe in the Virgilian verse:
“Next came that Procas, glory of the Trojan race.”1145
That greatest of all kingdoms, the Assyrian, had its long duration brought to a close in his time,
the time of Rome’s birth drawing nigh. For the Assyrian empire was transferred to the Medes after
nearly thirteen hundred and five years, if we include the reign of Belus, who begot Ninus, and,
content with a small kingdom, was the first king there. Now Procas reigned before Amulius. And
Amulius had made his brother Numitor’s daughter, Rhea by name, who was also called Ilia, a vestal
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virgin, who conceived twin sons by Mars, as they will have it, in that way honoring or excusing
her adultery, adding as a proof that a she-wolf nursed the infants when exposed. For they think
this kind of beast belongs to Mars so that the she-wolf is believed to have given her teats to the
infants, because she knew they were the sons of Mars her lord; although there are not wanting
persons who say that when the crying babes lay exposed, they were first of all picked up by I know
not what harlot, and sucked her breasts first (now harlots were called lupæ, she-wolves, from which
their vile abodes are even yet called lupanaria), and that afterwards they came into the hands of
the shepherd Faustulus, and were nursed by Acca his wife. Yet what wonder is it, if, to rebuke the
king who had cruelly ordered them to be thrown into the water, God was pleased, after divinely
delivering them from the water, to succor, by means of a wild beast giving milk, these infants by
whom so great a city was to be founded? Amulius was succeeded in the Latian kingdom by his
brother Numitor, the grandfather of Romulus; and Rome was founded in the first year of this
Numitor, who from that time reigned along with his grandson Romulus.
Chapter 22.—That Rome Was Founded When the Assyrian Kingdom Perished, at Which Time
Hezekiah Reigned in Judah.
1144 Varro, De Lingua Latina, v. 43.
1145 Æneid,vi. 767.
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To be brief, the city of Rome was founded, like another Babylon, and as it were the daughter
of the former Babylon, by which God was pleased to conquer the whole world, and subdue it far
and wide by bringing it into one fellowship of government and laws. For there were already
powerful and brave peoples and nations trained to arms, who did not easily yield, and whose
subjugation necessarily involved great danger and destruction as well as great and horrible labor.
For when the Assyrian kingdom subdued almost all Asia, although this was done by fighting, yet
the wars could not be very fierce or difficult, because the nations were as yet untrained to resist,
and neither so many nor so great as afterward; forasmuch as, after that greatest and indeed universal
flood, when only eight men escaped in Noah’s ark, not much more than a thousand years had passed
when Ninus subdued all Asia with the exception of India. But Rome did not with the same quickness
and facility wholly subdue all those nations of the east and west which we see brought under the
Roman empire, because, in its gradual increase, in whatever direction it was extended, it found
them strong and warlike. At the time when Rome was founded, then, the people of Israel had been
in the land of promise seven hundred and eighteen years. Of these years twenty-seven belong to
Joshua the son of Nun, and after that three hundred and twenty-nine to the period of the judges.
But from the time when the kings began to reign there, three hundred and sixty-two years had
passed. And at that time there was a king in Judah called Ahaz, or, as others compute, Hezekiah
his successor, the best and most pious king, who it is admitted reigned in the times of Romulus.
And in that part of the Hebrew nation called Israel, Hoshea had begun to reign.
Chapter 23.—Of the Erythræan Sibyl, Who is Known to Have Sung Many Things About Christ
More Plainly Than the Other Sibyls.1146
Some say the Erythræan sibyl prophesied at this time. Now Varro declares there were many
sibyls, and not merely one. This sibyl of Erythræ certainly wrote some things concerning Christ
which are quite manifest, and we first read them in the Latin tongue in verses of bad Latin, and
unrhythmical, through the unskillfulness, as we afterwards learned, of some interpreter unknown
to me. For Flaccianus, a very famous man, who was also a proconsul, a man of most ready eloquence
and much learning, when we were speaking about Christ, produced a Greek manuscript, saying
1146 The Sibylline Oracles are a collection of prophecies and religious teachings in Greek hexameter under the assumed
authority and inspiration of a Sibyl, i.e., a female prophet. They are partly of heathen, partly of Jewish-Christian origin. They
were used by the fathers against the heathen as genuine prophecies without critical discrimination, and they appear also in the
famous Dies iræ alongside with David as witnesses of the future judgment (“teste David cum Sibylla.”) They were edited by
Alexander, Paris, 2d. ed. 1869, and by Friedlieb (in Greek and German), Leipzig, 1852. Comp. Ewald: Ueber Entstehung,
Inhalt und Werth der sibyll. Bücher, 1858, and Schürer, Geschichte der jüd. Volkes im Zeitalter Jesu (Leipzig, 1885), ii. § 33,
pp. 700 sqq., Engl. transl. (Hist. of the Jews in the times of Jesus. Edinburgh and New York, 1886), vol. iii. 271 sqq.—P.S.]
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that it was the prophecies of the Erythræan sibyl, in which he pointed out a certain passage which
had the initial letters of the lines so arranged that these words could be read in them: ᾽Ιησοῦς Χριστος
Θεοῦ υιὸς σωτηρ, which means, “Jesus Christ the Son of God, the Saviour.” And these verses, of
which the initial letters yield that meaning, contain what follows as translated by some one into
Latin in good rhythm:
Ι Judgment shall moisten the earth with the sweat of its standard,
Η Ever enduring, behold the King shall come through the ages,
Σ Sent to be here in the flesh, and Judge at the last of the world.
Ο O God, the believing and faithless alike shall behold Thee
Υ Uplifted with saints, when at last the ages are ended.
Σ Seated before Him are souls in the flesh for His judgment.
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Χ Hid in thick vapors, the while desolate lieth the earth.
Ρ Rejected by men are the idols and long hidden treasures;
Ε Earth is consumed by the fire, and it searcheth the ocean and heaven;
Ι Issuing forth, it destroyeth the terrible portals of hell.
Σ Saints in their body and soul freedom and light shall inherit;
Τ Those who are guilty shall burn in fire and brimstone for ever.
Ο Occult actions revealing, each one shall publish his secrets;
Σ Secrets of every man’s heart God shall reveal in the light.
Θ Then shall be weeping and wailing, yea, and gnashing of teeth;
Ε Eclipsed is the sun, and silenced the stars in their chorus.
Ο Over and gone is the splendor of moonlight, melted the heaven,
Υ Uplifted by Him are the valleys, and cast down the mountains.
Υ Utterly gone among men are distinctions of lofty and lowly.
Ι Into the plains rush the hills, the skies and oceans are mingled.
Ο Oh, what an end of all things! earth broken in pieces shall perish;
Σ . . . . Swelling together at once shall the waters and flames flow in rivers.
Σ Sounding the archangel’s trumpet shall peal down from heaven,
Ω Over the wicked who groan in their guilt and their manifold sorrows.
Τ Trembling, the earth shall be opened, revealing chaos and hell.
Η Every king before God shall stand in that day to be judged.
Ρ Rivers of fire and brimstone shall fall from the heavens.
In these Latin verses the meaning of the Greek is correctly given, although not in the exact
order of the lines as connected with the initial letters; for in three of them, the fifth, eighteenth, and
nineteenth, where the Greek letter Υ occurs, Latin words could not be found beginning with the
corresponding letter, and yielding a suitable meaning. So that, if we note down together the initial
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letters of all the lines in our Latin translation except those three in which we retain the letter Υ in
the proper place, they will express in five Greek words this meaning, “Jesus Christ the Son of God,
the Saviour.” And the verses are twenty-seven, which is the cube of three. For three times three
are nine; and nine itself, if tripled, so as to rise from the superficial square to the cube, comes to
twenty-seven. But if you join the initial letters of these five Greek words, ᾽Ιησοῦς Χριστος Θεοῦ
υἰὸς σωτήρ, which mean, “Jesus Christ the Son of God, the Saviour,” they will make the word
ἰχδὺς, that is, “fish,” in which word Christ is mystically understood, because He was able to live,
that is, to exist, without sin in the abyss of this mortality as in the depth of waters.1147
But this sibyl, whether she is the Erythræan, or, as some rather believe, the Cumæan, in her
whole poem, of which this is a very small portion, not only has nothing that can relate to the worship
of the false or feigned gods, but rather speaks against them and their worshippers in such a way
that we might even think she ought to be reckoned among those who belong to the city of God.
Lactantius also inserted in his work the prophecies about Christ of a certain sibyl, he does not say
which. But I have thought fit to combine in a single extract, which may seem long, what he has
set down in many short quotations. She says, “Afterward He shall come into the injurious hands
of the unbelieving, and they will give God buffets with profane hands, and with impure mouth will
spit out envenomed spittle; but He will with simplicity yield His holy back to stripes. And He will
hold His peace when struck with the fist, that no one may find out what word, or whence, He comes
to speak to hell; and He shall be crowned with a crown of thorns. And they gave Him gall for meat,
and vinegar for His thirst: they will spread this table of inhospitality. For thou thyself, being
foolish, hast not understood thy God, deluding the minds of mortals, but hast both crowned Him
with thorns and mingled for Him bitter gall. But the veil of the temple shall be rent; and at midday
it shall be darker than night for three hours. And He shall die the death, taking sleep for three days;
and then returning from hell, He first shall come to the light, the beginning of the resurrection being
shown to the recalled.” Lactantius made use of these sibylline testimonies, introducing them bit
by bit in the course of his discussion as the things he intended to prove seemed to require, and we
have set them down in one connected series, uninterrupted by comment, only taking care to mark
them by capitals, if only the transcribers do not neglect to preserve them hereafter. Some writers,
indeed, say that the Erythræan sibyl was not in the time of Romulus, but of the Trojan war.
374 Chapter 24.—That the Seven Sages Flourished in the Reign of Romulus, When the Ten Tribes
Which Were Called Israel Were Led into Captivity by the Chaldeans, and Romulus, When
Dead, Had Divine Honors Conferred on Him.
1147 [Hence the fish was a favorite symbol of the ancient Christians. See Schaff, Church Hist. (revised ed.), vol. ii. 279
sq.—P.S.]
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While Romulus reigned, Thales the Milesian is said to have lived, being one of the seven sages,
who succeeded the theological poets, of whom Orpheus was the most renowned, and were called
Σοφοί, that is, sages. During that time the ten tribes, which on the division of the people were
called Israel, were conquered by the Chaldeans and led captive into their lands, while the two tribes
which were called Judah, and had the seat of their kingdom in Jerusalem, remained in the land of
Judea. As Romulus, when dead, could nowhere be found, the Romans, as is everywhere notorious,
placed him among the gods,—a thing which by that time had already ceased to be done, and which
was not done afterwards till the time of the Cæsars, and then not through error, but in flattery; so
that Cicero ascribes great praises to Romulus, because he merited such honors not in rude and
unlearned times, when men were easily deceived, but in times already polished and learned, although
the subtle and acute loquacity of the philosophers had not yet culminated. But although the later
times did not deify dead men, still they did not cease to hold and worship as gods those deified of
old; nay, by images, which the ancients never had, they even increased the allurements of vain and
impious superstition, the unclean demons effecting this in their heart, and also deceiving them by
lying oracles, so that even the fabulous crimes of the gods, which were not once imagined by a
more polite age, were yet basely acted in the plays in honor of these same false deities. Numa
reigned after Romulus; and although he had thought that Rome would be better defended the more
gods there were, yet on his death he himself was not counted worthy of a place among them, as if
it were supposed that he had so crowded heaven that a place could not be found for him there.
They report that the Samian sibyl lived while he reigned at Rome, and when Manasseh began to
reign over the Hebrews,—an impious king, by whom the prophet Isaiah is said to have been slain.
Chapter 25.—What Philosophers Were Famous When Tarquinius Priscus Reigned Over the Romans,
and Zedekiah Over the Hebrews, When Jerusalem Was Taken and the Temple Overthrown.
When Zedekiah reigned over the Hebrews, and Tarquinius Priscus, the successor of Ancus
Martius, over the Romans, the Jewish people was led captive into Babylon, Jerusalem and the
temple built by Solomon being overthrown. For the prophets, in chiding them for their iniquity
and impiety, predicted that these things should come to pass, especially Jeremiah, who even stated
the number of years. Pittacus of Mitylene, another of the sages, is reported to have lived at that
time. And Eusebius writes that, while the people of God were held captive in Babylon, the five
other sages lived, who must be added to Thales, whom we mentioned above, and Pittacus, in order
to make up the seven. These are Solon of Athens, Chilo of Lacedæmon, Periander of Corinth,
Cleobulus of Lindus, and Bias of Priene. These flourished after the theological poets, and were
called sages, because they excelled other men in a certain laudable line of life, and summed up
some moral precepts in epigrammatic sayings. But they left posterity no literary monuments, except
that Solon is alleged to have given certain laws to the Athenians, and Thales was a natural
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philosopher, and left books of his doctrine in short proverbs. In that time of the Jewish captivity,
Anaximander, Anaximenes, and Xenophanes, the natural philosophers, flourished. Pythagoras also
lived then, and at this time the name philosopher was first used.
Chapter 26.—That at the Time When the Captivity of the Jews Was Brought to an End, on the
Completion of Seventy Years, the Romans Also Were Freed from Kingly Rule.
At this time, Cyrus king of Persia, who also ruled the Chaldeans and Assyrians, having somewhat
relaxed the captivity of the Jews, made fifty thousand of them return in order to rebuild the temple.
They only began the first foundations and built the altar; but, owing to hostile invasions, they were
unable to go on, and the work was put off to the time of Darius. During the same time also those
things were done which are written in the book of Judith, which, indeed, the Jews are said not to
have received into the canon of the Scriptures. Under Darius king of Persia, then, on the completion
of the seventy years predicted by Jeremiah the prophet, the captivity of the Jews was brought to an
end, and they were restored to liberty. Tarquin then reigned as the seventh king of the Romans.
On his expulsion, they also began to be free from the rule of their kings. Down to this time the
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people of Israel had prophets; but, although they were numerous, the canonical writings of only a
few of them have been preserved among the Jews and among us. In closing the previous book, I
promised to set down something in this one about them, and I shall now do so.
Chapter 27.—Of the Times of the Prophets Whose Oracles are Contained in Books and Who Sang
Many Things About the Call of the Gentiles at the Time When the Roman Kingdom Began and
the Assyrian Came to an End.
In order that we may be able to consider these times, let us go back a little to earlier times. At
the beginning of the book of the prophet Hosea, who is placed first of twelve, it is written, “The
word of the Lord which came to Hosea in the days of Uzziah, Jothan, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings
of Judah.”1148 Amos also writes that he prophesied in the days of Uzziah, and adds the name of
Jeroboam king of Israel, who lived at the same time.1149 Isaiah the son of Amos—either the
above-named prophet, or, as is rather affirmed, another who was not a prophet, but was called by
the same name—also puts at the head of his book these four kings named by Hosea, saying by way
1148 Hos. i. 1.
1149 Amos i. 1.
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of preface that he prophesied in their days.1150 Micah also names the same times as those of his
prophecy, after the days of Uzziah;1151 for he names the same three kings as Hosea named,—Jotham,
Ahaz, and Hezekiah. We find from their own writings that these men prophesied
contemporaneously. To these are added Jonah in the reign of Uzziah, and Joel in that of Jotham,
who succeeded Uzziah. But we can find the date of these two prophets in the chronicles,1152 not in
their own writings, for they say nothing about it themselves. Now these days extend from Procas
king of the Latins, or his predecessor Aventinus, down to Romulus king of the Romans, or even to
the beginning of the reign of his successor Numa Pompilius. Hezekiah king of Judah certainly
reigned till then. So that thus these fountains of prophecy, as I may call them, burst forth at once
during those times when the Assyrian kingdom failed and the Roman began; so that, just as in the
first period of the Assyrian kingdom Abraham arose, to whom the most distinct promises were
made that all nations should be blessed in his seed, so at the beginning of the western Babylon, in
the time of whose government Christ was to come in whom these promises were to be fulfilled,
the oracles of the prophets were given not only in spoken but in written words, for a testimony that
so great a thing should come to pass. For although the people of Israel hardly ever lacked prophets
from the time when they began to have kings, these were only for their own use, not for that of the
nations. But when the more manifestly prophetic Scripture began to be formed, which was to
benefit the nations too, it was fitting that it should begin when this city was founded which was to
rule the nations.
Chapter 28.—Of the Things Pertaining to the Gospel of Christ Which Hosea and Amos Prohesied.
The prophet Hosea speaks so very profoundly that it is laborious work to penetrate his meaning.
But, according to promise, we must insert something from his book. He says, “And it shall come
to pass that in the place where it was said unto them, Ye are not my people, there they shall be
called the sons of the living God.”1153 Even the apostles understood this as a prophetic testimony
of the calling of the nations who did not formerly belong to God; and because this same people of
the Gentiles is itself spiritually among the children of Abraham, and for that reason is rightly called
Israel, therefore he goes on to say, “And the children of Judah and the children of Israel shall be
gathered together in one, and shall appoint themselves one headship, and shall ascend from the
earth.”1154 We should but weaken the savor of this prophetic oracle if we set ourselves to expound
1150 Isa. i. 1. Isaiah’s father was Amoz, a different name.
1151 Mic. i. 1.
1152 The chronicles of Eusebius and Jerome.
1153 Hos. i. 10.
1154 Hos. i. 11.
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it. Let the reader but call to mind that cornerstone and those two walls of partition, the one of the
Jews, the other of the Gentiles,1155 and he will recognize them, the one under the term sons of Judah,
the other as sons of Israel, supporting themselves by one and the same headship, and ascending
from the earth. But that those carnal Israelites who are now unwilling to believe in Christ shall
afterward believe, that is, their children shall (for they themselves, of course, shall go to their own
place by dying), this same prophet testifies, saying, “For the children of Israel shall abide many
days without a king, without a prince, without a sacrifice, without an altar, without a priesthood,
without manifestations.”1156 Who does not see that the Jews are now thus? But let us hear what he
adds: “And afterward shall the children of Israel return, and seek the Lord their God, and David
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their king, and shall be amazed at the Lord and at His goodness in the latter days.”1157 Nothing is
clearer than this prophecy, in which by David, as distinguished by the title of king, Christ is to be
understood, “who is made,” as the apostle says, “of the seed of David according to the flesh.”1158
This prophet has also foretold the resurrection of Christ on the third day, as it behoved to be foretold,
with prophetic loftiness, when he says, “He will heal us after two days, and in the third day we
shall rise again.”1159 In agreement with this the apostle says to us, “If ye be risen with Christ, seek
those things which are above.”1160 Amos also prophesies thus concerning such things: “Prepare
thee, that thou mayst invoke thy God, O Israel; for lo, I am binding the thunder, and creating the
spirit, and announcing to men their Christ.”1161 And in another place he says, “In that day will I
raise up the tabernacle of David that is fallen, and build up the breaches thereof: and I will raise
up his ruins, and will build them up again as in the days of old: that the residue of men may inquire
for me, and all the nations upon whom my name is invoked, saith the Lord that doeth this.”1162
Chapter 29.—What Things are Predicted by Isaiah Concerning Christ and the Church.
The prophecy of Isaiah is not in the book of the twelve prophets, who are called the minor from
the brevity of their writings, as compared with those who are called the greater prophets because
they published larger volumes. Isaiah belongs to the latter, yet I connect him with the two above
1155 Gal. ii. 14–20.
1156 Hos. iii. 4.
1157 Hos. iii. 5.
1158 Rom. i. 3.
1159 Hos. vi. 2.
1160 Col. iii. 1.
1161 Amos iv. 12, 13.
1162 Amos ix. 11, 12; Acts xv. 15–17.
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named, because he prophesied at the same time. Isaiah, then, together with his rebukes of
wickedness, precepts of righteousness, and predictions of evil, also prophesied much more than
the rest about Christ and the Church, that is, about the King and that city which he founded; so that
some say he should be called an evangelist rather than a prophet. But, in order to finish this work,
I quote only one out of many in this place. Speaking in the person of the Father, he says, “Behold,
my servant shall understand, and shall be exalted and glorified very much. As many shall be
astonished at Thee.”1163 This is about Christ.
But let us now hear what follows about the Church. He says, “Rejoice, O barren, thou that
barest not; break forth and cry, thou that didst not travail with child: for many more are the children
of the desolate than of her that has an husband.”1164 But these must suffice; and some things in
them ought to be expounded; yet I think those parts sufficient which are so plain that even enemies
must be compelled against their will to understand them.
Chapter 30.—What Micah, Jonah, and Joel Prophesied in Accordance with the New Testament.
The prophet Micah, representing Christ under the figure of a great mountain, speaks thus: “It
shall come to pass in the last days, that the manifested mountain of the Lord shall be prepared on
the tops of the mountains, and it shall be exalted above the hills; and people shall hasten unto it.
Many nations shall go, and shall say, Come, let us go up into the mountain of the Lord, and into
the house of the God of Jacob; and He will show us His way, and we will go in His paths: for out
of Zion shall proceed the law, and the word of the Lord out of Jerusalem. And He shall judge
among many people, and rebuke strong nations afar off.”1165 This prophet predicts the very place
in which Christ was born, saying, “And thou, Bethlehem, of the house of Ephratah, art the least
that can be reckoned among the thousands of Judah; out of thee shall come forth unto me a leader,
to be the prince in Israel; and His going forth is from the beginning, even from the days of eternity.
Therefore will He give them [up] even until the time when she that travaileth shall bring forth; and
the remnant of His brethren shall be converted to the sons of Israel. And He shall stand, and see,
and feed His flock in the strength of the Lord, and in the dignity of the name of the Lord His God:
for now shall He be magnified even to the utmost of the earth.”1166
The prophet Jonah, not so much by speech as by his own painful experience, prophesied Christ’s
death and resurrection much more clearly than if he had proclaimed them with his voice. For why
1163 Isa. lii. 13; liii. 13. Augustin quotes these passages in full.
1164 Isa. liv. 1–5.
1165 Mic. iv. 1–3.
1166 Mic. v. 2–4.
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was he taken into the whale’s belly and restored on the third day, but that he might be a sign that
Christ should return from the depths of hell on the third day?
I should be obliged to use many words in explaining all that Joel prophesies in order to make
clear those that pertain to Christ and the Church. But there is one passage I must not pass by, which
the apostles also quoted when the Holy Spirit came down from above on the assembled believers
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according to Christ’s promise. He says, “And it shall come to pass after these things, that I will
pour out my Spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your old
men shall dream, and your young men shall see visions: and even on my servants and mine
handmaids in those days will I pour out my Spirit.”1167
Chapter 31.—Of the Predictions Concerning the Salvation of the World in Christ, in Obadiah,
Nahum, and Habakkuk.
The date of three of the minor prophets, Obadiah, Nahum, and Habakkuk, is neither mentioned
by themselves nor given in the chronicles of Eusebius and Jerome. For although they put Obadiah
with Micah, yet when Micah prophesied does not appear from that part of their writings in which
the dates are noted. And this, I think, has happened through their error in negligently copying the
works of others. But we could not find the two others now mentioned in the copies of the chronicles
which we have; yet because they are contained in the canon, we ought not to pass them by.
Obadiah, so far as his writings are concerned, the briefest of all the prophets, speaks against
Idumea, that is, the nation of Esau, that reprobate elder of the twin sons of Isaac and grandsons of
Abraham. Now if, by that form of speech in which a part is put for the whole, we take Idumea as
put for the nations, we may understand of Christ what he says among other things, “But upon Mount
Sion shall be safety, and there shall be a Holy One.”1168 And a little after, at the end of the same
prophecy, he says, “And those who are saved again shall come up out of Mount Sion, that they
may defend Mount Esau, and it shall be a kingdom to the Lord.”1169 It is quite evident this was
fulfilled when those saved again out of Mount Sion—that is, the believers in Christ from Judea, of
whom the apostles are chiefly to be acknowledged—went up to defend Mount Esau. How could
they defend it except by making safe, through the preaching of the gospel, those who believed that
they might be “delivered from the power of darkness and translated into the kingdom of God?”1170
This he expressed as an inference, adding, “And it shall be to the Lord a kingdom.” For Mount
Sion signifies Judea, where it is predicted there shall be safety, and a Holy One, that is, Christ
1167 Joel ii. 28, 29.
1168 Obad. 17.
1169 Obad. 21.
1170 Col. i. 13.
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Jesus. But Mount Esau is Idumea, which signifies the Church of the Gentiles, which, as I have
expounded, those saved again out of Sion have defended that it should be a kingdom to the Lord.
This was obscure before it took place; but what believer does not find it out now that it is done?
As for the prophet Nahum, through him God says, “I will exterminate the graven and the molten
things: I will make thy burial. For lo, the feet of Him that bringeth good tidings and announceth
peace are swift upon the mountains! O Judah, celebrate thy festival days, and perform thy vows;
for now they shall not go on any more so as to become antiquated. It is completed, it is consumed,
it is taken away. He ascendeth who breathes in thy face, delivering thee out of tribulation.”1171 Let
him that remembers the gospel call to mind who hath ascended from hell and breathed the Holy
Spirit in the face of Judah, that is, of the Jewish disciples; for they belong to the New Testament,
whose festival days are so spiritually renewed that they cannot become antiquated. Moreover, we
already see the graven and molten things, that is, the idols of the false gods, exterminated through
the gospel, and given up to oblivion as of the grave, and we know that this prophecy is fulfilled in
this very thing.
Of what else than the advent of Christ, who was to come, is Habakkuk understood to say, “And
the Lord answered me, and said, Write the vision openly on a tablet of boxwood, that he that readeth
these things may understand. For the vision is yet for a time appointed, and it will arise in the end,
and will not become void: if it tarry, wait for it; because it will surely come, and will not be
delayed?”1172
Chapter 32.—Of the Prophecy that is Contained in the Prayer and Song of Habakkuk.
In his prayer, with a song, to whom but the Lord Christ does he say, “O Lord, I have heard Thy
hearing, and was afraid: O Lord, I have considered Thy works, and was greatly afraid?”1173 What
is this but the inexpressible admiration of the foreknown, new, and sudden salvation of men? “In
the midst of two living creatures thou shalt be recognized.” What is this but either between the
two testaments, or between the two thieves, or between Moses and Elias talking with Him on the
mount? “While the years draw nigh, Thou wilt be recognized; at the coming of the time Thou wilt
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be shown,” does not even need exposition. “While my soul shall be troubled at Him, in wrath
Thou wilt be mindful of mercy.” What is this but that He puts Himself for the Jews, of whose
nation He was, who were troubled with great anger and crucified Christ, when He, mindful of
mercy, said, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do?1174 “God shall come from
1171 Nah. i. 14; ii. 1.
1172 Hab. ii. 2, 3.
1173 Hab. iii. 2.
1174 Luke xxiii. 34.
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Teman, and the Holy One from the shady and close mountain.”1175 What is said here, “He shall
come from Teman,” some interpret “from the south,” or “from the southwest,” by which is signified
the noonday, that is, the fervor of charity and the splendor of truth. “The shady and close mountain”
might be understood in many ways, yet I prefer to take it as meaning the depth of the divine
Scriptures, in which Christ is prophesied: for in the Scriptures there are many things shady and
close which exercise the mind of the reader; and Christ comes thence when he who has understanding
finds Him there. “His power covereth up the heavens, and the earth is full of His praise.” What
is this but what is also said in the psalm, “Be Thou exalted, O God, above the heavens; and Thy
glory above all the earth?”1176 “His splendor shall be as the light.” What is it but that the fame of
Him shall illuminate believers? “Horns are in His hands.” What is this but the trophy of the cross?
“And He hath placed the firm charity of His strength”1177 needs no exposition. “Before His face
shall go the word, and it shall go forth into the field after His feet.” What is this but that He should
both be announced before His coming hither and after His return hence? “He stood, and the earth
was moved.” What is this but that “He stood” for succor, “and the earth was moved” to believe?
“He regarded, and the nations melted;” that is, He had compassion, and made the people penitent.
“The mountains are broken with violence;” that is, through the power of those who work miracles
the pride of the haughty is broken. “The everlasting hills flowed down;” that is, they are humbled
in time that they may be lifted up for eternity. “I saw His goings [made] eternal for his labors;”
that is, I beheld His labor of love not left without the reward of eternity. “The tents of Ethiopia
shall be greatly afraid, and the tents of the land of Midian;” that is, even those nations which are
not under the Roman authority, being suddenly terrified by the news of Thy wonderful works, shall
become a Christian people. “Wert Thou angry at the rivers, O Lord? or was Thy fury against the
rivers? or was Thy rage against the sea?” This is said because He does not now come to condemn
the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.1178 “For Thou shall mount upon Thy
horses, and Thy riding shall be salvation;” that is, Thine evangelists shall carry Thee, for they are
guided by Thee, and Thy gospel is salvation to them that believe in Thee. “Bending, Thou wilt
bend Thy bow against the sceptres, saith the Lord;” that is, Thou wilt threaten even the kings of
the earth with Thy judgment. “The earth shall be cleft with rivers;” that is, by the sermons of those
who preach Thee flowing in upon them, men’s hearts shall be opened to make confession, to whom
it is said, “Rend your hearts and not your garments.”1179 What does “The people shall see Thee and
grieve” mean, but that in mourning they shall be blessed?1180 What is “Scattering the waters in
marching,” but that by walking in those who everywhere proclaim Thee, Thou wilt scatter hither
1175 Hab. iii. 3.
1176 Ps. lvii. 5, 11.
1177 Hab. iii. 4.
1178 John iii. 17.
1179 Joel ii. 13.
1180 Matt. v. 4.
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and thither the streams of Thy doctrine? What is “The abyss uttered its voice?” Is it not that the
depth of the human heart expressed what it perceived? The words, “The depth of its phantasy,”
are an explanation of the previous verse, for the depth is the abyss; and “Uttered its voice” is to be
understood before them, that is, as we have said, it expressed what it perceived. Now the phantasy
is the vision, which it did not hold or conceal, but poured forth in confession. “The sun was raised
up, and the moon stood still in her course;” that is, Christ ascended into heaven, and the Church
was established under her King. “Thy darts shall go in the light;” that is, Thy words shall not be
sent in secret, but openly. For He had said to His own disciples, “What I tell you in darkness, that
speak ye in the light.”1181 “By threatening thou shall diminish the earth;” that is, by that threatening
Thou shall humble men. “And in fury Thou shall cast down the nations;” for in punishing those
who exalt themselves Thou dashest them one against another. “Thou wentest forth for the salvation
of Thy people, that Thou mightest save Thy Christ; Thou hast sent death on the heads of the wicked.”
None of these words require exposition. “Thou hast lifted up the bonds, even to the neck.” This
may be understood even of the good bonds of wisdom, that the feet may be put into its fetters, and
the neck into its collar. “Thou hast struck off in amazement of mind the bonds” must be understood
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for, He lifts up the good and strikes off the bad, about which it is said to Him, “Thou hast broken
asunder my bonds,”1182 and that “in amazement of mind,” that is, wonderfully. “The heads of the
mighty shall be moved in it;” to wit, in that wonder. “They shall open their teeth like a poor man
eating secretly.” For some of the mighty among the Jews shall come to the Lord, admiring His
works and words, and shall greedily eat the bread of His doctrine in secret for fear of the Jews, just
as the Gospel has shown they did. “And Thou hast sent into the sea Thy horses, troubling many
waters,” which are nothing else than many people; for unless all were troubled, some would not
be converted with fear, others pursued with fury. “I gave heed, and my belly trembled at the voice
of the prayer of my lips; and trembling entered into my bones, and my habit of body was troubled
under me.” He gave heed to those things which he said, and was himself terrified at his own prayer,
which he had poured forth prophetically, and in which he discerned things to come. For when
many people are troubled, he saw the threatening tribulation of the Church, and at once acknowledged
himself a member of it, and said, “I shall rest in the day of tribulation,” as being one of those who
are rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation.1183 “That I may ascend,” he says, “among the people
of my pilgrimage,” departing quite from the wicked people of his carnal kinship, who are not
pilgrims in this earth, and do not seek the country above.1184 “Although the fig-tree,” he says, “shall
not blossom, neither shall fruit be in the vines; the labor of the olive shall lie, and the fields shall
yield no meat; the sheep shall be cut off from the meat, and there shall be no oxen in the stalls.”
He sees that nation which was to slay Christ about to lose the abundance of spiritual supplies,
1181 Matt. x. 27.
1182 Ps. cxvi. 16.
1183 Rom. xii. 12.
1184 Heb. xi. 13, 16.
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which, in prophetic fashion, he has set forth by the figure of earthly plenty. And because that nation
was to suffer such wrath of God, because, being ignorant of the righteousness of God, it wished to
establish its own,1185 he immediately says, “Yet will I rejoice in the Lord; I will joy in God my
salvation. The Lord God is my strength, and He will set my feet in completion; He will place me
above the heights, that I may conquer in His song,” to wit, in that song of which something similar
is said in the psalm, “He set my feet upon a rock, and directed my goings, and put in my mouth a
new song, a hymn to our God.”1186 He therefore conquers in the song of the Lord, who takes pleasure
in His praise, not in his own; that “He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord.”1187 But some copies
have, “I will joy in God my Jesus,” which seems to me better than the version of those who, wishing
to put it in Latin, have not set down that very name which for us it is dearer and sweeter to name.
Chapter 33.—What Jeremiah and Zephaniah Have, by the Prophetic Spirit, Spoken Before
Concerning Christ and the Calling of the Nations.
Jeremiah, like Isaiah, is one of the greater prophets, not of the minor, like the others from whose
writings I have just given extracts. He prophesied when Josiah reigned in Jerusalem, and Ancus
Martius at Rome, when the captivity of the Jews was already at hand; and he continued to prophesy
down to the fifth month of the captivity, as we find from his writings. Zephaniah, one of the minor
prophets, is put along with him, because he himself says that he prophesied in the days of Josiah;
but he does not say till when. Jeremiah thus prophesied not only in the times of Ancus Martius,
but also in those of Tarquinius Priscus, whom the Romans had for their fifth king. For he had
already begun to reign when that captivity took place. Jeremiah, in prophesying of Christ, says,
“The breath of our mouth, the Lord Christ, was taken in our sins,”1188 thus briefly showing both
that Christ is our Lord and that He suffered for us. Also in another place he says, “This is my God,
and there shall none other be accounted of in comparison of Him; who hath found out all the way
of prudence, and hath given it to Jacob His servant, and to Israel His beloved: afterwards He was
seen on the earth, and conversed with men.”1189 Some attribute this testimony not to Jeremiah, but
to his secretary, who was called Baruch; but it is more commonly ascribed to Jeremiah. Again the
same prophet says concerning Him, “Behold the days come, saith the Lord, that I will raise up unto
David a righteous shoot, and a King shall reign and shall be wise, and shall do judgment and justice
in the earth. In those days Judah shall be saved, and Israel shall dwell confidently: and this is the
1185 Rom. x. 3.
1186 Ps. xl. 2, 3.
1187 Jer. ix. 23, 24, as in 1 Cor. i. 31.
1188 Lam. iv. 20.
1189 Bar. iii. 35–37.
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name which they shall call Him, Our righteous Lord.”1190 And of the calling of the nations which
was to come to pass, and which we now see fulfilled, he thus spoke: “O Lord my God, and my
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refuge in the day of evils, to Thee shall the nations come from the utmost end of the earth, saying,
Truly our fathers have worshipped lying images, wherein there is no profit.”1191 But that the Jews,
by whom He behoved even to be slain, were not going to acknowledge Him, this prophet thus
intimates: “Heavy is the heart through all; and He is a man, and who shall know Him?”1192 That
passage also is his which I have quoted in the seventeenth book concerning the new testament, of
which Christ is the Mediator. For Jeremiah himself says, “Behold, the days come, saith the Lord,
that I will complete over the house of Jacob a new testament,” and the rest, which may be read
there.1193
For the present I shall put down those predictions about Christ by the prophet Zephaniah, who
prophesied with Jeremiah. “Wait ye upon me, saith the Lord, in the day of my resurrection, in the
future; because it is my determination to assemble the nations, and gather together the kingdoms.”1194
And again he says, “The Lord will be terrible upon them, and will exterminate all the gods of the
earth; and they shall worship Him every man from his place, even all the isles of the nations.”1195
And a little after he says, “Then will I turn to the people a tongue, and to His offspring, that they
may call upon the name of the Lord, and serve Him under one yoke. From the borders of the rivers
of Ethiopia shall they bring sacrifices unto me. In that day thou shall not be confounded for all thy
curious inventions, which thou hast done impiously against me: for then I will take away from
thee the haughtiness of thy trespass; and thou shalt no more magnify thyself above thy holy
mountain. And I will leave in thee a meek and humble people, and they who shall be left of Israel
shall fear the name of the Lord.”1196 These are the remnant of whom the apostle quotes that which
is elsewhere prophesied: “Though the number of the children of Israel be as the sand of the sea, a
remnant shall be saved.”1197 These are the remnant of that nation who have believed in Christ.
Chapter 34.—Of the Prophecy of Daniel and Ezekiel, Other Two of the Greater Prophets.
1190 Jer. xxiii. 5, 6.
1191 Jer. xvi. 19.
1192 Jer. xvii. 9.
1193 Jer. xxxi. 31; see Bk. xvii. 3.
1194 Zeph. iii. 8.
1195 Zeph. ii. 11.
1196 Zeph. iii. 9–12.
1197 Isa. x. 22; Rom. ix. 27.
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Daniel and Ezekiel, other two of the greater prophets, also first prophesied in the very captivity
of Babylon. Daniel even defined the time when Christ was to come and suffer by the exact date.
It would take too long to show this by computation, and it has been done often by others before
us. But of His power and glory he has thus spoken: “I saw in a night vision, and, behold, one like
the Son of man was coming with the clouds of heaven, and He came even to the Ancient of days,
and He was brought into His presence. And to Him there was given dominion, and honor, and a
kingdom: and all people, tribes, and tongues shall serve Him. His power is an everlasting power,
which shall not pass away, and His kingdom shall not be destroyed.”1198
Ezekiel also, speaking prophetically in the person of God the Father, thus foretells Christ,
speaking of Him in the prophetic manner as David, because He assumed flesh of the seed of David,
and on account of that form of a servant in which He was made man, He who is the Son of God is
also called the servant of God. He says, “And I will set up over my sheep one Shepherd, who will
feed them, even my servant David; and He shall feed them, and He shall be their shepherd. And I
the Lord will be their God, and my servant David a prince in the midst of them. I the Lord have
spoken.”1199 And in another place he says, “And one King shall be over them all: and they shall
no more be two nations, neither shall they be divided any more into two kingdoms: neither shall
they defile themselves any more with their idols, and their abominations, and all their iniquities.
And I will save them out of all their dwelling-places wherein they have sinned, and will cleanse
them; and they shall be my people, and I will be their God. And my servant David shall be king
over them, and there shall be one Shepherd for them all.”1200
Chapter 35.—Of the Prophecy of the Three Prophets, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi.
There remain three minor prophets, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi, who prophesied at the
close of the captivity. Of these Haggai more openly prophesies of Christ and the Church thus
briefly: “Thus saith the Lord of hosts, Yet one little while, and I will shake the heaven, and the
earth, and the sea, and the dry land; and I will move all nations, and the desired of all nations shall
come.”1201 The fulfillment of this prophecy is in part already seen, and in part hoped for in the end.
For He moved the heaven by the testimony of the angels and the stars, when Christ became incarnate.
He moved the earth by the great miracle of His birth of the virgin. He moved the sea and the dry
1198 Dan. vii. 13, 14.
1199 Ezek. xxxiv. 23.
1200 Ezek. xxxvii. 22–24.
1201 Hag. ii. 6.
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land, when Christ was proclaimed both in the isles and in the whole world. So we see all nations
moved to the faith; and the fulfillment of what follows, “And the desired of all nations shall come,”
is looked for at His last coming. For ere men can desire and and wait for Him, they must believe
and love Him.
Zechariah says of Christ and the Church, “Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Sion; shout joyfully,
O daughter of Jerusalem; behold, thy King shall come unto thee, just and the Saviour; Himself
poor, and mounting an ass, and a colt the foal of an ass: and His dominion shall be from sea to sea,
and from the river even to the ends of the earth.”1202 How this was done, when the Lord Christ on
His journey used a beast of burden of this kind, we read in the Gospel, where, also, as much of this
prophecy is quoted as appears sufficient for the context. In another place, speaking in the Spirit of
prophecy to Christ Himself of the remission of sins through His blood, he says, “Thou also, by the
blood of Thy testament, hast sent forth Thy prisoners from the lake wherein is no water.”1203
Different opinions may be held, consistently with right belief, as to what he meant by this lake.
Yet it seems to me that no meaning suits better than that of the depth of human misery, which is,
as it were, dry and barren, where there are no streams of righteousness, but only the mire of iniquity.
For it is said of it in the Psalms, “And He led me forth out of the lake of misery, and from the miry
clay.”1204
Malachi, foretelling the Church which we now behold propagated through Christ, says most
openly to the Jews, in the person of God, “I have no pleasure in you, and I will not accept a gift at
your hand. For from the rising even to the going down of the sun, my name is great among the
nations; and in every place sacrifice shall be made, and a pure oblation shall be offered unto my
name: for my name shall be great among the nations, saith the Lord.”1205 Since we can already see
this sacrifice offered to God in every place, from the rising of the sun to his going down, through
Christ’s priesthood after the order of Melchisedec, while the Jews, to whom it was said, “I have no
pleasure in you, neither will I accept a gift at your hand,” cannot deny that their sacrifice has ceased,
why do they still look for another Christ, when they read this in the prophecy, and see it fulfilled,
which could not be fulfilled except through Him? And a little after he says of Him, in the person
of God, “My covenant was with Him of life and peace: and I gave to Him that He might fear me
with fear, and be afraid before my name. The law of truth was in His mouth: directing in peace
He hath walked with me, and hath turned many away from iniquity. For the Priest’s lips shall keep
knowledge, and they shall seek the law at His mouth: for He is the Angel of the Lord Almighty.”1206
Nor is it to be wondered at that Christ Jesus is called the Angel of the Almighty God. For just as
He is called a servant on account of the form of a servant in which He came to men, so He is called
1202 Zech. ix. 9, 10.
1203 Zech. ix. 11.
1204 Ps. xl. 2.
1205 Mal. i. 10, 11.
1206 Mal. ii. 5–7.
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an angel on account of the evangel which He proclaimed to men. For if we interpret these Greek
words, evangel is “good news,” and angel is “messenger.” Again he says of Him, “Behold I will
send mine angel, and He will look out the way before my face: and the Lord, whom ye seek, shall
suddenly come into His temple, even the Angel of the testament, whom ye desire. Behold, He
cometh, saith the Lord Almighty, and who shall abide the day of His entry, or who shall stand at
His appearing?”1207 In this place he has foretold both the first and second advent of Christ: the
first, to wit, of which he says, “And He shall come suddenly into His temple;” that is, into His flesh,
of which He said in the Gospel, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up again.”1208
And of the second advent he says, “Behold, He cometh, saith the Lord Almighty, and who shall
abide the day of His entry, or who shall stand at His appearing?” But what he says, “The Lord
whom ye seek, and the Angel of the testament whom ye desire,” just means that even the Jews,
according to the Scriptures which they read, shall seek and desire Christ. But many of them did
not acknowledge that He whom they sought and desired had come, being blinded in their hearts,
which were preoccupied with their own merits. Now what he here calls the testament, either above,
where he says, “My testament had been with Him,” or here, where he has called Him the Angel of
the testament, we ought, beyond a doubt, to take to be the new testament, in which the things
promised are eternal, and not the old, in which they are only temporal. Yet many who are weak
are troubled when they see the wicked abound in such temporal things, because they value them
greatly, and serve the true God to be rewarded with them. On this account, to distinguish the eternal
blessedness of the new testament, which shall be given only to the good, from the earthly felicity
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of the old, which for the most part is given to the bad as well, the same prophet says, “Ye have
made your words burdensome to me: yet ye have said, In what have we spoken ill of Thee? Ye
have said, Foolish is every one who serves God; and what profit is it that we have kept His
observances, and that we have walked as suppliants before the face of the Lord Almighty? And
now we call the aliens blessed; yea, all that do wicked things are built up again; yea, they are
opposed to God and are saved. They that feared the Lord uttered these reproaches every one to his
neighbor: and the Lord hearkened and heard; and He wrote a book of remembrance before Him,
for them that fear the Lord and that revere His name.”1209 By that book is meant the New Testament.
Finally, let us hear what follows: “And they shall be an acquisition for me, saith the Lord Almighty,
in the day which I make; and I will choose them as a man chooseth his son that serveth him. And
ye shall return, and shall discern between the just and the unjust, and between him that serveth God
and him that serveth Him not. For, behold, the day cometh burning as an oven, and it shall burn
them up; and all the aliens and all that do wickedly shall be stubble: and the day that shall come
will set them on fire, saith the Lord Almighty, and shall leave neither root nor branch. And unto
you that fear my name shall the Sun of Righteousness arise, and health shall be in His wings; and
1207 Mal. iii. 1, 2.
1208 John ii. 19.
1209 Mal. iii. 13–16.
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ye shall go forth, and exult as calves let loose from bonds. And ye shall tread down the wicked,
and they shall be ashes under your feet, in the day in which I shall do [this], saith the Lord
Almighty.”1210 This day is the day of judgment, of which, if God will, we shall speak more fully
in its own place.
Chapter 36.—About Esdras and the Books of the Maccabees.
After these three prophets, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi, during the same period of the
liberation of the people from the Babylonian servitude Esdras also wrote, who is historical rather
than prophetical, as is also the book called Esther, which is found to relate, for the praise of God,
events not far from those times; unless, perhaps, Esdras is to be understood as prophesying of Christ
in that passage where, on a question having arisen among certain young men as to what is the
strongest thing, when one had said kings, another wine, the third women, who for the most part
rule kings, yet that same third youth demonstrated that the truth is victorious over all.1211 For by
consulting the Gospel we learn that Christ is the Truth. From this time, when the temple was rebuilt,
down to the time of Aristobulus, the Jews had not kings but princes; and the reckoning of their
dates is found, not in the Holy Scriptures which are called canonical, but in others, among which
are also the books of the Maccabees. These are held as canonical, not by the Jews, but by the
Church, on account of the extreme and wonderful sufferings of certain martyrs, who, before Christ
had come in the flesh, contended for the law of God even unto death, and endured most grievous
and horrible evils.
Chapter 37.—That Prophetic Records are Found Which are More Ancient Than Any Fountain of
the Gentile Philosophy.
In the time of our prophets, then, whose writings had already come to the knowledge of almost
all nations, the philosophers of the nations had not yet arisen,—at least, not those who were called
by that name, which originated with Pythagoras the Samian, who was becoming famous at the time
when the Jewish captivity ended. Much more, then, are the other philosophers found to be later
than the prophets. For even Socrates the Athenian, the master of all who were then most famous,
holding the pre-eminence in that department that is called the moral or active, is found after Esdras
in the chronicles. Plato also was born not much later, who far out went the other disciples of
1210 Mal. iii. 17; iv. 3.
1211 Esdras iii. and iv.
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Socrates. If, besides these, we take their predecessors, who had not yet been styled philosophers,
to wit, the seven sages, and then the physicists, who succeeded Thales, and imitated his studious
search into the nature of things, namely, Anaximander, Anaximenes, and Anaxagoras, and some
others, before Pythagoras first professed himself a philosopher, even these did not precede the
whole of our prophets in antiquity of time, since Thales, whom the others succeeded, is said to have
flourished in the reign of Romulus, when the stream of prophecy burst forth from the fountains of
Israel in those writings which spread over the whole world. So that only those theological poets,
Orpheus, Linus, and Musæus, and, it may be, some others among the Greeks, are found earlier in
date than the Hebrew prophets whose writings we hold as authoritative. But not even these preceded
in time our true divine, Moses, who authentically preached the one true God, and whose writings
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are first in the authoritative canon; and therefore the Greeks, in whose tongue the literature of this
age chiefly appears, have no ground for boasting of their wisdom, in which our religion, wherein
is true wisdom, is not evidently more ancient at least, if not superior. Yet it must be confessed that
before Moses there had already been, not indeed among the Greeks, but among barbarous nations,
as in Egypt, some doctrine which might be called their wisdom, else it would not have been written
in the holy books that Moses was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians,1212 as he was, when,
being born there, and adopted and nursed by Pharaoh’s daughter, he was also liberally educated.
Yet not even the wisdom of the Egyptians could be antecedent in time to the wisdom of our prophets,
because even Abraham was a prophet. And what wisdom could there be in Egypt before Isis had
given them letters, whom they thought fit to worship as a goddess after her death? Now Isis is
declared to have been the daughter of Inachus, who first began to reign in Argos when the grandsons
of Abraham are known to have been already born.
Chapter 38.—That the Ecclesiastical Canon Has Not Admitted Certain Writings on Account of
Their Too Great Antiquity, Lest Through Them False Things Should Be Inserted Instead of
True.
If I may recall far more ancient times, our patriarch Noah was certainly even before that great
deluge, and I might not undeservedly call him a prophet, forasmuch as the ark he made, in which
he escaped with his family, was itself a prophecy of our times.1213 What of Enoch, the seventh from
Adam? Does not the canonical epistle of the Apostle Jude declare that he prophesied?1214 But the
writings of these men could not be held as authoritative either among the Jews or us, on account
of their too great antiquity, which made it seem needful to regard them with suspicion, lest false
1212 Acts vii. 22.
1213 Heb. xi. 7; 1 Pet. iii. 20, 21.
1214 Jude 14.
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things should be set forth instead of true. For some writings which are said be theirs are quoted by
those who, according to their own humor, loosely believe what they please. But the purity of the
canon has not admitted these writings, not because the authority of these men who pleased God is
rejected, but because they are not believed to be theirs. Nor ought it to appear strange if writings
for which so great antiquity is claimed are held in suspicion, seeing that in the very history of the
kings of Judah and Israel containing their acts, which we believe to belong to the canonical Scripture,
very many things are mentioned which are not explained there, but are said to be found in other
books which the prophets wrote, the very names of these prophets being sometimes given, and yet
they are not found in the canon which the people of God received. Now I confess the reason of
this is hidden from me; only I think that even those men, to whom certainly the Holy Spirit revealed
those things which ought to be held as of religious authority, might write some things as men by
historical diligence, and others as prophets by divine inspiration; and these things were so distinct,
that it was judged that the former should be ascribed to themselves, but the latter to God speaking
through them: and so the one pertained to the abundance of knowledge, the other to the authority
of religion. In that authority the canon is guarded. So that, if any writings outside of it are now
brought forward under the name of the ancient prophets, they cannot serve even as an aid to
knowledge, because it is uncertain whether they are genuine; and on this account they are not
trusted, especially those of them in which some things are found that are even contrary to the truth
of the canonical books, so that it is quite apparent they do not belong to them.
Chapter 39.—About the Hebrew Written Characters Which that Language Always Possessed.
Now we must not believe that Heber, from whose name the word Hebrew is derived, preserved
and transmitted the Hebrew language to Abraham only as a spoken language, and that the Hebrew
letters began with the giving of the law through Moses; but rather that this language, along with
its letters, was preserved by that succession of fathers. Moses, indeed, appointed some among the
people of God to teach letters, before they could know any letters of the divine law. The Scripture
calls these men γραμματεισαγωγεῖς, who may be called in Latin inductores or introductores of
letters, because they, as it were, introduce them into the hearts of the learners, or rather lead those
whom they teach into them. Therefore no nation could vaunt itself over our patriarchs and prophets
by any wicked vanity for the antiquity of its wisdom; since not even Egypt, which is wont falsely
and vainly to glory in the antiquity of her doctrines, is found to have preceded in time the wisdom
of our patriarchs in her own wisdom, such as it is. Neither will any one dare to say that they were
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most skillful in wonderful sciences before they knew letters, that is, before Isis came and taught
them there. Besides, what, for the most part, was that memorable doctrine of theirs which was
called wisdom but astronomy, and it may be some other sciences of that kind, which usually have
more power to exercise men’s wit than to enlighten their minds with true wisdom? As regards
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philosophy, which professes to teach men something which shall make them happy, studies of that
kind flourished in those lands about the times of Mercury, whom they called Trismegistus, long
before the sages and philosophers of Greece, but yet after Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph, and
even after Moses himself. At that time, indeed, when Moses was born, Atlas is found to have lived,
that great astronomer, the brother of Prometheus, and maternal grandson of the elder Mercury, of
whom that Mercury Trismegistus was the grandson.
Chapter 40.—About the Most Mendacious Vanity of the Egyptians, in Which They Ascribe to
Their Science an Antiquity of a Hundred Thousand Years.
In vain, then, do some babble with most empty presumption, saying that Egypt has understood
the reckoning of the stars for more than a hundred thousand years. For in what books have they
collected that number who learned letters from Isis their mistress, not much more than two thousand
years ago? Varro, who has declared this, is no small authority in history, and it does not disagree
with the truth of the divine books. For as it is not yet six thousand years since the first man, who
is called Adam, are not those to be ridiculed rather than refuted who try to persuade us of anything
regarding a space of time so different from, and contrary to, the ascertained truth? For what historian
of the past should we credit more than him who has also predicted things to come which we now
see fulfilled? And the very disagreement of the historians among themselves furnishes a good
reason why we ought rather to believe him who does not contradict the divine history which we
hold. But, on the other hand, the citizens of the impious city, scattered everywhere through the
earth, when they read the most learned writers, none of whom seems to be of contemptible authority,
and find them disagreeing among themselves about affairs most remote from the memory of our
age, cannot find out whom they ought to trust. But we, being sustained by divine authority in the
history of our religion, have no doubt that whatever is opposed to it is most false, whatever may
be the case regarding other things in secular books, which, whether true or false, yield nothing of
moment to our living rightly and happily.
Chapter 41.—About the Discord of Philosophic Opinion, and the Concord of the Scriptures that
are Held as Canonical by the Church.
But let us omit further examination of history, and return to the philosophers from whom we
digressed to these things. They seem to have labored in their studies for no other end than to find
out how to live in a way proper for laying hold of blessedness. Why, then, have the disciples
dissented from their masters, and the fellow-disciples from one another, except because as men
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they have sought after these things by human sense and human reasonings? Now, although there
might be among them a desire of glory, so that each wished to be thought wiser and more acute
than another, and in no way addicted to the judgment of others, but the inventor of his own dogma
and opinion, yet I may grant that there were some, or even very many of them, whose love of truth
severed them from their teachers or fellow-disciples, that they might strive for what they thought
was the truth, whether it was so or not. But what can human misery do, or how or where can it
reach forth, so as to attain blessedness, if divine authority does not lead it? Finally, let our authors,
among whom the canon of the sacred books is fixed and bounded, be far from disagreeing in any
respect. It is not without good reason, then, that not merely a few people prating in the schools and
gymnasia in captious disputations, but so many and great people, both learned and unlearned, in
countries and cities, have believed that God spoke to them or by them, i.e. the canonical writers,
when they wrote these books. There ought, indeed, to be but few of them, lest on account of their
multitude what ought to be religiously esteemed should grow cheap; and yet not so few that their
agreement should not be wonderful. For among the multitude of philosophers, who in their works
have left behind them the monuments of their dogmas, no one will easily find any who agree in all
their opinions. But to show this is too long a task for this work.
But what author of any sect is so approved in this demon-worshipping city, that the rest who
have differed from or opposed him in opinion have been disapproved? The Epicureans asserted
that human affairs were not under the providence of the gods; and the Stoics, holding the opposite
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opinion, agreed that they were ruled and defended by favora ble and tutelary gods. Yet were not
both sects famous among the Athenians? I wonder, then, why Anaxagoras was accused of a crime
for saying that the sun was a burning stone, and denying that it was a god at all; while in the same
city Epicurus flourished gloriously and lived securely, although he not only did not believe that the
sun or any star was a god, but contended that neither Jupiter nor any of the gods dwelt in the world
at all, so that the prayers and supplications of men might reach them! Were not both Aristippus
and Antisthenes there, two noble philosophers and both Socratic? yet they placed the chief end of
life within bounds so diverse and contradictory, that the first made the delight of the body the chief
good, while the other asserted that man was made happy mainly by the virtue of the mind. The
one also said that the wise man should flee from the republic; the other, that he should administer
its affairs. Yet did not each gather disciples to follow his own sect? Indeed, in the conspicuous
and well-known porch, in gymnasia, in gardens, in places public and private, they openly strove
in bands each for his own opinion, some asserting there was one world, others innumerable worlds;
some that this world had a beginning, others that it had not; some that it would perish, others that
it would exist always; some that it was governed by the divine mind, others by chance and accident;
some that souls are immortal, others that they are mortal,—and of those who asserted their
immortality, some said they transmigrated through beasts, others that it was by no means so; while
of those who asserted their mortality, some said they perished immediately after the body, others
that they survived either a little while or a longer time, but not always; some fixing supreme good
in the body, some in the mind, some in both; others adding to the mind and body external good
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things; some thinking that the bodily senses ought to be trusted always, some not always, others
never. Now what people, senate, power, or public dignity of the impious city has ever taken care
to judge between all these and other well-nigh innumerable dissensions of the philosophers,
approving and accepting some, and disapproving and rejecting others? Has it not held in its bosom
at random, without any judgment, and confusedly, so many controversies of men at variance, not
about fields, houses, or anything of a pecuniary nature, but about those things which make life
either miserable or happy? Even if some true things were said in it, yet falsehoods were uttered
with the same licence; so that such a city has not amiss received the title of the mystic Babylon.
For Babylon means confusion, as we remember we have already explained. Nor does it matter to
the devil, its king, how they wrangle among themselves in contradictory errors, since all alike
deservedly belong to him on account of their great and varied impiety.
But that nation, that people, that city, that republic, these Israelites, to whom the oracles of God
were entrusted, by no means confounded with similar licence false prophets with the true prophets;
but, agreeing together, and differing in nothing, acknowledged and upheld the authentic authors of
their sacred books. These were their philosophers, these were their sages, divines, prophets, and
teachers of probity and piety. Whoever was wise and lived according to them was wise and lived
not according to men, but according to God who hath spoken by them. If sacrilege is forbidden
there, God hath forbidden it. If it is said, “Honor thy father and thy mother,”1215 God hath commanded
it. If it is said, “Thou shall not commit adultery, Thou shall not kill, Thou shall not steal,”1216 and
other similar commandments, not human lips but the divine oracles have enounced them. Whatever
truth certain philosophers, amid their false opinions, were able to see, and strove by laborious
discussions to persuade men of,—such as that God had made this world, and Himself most
providently governs it, or of the nobility of the virtues, of the love of country, of fidelity in friendship,
of good works and everything pertaining to virtuous manners, although they knew not to what end
and what rule all these things were to be referred,—all these, by words prophetic, that is, divine,
although spoken by men, were commended to the people in that city, and not inculcated by contention
in arguments, so that he who should know them might be afraid of contemning, not the wit of men,
but the oracle of God.
Chapter 42.—By What Dispensation of God’s Providence the Sacred Scriptures of the Old Testament
Were Translated Out of Hebrew into Greek, that They Might Be Made Known to All the Nations.
One of the Ptolemies, kings of Egypt, desired to know and have these sacred books. For after
Alexander of Macedon, who is also styled the Great, had by his most wonderful, but by no means
1215 Ex. xx. 12.
1216 Ex. xx. 13–15, the order as in Mark x. 19.
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enduring power, subdued the whole of Asia, yea, almost the whole world, partly by force of arms,
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partly by terror, and, among other kingdoms of the East, had entered and obtained Judea also, on
his death his generals did not peaceably divide that most ample kingdom among them for a
possession, but rather dissipated it, wasting all things by wars. Then Egypt began to have the
Ptolemies as her kings. The first of them, the son of Lagus, carried many captive out of Judea into
Egypt. But another Ptolemy, called Philadelphus, who succeeded him, permitted all whom he had
brought under the yoke to return free; and more than that, sent kingly gifts to the temple of God,
and begged Eleazar, who was the high priest, to give him the Scriptures, which he had heard by
report were truly divine, and therefore greatly desired to have in that most noble library he had
made. When the high priest had sent them to him in Hebrew, he afterwards demanded interpreters
of him, and there were given him seventy-two, out of each of the twelve tribes six men, most learned
in both languages, to wit, the Hebrew and Greek and their translation is now by custom called the
Septuagint. It is reported, indeed, that there was an agreement in their words so wonderful,
stupendous, and plainly divine, that when they had sat at this work, each one apart (for so it pleased
Ptolemy to test their fidelity), they differed from each other in no word which had the same meaning
and force, or, in the order of the words; but, as if the translators had been one, so what all had
translated was one, because in very deed the one Spirit had been in them all. And they received
so wonderful a gift of God, in order that the authority of these Scriptures might be commended not
as human but divine, as indeed it was, for the benefit of the nations who should at some time believe,
as we now see them doing.
Chapter 43.—Of the Authority of the Septuagint Translation, Which, Saving the Honor of the
Hebrew Original, is to Be Preferred to All Translations.
For while there were other interpreters who translated these sacred oracles out of the Hebrew
tongue into Greek, as Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion, and also that translation which, as the
name of the author is unknown, is quoted as the fifth edition, yet the Church has received this
Septuagint translation just as if it were the only one; and it has been used by the Greek Christian
people, most of whom are not aware that there is any other. From this translation there has also
been made a translation in the Latin tongue, which the Latin churches use. Our times, however,
have enjoyed the advantage of the presbyter Jerome, a man most learned, and skilled in all three
languages, who translated these same Scriptures into the Latin speech, not from the Greek, but
from the Hebrew.1217 But although the Jews acknowledge this very learned labor of his to be faithful,
1217 [Jerome was an older contemporary of Augustin, and next to him the most influential of the Latin fathers. He is the author
of the Latin translation of the Scriptures, which under the name of the Vulgate is still the authorized Bible of the Roman church.
He died at Bethlehem, 419, eleven years before Augustin.—P.S.]
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while they contend that the Septuagint translators have erred in many places, still the churches of
Christ judge that no one should be preferred to the authority of so many men, chosen for this very
great work by Eleazar, who was then high priest; for even if there had not appeared in them one
spirit, without doubt divine, and the seventy learned men had, after the manner of men, compared
together the words of their translation, that what pleased them all might stand, no single translator
ought to be preferred to them; but since so great a sign of divinity has appeared in them, certainly,
if any other translator of their Scriptures from the Hebrew into any other tongue is faithful, in that
case he agrees with these seventy translators, and if he is not found to agree with them, then we
ought to believe that the prophetic gift is with them. For the same Spirit who was in the prophets
when they spoke these things was also in the seventy men when they translated them, so that
assuredly they could also say something else, just as if the prophet himself had said both, because
it would be the same Spirit who said both; and could say the same thing differently, so that, although
the words were not the same, yet the same meaning should shine forth to those of good
understanding; and could omit or add something, so that even by this it might be shown that there
was in that work not human bondage, which the translator owed to the words, but rather divine
power, which filled and ruled the mind of the translator. Some, however, have thought that the
Greek copies of the Septuagint version should be emended from the Hebrew copies; yet they did
not dare to take away what the Hebrew lacked and the Septuagint had, but only added what was
found in the Hebrew copies and was lacking in the Septuagint, and noted them by placing at the
beginning of the verses certain marks in the form of stars which they call asterisks. And those
things which the Hebrew copies have not, but the Septuagint have, they have in like manner marked
at the beginning of the verses by horizontal spit-shaped marks like those by which we denote ounces;
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and many copies having these marks are circulated even in Latin.1218 But we cannot, without
inspecting both kinds of copies, find out those things which are neither omitted nor added, but
expressed differently, whether they yield another meaning not in itself unsuitable, or can be shown
to explain the same meaning in another way. If, then, as it behoves us, we behold nothing else in
these Scriptures than what the Spirit of God has spoken through men, if anything is in the Hebrew
copies and is not in the version of the Seventy, the Spirit of God did not choose to say it through
them, but only through the prophets. But whatever is in the Septuagint and not in the Hebrew
copies, the same Spirit chose rather to say through the latter, thus showing that both were prophets.
For in that manner He spoke as He chose, some things through Isaiah, some through Jeremiah,
some through several prophets, or else the same thing through this prophet and through that. Further,
whatever is found in both editions, that one and the same Spirit willed to say through both, but so
as that the former preceded in prophesying, and the latter followed in prophetically interpreting
them; because, as the one Spirit of peace was in the former when they spoke true and concordant
words, so the selfsame one Spirit hath appeared in the latter, when, without mutual conference they
yet interpreted all things as if with one mouth.
1218 Var. reading, “both in Greek and Latin.”
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Chapter 44.—How the Threat of the Destruction of the Ninevites is to Be Understood Which in
the Hebrew Extends to Forty Days, While in the Septuagint It is Contracted to Three.
But some one may say, “How shall I know whether the prophet Jonah said to the Ninevites,
‘Yet three days and Nineveh shall be overthrown,’ or forty days?”1219 For who does not see that
the prophet could not say both, when he was sent to terrify the city by the threat of imminent ruin?
For if its destruction was to take place on the third day, it certainly could not be on the fortieth; but
if on the fortieth, then certainly not on the third. If, then, I am asked which of these Jonah may
have said, I rather think what is read in the Hebrew, “Yet forty days and Nineveh shall be
overthrown.” Yet the Seventy, interpreting long afterward, could say what was different and yet
pertinent to the matter, and agree in the self-same meaning, although under a different signification.
And this may admonish the reader not to despise the authority of either, but to raise himself above
the history, and search for those things which the history itself was written to set forth. These
things, indeed, took place in the city of Nineveh, but they also signified something else too great
to apply to that city; just as, when it happened that the prophet himself was three days in the whale’s
belly, it signified besides, that He who is Lord of all the prophets should be three days in the depths
of hell. Wherefore, if that city is rightly held as prophetically representing the Church of the
Gentiles, to wit, as brought down by penitence, so as no longer to be what it had been, since this
was done by Christ in the Church of the Gentiles, which Nineveh represented, Christ Himself was
signified both by the forty and by the three days: by the forty, because He spent that number of
days with His disciples after the resurrection, and then ascended into heaven, but by the three days,
because He rose on the third day. So that, if the reader desires nothing else than to adhere to the
history of events, he may be aroused from his sleep by the Septuagint interpreters, as well as the
prophets, to search into the depth of the prophecy, as if they had said, In the forty days seek Him
in whom thou mayest also find the three days,—the one thou wilt find in His ascension, the other
in His resurrection. Because that which could be most suitably signified by both numbers, of which
one is used by Jonah the prophet, the other by the prophecy of the Septuagint version, the one and
self-same Spirit hath spoken. I dread prolixity, so that I must not demonstrate this by many instances
in which the seventy interpreters may be thought to differ from the Hebrew, and yet, when well
understood, are found to agree. For which reason I also, according to my capacity, following the
footsteps of the apostles, who themselves have quoted prophetic testimonies from both, that is,
from the Hebrew and the Septuagint, have thought that both should be used as authoritative, since
both are one, and divine. But let us now follow out as we can what remains.
1219 Jon. iii. 4.
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Chapter 45.—That the Jews Ceased to Have Prophets After the Rebuilding of the Temple, and from
that Time Until the Birth of Christ Were Afflicted with Continual Adversity, to Prove that the
Building of Another Temple Had Been Promised by Prophetic Voices.
The Jewish nation no doubt became worse after it ceased to have prophets, just at the very time
when, on the rebuilding of the temple after the captivity in Babylon, it hoped to become better.
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For so, indeed, did that car nal people understand what was foretold by Haggai the prophet, saying,
“The glory of this latter house shall be greater than that of the former.”1220 Now, that this is said
of the new testament, he showed a little above, where he says, evidently promising Christ, “And I
will move all nations, and the desired One shall come to all nations.”1221 In this passage the
Septuagint translators giving another sense more suitable to the body than the Head, that is, to the
Church than to Christ, have said by prophetic authority, “The things shall come that are chosen of
the Lord from all nations,” that is, men, of whom Jesus saith in the Gospel, “Many are called, but
few are chosen.”1222 For by such chosen ones of the nations there is built, through the new testament,
with living stones, a house of God far more glorious than that temple was which was constructed
by king Solomon, and rebuilt after the captivity. For this reason, then, that nation had no prophets
from that time, but was afflicted with many plagues by kings of alien race, and by the Romans
themselves, lest they should fancy that this prophecy of Haggai was fulfilled by that rebuilding of
the temple.
For not long after, on the arrival of Alexander, it was subdued, when, although there was no
pillaging, because they dared not resist him, and thus, being very easily subdued, received him
peaceably, yet the glory of that house was not so great as it was when under the free power of their
own kings. Alexander, indeed, offered up sacrifices in the temple of God, not as a convert to His
worship in true piety, but thinking, with impious folly, that He was to be worshipped along with
false gods. Then Ptolemy son of Lagus, whom I have already mentioned, after Alexander’s death
carried them captive into Egypt. His successor, Ptolemy Philadelphus, most benevolently dismissed
them; and by him it was brought about, as I have narrated a little before, that we should have the
Septuagint version of the Scriptures. Then they were crushed by the wars which are explained in
the books of the Maccabees. Afterward they were taken captive by Ptolemy king of Alexandria,
who was called Epiphanes. Then Antiochus king of Syria compelled them by many and most
grievous evils to worship idols, and filled the temple itself with the sacrilegious superstitions of
the Gentiles. Yet their most vigorous leader Judas, who is also called Maccabæus, after beating
the generals of Antiochus, cleansed it from all that defilement of idolatry.
1220 Hag. ii. 9.
1221 Hag. ii. 7.
1222 Matt. xxii. 14.
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But not long after, one Alcimus, although an alien from the sacerdotal tribe, was, through
ambition, made pontiff, which was an impious thing. After almost fifty years, during which they
never had peace, although they prospered in some affairs, Aristobulus first assumed the diadem
among them, and was made both king and pontiff. Before that, indeed, from the time of their return
from the Babylonish captivity and the rebuilding of the temple, they had not kings, but generals or
principes. Although a king himself may be called a prince, from his principality in governing, and
a leader, because he leads the army, but it does not follow that all who are princes and leaders may
also be called kings, as that Aristobulus was. He was succeeded by Alexander, also both king and
pontiff, who is reported to have reigned over them cruelly. After him his wife Alexandra was queen
of the Jews, and from her time downwards more grievous evils pursued them; for this Alexandra’s
sons, Aristobulus and Hyrcanus, when contending with each other for the kingdom, called in the
Roman forces against the nation of Israel. For Hyrcanus asked assistance from them against his
brother. At that time Rome had already subdued Africa and Greece, and ruled extensively in other
parts of the world also, and yet, as if unable to bear her own weight, had, in a manner, broken herself
by her own size. For indeed she had come to grave domestic seditions, and from that to social
wars, and by and by to civil wars, and had enfeebled and worn herself out so much, that the changed
state of the republic, in which she should be governed by kings, was now imminent. Pompey then,
a most illustrious prince of the Roman people, having entered Judea with an army, took the city,
threw open the temple, not with the devotion of a suppliant, but with the authority of a conqueror,
and went, not reverently, but profanely, into the holy of holies, where it was lawful for none but
the pontiff to enter. Having established Hyrcanus in the pontificate, and set Antipater over the
subjugated nation as guardian or procurator, as they were then called, he led Aristobulus with him
bound. From that time the Jews also began to be Roman tributaries. Afterward Cassius plundered
the very temple. Then after a few years it was their desert to have Herod, a king of foreign birth,
in whose reign Christ was born. For the time had now come signified by the prophetic Spirit through
the mouth of the patriarch Jacob, when he says, “There shall not be lacking a prince out of Judah,
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nor a teacher from his loins, until He shall come for whom it is reserved; and He is the expectation
of the nations.”1223 There lacked not therefore a Jewish prince of the Jews until that Herod, who
was the first king of a foreign race received by them. Therefore it was now the time when He
should come for whom that was reserved which is promised in the New Testament, that He should
be the expectation of the nations. But it was not possible that the nations should expect He would
come, as we see they did, to do judgment in the splendor of power, unless they should first believe
in Him when He came to suffer judgment in the humility of patience.
1223 Gen. xlix. 10.
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Chapter 46.—Of the Birth of Our Saviour, Whereby the Word Was Made Flesh; And of the
Dispersion of the Jews Among All Nations, as Had Been Prophesied.
While Herod, therefore, reigned in Judea, and Cæsar Augustus was emperor at Rome, the state
of the republic being already changed, and the world being set at peace by him, Christ was born in
Bethlehem of Judah, man manifest out of a human virgin, God hidden out of God the Father. For
so had the prophet foretold: “Behold, a virgin shall conceive in the womb, and bring forth a Son,
and they shall call His name Immanuel, which, being interpreted, is, God with us.”1224 He did many
miracles that He might commend God in Himself, some of which, even as many as seemed sufficient
to proclaim Him, are contained in the evangelic Scripture. The first of these is, that He was so
wonderfully born, and the last, that with His body raised up again from the dead He ascended into
heaven. But the Jews who slew Him, and would not believe in Him, because it behoved Him to
die and rise again, were yet more miserably wasted by the Romans, and utterly rooted out from
their kingdom, where aliens had already ruled over them, and were dispersed through the lands (so
that indeed there is no place where they are not), and are thus by their own Scriptures a testimony
to us that we have not forged the prophecies about Christ. And very many of them, considering
this, even before His passion, but chiefly after His resurrection, believed on Him, of whom it was
predicted, “Though the number of the children of Israel be as the sand of the sea, the remnant shall
be saved.”1225 But the rest are blinded, of whom it was predicted, “Let their table be made before
them a trap, and a retribution, and a stumbling-block. Let their eyes be darkened lest they see, and
bow down their back alway.”1226 Therefore, when they do not believe our Scriptures, their own,
which they blindly read, are fulfilled in them, lest perchance any one should say that the Christians
have forged these prophecies about Christ which are quoted under the name of the sibyl, or of
others, if such there be, who do not belong to the Jewish people. For us, indeed, those suffice which
are quoted from the books of our enemies, to whom we make our acknowledgment, on account of
this testimony which, in spite of themselves, they contribute by their possession of these books,
while they themselves are dispersed among all nations, wherever the Church of Christ is spread
abroad. For a prophecy about this thing was sent before in the Psalms, which they also read, where
it is written, “My God, His mercy shall prevent me. My God hath shown me concerning mine
enemies, that Thou shalt not slay them, lest they should at last forget Thy law: disperse them in
Thy might.”1227 Therefore God has shown the Church in her enemies the Jews the grace of His
compassion, since, as saith the apostle, “their offence is the salvation of the Gentiles.”1228 And
1224 Isa. vii. 14, as in Matt. i. 23.
1225 Isa. x. 22, as in Rom. ix. 27, 28.
1226 Ps. lxix. 22, 23; Rom. xi. 9, 10.
1227 Ps. lxix. 10, 11.
1228 Rom xi. 11.
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therefore He has not slain them, that is, He has not let the knowledge that they are Jews be lost in
them, although they have been conquered by the Romans, lest they should forget the law of God,
and their testimony should be of no avail in this matter of which we treat. But it was not enough
that he should say, “Slay them not, lest they should at last forget Thy law,” unless he had also
added, “Disperse them;” because if they had only been in their own land with that testimony of the
Scriptures, and not every where, certainly the Church which is everywhere could not have had them
as witnesses among all nations to the prophecies which were sent before concerning Christ.
Chapter 47.—Whether Before Christian Times There Were Any Outside of the Israelite Race Who
Belonged to the Fellowship of the Heavenly City.
Wherefore if we read of any foreigner—that is, one neither born of Israel nor received by that
people into the canon of the sacred books—having prophesied something about Christ, if it has
come or shall come to our knowledge, we can refer to it over and above; not that this is necessary,
even if wanting, but because it is not incongruous to believe that even in other nations there may
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have been men to whom this mystery was revealed, and who were also impelled to proclaim it,
whether they were partakers of the same grace or had no experience of it, but were taught by bad
angels, who, as we know, even confessed the present Christ, whom the Jews did not acknowledge.
Nor do I think the Jews themselves dare contend that no one has belonged to God except the
Israelites, since the increase of Israel began on the rejection of his elder brother. For in very deed
there was no other people who were specially called the people of God; but they cannot deny that
there have been certain men even of other nations who belonged, not by earthly but heavenly
fellowship, to the true Israelites, the citizens of the country that is above. Because, if they deny
this, they can be most easily confuted by the case of the holy and wonderful man Job, who was
neither a native nor a proselyte, that is, a stranger joining the people of Israel, but, being bred of
the Idumean race, arose there and died there too, and who is so praised by the divine oracle, that
no man of his times is put on a level with him as regards justice and piety. And although we do
not find his date in the chronicles, yet from his book, which for its merit the Israelites have received
as of canonical authority, we gather that he was in the third generation after Israel. And I doubt
not it was divinely provided, that from this one case we might know that among other nations also
there might be men pertaining to the spiritual Jerusalem who have lived according to God and have
pleased Him. And it is not to be supposed that this was granted to any one, unless the one Mediator
between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus,1229 was divinely revealed to him; who was
pre-announced to the saints of old as yet to come in the flesh, even as He is announced to us as
having come, that the self-same faith through Him may lead all to God who are predestinated to
1229 1 Tim. ii. 5.
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be the city of God, the house of God, and the temple of God. But whatever prophecies concerning
the grace of God through Christ Jesus are quoted, they may be thought to have been forged by the
Christians. So that there is nothing of more weight for confuting all sorts of aliens, if they contend
about this matter, and for supporting our friends, if they are truly wise, than to quote those divine
predictions about Christ which are written in the books of the Jews, who have been torn from their
native abode and dispersed over the whole world in order to bear this testimony, so that the Church
of Christ has everywhere increased.
Chapter 48.—That Haggai’s Prophecy, in Which He Said that the Glory of the House of God Would
Be Greater Than that of the First Had Been,1230 Was Really Fulfilled, Not in the Rebuilding of
the Temple, But in the Church of Christ.
This house of God is more glorious than that first one which was constructed of wood and stone,
metals and other precious things. Therefore the prophecy of Haggai was not fulfilled in the
rebuilding of that temple. For it can never be shown to have had so much glory after it was rebuilt
as it had in the time of Solomon; yea, rather, the glory of that house is shown to have been
diminished, first by the ceasing of prophecy, and then by the nation itself suffering so great
calamities, even to the final destruction made by the Romans, as the things above-mentioned prove.
But this house which pertains to the new testament is just as much more glorious as the living
stones, even believing, renewed men, of which it is constructed are better. But it was typified by
the rebuilding of that temple for this reason, because the very renovation of that edifice typifies in
the prophetic oracle another testament which is called the new. When, therefore, God said by the
prophet just named, “And I will give peace in this place,”1231 He is to be understood who is typified
by that typical place; for since by that rebuilt place is typified the Church which was to be built by
Christ, nothing else can be accepted as the meaning of the saying, “I will give peace in this place,”
except I will give peace in the place which that place signifies. For all typical things seem in some
way to personate those whom they typify, as it is said by the apostle, “That Rock was Christ.”1232
Therefore the glory of this new testament house is greater than the glory of the old testament house;
and it will show itself as greater when it shall be dedicated. For then “shall come the desired of all
nations,”1233 as we read in the Hebrew. For before His advent He had not yet been desired by all
nations. For they knew not Him whom they ought to desire, in whom they had not believed. Then,
also, according to the Septuagint interpretation (for it also is a prophetic meaning), “shall come
1230 Hag. ii. 9.
1231 Hag. ii. 9.
1232 1 Cor. x. 4; Ex. xvii. 6.
1233 Hag. ii. 7.
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those who are elected of the Lord out of all nations.” For then indeed there shall come only those
who are elected, whereof the apostle saith, “According as He hath chosen us in Him before the
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foundation of the world.”1234 For the Master Builder who said, “Many are called, but few are
chosen,”1235 did not say this of those who, on being called, came in such a way as to be cast out
from the feast, but would point out the house built up of the elect, which henceforth shall dread no
ruin. Yet because the churches are also full of those who shall be separated by the winnowing as
in the threshing-floor, the glory of this house is not so apparent now as it shall be when every one
who is there shall be there always.
Chapter 49.—Of the Indiscriminate Increase of the Church, Wherein Many Reprobate are in This
World Mixed with the Elect.
In this wicked world, in these evil days, when the Church measures her future loftiness by her
present humility, and is exercised by goading fears, tormenting sorrows, disquieting labors, and
dangerous temptations, when she soberly rejoices, rejoicing only in hope, there are many reprobate
mingled with the good, and both are gathered together by the gospel as in a drag net;1236 and in this
world, as in a sea, both swim enclosed without distinction in the net, until it is brought ashore, when
the wicked must be separated from the good, that in the good, as in His temple, God may be all in
all. We acknowledge, indeed, that His word is now fulfilled who spake in the psalm, and said, “I
have announced and spoken; they are multiplied above number.”1237 This takes place now, since
He has spoken, first by the mouth of his forerunner John, and afterward by His own mouth, saying,
“Repent: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”1238 He chose disciples, whom He also called
apostles,1239 of lowly birth, unhonored, and illiterate, so that whatever great thing they might be or
do, He might be and do it in them. He had one among them whose wickedness He could use well
in order to accomplish His appointed passion, and furnish His Church an example of bearing with
the wicked. Having sown the holy gospel as much as that behoved to be done by His bodily
presence, He suffered, died, and rose again, showing by His passion what we ought to suffer for
the truth, and by His resurrection what we ought to hope for in adversity; saving always the mystery
of the sacrament, by which His blood was shed for the remission of sins. He held converse on the
earth forty days with His disciples, and in their sight ascended into heaven, and after ten days sent
1234 Eph. i. 4.
1235 Matt. xxii. 11–14.
1236 Matt. xiii. 47–50.
1237 Ps. xl. 5.
1238 Matt. iii. 2; iv. 17.
1239 Luke vi. 13.
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the promised Holy Spirit. It was given as the chief and most necessary sign of His coming on those
who had believed, that every one of them spoke in the tongues of all nations; thus signifying that
the unity of the catholic Church would embrace all nations, and would in like manner speak in all
tongues.
Chapter 50.—Of the Preaching of the Gospel, Which is Made More Famous and Powerful by the
Sufferings of Its Preachers.
Then was fulfilled that prophecy, “Out of Sion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord
out of Jerusalem;”1240 and the prediction of the Lord Christ Himself, when, after the resurrection,
“He opened the understanding” of His amazed disciples “that they might understand the Scriptures,
and said unto them, that thus it is written, and thus it behoved Christ to suffer, and to rise from the
dead the third day, and that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in His name among
all nations, beginning at Jerusalem.”1241 And again, when, in reply to their questioning about the
day of His last coming, He said, “It is not for you to know the times or the seasons which the Father
hath put in His own power; but ye shall receive the power of the Holy Ghost coming upon you,
and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and Samaria, and even unto
the ends of the earth.”1242 First of all, the Church spread herself abroad from Jerusalem; and when
very many in Judea and Samaria had believed, she also went into other nations by those who
announced the gospel, whom, as lights, He Himself had both prepared by His word and kindled by
His Holy Spirit. For He had said to them, “Fear ye not them which kill the body, but are not able
to kill the soul.”1243 And that they might not be frozen with fear, they burned with the fire of charity.
Finally, the gospel of Christ was preached in the whole world, not only by those who had seen and
heard Him both before His passion and after His resurrection, but also after their death by their
successors, amid the horrible persecutions, diverse torments and deaths of the martyrs, God also
bearing them witness, both with signs and wonders, and divers miracles and gifts of the Holy
Ghost,1244 that the people of the nations, believing in Him who was crucified for their redemption,
might venerate with Christian love the blood of the martyrs which they had poured forth with
devilish fury, and the very kings by whose laws the Church had been laid waste might become
profitably subject to that name they had cruelly striven to take away from the earth, and might begin
1240 Isa. ii. 3.
1241 Luke xxiv. 45–47.
1242 Acts i. 7, 8.
1243 Matt. x. 28.
1244 Heb. ii. 4.
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to persecute the false gods for whose sake the worshippers of the true God had formerly been
persecuted.
Chapter 51.—That the Catholic Faith May Be Confirmed Even by the Dissensions of the Heretics.
But the devil, seeing the temples of the demons deserted, and the human race running to the
name of the liberating Mediator, has moved the heretics under the Christian name to resist the
Christian doctrine, as if they could be kept in the city of God indifferently without any correction,
just as the city of confusion indifferently held the philosophers who were of diverse and adverse
opinions. Those, therefore, in the Church of Christ who savor anything morbid and depraved, and,
on being corrected that they may savor what is wholesome and right, contumaciously resist, and
will not amend their pestiferous and deadly dogmas, but persist in defending them, become heretics,
and, going without, are to be reckoned as enemies who serve for her discipline. For even thus they
profit by their wickedness those true catholic members of Christ, since God makes a good use even
of the wicked, and all things work together for good to them that love Him.1245 For all the enemies
of the Church, whatever error blinds or malice depraves them, exercise her patience if they receive
the power to afflict her corporally; and if they only oppose her by wicked thought, they exercise
her wisdom: but at the same time, if these enemies are loved, they exercise her benevolence, or
even her beneficence, whether she deals with them by persuasive doctrine or by terrible discipline.
And thus the devil, the prince of the impious city, when he stirs up his own vessels against the city
of God that sojourns in this world, is permitted to do her no harm. For without doubt the divine
providence procures for her both consolation through prosperity, that she may not be broken by
adversity, and trial through adversity, that she may not be corrupted by prosperity; and thus each
is tempered by the other, as we recognize in the Psalms that voice which arises from no other cause,
“According to the multitude of my griefs in my heart, Thy consolations have delighted my soul.”1246
Hence also is that saying of the apostle, “Rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation.”1247
For it is not to be thought that what the same teacher says can at any time fail, “Whoever will
live piously in Christ shall suffer persecution.”1248 Because even when those who are without do
not rage, and thus there seems to be, and really is, tranquillity, which brings very much consolation,
especially to the weak, yet there are not wanting, yea, there are many within who by their abandoned
manners torment the hearts of those who live piously, since by them the Christian and catholic
name is blasphemed; and the dearer that name is to those who will live piously in Christ, the more
1245 Rom. viii. 28.
1246 Ps. xciv. 19.
1247 Rom. xii. 12.
1248 2 Tim. iii. 12.
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do they grieve that through the wicked, who have a place within, it comes to be less loved than
pious minds desire. The heretics themselves also, since they are thought to have the Christian name
and sacraments, Scriptures, and profession, cause great grief in the hearts of the pious, both because
many who wish to be Christians are compelled by their dissensions to hesitate, and many
evil-speakers also find in them matter for blaspheming the Christian name, because they too are at
any rate called Christians. By these and similar depraved manners and errors of men, those who
will live piously in Christ suffer persecution, even when no one molests or vexes their body; for
they suffer this persecution, not in their bodies, but in their hearts. Whence is that word, “According
to the multitude of my griefs in my heart;” for he does not say, in my body. Yet, on the other hand,
none of them can perish, because the immutable divine promises are thought of. And because the
apostle says, “The Lord knoweth them that are His;1249 for whom He did foreknow, He also
predestinated [to be] conformed to the image of His Son,”1250 none of them can perish; therefore it
follows in that psalm, “Thy consolations have delighted my soul.”1251 But that grief which arises
in the hearts of the pious, who are persecuted by the manners of bad or false Christians, is profitable
to the sufferers, because it proceeds from the charity in which they do not wish them either to perish
or to hinder the salvation of others. Finally, great consolations grow out of their chastisement,
which imbue the souls of the pious with a fecundity as great as the pains with which they were
troubled concerning their own perdition. Thus in this world, in these evil days, not only from the
time of the bodily presence of Christ and His apostles, but even from that of Abel, whom first his
wicked brother slew because he was righteous,1252 and thenceforth even to the end of this world,
the Church has gone forward on pilgrimage amid the persecutions of the world and the consolations
of God.
393 Chapter 52.—Whether We Should Believe What Some Think, That, as the Ten Persecutions Which
are Past Have Been Fulfilled, There Remains No Other Beyond the Eleventh, Which Must
Happen in the Very Time of Antichrist.
I do not think, indeed, that what some have thought or may think is rashly said or believed, that
until the time of Antichrist the Church of Christ is not to suffer any persecutions besides those she
has already suffered,—that is, ten,—and that the eleventh and last shall be inflicted by Antichrist.
They reckon as the first that made by Nero, the second by Domitian, the third by Trajan, the fourth
by Antoninus, the fifth by Severus, the sixth by Maximin, the seventh by Decius, the eighth by
1249 2 Tim. ii. 19.
1250 Rom. viii. 29.
1251 Ps. xciv. 19.
1252 1 John iii. 12.
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Valerian, the ninth by Aurelian, the tenth by Diocletian and Maximian. For as there were ten
plagues in Egypt before the people of God could begin to go out, they think this is to be referred
to as showing that the last persecution by Antichrist must be like the eleventh plague, in which the
Egyptians, while following the Hebrews with hostility, perished in the Red Sea when the people
of God passed through on dry land. Yet I do not think persecutions were prophetically signified
by what was done in Egypt, however nicely and ingeniously those who think so may seem to have
compared the two in detail, not by the prophetic Spirit, but by the conjecture of the human mind,
which sometimes hits the truth, and sometimes is deceived. But what can those who think this say
of the persecution in which the Lord Himself was crucified? In which number will they put it?
And if they think the reckoning is to be made exclusive of this one, as if those must be counted
which pertain to the body, and not that in which the Head Himself was set upon and slain, what
can they make of that one which, after Christ ascended into heaven, took place in Jerusalem, when
the blessed Stephen was stoned; when James the brother of John was slaughtered with the sword;
when the Apostle Peter was imprisoned to be killed, and was set free by the angel; when the brethren
were driven away and scattered from Jerusalem; when Saul, who afterward became the Apostle
Paul, wasted the Church; and when he himself, publishing the glad tidings of the faith he had
persecuted, suffered such things as he had inflicted, either from the Jews or from other nations,
where he most fervently preached Christ everywhere? Why, then, do they think fit to start with
Nero, when the Church in her growth had reached the times of Nero amid the most cruel persecutions;
about which it would be too long to say anything? But if they think that only the persecutions made
by kings ought to be reckoned, it was king Herod who also made a most grievous one after the
ascension of the Lord. And what account do they give of Julian, whom they do not number in the
ten? Did not he persecute the Church, who forbade the Christians to teach or learn liberal letters?
Under him the elder Valentinian, who was the third emperor after him, stood forth as a confessor
of the Christian faith, and was dismissed from his command in the army. I shall say nothing of
what he did at Antioch, except to mention his being struck with wonder at the freedom and
cheerfulness of one most faithful and steadfast young man, who, when many were seized to be
tortured, was tortured during a whole day, and sang under the instrument of torture, until the emperor
feared lest he should succumb under the continued cruelties and put him to shame at last, which
made him dread and fear that he would be yet more dishonorably put to the blush by the rest.
Lastly, within our own recollection, did not Valens the Arian, brother of the foresaid Valentinian,
waste the catholic Church by great persecution throughout the East? But how unreasonable it is
not to consider that the Church, which bears fruit and grows through the whole world, may suffer
persecution from kings in some nations even when she does not suffer it in others! Perhaps, however,
it was not to be reckoned a persecution when the king of the Goths, in Gothia itself, persecuted the
Christians with wonderful cruelty, when there were none but catholics there, of whom very many
were crowned with martyrdom, as we have heard from certain brethren who had been there at that
time as boys, and unhesitatingly called to mind that they had seen these things? And what took
place in Persia of late? Was not persecution so hot against the Christians (if even yet it is allayed)
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that some of the fugitives from it came even to Roman towns? When I think of these and the like
things, it does not seem to me that the number of persecutions with which the Church is to be tried
can be definitely stated. But, on the other hand, it is no less rash to affirm that there will be some
persecutions by kings besides that last one, about which no Christian is in doubt. Therefore we
leave this undecided, supporting or refuting neither side of this question, but only restraining men
from the audacious presumption of affirming either of them.
394 Chapter 53.—Of the Hidden Time of the Final Persecution.
Truly Jesus Himself shall extinguish by His presence that last persecution which is to be made
by Antichrist. For so it is written, that “He shall slay him with the breath of His mouth, and empty
him with the brightness of His presence.”1253 It is customary to ask, When shall that be? But this
is quite unreasonable. For had it been profitable for us to know this, by whom could it better have
been told than by God Himself, the Master, when the disciples questioned Him? For they were not
silent when with Him, but inquired of Him, saying, “Lord, wilt Thou at this time present the kingdom
to Israel, or when?”1254 But He said, “It is not for you to know the times, which the Father hath put
in His own power.” When they got that answer, they had not at all questioned Him about the hour,
or day, or year, but about the time. In vain, then, do we attempt to compute definitely the years
that may remain to this world, when we may hear from the mouth of the Truth that it is not for us
to know this. Yet some have said that four hundred, some five hundred, others a thousand years,
may be completed from the ascension of the Lord up to His final coming. But to point out how
each of them supports his own opinion would take too long, and is not necessary; for indeed they
use human conjectures, and bring forward nothing certain from the authority of the canonical
Scriptures. But on this subject He puts aside the figures of the calculators, and orders silence, who
says, “It is not for you to know the times, which the Father hath put in His own power.”
But because this sentence is in the Gospel, it is no wonder that the worshippers of the many
and false gods have been none the less restrained from feigning that by the responses of the demons,
whom they worship as gods, it has been fixed how long the Christian religion is to last. For when
they saw that it could not be consumed by so many and great persecutions, but rather drew from
them wonderful enlargements, they invented I know not what Greek verses, as if poured forth by
a divine oracle to some one consulting it, in which, indeed, they make Christ innocent of this, as it
were, sacrilegious crime, but add that Peter by enchantments brought it about that the name of
Christ should be worshipped for three hundred and sixty-five years, and, after the completion of
that number of years, should at once take end. Oh the hearts of learned men! Oh, learned wits,
1253 Isa. xi. 4; 2 Thess. i. 9.
1254 Acts i. 6, 7.
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meet to believe such things about Christ as you are not willing to believe in Christ, that His disciple
Peter did not learn magic arts from Him, yet that, although He was innocent, His disciple was an
enchanter, and chose that His name rather than his own should be worshipped through his magic
arts, his great labors and perils, and at last even the shedding of his blood! If Peter the enchanter
made the world so love Christ, what did Christ the innocent do to make Peter so love Him? Let
them answer themselves then, and, if they can, let them understand that the world, for the sake of
eternal life, was made to love Christ by that same supernal grace which made Peter also love Christ
for the sake of the eternal life to be received from Him, and that even to the extent of suffering
temporal death for Him. And then, what kind of gods are these who are able to predict such things,
yet are not able to avert them, succumbing in such a way to a single enchanter and wicked magician
(who, as they say, having slain a yearling boy and torn him to pieces, buried him with nefarious
rites), that they permitted the sect hostile to themselves to gain strength for so great a time, and to
surmount the horrid cruelties of so many great persecutions, not by resisting but by suffering, and
to procure the overthrow of their own images, temples, rituals, and oracles? Finally, what god was
it—not ours, certainly, but one of their own—who was either enticed or compelled by so great
wickedness to perform these things? For those verses say that Peter bound, not any demon, but a
god to do these things. Such a god have they who have not Christ.
Chapter 54.—Of the Very Foolish Lie of the Pagans, in Feigning that the Christian Religion Was
Not to Last Beyond Three Hundred and Sixty-Five Years.
I might collect these and many similar arguments, if that year had not already passed by which
lying divination has promised, and deceived vanity has believed. But as a few years ago three
hundred and sixty-five years were completed since the time when the worship of the name of Christ
was established by His presence in the flesh, and by the apostles, what other proof need we seek
to refute that falsehood? For, not to place the beginning of this period at the nativity of Christ,
because as an infant and boy He had no disciples, yet, when He began to have them, beyond doubt
the Christian doctrine and religion then became known through His bodily presence, that is, after
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He was baptized in the river Jordan by the ministry of John. For on this account that prophecy
went before concerning Him: “He shall reign from sea even to sea, and from the river even to the
ends of the earth.”1255 But since, before He suffered and rose from the dead, the faith had not yet
been defined to all, but was defined in the resurrection of Christ (for so the Apostle Paul speaks to
the Athenians, saying, “But now He announces to men that all everywhere should repent, because
He hath appointed a day in which to judge the world in equity, by the Man in whom He hath defined
1255 Ps. lxxii. 8.
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the faith to all men, raising Him from the dead”1256), it is better that, in settling this question, we
should start from that point, especially because the Holy Spirit was then given, just as He behoved
to be given after the resurrection of Christ in that city from which the second law, that is, the new
testament, ought to begin. For the first, which is called the old testament was given from Mount
Sinai through Moses. But concerning this which was to be given by Christ it was predicted, “Out
of Sion shall go forth the law and the word of the Lord out of Jerusalem;”1257 whence He Himself
said that repentance in His name behoved to be preached among all nations, but yet beginning at
Jerusalem.1258 There, therefore, the worship of this name took its rise, that Jesus should be believed
in, who died and rose again. There this faith blazed up with such noble beginnings, that several
thousand men, being converted to the name of Christ with wonderful alacrity, sold their goods for
distribution among the needy, thus, by a holy resolution and most ardent charity, coming to voluntary
poverty, and prepared themselves, amid the Jews who raged and thirsted for their blood, to contend
for the truth even to death, not with armed power, but with more powerful patience. If this was
accomplished by no magic arts, why do they hesitate to believe that the other could be done
throughout the whole world by the same divine power by which this was done? But supposing
Peter wrought that enchantment so that so great a multitude of men at Jerusalem was thus kindled
to worship the name of Christ, who had either seized and fastened Him to the cross, or reviled Him
when fastened there, we must still inquire when the three hundred and sixty-five years must be
completed, counting from that year. Now Christ died when the Gemini were consuls, on the eighth
day before the kalends of April. He rose the third day, as the apostles have proved by the evidence
of their own senses. Then forty days after, He ascended into heaven. Ten days after, that is, on
the fiftieth after his resurrection, He sent the Holy Spirit; then three thousand men believed when
the apostles preached Him. Then, therefore, arose the worship of that name, as we believe, and
according to the real truth, by the efficacy of the Holy Spirit, but, as impious vanity has feigned or
thought, by the magic arts of Peter. A little afterward, too, on a wonderful sign being wrought,
when at Peter’s own word a certain beggar, so lame from his mother’s womb that he was carried
by others and laid down at the gate of the temple, where he begged alms, was made whole in the
name of Jesus Christ, and leaped up, five thousand men believed, and thenceforth the Church grew
by sundry accessions of believers. Thus we gather the very day with which that year began, namely,
that on which the Holy Spirit was sent, that is, during the ides of May. And, on counting the consuls,
the three hundred and sixty-five years are found completed on the same ides in the consulate of
Honorius and Eutychianus. Now, in the following year, in the consulate of Mallius Theodorus,
when, according to that oracle of the demons or figment of men, there ought already to have been
no Christian religion, it was not necessary to inquire, what perchance was done in other parts of
the earth. But, as we know, in the most noted and eminent city, Carthage, in Africa, Gaudentius
1256 Acts xvii. 30, 31.
1257 Isa. ii. 3.
1258 Luke xxiv. 47.
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and Jovius, officers of the Emperor Honorius, on the fourteenth day before the kalends of April,
overthrew the temples and broke the images of the false gods. And from that time to the present,
during almost thirty years, who does not see how much the worship of the name of Christ has
increased, especially after many of those became Christians who had been kept back from the faith
by thinking that divination true, but saw when that same number of years was completed that it
was empty and ridiculous? We, therefore, who are called and are Christians, do not believe in
Peter, but in Him whom Peter believed,—being edified by Peter’s sermons about Christ, not poisoned
by his incantations; and not deceived by his enchantments, but aided by his good deeds. Christ
Himself, who was Peter’s Master in the doctrine which leads to eternal life, is our Master too.
But let us now at last finish this book, after thus far treating of, and showing as far as seemed
sufficient, what is the mortal course of the two cities, the heavenly and the earthly, which are
mingled together from the beginning down to the end. Of these, the earthly one has made to herself
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of whom she would, either from any other quarter, or even from among men, false gods whom
she might serve by sacrifice; but she which is heavenly and is a pilgrim on the earth does not make
false gods, but is herself made by the true God of whom she herself must be the true sacrifice. Yet
both alike either enjoy temporal good things, or are afflicted with temporal evils, but with diverse
faith, diverse hope, and diverse love, until they must be separated by the last judgment, and each
must receive her own end, of which there is no end. About these ends of both we must next treat.

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