The City of God: Book 19

Where I now turn my discourse from the progress of these two cities toward their final consummation, the celestial and the terrestrial, I must first lay out the arguments of those who seek to build their happiness within the unrelenting misfortunes of temporal mortality, as far as the scope of this volume allows. My purpose is to set their empty claims alongside our assured hope, which God has given us, and alongside the object of that hope: the true blessedness He will give us. By grounding our assertions in both Holy Scripture and in reasoning fit to be used against unbelievers, the difference between their foundations and ours will become fully apparent.

On the question of the final good, the philosophers have stirred up a remarkable controversy among themselves, searching every corner and crevice of the subject for true happiness. The final good is that which is desired for its own sake alone, with all other goods pointing toward it as their ultimate end. We do not call the final good that which brings goodness to an end, as if extinguishing it; we call it that which perfects goodness and brings it to fullness. Nor do we call the end of evil that point at which evil simply ceases; we call it the furthest point to which evil extends, while still retaining its harmful nature. The greatest good and the greatest evil, then, are the ends of all good and all evil: the final perfection and the final ruin. These two ends have been the subject of intense inquiry. To escape the final evil and attain the final good was the daily pursuit of the worldly philosophers. Though they fell into many serious errors, the limits of nature kept their thinking within certain bounds, so that they looked no further than the body, the mind, or some combination of both as the seat of their *summum bonum*, their highest good.

From this threefold foundation, M. Varro, in his book *De Philosophia*, observed with great learning and care that two hundred and eighty-eight sects could potentially arise, not as positions that actually existed, but as positions that could logically be derived from those three sources. To demonstrate this briefly, I must begin with what he sets out in that same book: that there are four things everyone desires by nature, without the aid of a teacher or any deliberate effort, and apart from virtue (that habit of life which is learned gradually). These four are: bodily pleasure, bodily rest, both together (which Epicurus grouped under the single name of pleasure), and the primary natural endowments, which include these and others besides, such as physical health and strength, and mental sharpness and soundness of judgment. These four, then, pleasure, rest, both together, and nature's primary endowments, stand in relation to virtue in the following ways: either virtue (the product of learning) is to be pursued for their sake, or for its own sake, or they are to be pursued for virtue's sake, or for their own sake. This yields twelve possible positions, because each of the four is tripled in this way. I will illustrate it with one example, and that will make the pattern clear for all the rest.

Bodily pleasure, when placed below virtue, above it, or equal to it, gives rise to three distinct views. It is placed below virtue when virtue governs and makes use of it. It is a virtue, for instance, to live for the good of one's country and to beget children for that same purpose, neither of which can exclude bodily pleasure, since without it we neither eat to sustain life nor engage in the act of generation. But when pleasure is placed above virtue, it is pursued entirely for its own sake, and all of virtue's activity is directed toward producing or preserving that pleasure. This is a degraded way of life, because in it virtue becomes a servant to the commands of desire, though in truth what serves desire in this way can hardly be called virtue at all. Yet this degraded view was not without its defenders, and many philosophers championed it. When pleasure and virtue are placed on equal footing, both are pursued for their own sakes, with neither subordinated to the other. Just as the subordination, supremacy, or equality of virtue in relation to pleasure produces three positions, so do rest, pleasure-and-rest combined, and nature's primary endowments each produce three more in the same way, since each can stand below, above, or equal to virtue. The total thus reaches twelve.

Now add a single further distinction, namely whether one's concern extends to others or only to oneself, and the whole number doubles. Whoever follows any one of these twelve positions either follows it with regard to himself alone or with regard to his neighbor as well, wishing for others what he wishes for himself. So there may be twelve people holding those twelve positions each for their own sake, and another twelve holding them out of concern for others whose good they desire as much as their own. Bring in the New Academics, who hold that certainty is unattainable, and these twenty-four positions become forty-eight, since every one of them can either be maintained

Stoically as certain (as with virtue, that it is the sole good) or in the Academic manner as uncertain, not so much assuredly true as likely to be true. This gives twenty-four positions affirming certain truth and twenty-four standing entirely for uncertainty. Again, each of these positions may be defended either in the manner of some other philosopher or of a Cynic, and this doubling of forty-eight brings the total to ninety-six. Again, these may be argued by those who profess pure philosophy with no involvement in public affairs, or by those who love argument but still hold a place in political life and public service, or by those who profess both and alternate between playing the pure philosopher and the pure politician: this trebling brings the number to two hundred and eighty-eight. So much, as briefly as I could manage, from Varro, setting out his doctrine in my own terms. But to show how he dismisses all positions but one and chooses that one as peculiar to the old Academy of Plato's institution (continuing to defend certain principles from Plato down to Polemo, the fourth in succession after him), which is entirely distinct from the New Academy that asserts nothing positively, founded by Archesilas, Polemo's successor: to show Varro's view that the old Academics were free from both uncertainty and error. A full account would take too long, yet we may lawfully, and indeed must, examine part of it. First, then, he removes all the differences that produce this multitude of sects, on the grounds that they do not aim at the perfection of goodness. He holds that no school deserves the name of a philosophical sect unless it differs from all others on the fundamental question of good and evil, since the end of philosophy is beatitude alone, which is the ultimate end and perfection of all goodness. This, then, is what all philosophers are aiming at, and those who do not aim at it are unworthy of the name. Therefore, on the question of social life, whether a wise man should care about the perfection of goodness in his friend as much as in himself, or whether he does everything for the sake of his own beatitude: this has no bearing on the good itself, but only on whether one takes a companion into sharing it, not for one's own sake but for the sake of the one admitted, whose good the other desires as he desires his own. Likewise, among the New Academics, whether all these assertions should be held as uncertain or with the confidence that other philosophers defended them: the question does not touch the nature of what we are to attain as the end of all good, but only asks whether such a thing exists, expressing doubt rather than affirmation. To put it more plainly, the controversy is whether the person pursuing this perfection may affirm that his final good is certain, or only that it seems so but may be uncertain, and yet both parties intend the same good. Similarly, regarding the Cynic manner of life, the reality of the good is not in question, only whether it should be pursued in that particular style of living and conduct. Finally, there have been philosophers who disagreed about the final good, some placing it in virtue and some in pleasure, and yet all adopted the same Cynic manner and bearing: so that the reason for their being called Cynics had no connection whatsoever to the perfection they were striving to attain. For if it had, then that end would have been peculiar to that manner of life and could not have been shared with any other.

So among these three ways of life (the contemplative, the active, and the mixed), when we ask which one we should follow, we are not really debating the final good itself, but rather how easily or how hard it is to attain that good through each of these three paths. Once attained, the final good immediately makes the one who possesses it blessed. But it is neither contemplation, nor action, nor some combination of the two that makes a person blessed, since one can live in any of these three ways and still be far removed from the true path to beatitude. The questions surrounding the end of goodness, which distinguish all those philosophical sects, are therefore quite different from questions about the social life, academic skepticism, the Cynic way of living, and the three modes of philosophical conversation (the philosophical, the political, and the neutral). None of these touch at all on the nature of good and evil. Accordingly, after reciting these last four distinctions (which bring the total number of positions to two hundred and eighty-eight), Varro sets them all aside as unworthy of being called genuine sects, since they say nothing about the good that is chiefly to be sought. He returns instead to the original twelve, whose debate concerns the central question: the chief good of humanity. From these he intends to draw out one definitive truth and show all the rest to be false. First, he removes the three modes of life, and with them two-thirds of the number disappears, leaving ninety-six. Then he removes the Cynics, taking away forty-eight more, leaving forty-eight. Then he dismisses the New Academics along with their share, leaving thirty-six. Then he removes the social mode of conversation with all it brought, leaving only twelve, which no one can deny are twelve distinct sects. Their only point of difference is the highest account of good and evil, since once the ends of good are identified, the corresponding evils stand directly opposite. These twelve sects arise from multiplying four positions by three: pleasure, rest, both together, and what Varro calls *primogenia* (nature's original desires and dispositions). Each of these four can be ranked below virtue and desired only for virtue's sake, above virtue with virtue desired only for their sake, or equal to virtue with both pursued for their own sake, producing twelve distinct positions in all. Of these four heads, Varro sets aside three (pleasure, rest, and their combination), not because he rejects them, but because they are already contained within the fourth, namely nature's original endowments, along with much else besides. There is therefore no need to give them a separate place in the ranking. The discussion must then be built entirely on the three positions derived from that fourth head, in order to determine which of them is true. There can be only one true answer, whether it lies among these three or in something else, as we will see later. For now, let us briefly note Varro's three options: whether nature's original desires should be sought for virtue's sake, or virtue for their sake, or both for their own sake.

Here Varro begins to show which of these schools contains the truth. First, since the question concerns not the happiness of gods, beasts, or trees, but of human beings, he thinks it necessary to examine what a human being actually is. He finds two things in human nature: body and soul, of which he holds the soul to be far the more excellent part. Whether the soul alone constitutes the person, with the body serving it as a horse serves a rider (for the rider is the man alone, not the horse and man together, even though it is his relationship to the horse that gives him that name), or whether the body alone is the person, standing in relation to the soul as a cup stands to its drink (for it is not the cup and the drink together that are called *poculum* in Latin, but the cup alone, and only because it contains the drink), or whether it is body and soul joined together, not separately, that we call a person, with these two as its parts, as two oxen together are called a yoke (which, though it consists of one on this side and another on that, we call neither of them separately a yoke, but only both combined): of these three positions, Varro chooses the last. He calls the essence composed of body and soul "the person," and refuses the name to either part considered on its own. Therefore, he says, human happiness must be found in the goods that belong jointly to both body and soul. The primary gifts of nature are to be desired for their own sake, and virtue, which learning gradually plants in a good mind, is the highest good of all. Virtue, having received those first gifts of nature (which existed before virtue did), now desires all things for its own sake and desires itself as well, making use of everything together with itself for its own pleasure and enjoyment, more or less, putting all things to good use, and yet, when necessity demands, choosing to forgo lesser goods rather than lose or fail to attain greater ones. But virtue always holds itself in higher regard than any other good, whether of mind or body, because it understands both its own proper use and the use of all other goods that make a person happy. Where virtue is absent, however many good things a person may possess, those goods are not truly his, because he cannot put them to their proper use. The person who is truly happy, then, is the one who can use virtue together with those other bodily and mental goods without which virtue cannot exist, all directed toward their true end. If he can also make good use of those things that virtue can easily do without, he is happier still. And if he can turn absolutely everything, whether it concerns body or mind, to its proper end, then he is the happiest person alive. Life and virtue, however, are not the same thing: it is only the life of the wise person that deserves to be called a life in the fullest sense, for some kind of life may exist entirely without virtue, but no virtue can exist without life. The same holds for memory, reason, and other human faculties: all of these precede learning, and learning cannot exist without them, any more than virtue can, which learning teaches. But swiftness of foot, beauty of face, strength of body, and the like may all exist without virtue, and all of them are good in themselves even apart from virtue. Yet virtue is still desired for its own sake and makes use of these goods as is fitting. This happy life they also hold to be social in character, desiring the good of one's neighbor as much as one's own, and wishing others well on their own terms, just as it wishes itself well: whether those others are wives and children, fellow citizens, or any mortal person whatsoever. Indeed, this concern may extend even to the gods, whom they regard as friends of the wise, and whom we call by the more familiar name of angels. On the question of the highest good and evil, they make no dispute about where the difference lies (that, they say, is their only point of disagreement with the New Academics), nor do they care what manner of life a person adopts, whether Cynic or anything else, so long as he affirms their account of the highest ends. Among the three kinds of life, the contemplative, the active, and the mixed, they choose the last. This, says Varro, was the teaching of the old Academy, with Antiochus, who was master to both him and Cicero, as its author, though Cicero presents Antiochus as more of a Stoic than a genuine old Academician in most of his positions. But what does that matter to us? We should be more concerned with judging the substance of the matter than with judging what others think of the men involved.

If you ask what the City of God says about this question of the highest good and evil, the answer comes quickly: eternal life is the perfection of good, and eternal death is the ultimate evil, and the aim of our life must be to avoid the one and attain the other. This is why it is written, "The just shall live by faith." We cannot see our greatest good, and so we must believe and hope for it; nor do we have the power to live accordingly unless our belief and prayer obtain help from Him who gave us that belief and hope, and who has promised to help us. But those who build the perfection of happiness on this present life, placing it either in the body, or in the mind, or in both; or, to put it more plainly, either in pleasure or in virtue, or in pleasure and rest together, or in virtue alone, or in both, or in nature's first desires, or in virtue, or in both: these men are foolishly and vainly persuaded that they can find true happiness here. The prophet laughs at them, saying, "The Lord knoweth the thoughts of men" (or, as Paul puts it, "of the wise") "that they are vain." For who can fully describe the miseries of this life? Cicero did his best when his daughter died, but what could he really do? In what person can nature's basic gifts be found undisturbed? Does not sorrow and anxiety have full power to disrupt the pleasure and peace of even the wisest person? Strength, beauty, health, vigor, and agility are all overturned by their opposites: loss of limbs, deformity, sickness, weakness, and helplessness. What if a limb develops some tumor or disease? What if a curved spine bends a man toward the ground, making him resemble a four-footed animal? Is not all the grace of his bearing completely gone? And then consider the primary gifts of nature, of which sense and reason are the two most important because they allow us to grasp truth: how easily are they lost! How completely does deafness or blindness strip away hearing and sight! And as for reason, how quickly it is overthrown by a frenzied passion, a stupor, or something similar. It is enough to wring tears from our eyes to see how the actions of those who have lost their minds differ so completely from, indeed stand in direct opposition to, the guidance of reason. Why should I even mention those possessed by demons, whose understanding the devil entirely dulls, using all their powers of soul and body for his own purposes? And what wise man can fully protect himself from such attacks? Consider also how weak our grasp of truth is in this life, as we read in the book of true Wisdom: "The corruptible body is heavy unto the soul, and the earthly mansion keepeth down the mind that is full of cares."

And that same *ὁρμὴ* (the violent impulse toward action) that the Stoics count among nature's first positive endowments in good people: is it not precisely this impulse that drives those strange and horrible acts of madness when reason and sense are both clouded and overwhelmed? Beyond this, consider virtue itself, which doesn't come from nature but is built through effort over time. When virtue reaches its highest point in a human being, what is its work but a constant struggle against the ingrained vices rooted in our own hearts, not in others? Chief among these struggles is *σωφροσύνη* (temperance), which suppresses the desires of the flesh and keeps them from dragging the mind into ruin. For that desire itself is a vice when, as the apostle says, "the flesh lusteth against the spirit;" and the opposing force is a virtue "when the spirit lusteth against the flesh:" for they, he says, are contrary, so that ye cannot do what you would. And what do we want? What is our longing in this perfection that God offers, if not that the flesh would stop warring against the spirit, and that there would be no vice in us for the spirit to resist? Since we cannot achieve this in the present life, no matter how earnestly we wish it, let us by God's grace at least strive to keep our spirit from surrendering to the desires of the flesh, and so avoid freely sealing our consent to the bond of sin.

So let us never imagine that we have achieved true happiness while we still live in this world. Who is so wise that he doesn't occasionally struggle against his own desires? What is the purpose of prudence, if not to distinguish between what should be chosen and what should be refused, so that we make no error in either direction? This very fact testifies that there is evil within us, and that we live surrounded by evil. Prudence teaches us that it is evil to give in to sin, and good to avoid it. Yet neither prudence nor temperance can rid our lives of the very evil they warn us about and arm us against. And what of justice, which gives everyone their due? The right order of nature requires that the soul be under God, the flesh under the soul, and both together under God. Isn't it obvious that this is something we continually strive toward rather than truly achieve in this life? The less the soul meditates on God, the less it serves Him; and the more the flesh wars against the soul, the less control the soul has over it. So as long as we are subject to this weakness and corruption, how can we dare to call ourselves safe? Or, if not safe, how much less can we call ourselves blessed through the perfection of some fully attained happiness? Then there is also fortitude, which stands as yet another clear testimony to the human miseries we endure with patience.

I find it remarkable that the Stoics deny these things are evils while simultaneously admitting that if their wise man cannot or should not endure them, he may lawfully (indeed, must) kill himself to escape this life. Their proud stupidity has reached extraordinary heights. Having built all their happiness on this life, they are not ashamed to call it blessed even when their wise man is blind, deaf, lame, and wracked with every agony and anguish so overwhelming that they drive him to take his own life. This life, surrounded by all those afflictions, they still call blessed. What a sweet and blessed life, one that requires death to bring it to a close! If it is truly blessed, why not keep living? But if those evils make it something to escape, what has become of the bliss? And what are these things, if not evils, that have such power to overturn the good of fortitude itself, making it not only guilty of despair but of sheer absurdity in claiming that one and the same life is both blessed and yet must be abandoned? Who is so blind as to miss the fact that if it is the one, it cannot possibly be the other?

"But," they say, "the decision to leave life is caused by the weight of overwhelming suffering." Why not simply abandon their stubbornness and admit that such a life is wretched? Was it patience that drove Cato to kill himself? No: he would never have done it had he not taken Caesar's victory so impatiently. Where was his fortitude then? Gone. It yielded, was trampled down, and fled both the light and life, blessed as that life supposedly was. Was his life truly blessed at the very moment it was wretched? If not, then are these not real evils, capable of making a life so wretched that it must be abandoned? This is why the Peripatetics and the old Academics (whose school Varro champions entirely) did better by calling these misfortunes plainly evil. Yet they share one serious error: holding that a life enduring such evils can still be called blessed, so long as the person escapes them through voluntary self-destruction. The pains and torments of the body are evil, they say, and the greater the worse; and to escape them, you must willingly turn to death and leave this life. What life? This one, so burdened with evils. Is it then blessed amid so many evils that must be fled? Or do you call it blessed merely because you can abandon those evils whenever you choose, through death? But what if some divine power were to hold you back from dying and keep you continually in those evils? Then you would say this was a wretched life indeed. The fact that you can leave it quickly does not argue against its misery, because if it were eternal, you yourself would judge it miserable. A life is not free from misery simply because it is short, and still less is it happiness merely because the misery does not last long. It must be a powerful evil indeed that can drive a man, even a wise man, to become his own executioner, especially given what the Stoics themselves truly say: that it is, as it were, Nature's first and most forcible command that a man should hold himself dear and therefore recoil from death by natural instinct, befriending himself by desiring to remain a living creature and to enjoy the union of soul and body. Mighty are the evils that overcome this natural instinct, which in all people drives the desire to avoid death, overcoming it so completely that what was once dreaded is now desired and, rather than left undone, carried out by a person's own hand. Mighty is the harm that turns fortitude into a killer, if we can even call it fortitude when it yields so completely to these evils that it is compelled to drive the very person it undertook to defend against all hardships to kill himself in order to escape them.

Indeed, a wise man should endure death with patience, but that death must come *ab externo* (from another's hand), not from his own. Yet when these philosophers teach that a man may take his own life, they are forced to admit that the evils driving him to such an extreme are themselves unbearable. A life exposed to such a multitude of miseries cannot be called happy in any meaningful sense, especially when men, to escape that unhappiness, feel compelled to end it themselves. When honest reasoning forces them into this corner, they must concede, in their very search for happiness, that perfect happiness cannot be found in this mortal life. Their greatest virtues make this plain: the more effectively those virtues help a man endure anguish, danger, and grief, the more clearly they testify to the depth of human misery. If true virtue can exist only where there is true piety, then virtue offers no guarantee that those who possess it will be spared temporal suffering. True virtue does not pretend to deliver what it cannot. Its aim is simply this: that the life which is, in this world, battered by every kind of sorrow, will in the life to come receive both safety and joy. For how can a man have happiness if he has no safety?

It is not of the unwise, the intemperate, the impatient, or the unjust that Paul speaks when he says, "We are saved by hope" (Rom 8:24), but of those who possess true piety and practice genuine virtue: "Hope that is seen is not hope, for how can a man hope for that which he sees? But if we hope for that we see not, we do with patience wait for it" (Rom 8:24-25). Just as we are saved by hope, so we are made happy by hope. Just as we have no firm hold on our safety, we have no firm hold on our happiness either, except through hope, patiently endured. We are still in a wilderness of thorny dangers, all of which we must steadily bear until we reach the paradise of inexpressible delight, having at last passed through every peril along the way. That security in the life to come is the happiness we are speaking of. The philosophers, unable to see it, refuse to believe in it, and instead construct for themselves an imaginary happiness in this life. The more boldly their virtue claims to achieve it, the more clearly it is exposed as false in the judgment of everyone else.

We rightly approve of those who insist that a wise man should live in community with others. After all, how could our Celestial City (the subject of this nineteenth book) have ever come into being, grown, or reached its perfection, unless the saints lived together in fellowship? And yet, who could begin to count all the miseries that come with human society? Listen to what the comic playwright says, to universal applause: "I married a wife. What misery did I lack after that! I had children: so there's one more worry." And those troubles that Terence attaches to love, such as injuries, enmities, war, and then an uneasy peace again: don't all of these follow us through life without rest? Don't they sometimes creep into even the closest friendships? And doesn't the whole world keep producing fresh examples of them, in the form of wars, injuries, and enmities? Our peace is as uncertain as our ignorance of the hearts of those with whom we hold it. We may have some sense of what they intend today, but tomorrow we cannot know. Who should be closer friends than members of the same family? And yet how many hidden schemes of malice fester even there, destroying all sense of security. The more settled the peace, the uglier the betrayal when it comes; and what seemed the most loyal affection turns out to have been only the most skillfully disguised. The reach of this corruption moved Cicero to let fall these words with tears: "Treason is never more carefully hidden than when it shelters under the name of duty or family loyalty. An open enemy is easy to watch; but this secret serpent of yours both breeds and strikes before you can ever detect it." This is why the words of Holy Scripture cut so deep: "A man's enemies are those of his own household" (Matt 10:36). We hear this with real grief, because even if a man has the strength to endure it or the foresight to guard against it, if he is a good man he cannot help but grieve deeply over the wickedness of those so close to him, whether they have long practiced this viper-like deception or have only recently learned it. If, then, a man's own home offers him no shelter from these attacks, what hope is there for the city? The city is larger, and so it is fuller of quarrels, lawsuits, and accusations, even setting aside seditions and civil conflicts, which are all too common and which threaten cities even in their most stable moments.

How pitiable are the judgments that cities must rely on from their magistrates, even in the most settled times of peace, when those magistrates must rule on the lives of others whose consciences they cannot see. They are often forced to wring out the truth by torturing innocent witnesses. And what do you say when a man is tortured in his own case, put to the rack precisely because it is uncertain whether he is guilty at all? Though he may be entirely innocent, he suffers real and certain pain while his guilt remains unproven. In most such cases, the judge's ignorance becomes the prisoner's agony. Worse still, and worthy of an ocean of tears: the judge, torturing the accused precisely to avoid executing an innocent man, sometimes kills that very innocent person through torture, the same person he was tormenting in order to spare. For if the accused, following the logic of those who say it is better to leave this life than to endure such misery, simply confesses to what he never did, he is condemned and executed, and the judge still cannot say whether he was guilty or not. The judge tortured him to avoid killing him unjustly, and by that very act killed him before ever knowing the truth. Now, in this fog that hangs over mortal society, should the judge take his seat or not? Yes, he must. He is bound to it by his office, which he would consider it wicked to abandon, and by the command of the state, which he must obey. Yet he never considers it wicked to torture guiltless witnesses in other men's cases, nor to condemn as guilty those whom torture has broken into false self-accusation, nor to let many of them die on the rack itself, or, if they survive it, to send them to the executioner. And what do you say to this: when someone brings a just accusation against another for the good of the state, and the accused endures every torture without confessing, the innocent accusers, unable to prove their case, are condemned by the judge's ignorance. All of this, and more, the judge counts as no sin, because his will is not behind it. He is driven by his duty to the state, and what causes the harm is not any desire to harm but simply his ignorance of the truth. This is the misery of the man. If it is not malice in a wise man but only the burdens of his office and the limits of his knowledge that produce these outcomes, does he think it is enough to be free from accusation? Does he imagine he sits in some kind of blessedness? How much more wisdom and honesty it would show to acknowledge his mortality in the midst of these troubles, to feel the weight of this misery in himself, and to cry out to God, as the psalmist did: "Lord, take me out of all my troubles."

After the city comes the whole world, where the third kind of human society resides (the first being in the household, the second in the city). The world is like a flood: the larger it grows, the more dangerous it becomes. First among its dangers, difference of language divides person from person. If two strangers meet who happen to need each other's company and conversation, yet neither can understand the other, you will sooner make two animals of different species get along than those two human beings. When they try to communicate, their languages don't agree, and when that fails, every other natural bond counts for nothing. A man would sooner keep company with his own dog than with a fellow human who speaks a foreign tongue. The great western Babylon tried to solve this by imposing her language on every land she conquered, hoping to build a fuller society and a ready supply of interpreters on both sides. Perhaps she succeeded, but at what cost in human lives? And even then, the worst was not over: though she never lacked foreign nations to make war against, the vast reach of her empire produced conflicts far worse than those smaller ones, the civil wars and wars among allies, and these were the ones that tormented humanity both in their fury (when people longed to see them end) and in their aftermath (when people feared they would begin again). If I were to recount the massacres and their terrible consequences, as I could, though never as fully as they deserve, the account would be endless. But a wise man, they say, will wage only just wars. Will he? As if the very awareness that he is human should not make him grieve all the more that he has cause for just war and must fight it. If the war were not just, he would have no business fighting it at all, so a truly wise man would never have war to fight: it is other men's wickedness that makes his cause just, and that wickedness is something he should mourn whether it ever leads to war or not. Anyone who contemplates with genuine compassion all that suffering and bloodshed must acknowledge that this is a profound mystery. But the person who endures it without sorrow or reflection is far more wretched than he knows: he imagines he has the peace of a god, while he has simply lost the natural feeling of a human being.

But suppose a man is not so badly deceived (as many in this wretched life are) as to mistake his enemy for a friend, or his friend for an enemy. What comfort remains to us in this valley of mortal miseries, if not the genuine faith and affection of true friends? The more friends we have, and the farther away they are, the more we fear for them, dreading that some one of the countless hazards attending every human life will strike them down. We fear not only that they may suffer famine, war, sickness, or imprisonment, but far more that they may fall through treachery, malice, or moral ruin. And when that happens, and word reaches us (as it is all the more likely to do the more friends we have scattered far and wide), who can describe our grief except someone who has felt it themselves? We would sooner hear of their death, though even that we cannot hear without sorrow. For having enjoyed the warmth of their friendship while they lived, how can we not be pierced with grief when they die? Anyone who forbids us that grief might as well forbid all conversation between friends, all social kindness, indeed all human feeling, and banish them entirely from human life; or else insist that our affections serve no pleasurable purpose. But since that is impossible, it is equally impossible for us not to mourn the death of someone we loved in life. That grief is like a wound or ulcer in the heart, and our laments serve as poultices and bandages applied to it. The sounder a person's understanding, the sooner the healing comes, yet this does not change the fact that there is a wound requiring treatment. So in all our mourning, more or less, for the deaths of our dearest friends and companions, we still hold to this love for them: we would rather they had died in body than in soul, and would rather they had perished in existence than in character, for the corruption of character is the most dangerous infection on earth. This is why it was written, "Is not man's life a temptation upon earth?" And our Savior said: "Woe be to the world because of offences;" and again: "Because iniquity shall be increased, the love of many shall wax cold." This is what moves us to give thanks for the death of our good friends. Though it saddens us for a time, it gives us far greater assurance of lasting comfort, because they have now escaped all those evils that so often seize upon even the best of people, crushing or corrupting them, and putting them at risk however things may fall.

The philosophers placed the society of angels with men in the fourth rank, coming as it were from earth to the whole universe and including heaven. These angels they called the gods' guardians, Lares, and many other names. As for those friends (the angels), we need not fear being struck with grief over any death or corruption of theirs, since they are beyond suffering. But this friendship between them and us is not visibly apparent the way human friendship is, which only adds to our earthly misery. Beyond that, the devil, as we read, often transforms himself into an angel of light to tempt people: some for their instruction, others for their ruin. This is where we desperately need God's great mercy, lest what we believe to be the love and fellowship of good angels turns out to be the work of pernicious devils, false friends and subtle enemies, as great in power as in deceit. And where is God's great mercy more needed than in this worldly misery, which is so wrapped in ignorance and so prone to delusion? As for the philosophers of the reprobate city who claimed gods as their friends, it is certain they had devils indeed, whom they mistook for deities. The entire society in which they lived is the devil's domain, and it will share his reward for all eternity. Their sacrifices, or rather their sacrileges, by which these devils were honored, along with the obscene spectacles the devils themselves demanded, were clear evidence of their diabolical nature.

Yes, the holy and faithful servants of the true God are still vulnerable to the devil's countless ambushes. As long as they live in this frail and troubled world, that will remain true, and it is for their benefit, driving them to seek more earnestly that security where their peace is endless and complete. There the Creator will bestow on them all the gifts of nature, giving them not merely good things but eternal ones, renewing not only the soul through wisdom but also the body through resurrection. There the virtues will no longer struggle against the vices; they will rest in the victory of eternal peace, which nothing will ever disturb. This is the final beatitude, brought at last to its eternal fulfillment. We are called happy here on earth when we enjoy that small measure of peace that goodness can offer us, but set that happiness beside the other, and this one shrinks to something barely distinguishable from misery. So if we live well on earth, our virtue puts the benefits of this passing peace to good use when we have it; and when we don't, our virtue still turns the hardships that come from its absence to good ends. But our virtue reaches its full power and perfection when it directs itself, and all the good it can produce whether from favorable or difficult circumstances, toward that one end where our peace will have no end, and nothing will surpass it in goodness or perfection.

We can therefore say that peace is our final good, just as we said of life eternal. The psalm speaks to that city about which we labor in this work: "Praise the Lord, O Jerusalem, praise thy Lord, O Sion: for He hath made fast the bars of thy gates, and blessed thy children within thee; He giveth peace in thy borders" (Ps 147:12-14). When the bars of the gates are secure, no one can enter and no one can leave. This peace, which we call final, is therefore the boundary and limit of this city, for its mystical name, Jerusalem, means "a vision of peace." But because the word "peace" is so common in this world, where eternity has no home, we prefer to call the ultimate good of this city "life eternal" rather than "peace." Of this end the apostle says, "Now being freed from sin, and made servants to God, ye have your fruit in holiness, and the end, everlasting life" (Rom 6:22). On the other hand, those unfamiliar with Scripture might take "everlasting life" in a bad sense, applying it to the life of the wicked, which is eternally evil: either, as some philosophers held, because the soul cannot die, or, as our faith teaches, because torment cannot cease. Yet the wicked could not feel that torment forever unless they too possess a kind of eternal life. The ultimate aim of this city, then, is best described either as eternity in peace or peace in eternity, and this should be clear to everyone. Peace is generally the greatest desire of the world and the most welcome thing when it arrives. I think the reader will forgive me for dwelling on this a little longer, both because of the city's final end, which we are now discussing, and because of the sweetness of peace, which all people love.

Who will not agree with me on this, when they consider human affairs and the general order of nature? Joy and peace are desired equally by all people.

The warrior's only aim is conquest, and war's only purpose is a glorious peace. What is victory, after all, but the suppression of those who resist? Once that is accomplished, peace follows. Peace is therefore war's purpose, the goal of all military discipline, and the end toward which every just conflict strives. All people seek peace through war, but no one seeks war through peace. Even those who disturb the peace they live in do so not out of hatred for peace itself, but to demonstrate their power by reshaping it on their own terms. They don't want to destroy peace; they want peace on their own conditions. And though they break into open conflict with others, they must still maintain a working harmony among their own companions, or they will never accomplish what they set out to do.

Even thieves, who prey on everyone outside their circle, keep peace among themselves. Suppose one thief is so strong or cunning that he works entirely alone, refusing any partner in his crimes. Even then, he must maintain some kind of peace with those he cannot eliminate and does not want to expose his deeds to. At home, with his wife and household, he must keep order, and he no doubt takes pleasure in their obedience to him. When that obedience fails, he scolds, threatens, and strikes, restoring order by force or cruelty if necessary. He understands that none of this works unless everyone under his roof is subject to one authority: his own. And if he could extend that same control over a city or a province the way he controls his household, he would shed his criminal nature and take on the bearing of a king, even if his greed and malice remained exactly the same.

So you can see that all people want peace with those they expect to live according to their wishes. Those against whom they wage war, they would gladly make their own subjects if they could; and when they conquer them, they impose whatever terms they please. But let us now consider the kind of utterly unsociable figure that the poet's fable describes, calling him a half-man on account of his savage, inhuman nature.

Now, even though Cacus, the fire-breathing monster of Roman legend, lived in a lightless cave, and his crimes were so extraordinary that they earned him the name Cacus, meaning "evil," his wife never had a kind word for him, he never played with his children or guided them as they grew older, never spoke with a friend or even with his father Vulcan (from whom he was, in one sense, far luckier, since Vulcan had produced such a monster while Cacus had produced none), and though he never gave anything to anyone but instead robbed and plundered everyone he could lay hands on, including the people themselves, still, even in that grim dungeon of his, whose floor and walls were perpetually slick with fresh blood, all he wanted was to rest there in peace, undisturbed. He also wanted to be at peace with himself. Whatever he had, he enjoyed. He governed his own body, and to satisfy the hunger that threatened to separate his soul from it, he threw himself into his robberies with speed and energy. Brutal and bloody as he was, he still took care to preserve his own life and safety. Had he been willing to extend to others the same peace he kept with himself in that cave, he would never have been called a half-man or a monster. But if it was his hideous appearance and his fire-breathing that drove people away from him, then it was necessity, not choice, that forced him to live in that cave and steal for his living. In any case, no such man likely ever existed, and if he did, he was nothing like the poets describe him. Had they not wildly exaggerated Cacus, they could not have sufficiently praised Hercules. As I said, the whole figure is almost certainly a fiction, no more historically grounded than many of their other inventions. Even wild beasts, some of whose savagery the poets attribute to Cacus, maintain a kind of peace within their own species: they mate, raise their young, and live together among their own kind, however unsociable they may be toward others. I am not speaking here of sheep, deer, pigeons, starlings, or bees, but of lions, foxes, eagles, and owls. What tigress does not purr over her cubs and nuzzle them in their helplessness? What kite, though he hunts alone, does not seek out his mate, build a nest, sit on the eggs, feed the young, and help his partner in every way he can with her maternal duties? The bonds that draw human beings into society and into peace with one another are far stronger still. Even the worst of men fight to secure the quiet of their companions, and if they had the power, they would reshape everything into a distinct order of their own devising, with themselves at the head. That could only happen through a bond of either fear or love. In this way, perverse pride imitates the goodness of God: it wants others to be its equals under God, but it lays a yoke of submission on those same others, placing itself where God should be. So it hates the just peace of God and constructs an unjust peace of its own. Yet it cannot help loving peace, because no vice, however unnatural, can tear nature out by the roots entirely. Anyone who can distinguish good from bad, and order from confusion, can readily tell the peace of the godly from the peace of the wicked.

That perverse confusion must be corrected by a better arrangement of the thing in which it exists, wherever it exists at all. Consider this example: hang a man upside down, and his whole posture is disordered, with what should be lowest now occupying the highest place, and vice versa. This confusion disturbs and torments the flesh. But it is the soul's peace with the body that makes the flesh capable of feeling that disturbance at all. Even if the soul leaves the body through such suffering, as long as the body's form remains, it retains a certain peace within itself, and even in the act of hanging it shows that it longs to be placed in the natural order: its very weight seems to reach for a place of rest. Though life is gone, nature itself still draws the body toward the order in which she originally set it. If the dead body is preserved from decay by ointments and embalming, the peace of nature is maintained, because the body's weight is thereby suited to an earthly resting place that is fitting and appropriate for it. But if it is not embalmed and is left to nature's own dissolving, it is gradually broken down by foul vapors until each part is fully returned to the particular elements from which it came. Even so, not one particle of the Creator's all-governing law is overturned. If many living creatures emerge from that carcass, each of their bodies serves the measure of life within it according to that same law of creation. And if those creatures are in turn devoured by other predators or scavengers, they follow the ordinance of that same law, which arranges all things fittingly, into whatever form of nature they may be changed.

THE peace of the body is an orderly arrangement of its parts; the peace of the unreasonable soul is a proper balance of its appetites; the peace of the reasonable soul is a true harmony between knowledge and action. The peace of body and soul together is a temperate and healthy condition of the whole creature. The peace of mortal man with immortal God is an orderly obedience to His eternal law, lived out in faith. The peace of person with person is mutual agreement; the peace of a household is orderly authority and submission among its members; the peace of a city is orderly command and obedience among its citizens; the peace of God's City is a most perfect unity in God and enjoyment of God; and the peace of all things is a well-ordered arrangement. Order, then, is the good disposition of different parts, each placed where it fits best. The miserable, insofar as they are miserable, are out of order, lacking the peaceful and undisturbed condition that order requires. But because their own choices brought this misery upon them, even in their misery they are placed within a certain fixed order. They are not joined with the blessed but separated from them by the law of order, and though they are exposed to suffering, that suffering is fitted to the places where they dwell, and so they are arranged into some kind of structured form and, by extension, into some kind of peaceful order. Their misery, however, lies in this: whatever small security they enjoy may spare them from immediate sorrow, but it does not place them in a condition that banishes sorrow forever and grants eternal security. Their misery is far greater when they lack even the peace of nature, for when they are harmed, the part that suffers is the first to disturb their peace. What is neither harmed nor dissolved still preserves the peace of nature. Just as a person may live without grief but cannot grieve without being alive, so there may be peace without war or conflict, but conflict cannot exist without some peace, not because conflict is peaceful in itself, but because those in conflict still act and endure according to nature's own patterns, and those patterns could not hold together without some underlying order. So it is possible for a nature to exist in which no evil takes root, but it is utterly impossible to find a nature entirely stripped of goodness. The very nature of the devils, considered simply as nature, is excellent; it is their own willful corruption that has ruined it. The devil did not remain in the truth, yet he did not escape the sentence of the truth. He broke the peaceful law of order, but he could not escape the powerful hand of the One who orders all things.

The good that God had bestowed on the devil's nature did not exempt him from God's severe judgment, which condemned him to punishment. Yet in this, God does not punish the good He Himself created, but the evil the devil committed. Nor did He strip away the devil's entire nature, but left him enough to grieve over what he had lost. That grief itself testifies to both what he once had and what he still retains: if no good remained in him, he could not mourn what he had lost. His guilt is all the greater because, having lost all his uprightness, he should rejoice at that loss. Even a sick person, though recovery may be beyond reach, still grieves the loss of health. Uprightness and health are both genuine goods, and those who lose them should mourn rather than celebrate, unless the loss is compensated by something better, as uprightness of mind is better than health of body. But the sinner has far more reason to lament in his suffering than to rejoice in his sin. Therefore, just as rejoicing over the loss of goodness through sin reveals a corrupt will, so lamenting that same loss in suffering proves a good nature. The one who mourns the loss of his natural peace draws that capacity for grief from whatever remnant of peace still remains in him, keeping his nature and himself in some degree of harmony.

And in the last judgment, it is only reasonable that the wicked should mourn the loss of their natural goods and feel God's hand justly heavy in taking them away, since they showed such contempt for Him when He gave those goods in the first place. Therefore the supreme God, nature's wisest Creator and most just Ruler, the Father of the world's greatest wonder (mankind), bestowed on humanity many good things suited to this present life: the worldly and temporal peace maintained through honest community and society, along with everything that belongs to that peace, such as visible light, breathable air, drinkable water, and all the other necessities of food, drink, and clothing. But He gave these with a condition: those who use them rightly, with proper reference to human peace, will be rewarded with gifts of far greater worth, namely the peace of immortality, undiminished glory, and the full enjoyment of God and of one another in God. Those who misuse them will receive neither the lesser goods nor the greater.

All temporal things are directed toward the benefit of earthly peace by those who belong to the earthly city, and toward the use of eternal peace by the citizens of the heavenly society. If we had no reason, we would desire nothing more than a well-ordered body and a balanced set of appetites, nothing beyond physical comfort and the satisfaction of pleasure. For the body's peace deepens the soul's quiet, and when that peace is absent, it disturbs even brute animals, since their impulses lack their proper balance.

Now both of these together contribute to the peace of soul and body, that is, to the healthy order of life. For all creatures show how much they desire bodily peace by avoiding whatever might harm them, and how much they desire the soul's peace by following their appetites when need arises. In fleeing death, they make equally clear how much they value the peace of soul and body combined. But because man possesses a rational soul, he subjects all the drives he shares with animals to that soul's peace, working to ensure that his contemplation and his action are in genuine harmony with each other. This is what we call the peace of the rational soul. To achieve it, he must avoid the distress that grief brings, the restlessness that desire brings, and the ruin that death brings, while pursuing the kind of knowledge that can actually guide his actions. Yet because his own weakness, driven by an excessive desire to know, might lead him into the dangerous trap of error, he needs divine instruction, and he must yield to its guidance and help with firm and willing obedience. And because during this life "he is absent from the Lord" and "walks by faith, not by sight" (2 Cor 5:6-7), he refers all his peace, whether of body, of soul, or of both together, to that peace which mortal man has with immortal God: a life of ordered obedience under His eternal law, sustained by faith.

This passage teaches that God, our good Master, has given us two great commandments: to love Him and to love our neighbor. These two commandments actually require us to love three things: God, our neighbor, and ourselves. Since loving God means we cannot go wrong in loving ourselves, it follows that we should also guide our neighbor toward that same love of God, and actively work to help him grow in it, since we are commanded to love him as we love ourselves. The same applies to our wives, children, households, and all people generally. We should likewise hope that our neighbors will do the same for us when we are in need. This is how we arrive at genuine peace and orderly harmony with the whole world. That order works in two steps: first, do no harm to anyone; and second, help everyone we can. Those closest to us naturally receive our first attention, and beyond them, we help whoever our place in human society gives us the best opportunity to reach. This is why Paul says, "He that provideth not for his own, and, namely, for them that be of his household, denieth the faith, and is worse than an infidel" (1 Tim 5:8). This principle is the foundation of domestic peace: an orderly structure of authority and responsibility within the household, where those who provide also lead. The husband leads his wife, parents lead their children, and masters lead their servants; while those who are cared for give their obedience in return, as wives to husbands, children to parents, and servants to masters. But in the household of the faithful man, the heavenly pilgrim, something different is at work: those who appear to command are in reality servants of those they lead. They rule not out of ambition but out of conscientious duty; not with proud dominance but with nurturing compassion.

Thus nature's order has prescribed, and God created man accordingly. "Let them rule," He says, "over the fishes of the sea, and the fowls of the air, and over every thing that creepeth upon the earth." He made man reasonable, and lord only over the unreasonable: not over other men, but over beasts. This is why the first holy men were shepherds rather than kings, God showing in this what the order of creation required and what the consequence of sin demanded. For the burden of servitude was justly laid on the back of transgression. And so throughout all of Scripture we never encounter the word "servant" until that just man Noah pronounced it as a curse on his offending son. It was guilt, then, and not nature, that gave rise to that name. The Latin word *servus* has its first derivation from this source: those taken in war were at the mercy of their conquerors, who could either kill them or spare them, and if they were spared, they were called *servi*, from *servo*, meaning "to save." Nor did this happen beyond what sin deserved. For in the most just of wars, it is sin on one side that causes it; and if victory falls to the wicked (as it sometimes may), it is God's decree to humble the conquered, either reforming their sins through that humbling or punishing them for it. Consider that holy man of God, Daniel, who, while in captivity, confessed to his Creator that his own sins and the sins of his people were the true causes of that captivity.

Sin, then, is the mother of servitude and the first cause of one person being subject to another. This does not happen, however, except by the direction of the Most High, in whom there is no injustice, and who alone knows best how to match punishment to offense. He Himself says: "Whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin." And so many devout Christians serve wicked masters, yet those masters are not truly free, for a person is enslaved to whatever holds him in its grip. It is a happier condition to serve a fellow human being than to serve lust, for lust (to say nothing of the other passions) exercises a brutal tyranny over the hearts of those who submit to it, whether that lust is for power or for physical pleasure. In the peaceful order of society, where one person is under another's authority, humility benefits the servant while pride damages the one above. But consider a person as God first created him: in that original state, he was neither slave to another person nor to sin. Penal servitude was established by the law that commands the preservation of nature's order and forbids its disruption. Had that law never been broken, penal servitude would never have been imposed.

This is why the apostle urges servants to obey their masters and to serve them with cheerfulness and goodwill, so that even if they cannot be freed by their masters, they can turn their servitude into a kind of inner freedom: serving not out of fearful deception, but out of faithful love, until injustice has passed away, all human power and authority has been abolished, and God alone is all in all.

So then, although our righteous ancestors kept servants in their households and drew clear distinctions between those servants and their own children in matters of earthly life, they made no such distinction in matters of religion, which is the source from which all eternal good flows. There they provided for every member of the household with equal care. This is what the natural order requires, and from it came the title "father of the family," a name that even the worst masters love to claim for themselves. But those who truly deserve the title take care that everyone in their household continues in the service of God, as though all were their own children. They desire that all should find a place in the household of heaven, where authority becomes unnecessary because everyone has passed beyond the need for governance, having attained immortality. Until that day arrives, masters must endure more labor in governing than servants do in serving. If anyone is disobedient and disturbs this rightful peace, they must be corrected promptly, whether by discipline or some other appropriate means, so that they may be grafted back into the peaceful community from which their disobedience has torn them. Just as it is no kindness to help someone gain a lesser good at the cost of a greater one, it is equally wrong to let a small offense grow into something far worse by excusing it out of misplaced mercy. The duty of an upright person is to harm no one, but also to restrain sin wherever possible and to correct it in whoever is within their reach, so that the correction benefits the sinner and the example serves as a warning to others. Every household, then, is part of the city; every beginning points toward some end; and every part contributes to the wholeness of the whole. It follows clearly that the peace of the household is bound up with the peace of the city, meaning that orderly authority and obedience within the family have a direct bearing on orderly rule and submission within the city. The father of the family should therefore draw his principles from the city's governance, shaping the peace of his private household in accordance with the peace of the common life.

But those who do not live by faith seek all their peace in the sea of temporal gain; whereas the righteous live in full expectation of the glories to come, using the circumstances of this world as pilgrims would, not abandoning their course toward God for the sake of earthly concerns, but using those circumstances to support the weakness of the corruptible flesh and make it more capable of enduring toil and hardship. The necessities of this life are therefore common to both the faithful and the unbeliever, and to both their households; but the ends for which each makes use of them are vastly different.

The faithless "worldly city" aims at earthly peace and settles for nothing more, seeking only a uniform agreement among its citizens on matters that concern this mortal life alone. The "Heavenly City," or rather that part of it still making its pilgrimage on earth and living by faith, also makes use of this peace. As it should: it recognizes that this mortal life requires such peace, and so it lives here on earth as though in captivity. Having received the promise of redemption and various spiritual gifts as pledges of that promise, it willingly obeys whatever laws the "temporal city" enacts to sustain mortal life, so that both cities might share a common peace in the things that concern them both. But the "earthly city" has members whom Holy Scripture utterly rejects, people who were either too devoted to demons or too easily deceived by them, and who believed that every aspect of existence had its own presiding deity and fell under the care of a separate god. The body belonged to one god, the soul to another; within the body itself, the head to one, the neck to another, and so on for every member. The soul was similarly divided: one god governed the intellect, another learning, a third anger, a fourth desire. Every other necessity or circumstance of human life had its own divine patron as well, whether cattle, grain, wine, oil, forests, money, navigation, war, marriage, or procreation, each assigned to a particular power. The citizens of the "Heavenly State," by contrast, acknowledged only one God, to whom alone that worship called *latreia* (the highest, exclusive devotion owed to God) was properly and solely due. From this fundamental difference it followed that the two communities could never be united under one religion, but were bound to disagree on this point above all others, so that the faithful were left to endure the arrogance and persecution of the unfaithful, had not their own numbers sometimes, and the providence of God always, stood in their defense.

This "celestial society," while present on earth, grows by drawing in people from every language and culture. It never disregards the temporal laws enacted against such a good and devout practice, yet it doesn't break those laws either; rather, it observes the different legal customs of different nations, all of which serve to preserve earthly peace, provided they don't stand against the worship of the one true God. So the Heavenly City respects and honors this temporal peace on earth, along with the harmony of human wills in honest moral life, as far as conscience allows. It even desires this peace and makes use of it in pursuit of *eternal peace*, which is so truly worthy of that name because the orderly, unified fellowship of people in the enjoyment of God, and of one another in God, is the only real peace available to rational creatures. Once that peace is attained, mortality is banished, life becomes truly life, and the physical body is no longer a burden to the soul through decay; instead, it becomes spiritual, perfected, and entirely subject to the will.

This is the peace to which the pilgrim of faith refers everything else he encounters during his earthly journey. He lives by faith when everything he does in pursuit of that peace is consciously directed toward God and toward his neighbor as well, because as a citizen of that heavenly city, he cannot live only for himself but must be social in his life and conduct.

As for the new Academicians, whom Varro claims hold no certainty except this: "That all things are uncertain," the Church of God rejects these doubts as madness. The Church has a most certain knowledge of the things it grasps, though only in small measure, because the corruptible body weighs down the soul, and because, as the apostle says, "We know in part." Beyond this, the Church trusts the evidence of the senses in those matters where the mind judges through the sense organs, though anyone who trusts the senses entirely would be making a serious mistake. It also believes the holy canonical Scriptures, both Old and New Testament, from which the righteous person draws the faith by which he lives, and in which we all walk without doubt as long as we are on our pilgrimage and personally absent from God. With this faith held firm, we may reasonably doubt all other things that are not made clear to us through sense, reason, Scripture, or the testimony of reliable authority.

The City of God has no concern with what clothes its citizens wear or what customs they follow, as long as these don't contradict God's holy precepts and each person keeps the faith, which is the true path to salvation. So when a philosopher becomes a Christian, no one requires him to change his dress or his habits, since these are no obstacle to his religion; only his false opinions need to go. The church doesn't worry about Varro's distinction regarding the Cynics, as long as people avoid impure and intemperate behavior. As for the three ways of life (active, contemplative, and the middle path between them), while a person can keep the faith in any of these, there is still a real difference between the love of truth and the duties of charity. One should not be so devoted to contemplation that one neglects the good of one's neighbor, nor so absorbed in action that one forgets divine reflection. In contemplation, one should not seek idleness but truth: to benefit oneself through knowledge and to share it generously with others. In action, one should not aim at power or prestige, because "all under the sun is mere vanity" (Eccl 1:2); rather, one should perform the work of a leader for its true purpose, which is the benefit and salvation of those in one's care, as we said before. This is what led the apostle to write, "If any man desire the office of a bishop, he desireth a good work" (1 Tim 3:1). He doesn't explain what that office is in terms of status; it is an office of labor, not of honor. The Greek word itself makes this clear: the one installed in this role is to watch over the people under his care. "Bishop" comes from *ἐπί*, meaning "over," and *σκοπός*, meaning "a watching" or "an attendance," so that we can rightly translate *ἐπίσκοπος* as "superintendent," showing that no one is a true bishop who desires to lord it over others rather than to serve them. No one, then, is forbidden from pursuing a worthy life of contemplation. But to desire authority, even when people must be governed and the role is well performed, is still open to the charge of being unfitting. The love of truth, therefore, calls for a holy withdrawal; the necessity of charity calls for active engagement. If that engagement is not required of us, we should not seek it, but give ourselves fully to the sacred pursuit of truth. But if we are called to a position of responsibility, the law and need of charity bind us to accept it. Even so, we must not on that account abandon our first commitment entirely, lest we lose the sweetness of the one and be crushed under the weight of the other.

The good of the "holy society" is perfect only when their peace is established in eternity: no longer passing in succession as mortal men do through life and death, one giving way to another, but confirmed together with their immortality forever, untouched by the slightest imperfection. Who would not count such a state supremely happy? And who, comparing it with what human life offers here on earth, would not declare this present life utterly miserable, however well supplied with temporal comforts? Yet the person who possesses this earthly life and directs it entirely toward the firm and faithful object of his hope may not unfairly be called happy already, though that happiness lies more in his expectation of the first than in his enjoyment of the second. For possession of this life without that hope is a false beatitude and a very real misery. There is no true use of the mind's highest good in such a condition, because true wisdom is absent: the wisdom that, in the prudent discernment, resolute performance, temperate restraint, and just ordering of earthly things, directs all its aims toward that end where God will be all in all, where eternity will stand firm, and peace will be perfect and complete.

Now it is time to fulfill a promise I made in the second book of this work: to show that Rome never had a true commonwealth, as Scipio defines one in Cicero's *De Republica*. His definition was this: a commonwealth is the estate of the people (*Respublica est res populi*). If that is true, Rome never had one, because it never had an estate of the people, which is precisely what his definition requires. He defines the people as a multitude united in one shared commitment to law and common interest. What he means by a shared commitment to law he explains himself, and in doing so he shows that a state cannot stand without justice. Where true justice is absent, there can be no law. For what law does, justice does, and what is done unjustly is done unlawfully. We cannot regard unjust human decrees as genuine laws. All serious thinkers agree that law flows from the fountain of justice, and that the claim made by some is utterly false: "That is law which is profitable to the greatest number." So then, where justice is absent, there can be no society united in one commitment to law, and therefore no people in the sense Scipio defines in Cicero. If there is no people, there is no estate of the people, but only a confused mob unworthy of the name. If the commonwealth is the estate of the people, and those who are not united in one commitment to law do not constitute a people, and what is not grounded in justice is not law, then it necessarily follows that where there is no justice, there is no commonwealth.

Now, to the point at hand: justice is the virtue that gives to each person what is due to them. What kind of justice is it, then, that takes a person away from the true God and hands him over to condemned demons? Is that a proper distribution of what is due? If someone who seizes your property and gives it to someone with no claim to it is guilty of injustice, is not the person who tears himself away from his Lord God and gives himself to the service of the devil equally guilty? The books of *De Republica* contain powerful and sophisticated arguments on this very question, pitting justice against injustice. The case for injustice was argued first, with the claim that a state cannot stand without it, and this was offered as a central proof: that it is an injustice for man to rule over man, and yet if a city with such vast dominion were to abandon this form of injustice, it could never hold its provinces in submission. The reply on behalf of justice was that this arrangement is in fact just, because it benefits those who serve, and works for their good: when the power to do harm is taken from the wicked, they conduct themselves better under restraint, precisely because they conducted themselves so badly before restraint was applied. To support this reply, a striking example was drawn from nature itself: "If it is unjust to rule, why does God rule over man, the soul over the body, and reason over lust and all the mind's other vicious impulses?" This example makes it plain that it is good for some to serve in particular cases, and good for all to serve God in general. The mind that serves God is the lawful master of the body, and reason that is subject to God is the lawful master of the passions and other vices.

Therefore, if a person does not serve God, what justice can be found in him? For if he does not serve God, the soul has no lawful authority over the body, nor reason over the passions. And if this justice cannot be found in a single person, it cannot be found in a whole multitude of such people either. Among them, then, there is no shared commitment to law that would make a multitude into a people whose estate constitutes a commonwealth. Why should I even address the question of common interest, which also appears in the definition of a people? It is enough to say that no one lives profitably who lives wickedly, serving not God but demons (who are all the more wicked for being utterly corrupt creatures that nonetheless dare to demand sacrifice as though they were gods). Yet I think what I have already said about the shared commitment to law is sufficient to show that they were no people whose estate could constitute a commonwealth, since they had no justice among them. If they insist that they did not serve demons but holy gods, why should I repeat here what I have already said so many times? Anyone who has read this work up to this point and still doubts whether the Romans worshipped demons must be either hopelessly dense or shamelessly argumentative. But setting aside the question of what powers they offered sacrifice to, let this passage of holy Scripture settle the matter: "He that sacrificeth unto gods, shall be rooted out, save unto one God alone" (Exod 22:20). He who issued that command in such threatening terms will have no gods sacrificed to, whether good or bad.

But they may ask: Who is this God? And how do you prove that He alone deserves all the sacrifices of Rome, with no other deity receiving any share? It is a sign of profound blindness to still need to ask who this God is. He is the one whose prophets foretold what we ourselves have seen fulfilled. He is the one who told Abraham, "In thy seed shall all the nations be blessed" (Gen 22:18), which even those who remain hostile to Christianity know, whether they like it or not, to have been fulfilled in Christ, who descended from Abraham in the flesh. He is the God whose Spirit spoke through the prophets whose words the whole Church now sees fulfilled: the Church spread across the face of the entire earth sees those fulfillments, and they were accomplished in the very ways I described in my earlier books. He is the God whom Varro called the Romans' Jupiter, though Varro did not fully understand what he was saying. I mention this because so great a scholar believed this God to be neither nonexistent nor among the lesser powers, but rather the supreme God of all. In short, He is the very God whom the learned philosopher Porphyry (though he was a fierce enemy of Christianity) acknowledged as the highest God, even on the testimony of the oracles of those he called the lesser gods.

For in his books titled *The Divinity of Philosophy* (θεολογία φιλοσοφίας), where he records the Oracles' answers on philosophical matters, Porphyry includes something to this effect. Here it is, translated from the Greek: "Someone," he says, "went to the Oracle and asked which god he should sacrifice to in order to convert his wife away from Christianity." Apollo answered him this way: "You might sooner write legible letters on water, or grow wings and fly through the air like a bird, than pull your wife back from her corrupted beliefs. Let her chase after her mad opinions as long as she pleases; let her mourn that dead God with her false lamentations, the one whom wise and clear-headed judges condemned, and whom a shameful death on the cross finished off." So much for the Oracle; the Greek is in verse, though our language cannot reproduce it. After these verses, Porphyry adds the following: "See how beyond remedy their mistaken belief is, because, as Apollo said, the Jews receive God more fully than others do." Do you hear this? He disgraces and obscures Christ, yet says, "The Jews receive God," interpreting the Oracle's verses as meaning that Christ was condemned by clear-headed judges, as though He had been lawfully tried and justly executed. Let Porphyry look to this lying priest's Oracle and believe it if he wishes; but it is entirely possible that the Oracle gave no such answer and that this is pure invention on his part. How he reconciles the Oracles and stays consistent with himself, we will see shortly. But note, in passing, that here he claims the Jews, as those who rightly receive God, judged correctly in putting Christ to so shameful and cruel a death. And yet to the Jews, God spoke truly when He said, "He that sacrifices to many gods shall be rooted out, save to one God only." But let us move on to clearer ground and hear what Porphyry makes of the God of the Jews. He asked Apollo which was better, "The word, or the law," and Apollo answered thus (he says), adding the response. I will quote only what is necessary: "Upon God the Creator, and upon the King before all things, who makes heaven and earth, the sea, and the underworld tremble, yes, and all the gods as well: the law is their father, whom the holy Hebrews worship." This is the glory Porphyry, through his god Apollo, assigns to the Hebrew God: that the very deities tremble before Him. Given that this God declared, "He that sacrifices to many gods shall be rooted out," I am surprised Porphyry was not afraid of being rooted out himself for offering sacrifice to so many gods. What is more, this same man later speaks well of Christ, as though he has forgotten the insult he offered Him before: as if in their dreams his gods scorned Christ, but waking, praised Him and acknowledged His goodness. Finally, as though about to reveal something extraordinary, he writes: "What I am about to say may strain belief: the gods declared Christ to be a man of deep piety, immortalized for His goodness, and they praised Him highly; but as for the Christians, they described them as people stained with every kind of corruption and error, and heaped every foul word upon them." He then records the oracles that blaspheme the Christian religion, and afterward reports that when Hecate was asked whether Christ was God, she replied: "His soul, once separated from His body, became immortal; but it wanders without wisdom. It was the soul of a most worthy man, whom those who have abandoned the truth now worship." He then adds his own commentary on this oracle: "The goddess therefore called Him a man of deep piety, and said that the deluded Christians worship His soul, made immortal after death, as other pious souls are." When she was then asked why He was condemned, she answered: "His body was condemned to torment, but His soul sits above in heaven, and by destiny leads into error all those souls who cannot attain the gifts of the gods or come to the knowledge of immortal love. For this reason they are hated by the gods: because they neither acknowledge the gods nor receive their gifts, but are destined to error by Him. He Himself, however, was godly and ascended to heaven as godly men do. Therefore, do not blaspheme Him, but rather pity the poor fools He has bound in error."

What person is so foolish that they cannot see what these oracles really are? They are either fabricated outright by Christianity's cunning enemy, or they are the devil's own tricks designed to serve a specific purpose: by praising Christ, they appear to offer a genuine critique of the Christian faith, and so, if possible, to block people from entering Christianity, the only path to salvation. These forces see no contradiction in their many-layered deception. They are perfectly content to be believed when they praise Christ, as long as they are also believed when they attack the Christian, so that anyone who trusts them ends up admiring Christ while despising His religion. And so, even if such a person honors Christ, Christ will not free him from the devil's grip, because the praise they offer Christ is precisely the kind that leads anyone who accepts it far away from true Christianity, and toward the heresy of Photinus, who held that Christ was merely a man and no God at all. A person who believes this will never be saved by Christ, nor freed from the devil's snares.

But we will believe neither Apollo in his slander nor Hecate in her praise of Christ. Apollo would have Christ be a wicked man, justly condemned; Hecate would have Him be a most godly man, yet merely human. Both agree on one thing: they want no Christians, because everyone except Christians is in their grip. Let this philosopher, or anyone who trusts those oracles against Christianity, try to reconcile Apollo and Hecate and get them to tell the same story, whether in praise or condemnation of Christ. Even if they could manage it, we would still avoid them as deceitful devils, whether their words were flattering or hostile. But since this god and this goddess cannot even agree about Christ, men have no good reason to believe or obey them when they forbid Christianity. Either Porphyry or Hecate, in offering these compliments to Christ while claiming that He destined Christians to error, goes on to explain the causes of that error. Before I report those causes, I will put one question to him: if Christ predestined all Christians to error, did He do so knowingly or against His will? If He did it knowingly, how can He be just? If it was against His will, how can He be happy?

Now to the causes of this error. There are certain earthly spirits, he says, that are under the rule of evil demons. The Hebrew wise men (among whom Jesus was one, as the divine oracle cited earlier testifies) forbade religious persons to have anything to do with these spirits, urging them instead to attend to the celestial powers, and above all to God the Father, with every reverence they could muster. This, he says, the gods also command us, as we have already shown by the way they urge us to reverence God in all places. But the ignorant and wicked, possessing no divine gift, no knowledge of that great and immortal love, and following neither the precepts of the gods nor of good men, have thrown all the deities aside, choosing not merely to respect but even to worship those depraved demons. And while they profess to serve God, they do nothing that actually belongs to His service. For God is the Father of all things and stands in need of nothing; it is good for us to offer Him our worship through chastity, justice, and the other virtues, making our whole life a continual prayer to Him through our search for Him and our imitation of Him. For our search of Him, he says, purifies us, and our imitation of Him brings something of the divine into our own lives. So he has taught us well about God the Father and about how we should offer our service to Him. The Hebrew prophets are full of such holy precepts, both commending and reforming the lives of the saints. But when it comes to Christianity, he goes wrong and slanders, as far as his devil's pleasure allows, those whom he regards as deities, as though it were so difficult a matter to look at the obscenities practiced and published in their temples and the true worship and doctrine offered before God in our churches, and to see plainly where morals were being formed and where they were being destroyed. Who but the devil himself could have inspired him with so shameless a distortion as to say that Christians honor rather than detest the very devils whose worship the Hebrews forbade?

No: the God whom the Hebrews worshipped will not permit sacrifice even to His holiest angels (whom we who are pilgrims on earth nonetheless love and reverence as the most sanctified members of the city of heaven), but forbids it directly in this thundering command: "He that sacrificeth unto gods, shall be rooted out." And lest anyone suppose He meant only the earthly spirits, whom this writer calls the lesser powers and whom Scripture also calls gods (not the gods of the Hebrews, but of the pagans), as is clear from that one verse, "For all the gods of the heathen are devils" (Ps 96:5), lest anyone imagine that the prohibition extended no further than these devils or that it did not concern offerings to the celestial spirits, He adds: "save only the Lord alone, but unto one God only." Some may take the Latin words *nisi domino soli* to mean "unto the Lord, the Son," and so read the passage as referring to Apollo, but the original text and the Greek translations rule out any such misreading. So then, the Hebrew God so highly praised by this philosopher gave the Hebrews a law in their own language, not obscure or uncertain but already spread throughout the whole world, in which this clause was plainly stated: "He that sacrificeth unto gods shall be rooted out, save only unto the Lord." Why should we search any further through the law and the prophets on this point? Indeed, why search at all, when they are so plain and so abundant that I need not pile up passage after passage to establish that no power in heaven or earth may share in the honors due to God alone? Consider this one passage, spoken briefly but powerfully by the mouth of that God whom even the wisest pagans so highly extol; let us mark it, fear it, and keep it, lest we too be rooted out: "He that sacrificeth unto more gods than that true and only Lord, shall be rooted out." Yet God Himself has no need of any of our services; everything we do in this regard is for the good of our own souls. This is why the Hebrews say in their holy Psalms: "I have said unto the Lord, Thou art my God, my well-doing is nothing unto Thee." No: we ourselves are the best and most excellent sacrifice that can be offered to Him. It is His city whose mystery we celebrate in such offerings as the faithful understand well, as I have already said. For the ending of all the symbolic offerings that the Jews presented, and the ordaining of one sacrifice to be offered throughout the whole world from East to West (as we now see happening), was prophesied long beforehand by God through the mouths of the holy Hebrews, whom we have cited as much as was needed in the appropriate places of this work.

Therefore, to conclude: where this justice does not exist, where God does not rule alone over a society that obeys Him by grace and refuses to offer sacrifice to anyone but Him, where the soul does not govern the body and all its harmful impulses in obedience to God and in proper order, where all the righteous (taken together as one) do not live by that faith which works through love, by which a man loves God as he should and his neighbor as himself, there is no society of people united by a common law and shared interest. Consequently, there is no true republic in the proper sense of the term, and finally no commonwealth at all. For where the people have no settled foundation, the whole has no real form.

But set aside that earlier definition of a people, and consider this one instead: "*A people is a multitude of rational creatures united by a shared commitment to the things they collectively value.*" To understand the character of any people, you must first examine what those things actually are. Whatever they may be, wherever a multitude of people are united in the common pursuit of what they genuinely desire, you can rightly call them a people: the nobler their shared interests, the better they are as a people; the baser those interests, the worse. By this definition, Rome had a people, and therefore a commonwealth. What they embraced at the beginning, what they pursued afterward, what goodness they traded for bloodshed, what unity they abandoned for sedition, conspiracy, and civil war: history can testify to all of this, and we have already touched on part of it ourselves. Yet none of this strips them of the name of a people, or their state of the title of a commonwealth, so long as our revised definition still holds. And what I have said of Rome applies equally to the Athenians, to the Greeks as a whole, to the Egyptians, and to the Assyrian Babylonians, whether their dominions were great or small, and indeed to every nation on earth. For in the "City of the wicked," where God does not govern and people do not obey Him or sacrifice to Him alone, and where consequently the soul does not rule the body nor reason the passions, true justice is nowhere to be found.

For though these things may appear genuine, if the soul and reason do not serve God as He has taught them to, they can never truly govern the body or the passions. How can a soul maintain any real sense of proper order when it doesn't know God, refuses to serve His greatness, and has surrendered itself to the influence of unclean and filthy devils? No: those things the soul seems to count as virtues, by which it claims to govern its affections, are in fact vices rather than virtues if they are not all directed toward God. Some hold that virtues are real when pursued purely for their own sake and nothing else, but even then they slide into empty pride and so forfeit their true goodness. For just as it is not the flesh, but something above the flesh, that gives life to the body, so it is not man, but something above man, that brings true happiness to the human mind and to all the powers of heaven.

Just as the soul gives life to the body, so God gives blessedness to humanity, as the Hebrew scriptures affirm: "Blessed is the people whose God is the Lord" (Ps 144:15). Those who are strangers to God are therefore wretched, and yet they enjoy a kind of legitimate peace, though not forever, because they failed to use it well while they had it. That they should enjoy it in this life, however, also works to our benefit, because during our time mixed together with Babylon, we ourselves make use of her peace. Faith will eventually free the people of God from her, but in the meantime we live as pilgrims within her. For this reason, the apostle urged the Church to pray for the kings and rulers of that earthly city, adding this explanation: "That we may lead a quiet life in all godliness and charity" (1 Tim 2:2). Similarly, the prophet Jeremiah, foretelling the captivity of God's ancient people and commanding them (on the Lord's behalf) to go peacefully and patiently to Babylon, also advised them to pray, saying, "For in her peace shall be your peace" (Jer 29:7), meaning that temporal peace which belongs to good and bad alike.

Our true peace with God is twofold: here below we have it by faith, and in the life to come we will have it by sight. Yet all the peace we enjoy in this life, whether public or private, is more a comfort in our misery than any guarantee of our happiness. As for our righteousness, though it is genuine because it is directed toward the true good as its end, it consists, for as long as we live here, more in the forgiveness of sins than in the perfection of virtue. This is confirmed by the prayer that all of God's pilgrims use, every member of His holy city crying out to Him daily: "Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive them that trespass against us." This prayer does not benefit those whose faith is dead because it lacks works, but those whose faith works through love. Our reason, though it is subject to God, cannot while it remains in the corruptible body (which burdens the soul) hold the affections in perfect obedience. Therefore even the most righteous person stands in need of this prayer. Even when reason wins the battle, it does not win without a fight. Some touch of weakness or another creeps in on even the best of victors, just when he thinks he has all vice firmly under control, causing him to stumble through some idle word or disordered thought, if not through outright sin. So as long as we are still overruling sin, our peace remains imperfect: the affections not yet fully conquered are held down only through dangerous struggle, and even those already subdued offer no lasting security, keeping us in a state of constant and vigilant effort. In the midst of all these temptations (of which God said, "Is not the life of man a temptation upon earth?"), who would dare claim to live in such a way that he need not say to God, "Forgive us our trespasses"? No one but a proud fool. Nor is the person who trusts in his own righteousness to resist Him who gives grace to the humble truly strong; he is only madly vain. As it is written, "God resisteth the proud, and giveth grace to the humble." True human righteousness, then, looks like this: having God as Lord and oneself as His subject; the soul ruling the body; reason ruling over sin, whether by subduing it or resisting it; asking God both for His grace to merit good and His pardon for sin; and finally, being grateful for every grace He has bestowed. But in that final peace, to which all earthly peace and righteousness points, immortality and incorruption will so purify our nature from all vice that we will have no need of reason to govern sin, for there will be no sin at all. God will rule over humanity, and the soul over the body; obedience will be as pleasant and effortless as the condition of those who live there will be glorious and blessed. All will possess this forever, and will be certain of possessing it always. The blessedness of that peace, or the peace of that blessedness, will be the fullness and perfection of all goodness.

Those who are not part of this society, however, are destined for eternal misery, called the second death. In that state, even the soul, deprived of God, can hardly be said to live, let alone the body, which is bound in everlasting torments. This second death will be all the more terrible precisely because it will never end. Now, since war is the opposite of peace, just as misery is the opposite of bliss and death the opposite of life, we might ask what kind of war will reign among the wicked, as a counterpart to the peace enjoyed by the righteous. Consider only what war essentially is: the hostile opposition and violent conflict of things against one another. What could be worse, then, than a state where the will is at war with the passions and the passions with the will, locked in a struggle that is forever unresolvable? Where nature and pain are in eternal conflict, yet neither ever overcomes the other? In our earthly conflicts, one side eventually wins: either pain is victorious, and death ends all sensation, or nature conquers and drives the pain away. But there, pain will afflict without end, and nature will suffer without end, both persisting for as long as the punishment is inflicted. Since both the good and the wicked must pass through that great judgment to reach their respective ends, one to be sought and the other to be fled, I will, with God's permission and help, devote the next book to a discussion of that final day and its terrible judgment.